Hour 3 - Best of the Jason Rantz Show: Ferguson self own, guest Keith Swank, Trump storms out of interview

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. Ouch, Seattle, left. I'm walking here. Good afternoon and welcome to the Jason Ranch Show right here on Seattle Red 7.7am online at Seattle Red.com. We've got a lot to get to this hour. We'll bring you the latest out of the gubernatorial and mayoral races in California and Los Angeles. Trace Gallagher from Fox News at night stops by. Plus, there are some folks in left-wing media who are at least calling out Graham Platner. We'll get to that. But first, Bob Ferguson just truly humiliated himself almost intentionally. That's what's trending. What's trending? The economy. Bob Ferguson took a victory lap on X this week on a report. He didn't write for an economy he didn't build while citing a study that he didn't link to. And there is a reason, Governor Bob Ferguson goes on X. to brag about this wallet hub ranked study looking at our state's economy, claiming that it's second in the nation, but didn't actually link to it. Normally, he includes links. In fact, even when he was talking about Jim Walsh on this show last week, calling Bob Ferguson out and saying he's going to run, he potentially run for governor, he included Bob Ferguson a link to our Seattle Red story. So he's capable of doing links. He didn't run out of space to include the link. But he chose not to include a link to this Wallet Hub study that showed us second highest or strongest economy in the country. We're only behind Massachusetts and we're ahead of Utah. So it's Massachusetts, Washington, Utah. He listed off the talking points. He threw that out there. We have the ninth largest economy. We have space industry manufacturing. We've got new business formation requests. He pushes all that. Then he pivots to his real pitch, which was more spending on roads and more spending on housing and what he calls making our tax system more fair, which is just his governor speak for the tax hikes that he signed last year and the income tax that's about to hit us. Now, one thing that was missing from this tweet, was a link to the study because once you read it, you know it doesn't quite say what he wants you to think it says. I went and I actually looked at the study. I spent some time over the flight back from New York last night or yesterday afternoon reading this study. It's the 26 Best and Worst State Economies Report came out June 1st. And it looks at all 50 states plus D.C. And it looks at 28 different metrics. And it's basically 28 metrics, but it's done across three themes or buckets. Economic activity, economic health, and innovation potential.

They look at GDP growth, unemployment, startup activity, all these different things. And a lot of it is tied specifically to the tech sector. They're looking at the number of jobs in high-tech industries and patents that are being given or R&D spending. And Washington ranked second because of five specific numbers. We have the second highest industry research and development investment per capita, the second highest share of high-tech jobs. The second highest share of STEM professionals, which is obviously tied to the high-tech jobs, third highest invention patents per capita, and the eighth highest share of firms on the Tech Fast 500, Technology Fast 500. Now, none of those pieces, those data points, is an outcome that you can tie to policy, right? Nothing happened because of policy, because of something that, you know, Washington Democrats and Olympia did. Those are five different ways of measuring Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Expedia, T-Mobile, SpaceX, Blue Origin. Basically, it's a way of looking and judging the engineers in Seattle, in Bellevue, Redmond, Kent, the General Puget Sound Research Corridor, we'll call it. which has been building itself up since Bill Gates moved from Albuquerque, what, in the late 70s? The rankings that they're looking at is a snapshot of private investment that was already here before Bob Ferguson ran to become attorney general, let alone governor. The analysts that they quote in this Wallet Hub study actually kind of hedge a little bit on the headline. They quote the report's analyst. His name is Chip Lupo. He wrote that a strong state economy doesn't actually guarantee success for its residents and that the best state economies are the ones friendly to new businesses, friendly to new businesses. Which, by the way, Ferguson left out of his X thread for the same reason a magician doesn't show you the trap door. Because what Wallet Hub didn't measure in this report is that it doesn't grade tax burden. It doesn't grade business tax climate. or the regulatory load or the cost of living. It doesn't measure housing affordability or the survival rates of small businesses. It doesn't look at whether or not people building the economy that he's bragging about are packing a U-Haul for their own choice to move to, say, Boise or to Nashville. It's... Pretty transparent what he's doing here. If you want to know what the measurements look like in Washington, just understand they look bad. When you look at the stuff that wasn't mentioned in the study, that's the stuff that matters. The Association of Washington businesses, they did that survey. We've been talking about it for the last two months. 24% of the businesses surveyed this spring said they're actively considering relocating their business out of the state. One in four, which is up from 17%, which is the number that we got in the previous quarter. close to triple where it sat in winter of 2025. The number, the percentage of business leaders saying they're considering moving their personal residence out of the state is at 55%. What was the number one challenge for them? The tax burden. The tax burden. Our business tax climate has collapsed with the spending that's out of control in Olympia, with the taxes that are out of control coming from Democrats.

Our tax climate is awful. Back in 2014, we were the six best in the country. Now we're near the bottom. Now we rank among the worst states for small business survival. The B&O hike on service businesses that Ferguson signed into law last year started hitting employers the latter part of 2025, accelerating now. Those are the same taxes his more fair line is referring to. Do you think that we're living in a time in which it's more fair or fairer? It's ridiculous. So this victory lap that he's doing on a study he won't even link to is like a guy who inherited winning the lottery tickets and is taking credit for the numbers that he had nothing to do with. He didn't choose them. The ranking measures what the private sector built. It doesn't measure what Olympia is doing to it. And here's where it even gets worse for him. And we've got a story up over at Seattlered.com. Another report dropped this week from a group called Truth in Accounting. They looked at the financial state of the states. And it looks at something that Wallet Hub obviously didn't in that particular case. It was whether the state government can pay its own bills. Washington got a C. We rank 31st out of 50. They look at fiscal year 2024. So remember, this was two years ago. Washington had $5.3 billion away or came short of what it needed to cover its obligations. Divide that shortfall across the taxpayer base, and every one of us is on the hook for $1,800 to cover the gap. Now, some of us will get hit harder than others, but $1,800 per taxpayer is the share of what Olympia decided to do. And then double down even more in 2025 into 2026 and 2026 into 27. And this TIA report goes further, truth in accounting. They modeled what happens if the federal grants return to 2019 levels, adjusted only for inflation. Washington could see a $6 billion reduction in federal funding under that scenario. That's bad. That's the translation. It's bad. And this is coming, what, a month or so after Moody's? decided to downgrade our financial outlook from stable to negative. And to be clear, Moody's doesn't just downgrade states because of politics or because the vibes are off. Moody's downgrade states when the spending trajectory looks unsustainable and the revenue base looks fragile, looks vulnerable. I didn't see a tweet from Bob Ferguson about that, did you? Maybe we missed that one. Look at the company we're in. Truth in Accounting's top five states for fiscal health, every single one is run by a Republican. Every single one. The bottom five, every single one is Democrat run. Of the 25 states with the TIA labeling taxpayer surplus, 19 of them are red. Of the 25 states with taxpayer burden, 16 are blue. Our neighbors, Idaho, they did well, 10. Even Oregon did better. They came in in number 14. We're getting beat in fiscal health by Oregon. Oregon. Now, zoom out and connect all the dots. Because that's the picture of Ferguson doesn't want you to see in one single frame and certainly not one single tweet. Wallet Hub says our private economy is great. Truth in accounting says Washington has a lousy public balance sheet.

And that's even what the legal affairs reporter Fallon Gallagher over at MS Now says. We'll get into his audio in a second, but let's just walk through what John Bolton is admitting to admitting to admitting tomm is admitting to memory-hold this. The original indictment was 18 counts, eight for transmitting national defense information, 10 for unlawfully retaining it. Prosecutor said he basically shared a what they called diary-like notes from his time as National Security Advisor. He shared it with two family members. CNN identified them as his wife and his daughter. He did it through his personal email account. More than a thousand pages of information about his day-to-day activities in the Trump White House were pushed through a personal email account to people who didn't have security clearances while he was the sitting national security advisor. And it gets worse. Between 2019, September 2019, when he left the government and July 2021, A hacker that we think is associated with Iran gained access to his emails, gained access to classified national defense information in that account. Iran. The country John Bolton spent two decades warning everyone about. They read his diary on his Gmail account, according to the reporting, and yet somehow this guy's a martyr. He should never have been targeted by the Trump administration. I mean, roll the tape back to October. The day he was indicted. This was October of last year. He said he was innocent. He said he was being targeted because of his public opposition to the president. And that became the line that got picked up by Democrats on television over and over and over again. He's being targeted because he's a critic. Every cable hit, every op-ed, every Democratic senator with the Sunday show booking, they basically said exactly the same thing. Trump's going after his political enemies. John Bolton is the Canary. Next, it's going to be James Comey and Letitia James, then you. But John Bolton is the latest of the quote-unquote perceived enemies to, it turns out, actually have done something wrong. He actually did something wrong. He broke the law, which is why he's pleading guilty. And the funny thing is when folks paid attention to some of the coverage early on, including, frankly, on some of the left-wing networks. There were folks out there, legal folks, what's being alleged in this indictment is pretty serious. It seems pretty clear cut. But no, no, no, he's a victim. We were told over and over and over again. And now he's going to basically get to avoid jail time. There's no doubt that this is a big deal because this is the first plea deal that we're seeing from any of these cases that DOJ has brought against the president's perceived political enemies. But one thing I want to caution here is that it might not be a roadmap as much for the cases against James Comey or the Southern Poverty Law Center, any of these other cases that the DOJ is going to bring that. Some people are calling political retribution because this case has always been a little bit different. Of course, he was facing 18 counts of retention and transmission of national defense information, which is very serious charges. And we saw last August when the FBI searched his house in his office, we saw them walking out with boxes and materials. And so we know that he had these materials. We know that he was keeping diary entries that his wife and daughter had access to. So this plea deal that happened here is probably, I would say, a win for John Bolton.

if he was convicted on this, he was facing really serious prison time. And this also, I just want to add that this case was going to drag on for a very long time. So on top of anything that he might have faced if he was convicted here, he'd be facing massive legal fees. Yeah. And she's right, of course. This is a benefit or to his benefit. Now, here's why all of this should matter to you. It's beyond just the idea of someone being a bad guy getting caught. This is about a bad guy who was caught, but was presumed to be the victim. Not presumed innocent, which you expect out of the criminal justice system. But left-wing media said he was innocent and he was only being targeted because of Trump evil, Orange Man, bad. That was it. And again, it's always kind of funny. I made a reference in passing on CNN, I think Wednesday night, about Marjorie Taylor Greene, who left-wing media loathed and called out, and they should have, by the way, I called her out for years and years and years until she was anti-Trump. Then all of a sudden she's invited on to all of these shows and she's a big hero. John Bolton, same thing, same exact thing. John Bolton was loathed by the Democrats. He was loathed by some Republicans because he was too much of a war hawk. But then the second he started to be a Trump critic, oh, well, all of a sudden, all of a sudden he's someone who's trusted and anyone who goes after him, they're the bad guys. And it's ironic because it's Donald Trump, whose main criticism was always about how John Bolton was always too willing to go to war, hoping to go to war, which is a point he made today during a press gaggle. I was never much of a fan of John Bolton. I never thought he was a smart person. That he was a radical right in terms of war, not in terms of other things. He wanted to go to war with anybody that open their mouth, anybody that's all. And I used him for a purpose. He was involved with Bush, and he created a lot of problems. But he always wanted to kill people in war. And that was okay for me as long as I didn't listen to him, which I never did. He's a bad guy, John Boe. He's a dirty guy, and we caught him. Yeah, he was caught. And again, I'm not hearing a whole bunch of people now saying, okay, we apologize for the claims that he was the victim of persecution. None of that. Because God forbid they'd be honest about how they framed him as this innocent victim of political persecution. God forbid they actually be honest. Let's find out what else is trending. What's trending? You can't make this up. Hey, good news for Sound Transit. They just converted a driver to become a light rail user. They did it in a way that I don't think they expected. This happened Tuesday night, and I apologize, we're just getting to it now. But I did want to talk about it just a little bit. Obviously, I've been out of town, so I've been not able to get to everything I wanted to talk about.

The light rail station over at Mount Baker was at least temporarily suspended because a poor woman, a 70-year-old woman, ended up driving onto the tracks and she ended up becoming stuck on the, they call it an elevated guideway at the Mount Baker station. It happened during the afternoon commute, 615 or so. And it was right between the Soto Station and the Othello Station. And it, you know, there's images of it. It's... It was bad. Now, kudos to the crew. They were able to get the woman off of the tracks relatively quickly. The fact that it's up and running should tell you that they do a pretty good job. And I'm glad that they actually closed it down and got it taken care of. That was a rider talking with Como. They also spoke with a transit employee. who said, yeah, this doesn't happen all that often. This is a situation that you can't readily plan for. These vehicles are used to lifting cars off the tracks in more accessible areas like Rainier Beach and Columbia City and Othello. That is a very difficult event to recover from. And hats off to all of our transit staff. So what happened? She wasn't drunk or impaired in any way according to... the reporting, she was confused because she said she was following her GPS, which she said led her on to driving onto the tracks. Now, I don't know if... that is what actually happened or you just got confused on the GPS. The SPD said she took a really long time to answer some questions and was very confused. So my guess is it wasn't truly the GPS system. But we've certainly seen stories like that. And I think most of us would probably fall victim to a degree where, and I've certainly been in this case where GPS is telling me to do something. I'm like, I don't think that's right. But you do it anyway because the GPS, you keep saying, well, maybe I'm the one who's wrong. Maybe I should make a right here instead of a left. Or maybe I should go straight instead of going that. Like, we've all done it. Now, have any of us done it to the point of getting stuck on light rail or, you know, driving into the Puget Sound? No. No. Most of us have it. But I totally can see how someone who maybe is already dealing with some level of confusion. might end up making a mistake like this. So I feel bad for this poor woman. I just hope, by the way, she never drives again. Something seems like...

We're all safer if she's not out on the road. God bless her. Speaking of which, buying a used car can be stressful. Sunset Auto Family, they take the stress off your plate with a 48-hour used vehicle exchange policy. Pick a vehicle out, drive it for a couple days. If it's not the right fit, they're going to find you one that is without any gimmicks or loopholes because you just get more at sunset. And people do like that. When we come back, the latest out of California, will Steve Hilton win? Will Spencer Pratt win? Trace Gallagher from Fox News at Night Stops by. Based out of L.A., he'll give us the latest right here on the Jason Rancho on Seattle Red. The Jason Rant Show. All right, let's break it down with Seattle radio host and author Jason Rantz. Jason, if I didn't know you, my first question would be, do you make these stories up? No, they accepted this proposal. I guess it's a measure of Hamlers, they really don't like Trump, isn't it? Long form. Man, there is a lot to talk about with my next guest, Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank. who opened at least a preliminary investigation into a local high school that displayed testosterone vials as part of its LGBT pride display. At the same time, the Pierce County Charter Review Commission, which he says is run by leftist radicals, is trying to strip voters of the right to even elect their sheriff. And the response from the commissioners... Pretty outrageous. Joining me on the line is Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank. Welcome back to the show. I'm glad to be here, thanks. So there's a lot to get to. Let's start with this school district or school, specifically in Pierce County. Graham Capousin High School, they have this LGBT pride display for Pride Month, and it included a number of vials of what seems to be testosterone. You said you were starting an investigation, or at least you could have sent someone out there to look at this. What was the purpose for police involvement, and what did you guys find? The purpose for police involvement is, if this is truly testosterone, that's a controlled substance. A, you have to have a prescription for it. B, you can't give it out to people. It's kind of like... steroids or even other drugs that you, if you were to sell it or give it to somebody, you can't do that. So I was alerted to it by a post I had seen from Randy Cruz on X. I saw the vials and I said, we'll look into it. And of course, the school was closed down over the weekend. So we got there this morning and we're investigating it. What does the investigation entail beyond showing up and, you know, checking to see whether or not it's an actual vial. And to be clear, I mean, a Zoom photo clearly shows that this is testosterone vials.

Right, right. So we have those vials in custody, and so they'll be tested to see what they are. But, you know, we have to find out who put them there. Do they have authority to put them there? Which I would say no, probably not, right? What's going on with that? And so through our investigation so far, we have identified a possible suspect or a person of interest, a student from the school who might be the person who brought those vials in. And, you know, with our... state laws, when it comes to juveniles, you can't interview somebody under the age of 18 and whatnot. And so we're looking into this to see what's going on. Like, were there any teachers involved? Is there anybody that's an adult involved in this? Is it just kids being kids and putting things in there? We're going to find out what's going on with it. Because there was a lot of community alarm. People were calling me up, posting things on Facebook. Rightly so, worried about what's going on there. Now, to be clear, you're saying that the sheriff's office took the vials into custody so they're no longer being displayed, correct? Correct. They're in evidence. So they'll be put in evidence and then they'll be tested to see if there's drugs in there and if it's illegal drugs, things like that. And then we'll continue doing an investigation to see how they got in that display case. Why were they there? Who put them there? Who are they? Did... somebody rightfully have a prescription for them and then just put them in there or did somebody take somebody to get a prescription for something they shouldn't have you know i mean there's a lot of concern people are worried and rightly so about teachers interfering with parental rights taking their children students to various medical facilities and getting them, you know, testosterone or puberty blockers, things like that. So I want to investigate to see what's going on there so we can let the community know, like, hey, nothing bad has happened or, hey, something bad has happened and we're falling up with it more. Is the school cooperating? Yes, they are. The principal is cooperating. As far as I know, we had no issues getting the vials. They were already taken out of display case, I believe, by the principal and handed over to our investigating officer. Yeah, they're cooperating with it. I don't think it was authorized. I think they might have been put out a press release saying something like we didn't authorize this or we don't condone this behavior or something to that effect, right? So no, they're doing the right thing. And I know because it's in the middle of the investigation, I don't even know if you can answer this, but to the extent that you can, is it fair to say that this is not something that you're looking at as far as some egregious?

lawlessness from the school that even if it was done by a teacher, it was done overzealously to promote gender reassignment, not because they're handing out testosterone to people. Like there's no evidence of that latter part, correct? Correct. And I certainly hope that they're not handing out testosterone to anybody. And of course, that's what we need to rule out, right? I need to rule out if there's anything nefarious going on there. If it's just somebody gathered these up and, you know, hey, it's a family member of prescription. They're thrown and disposed of or whatever. You know, that could be the case there. And just like you said, they're trying to get the point across. We stand for this. gender, you know, reassignment or whatever. But we just have to rule out, make sure there's nothing nefarious going on, no crimes being committed. And something you had pointed out on Twitter, which I appreciated, someone said, someone better be arrested for this. And you push back at that, basically saying something along lines of what I'm going to arrest someone for putting up display that you don't appreciate, that there is a fine line between protected speech, which this could arguably... Again, it kind of depends on the info around the vials. But I mean, again, this is intended to be a expression in support of gender reassignment or, you know, the so-called, you know, gender affirming care. And there is a fine line in whether or not something's inappropriate versus illegal. Absolutely. You can disagree or agree with it, but I'm okay with that. But if it's illegal, that's something different. Like I'm all, you know me. I'm all for free speech, right? I'm not going to interfere with their display case. If everything's fine with it, there's nothing illegal. This was brought to the attention of us because it's a controlled substance. So we have to do our due diligence and find out, is this anything criminal going on here? And if there's not, then we'll let the school deal with what they deal with, how they deal with it. Keith Swank, joining me on the line. He's the sheriff of Pierce County. Same time, there's another big issue that you're getting attacked in the News Tribune for. Shocking, I know, that the Tacoma News Tribune is critical of something you've done. But there is a commission, the county charter review commission, that seems to want to take the sheriff... as an appointed position and switch it over, or excuse me, an elected position, switch it over to being an appointed commission, create this new sheriff ombuds department that would oversee you. So before we get into what you're asking for, what just in plain English are they trying to do with these potential changes, which are early in the conversation, but ultimately what do you think they want to do? Well, not really early in the conversation because by June 30th, the commission has to have all their business completed. And what they want to do is, and what they're going to do is put on the ballot this November for the people of Pierce County to elect, to vote on whether they want to have an elected sheriff and appointed sheriff. So that will be on the ballot this year. The ombuds.

may be on the ballot also, and that's the oversight of the sheriff. And part of my argument with that was like, hey, if it's going to be appointed sheriff, why do you also need to have the ombuds? So it's complete to have complete control over the sheriff. That's what this is all about. So you urged folks to show up for public comment or go online for public comment. They did. Quite a few. 40, I think, went online for the meeting that was just. about a week ago, 50 people showed up in person. The commission, it sounds like they responded by cutting the comment time from three minutes to two minutes. They had done that before. I don't remember when they did it. They cut it from three minutes to two minutes. And so, look, the sheriff thing is an important part. But there's also stuff about eminent domain, where they can give more authority for the county just to take your property from you. There's all kinds of... expanding the council from seven to nine, having a council for, what do they call it, a juvenile or a young person's counsel, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff that the left wants to put out there. It's going to cost taxpayers a lot of money. It's going to be troubling down the road. And so, yeah, I've been encouraging people to show up to these meetings. And thank you for bringing this up so people, your listeners, and Pierce County can show up tonight. 6 p.m. at the annex and voice your opinion about any of those charter amendments that are being proposed. Yeah. Well, I want to read to you a line from Commissioner Jake Hunter, who represents the 4th District. He gave an interview to the Tacoma News Tribune. They. appear to be up in arms that you're actually asking people to show up to a public hearing in which they're invited to show up. But he said, quote, I think that the statements that he, you, is making on social media are threatening. They're calling us a threat to democracy, basically. It's whipping up his supporters in a way that is not necessarily safe for the rest of the commissioners and myself. News Tribune says you didn't respond to their requests for comment on this story, so I'll let you respond here. Well, I didn't say anything about them being a threat to democracy, but since he said so, they are a threat to democracy. They're the ones talking about no kings. They want to try to make the executive a king. And so, you know, Jake, he sponsored this. He wants to make the sheriff an appointed position. So I'm in opposition to it. So I should have the right to go out and speak out about it. And I go there and speak. I'm very courteous. I give my two minutes. I don't cause any trouble or anything like that at all. People come in there and they give their two minutes, you know, and they're impassionate about it and they should be because this is the future for at least in the next 10 years of our county. And so we want to make sure we protect the county and keep it in the way that we want it to be. I also, I just don't understand where he's coming from when he says that these are threatening messages. You're obviously encouraging people to show up. The intent is quite obvious. I don't think any person knows that this agency even exists, let alone was hosting meetings on this. So you actually brought attention to something that is not only within your duty to tell people, but also it's a civic responsibility. But this idea of threatening.

because you're asking people to show up. And I also love the idea that it's a threat to democracy to tell people to show up to a public meeting that they're supposed to be able to attend and speak at, while the left tells us that Trump himself is a threat to democracy. I'm sure you've been called a threat to democracy. Oh, that's the other thing, too. You have to have this day quorum. You can't say anything about individual commissioners, but people call in or show up all the time and call me the most vile names, say the most terrible lives about me. People that are there who are supporters of mine, many of them are. They say to me, Sheriff, I'm so sorry about what happened. And you just have so much courage to come here and do this. You know, the other thing. too is that, hey, because of me, Jake got to get interviewed by the Tacoma New Shibu. Nobody even know who he was if it wasn't for me. So he should be happy and should be, you know, he should, you know, maybe bring me a cupcake tonight or something like that. to say thanks to me, you know, a cup of coffee or something. I would not hold my breath on that. I don't think he's going to bring you a cupcake tonight. But hey, you know, you never know. Pierce County Sheriff Keith Swank on the line. Before we let you go, there was also a post on X that got some attention, I guess. I wanted to talk about Bob Ferguson's Department of Corrections. They are pushing back against a lawsuit over separating biological men and women in men and women's prisons. You've just put out a post that's, you know, pretty clear where you stand. No biological men in women's jails. And if you need to, you build a special housing unit inside of a men's facility for inmates who might identify as women. So. Walk us through how any of this is working right now operationally. I don't know how many transgender people you even arrest that would be impacted by this, but obviously in the long term, it matters. Well, personally, at Pierce County Sheriff's Office, I don't know if we have any in custody right now or transgender is like that, but if we do, we're going to make sure that we protect them. And, you know, I think it's a pretty good compromise, too. Some of my people say, no, if they're males and put them in men with men, no, listen, if they identify as a woman, they could be mistreated and harmed by people there in prison, right? I understand that. So give them a special place, but at the same time, too. Don't let men be in there with women. We know about women in Purdy that have been raped. We know about women and Purdy who have been impregnated. We know about all kinds of things going on there. And I think that if we continue to do this, you're going to just have more men.

quote-unquote, identify as women so they can go over to Purdy and commit crimes on women there, too. I mean, there's sex offenders that say, I'm a woman, and they're putting them over in Purdy. That makes no sense at all, right? It really doesn't. So we have to push back against that. Yeah. Again, we've been talking with Sheriff Keith Swank. As always, thank you so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Thank you. Of course. You're listening to the Jason Rancho back with the latest from Graham Platner when we come back on the Jason Rancho. The Jason Ranch Show. We're in Jason Rantz, Seattle Red 770 AM host and also Seattlered.com. Jason, great to have you with us. Jason, Seattle is just continually ground zero. Yeah, and this is really the Pacific Northwest is ground zero for all this nonsense. USA Today is mocking the far left. The quick hit. Let's talk about Graham Platner, but not actually bring up the fact that he is a Nazi with the Nazi tattoo that he covered up. Only after it became a political problem. And really, I guess at least as it relates to the Democrats, it's not a political problem whatsoever. They don't seem to mind that he's got a Nazi tattoo. They don't seem to mind that he's been credibly accused of emotional and physical abuse of ex-girlfriends. They seem to be just doubling down because he is a socialist, because of his far-left views. on wealth and income inequality, as it were. He said to a crowd in Portland, Maine over the weekend that no one should be a millionaire. The fact that Jeff Bezos exists and the fact that I know someone in Dan Sullivan who works three jobs and pays 60% of her monthly income in rent. Those two things are directly connected. They're not. There is no metric of hard work that justifies a billionaire when people in Eastern Maine work three jobs just to put food on the table. I can't stand how he talks. He sounds Nazi. But again, I promise I wasn't going to bring that up. But that last line there. or second to last line, I guess, was kind of an interesting piece to me. There's no metric of hard work that justifies a billionaire when people in Eastern Maine work three jobs just to put food on the table. That sentence is the whole far-left economic worldview compressed into 19 words. That is the worldview in 19 words. And to be clear, the thinking that is espouse there in Maine is the same that runs in Seattle City Hall or in Olympia with Washington Democrats. I mean, just start with the premise. Graham Platner is saying a billionaire's wealth and a waitress's third shift are somehow connected, that she worked three jobs because he has ten figures worth of value. That the economy is a pie and he took the slice and she got a little bit of crust. Maybe not even crust, crumbs. I would argue that is a foundational error.

The pie isn't fixed. It grows. It's grown for 250 years in this country. It grows fastest when people build things that other people want to buy or provide a service that other people need. Jeff Bezos didn't take anything from anyone in Maine. He sold them books and then, you know, diapers and then everything else. Two-day shipping to a fishing village in Hancock County is the thing that exists because a guy in a Bellevue garage back in 1994 thought he could make retail faster and he got rich off of that. The customer in Maine got cheaper goods delivered to her porch. Both things happened. Neither caused the other to lose. Bill Gates didn't take anything from anyone in Maine. He sold them software. That's it. The personal computer in the public library that Graham Platner gave his speech near runs on an operating system that Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote in some motel room in Albuquerque. Bill Gates got rich. The library got a computer. Again, both things happened. That's how wealth works in a market economy, voluntary exchange. You have in this case a seller who has something to the buyer. The buyer values that more than cash in his or her pocket. And so he purchases it. And if he doesn't value it, okay, he doesn't let the cash leave his pocket. No sale. The framing from Graham Platner requires you to believe that Jeff Bezos walked into that waitress's home, removed cash from her purse, and just spent it the way he wanted to or just pocketed it all. But that's not what happened. She gave it to him for something that she wanted. Now, the second half of his sentence, this woman working three jobs, that part's real, right? There's no way to get around that. And I feel bad for anyone in that position. Graham Platner didn't make that scenario up. He probably made this woman up, but he didn't make up the scenario. And certainly in eastern Maine, they're low income. They're poor. The median household income in Washington County, Maine is $48,000. The state median in Massachusetts just next door is $99,000. So why is she working three jobs? I mean, you can pick from an actual list. Maine has the oldest population in the country. The median age is 45. The workforce is shrinking. Energy costs are among the highest in the nation. And that's because you have a grid that runs on imported oil and a state government that just killed a hydro corridor from Quebec. Yeah, that could have helped. The tax burden is the fourth highest in the country. The housing supply hasn't kept pace with demands because of zoning rules that nobody has the nerve to touch in, where is their capital, Augusta? Augusta. I think that's their capital. But none of those problems were caused by a billionaire. Jeff Bezos didn't do that. Every one of those problems was caused by a state government making choices that Graham Platner agrees with.

But the whole woman working three jobs because, you know, we won't permit a power line doesn't fit on a yard sign. She works three jobs because Jeff Bezos exists, sells to the radicals who are upset that Jeff Bezos has more money than they do. And the thing is, he's got more money than I do. I don't care. That doesn't bother me. I get inspired by that. I don't get angry. I don't get angry by that. He had a really good idea and he was able to put it to work. and grow, and he grew here. In fact, here's why you in Seattle or Tacoma or, you know, Vancouver should listen to what's going on in Maine. This is the worldview running our state. You had Noel framed the state senator from Seattle. Before she got her current job, she spent years pushing a wealth tax. A 1% annual levy on assets over $250 million. Remember that? It's been introduced again and again and again. And the argument is the exact same argument that's coming from Graham Platner that you have too much. Therefore, she has too little. Therefore, we take. They passed the capital gains tax a year ago. The Supreme Court decided to call it an excise tax to get away with the fact that it's clearly unconstitutional. And all that money that they took was supposed to fund schools. Have the schools gotten any better? Have we seen any dramatic benefit to just taking more money from people who earned it, even though people like Noelle Fray and other Democrats say they didn't? And of course, as he's moving forward with this, you know, he wants to go after the millionaires and billionaires in Maine. They'll just leave. The same way they left Washington are continuing to leave Washington. They just leave. Now, the Democrats seem to think that Graham Platner is the future of this party. I certainly hope he's not. A guy with a Reddit history filled with racist, sexist, homophobic posts. A Nazi tattoo that he pretended to not even know was a Nazi tattoo. He's called police officers murderers. He's compared ice agents to brown shirts. This is the guy telling you which Americans deserve to exist based on their bank balance. Whatever you think of Susan Collins, and I'm not even a fan of Susan Collins. She has not once in three decades suggested an entire class of human beings has no right to the work that they did, to earn money off of the work that they did. Graham Platner goes up on stage, and it is not the first time he's mentioned this. He espouses these crazy left-wing views, and he's gotten an entire party behind him. What happens if that party has more power? Just think about that for a second. The consequences of that. 1-800-4-665-8-7-70 for your texts. 1-800-4-6-5-877. Don't forget, check us out on Seattlered.com for news and opinion without any of the left-wing spins. Seattlered.com.