The Mark Arum Show 08-10-26 HR 1

Welcome, friends. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. We got a stacked, packed Monday morning edition of the Mark Aram Show for you. I'm going to be all over the Iran story, some big headlines over the weekend. We're going to get you caught up to date with. Marcus Espinoza from News Nation going to join us live. Apparently, the Tesla. self-driving feature not going well. There's been a bunch of incidents. So if you have a Tesla and use that self-driving feature, make sure you're listening in 30 minutes from now. Eric Erickson's going to join us live at 1035. I want to really pick Erickson's brain about the rise of the Democratic Socialists in the Democratic Party and what that could mean come November in control of the House and the Senate. We are going to be updating our top local stories in just a second. First and foremost, I had a fantastic weekend highlighted by the annual Mark Aram Show listener lunch benefiting the WSB Carathon. And we bumped it up early. Usually it's in the fall, but we coincided it on Saturday with Vinny Drip's birthday down south Vinny. I think that was, this was one of the best ones we've ever had, Deborah. It was, I mean, having Vinny's family there. Yeah, it was fun, meeting all of Vinny's family. It was awesome. And then, you know, McDaniel's cue and two barbecue delicious as always. Brian Monaghan came in to do the television side of the tour. which is much better when he does it than when I do it. Smiling, Alex Williams, the promotions team, Ashley Kate and Valencia. It was just, it was awesome. I put a bunch of pictures in my story, but I haven't done a full listener lunch post on my Instagram and Facebook accounts, but I'm going to do that at some point today. That was great. It was a great time. Vinnie, did you have a good time? I lost my voice over the weekend, but I had a great time. Yeah, I'll let you rest your voice to do it. But Debra made little Vinny face sticks. I'm going to get one and put it up here. Yeah. I mean, Vinnie's parents are great and grandma's so adorable. Grandmommas and aunties and yeah, it was a fun time. It was maybe the best listener lunch of all time. It was fantastic, fantastic. I do want, oh, and I forgot, we've got new tickets to give away. And I'm pretty excited about this because I I love this group. 1137, Deborah, you're giving away tickets to see Blackberry Smoke. Coming to the Tabernacle in November. That's a great venue for this band, too. That's very exciting. So 1137, your chance to win tickets to see Blackberry Smoke at the Tabby, as those in the know like to call it. I do want to start with a big local story. On Friday, in case you missed it, we had prison expert Ian Bick on. And I wanted to ask him in light of the recent convictions in the Appalachy High shooting, what Colin and Colt Gray are going to face behind bars? Because it's a whole other world that hopefully you and I will never experience. But in the prison system, certain... inmates are treated differently than other inmates. And I wanted to get this expert's opinion on how school shooters are treated in prison and this new segment of prisoner, the parents of school shooters, how they will be treated. So Ian Bick joined us on Friday. He said that Colgray, the school shooter, is probably in for a rough time behind bars. But he thought the dad, Colin Gray, probably would be okay.

because he wasn't the actual, he didn't pull the trigger. He was just convicted of negligence. And, I mean, sentence to 15 years. That's a legitimate sentence. But he said that Colin Gray probably would be okay behind bars. It's just in the click system there. But Cole Gray, different story. He's going to have a tough time. And the reason I bring that up is because we learn over the weekend, Debra, that the dad, Colin Gray, wants a new trial. you know convicted uh on what like multiple 37 counts of he got 15 years from the from the uh judge you heard it live on w sb radio why does colin gray or his attorneys why are they looking for a new trial he says it's um without evidence to support all of this stuff so it's you know how they said We kind of got a recap of like you, you weren't a good father and you didn't do this. Negligent. Negligent. Negligent. You didn't do this and you didn't do that, which kind of led your son to do this. And now his team is saying there's really just not enough support to really point to everything that was said in there. So that's why they're seeking a new trial. So I don't know. Maybe we can get one of our legal analysts on. Is that enough? Because it wasn't, you know, they're not filing for a new trial or appeal because of judicial malpractice or the police had bad evidence. Like usually if you request the new trial, you have, you know, there's some smoking gun. Yeah, there's something like the judge screwed up this trial or the prosecutors didn't give us enough in, you know, evidence they withheld it or there's a, you know, but just the fact, I don't know, maybe, you know what, can we reach out to Thane? Thane Rosenbaum, maybe we can get him on on that. But listen, I don't, I'm not defending Colin Gray and his negligence as a father, which ultimately the judge decided led to the shooting. But I don't besmirch anyone for asking for a new trial, right? If you're facing 15 years in big boy prison, you want to use every possible thing at your disposal to try to get that. sentence reduced or overturned. So I, listen, I'm not a fan, obviously. The judge agreed 15 years. That's what I said he was going to get. But I don't besmirch any person that is facing jail time to, you know, try every legal. route to get a new trial. So Deborah's reaching out to Thane Rosenbaum to check on that. I do want a big story over the weekend. President Trump was not too happy about the status of his White House ballroom. Joining us covering the story for ABC News in New York City, Peter Harralobus. Peter, President Trump lashing out over social media over the weekend because of what the court said. Get the listeners caught up to date on the ballroom story from this weekend. Yeah, the president lashing out over the weekend at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal for halting construction of this ballroom. On Friday, we saw a 2-1 decision from this D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

halting this construction, concluding that Congress was the only one that has the authority to actually approve this massive $400 million ballroom renovation. The president called it a, quote, military center that's needed for national security reasons. He's vowing to appeal this to the Supreme Court. That's something we could see as early as today. For now, the Trump administration has about two weeks to appeal this ruling before it takes effect. In the meantime, national security-related construction when it comes to the ballroom is permitted to move forward. We do think that the Supreme Court is going to hear this and do you know if they'll make a snappy decision? I think in all likelihood we'll see some kind of quick decision from the court on the emergency docket. The president actually kind of signaled what the argument is going to be in his social media post, this idea that the actual group that brought this lawsuit, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, doesn't actually have legal standing to bring this. That is an argument that Judge Naomi Rao, the one person who dissented from the majority in the decision on Friday concluded. That judge also said that the president generally has the ability to oversee renovations to the... executive residents, the president kind of signaling that that standing argument is going to be front and center when they make their emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. If things don't go the president's way in front of the Supreme Court, I mean, the Republicans control Congress and the purse strings wouldn't have been easier from day one just to get the budgetary approval from Congress and then he was free to do whatever he wanted? I think that's exactly right. I think, you know, we have a majority of Republicans in Congress. They could have passed funding and approval for this bill. There are. are at times good reasons to justify this construction. You know, the president has a point when it comes to kind of the White House benefiting from having an event space like this. That being said, the fact that this went forward unilaterally with partial private funding, partial taxpayer funding has become kind of a political football that Congress does not want to touch at this point. For example, they tried to include about $1 billion in security-related funding that could have gone to the ballroom through a broader immigration bill back in May. They eventually retreated. At this point, though, the actual national security-related work for this project, the stuff that's underground, there's a specific carve-out in this court order that allows that to proceed to move forward as this case moves through the courts. Interesting. Peter Harlomb was from ABC, new joining us on the Mark Aram Show. I would imagine, too, part of the issue on Capitol Hill with this is the price, the price tag. It went up. It was supposedly just all privately funded in the beginning for a couple of hundred million, and now we've seen... not private funds used and that budget, you know. That's right. It's a ballooning project. It's become really expensive compared to the original estimates. And of course, the president originally vowed that this would all be funded by private donations from different companies giving money to this project. We just know that not to be the case, though. Not only did Republicans try to squeeze in money in that immigration bill, but we understand back in June, the president, the Trump administration transferred about $350 million from the Secret Service to cover security-related upgrades at the White House that could.

He has control of the Congress and the purse strings. He can go back and ask for the money to kick up his ballroom project. But we'll see what the Supreme Court might rule or not rule on that. I could while away the hours, confirm with the flowers, consulting with the rain. 923 on the Mark Aram Show. Happy Heavenly Birthday, Jack Haley. You don't know the name. You know the character, though. He was the Tin Woodsman. in the Wizard of Oz, born in 1897, died in 1979. Didn't he die or any complications of the silver paint? I heard that, yeah, something about the paint, like it caused him an illness or something or maybe made him, yeah, I read that too. One of my favorite movies, but scared. Oh, my God, the monkeys. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, but I went after Maya took me to see the Wiz, not the Wiz, um, What was the new version of the Wizard of Oz that came out? Wicked. So I went back after we saw the first two and I rewatched Wizard of Oz for the first time and a while. I was still scared of the monkeys. Yeah. If you like Wizard of Oz, though, I would check out Wicked. It was pretty good. Anyway, welcome back to the Mark Garm Show. I mentioned before we took a break. Great economic news here in Georgia. Governor Brian Kemp announcing new manufacturing jobs in the Peach State and not a small amount, pretty sizable amount. Yeah, Siemens is going to create a... 1,400 new manufacturing jobs at a facility in pendergrass. And they're talking about an investment of about $180 million just for Jackson County, which is huge. That is big. Booming Pendergrass, Georgia, by the way, just south of the Tanger outlets, if you're familiar. What's the company and what do they, do we know what they do? Cisco, is it the food company? Oh, Siemens. You've seen them all over. Like, they're building. Is that a furniture store? No, I don't exactly. Spell it for me. S-I-E-M-E-N-S. I believe they're out of Germany. Siemens. There's a lot. Health Laniers? They could be a bunch of things. Yeah, I don't know exactly. Automation company? Could be, whatever that is. Yeah. All right, but how many jobs? 1400. 1400. That's huge. It's a lot. And those are, there's three locations of Siemens right now. I don't know if it's the same. Yeah, manufacture. Okay. So there's one in Alpharetta, one in Tucker Carlson, and one in Norcross. All right. So good news on the economic front there. Speaking of local stories, and I meant to text my friends that work at the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Saturday was the one year anniversary of the shooting at the CDC. And apparently Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. kind of on the down low came into town on Friday and had like a fireside chat with some CDC employees. Do we know how that went? Yeah, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. came in to mark the one year anniversary of that CDC shooting. And I guess they put up. up like a memorial and so he was kind of there to you know speak about the memorial and stuff and They did not make it public. It was only known to members of the CDC. They didn't want news there. They weren't going to have anybody there because they didn't want that to overshadow the anniversary of the people that were actually that lost their lives for the CDC shooting. Yeah. And yeah. So some people were just like, he might kind of detract from it. But I guess things went smoothly. And they're going to do like a public memorial a little bit later. Okay. I should let me text my friends. I meant to do it over the weekend. Like, hey, did you, did you meet Robert F. Kennedy Jr..? or were you there?

I would imagine it was probably a small group for the fireside chat. That and the heels of the new CDC director that got confirmed. Some big news at CDC. I spent some time on Clifton Road on Friday night, not at the CDC. An interesting story. I'll tell you about it a little bit later on the show, but yeah, I'll just give you a tease. I had to go to the emergency room Friday night. That's good enough of a T. I'm fine. Everything's okay. But I had a unique experience at the emergency room at Emory Hospital on Friday. I'll share the details a little bit later. When we come back, fresh off his birthday, Judd's got your news weather and traffic in three minutes. We're going to come back, update the latest with the ward and Ron. But in depth, I don't have a self-driving. I can barely drive my car. But I know Tesla's have like a self-driving feature. Apparently not going so well. There's been a number of... of incidents. Marcus Espinoza from News Nation is going to join us. If you're watching live on the video stream, there's a little Vinny Head that Devere made. Oh, look, I can cover my head perfectly. Looks just like me. But check us out. You can watch live on WSBRadio.com or on YouTube.

946 on the Mark Aram Show. Happy 65th birthday. John Ferris, drummer for In Excess. Underrated band, I think, a fantastic group. Speaking of a fantastic group coming up in two hours, Deborah's got a pair of tickets to see Blackberry Smoke at the Tabernacle, courtesy of the Mark Aram Show, 955 WSB. Just a couple of minutes. I'm going to explain my emergency room story from Friday night. Right now, though, joining us live from News Nation, Marcus Espinosa. Marcus, good morning. I hope you had a great weekend, my friend. Hey, Mark, good morning. I hope it didn't involve an autopilot in a Tesla. It did not. I'll tell you what, I've never ridden a Tesla as autopilot, but I've been driving the Uber's offered Waymos here in Atlanta. I've had a couple of experience with them. I've had no problems with Waymos or autonomous vehicles, but Tesla drivers need to pay attention. What the heck is going on, buddy? Yeah, so this is really interesting. This is one of the things that is now reaching a mainstream consciousness, I would say. So here's what's happening. Tesla obviously pioneered the electric car, I think that's fair to say, mainstreamed it. And a part of that big appeal for a Tesla owner is that they have two forms of self-driving for the car. There's autopilot, which is less... It's still involves some user input. And then there's full self-driving. So really we're talking about the FSD here, the full self-driving. That's where you can get behind a Tesla vehicle. Literally speak to it, tell it where to go, and it will drive you there. It'll turn for you. It'll stop at stoplights for you, the whole nine yards. It'll get you to your destination. So it's a pretty remarkable piece of technology. But the more and more people that use it, it's a subscription now with Tesla. You have to pay for it. And it's something. that more and more people are taking advantage of. Naturally, when that happens, more people are getting in accidents with this full self-driving or autopilot feature. And so now regulators, the NHTSA, Congress is kind of wondering. what's behind the cause of these accidents. Because what really brought this to the forefront, I would say this week, was the whole ordeal with the San Francisco 49ers head coach, Kyle Shanahan. Yes. When he got in an accident, they didn't tell anybody for almost two weeks, three weeks. And then he comes out in another press conference and says, oh, my Tesla was driving for me. And when I went to reach for my phone, I don't know if I turned it off. or not or what happened, but then the crash happened. He did take responsibility, but he just added that caveat that, oh, by the way, my Tesla was driving for me. Have we heard from Tesla in regards to that crash or the other issues you've been following? So this is the issue. Tesla is very, very secretive about their accident reports. So they do, the reports that they do reveal are 99% of them are redacted, meaning more than.

about 3,700 crashes that they've reported since about 2019. Every single year, they redact the narrative on them. And this is, I'm sourcing some things from a couple different reports. This is from Electric, the website. And it's a very good website. They're EV-based. So they know this. They do great research on this. But the issue is that Tesla, you can't tell from a crash report from Tesla whether or not the... cause of the accident was indeed the full self-driving or was the user or was the other car and so that causing questions now of transparency and we got a couple democratic lawmakers who who want the um NHTSA to investigate now. Interesting. Marcus Espinoza from News Nation, joining us live on the Mark Am show. Reading your piece on NewsNationNow.com. Not an accident, but there's a story at a Colorado you report on where a guy was pulled over for speeding when he had the automotive pilot on, you know, the automatic driver. And he said to the police officer, hey, I wasn't even driving. It was Tesla. And the officer said what? Well, he said he doesn't care. He says you're the one behind the wheel. But I'm so curious to see if he fights this in court with a lawyer because this brings up a whole new, you know, we used to have the dog ate my homework. Now it's the car sped, not me. Right? And. What a new excuse now for speeding if you are caught and pulled over. But police officers are now seeing this with this full self-driving autopilot is that they're pulling over these Tesla owners and other vehicles have this feature too, but not to the extent of Tesla in their vehicles. But they're pulling people over and they're getting the excuse back that, oh, it was the autopilot that made me speed, which... Really shouldn't be the case because they have the safety features built in where they don't even like to go above the speed limit. So you only get to that speed generally or generally if you set it. So if you're going 80 in a 65, that's because you told the Tesla isn't, you know, doesn't need to, you know, make a meeting in 30 minutes. So it's not deciding for you, but it's not stopping people from blaming the car. Yeah, it listens to whoever's programming. Final quick question, Marcus, this autopilot feature, is that available only in newer model Teslas or has that been around the whole time? No, they've... it for a while they've been evolving it's been around it i think since at least 2020 and it used to be free used to be a feature you used to get uh with tesla purchases or a one-time purchase i think for a lifetime and then just like everything else in life it became a subscription a monthly subscription i think it's over a hundred dollars oh wow to pay for the full self-driving but i know people i work with who they love it they get into they get in the car

They put in their little destination, and they just don't have to do anything. It drives completely for them. It's quite a world we're living in now, but we're seeing the real world consequences of it as well. I'm just fascinated by the whole autonomous vehicle industry. Marcus, great stuff, as always. Have a fantastic day, my friend. Appreciate you anytime. Thank you. A couple of quick Tesla follow-ups. I was at a stoplight the other day and there was a Tesla in front of me. I don't know if they were on a pilot, but they had a bumper sticker, Deborah, it said, I bought this Tesla, I bought this car before Eli, I knew Elon Musk was crazy or something like, because we had all those people that were like keying the sides of Tesla. And the autopilot, I saw this video. And I don't know if it was a setup video or not, but it was this overweight dude gets in the car and his wife's filming him. And he's testing out the autopilot feature. And it was like a Saturday morning. He says to his wife, what do you want to go? She's like, I don't know. So he, like voice programs the Tesla. He goes. Tesla, take it somewhere we've never been. And so Tesla starts driving on the freeway. And they're driving. They're like, oh, we're going to, this is in Ohio, like, oh, we're going to Wellington. I wonder, you know, we've been to a bunch of restaurants in Wellington. You know, this guy's a heavy dude. And they're like, I don't know. And they turn into the parking lot and it takes them to a planet fitness. That seems pretty fake to me. It was probably fake. Yeah. Anyway. All right. So Friday, I had to go to the emergency room. And everyone's fine. Everything's fine. It was out of an abundance of precaution. I am fine. Everyone in my family's great. But I just wanted to set up the premise of the story. So we go to the closest emergency room to our house. was Emory University Hospital on Clifton Road. And I haven't been in the emergency room, knock on wood, in like 25 years. And I went to the Piedmont Hospital one when I lived in the area. And so I pull up, you know, the directions take me to thing. And there's the drop off. And you drop off the patient. And there's a valet guy at the hospital. And I was like, well, that's odd, but I'm like, I'm not going to valet at the hospital. It was $16 to valet. I dropped my off and I went to get a parking spot across the street. And I have all respect for the valet profession. It's a noble profession. I couldn't be a valet. for a number of reasons, but mostly because I don't know if you've ever seen, like, if you go to Buckhead and the valet parking lot is like half a block down, and you get, they have to run. When I first moved to Atlanta, my buddy Scratchy from college came down, and he was a valet at Agnes and Murials, Muriel's, like an apartment building, and like you have to be an amazing shape to do a valet. You have to be able to drive, stick shift. You have to,

I nothing but respect but I wanted to ask the valet person and I when we came out of the emergency room the valet person was gone like obviously getting a car like is is that where they start valets off is like all right you're going to valet at the emergency room at the hospital because I can't imagine that's a very lucrative area because people that are valeting they've just been in you know they're an emergency And I'm sure they're not thinking, oh, I better tip the... I don't know. I'm so fascinated by how you wind up being a valet at an emergency room at a hospital. And I didn't even know that was a thing. I didn't... I've never heard of that before. Yeah. And we were there for like three hours, and I didn't see a single person valet their car the whole time. Maybe it's new? I don't know. Is that where they punish you? Like if you're a bad valet, they're like, all right, we're moving you to the ER. We'll bring you back to Atlanta Fish Market when you get your stuff together. You get down to the miners. Yeah. I wanted to talk to the dude and be like, hey, can I, you want to come on the radio and talk about how you wound up here? Or maybe it's, you know, by choice. I don't know. First of all, there are valets now at the emergency room. Sure, it wasn't just somebody who said he was a valet. No, they had the signs up and everything. And he didn't have to run too far because there was like the slots were up front. You just moved the car there. But like that can't be very lucrative. They have to, I guess, would pay a lot of money hourly because. What are the frequency of, like, it's not like an ambulance driver's valeting. They pull up. They're like, here's the keys. They're going to, and they take the stretcher out. I was just, it was fascinating. How do you wind up being a valet at an emergency room?

952 on the Mark Aram show. Welcome back, Friends. Coming up after the news at 10, we're going to check in with White House correspondent John Decker, get the latest on the Iran War, and we will scoop out the future of Todd Blanche. 4.30 in the morning, he had that confirmation. And I guess then after that, after the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche to head up the Department of Justice, they were like, peace out, A town down. We're out of here. We are out of here. I mentioned that story about the flesh eating bacteria in the Gulf Coast. I would imagine, well, there's probably still some folks in Metro Atlanta that are. chilling out on the Gulf Coast prior to Labor Day? What's coming up, Deborah? It's Labor Day, right? Yeah, Labor Day is in September. So I hope no one in Metro Atlanta got hit with this flesh-eating bacteria. But health officials warning Beach goes about an increase of dangerous flesh-eating bacteria. ABC's Jim Ryan says the resulting infections have claimed nearly a dozen lives this year. Vibrio-vulnificous bacteria live in the warm waters primarily but not exclusively along the U.S. Gulf Coast. has recorded 14 vibrio volnificus infections since the beginning of the year, including two deaths. Five of Louisiana's nine cases in 2026 have been fatal. Mississippi has seen eight cases, but no deaths. The one outlier is a non-fatal vibrio infection in Connecticut. Jim Ryan, ABC News. For the record, when we went to the emergency, we're on Friday, it was nothing concerning a flesh-eating bacteria. But that's, like, just the name alone. The names can shingles. Like, that's a tough name. Flesh-eating bacteria. Hand-foot-in-mouth disease. Like, just the, even if, I mean, those are all three serious things, but you got to be careful when you're naming things. I just got this, Deborah, and I wasn't aware of this. This is from Frank. He's a Navy veteran. He slid into my DMs. I didn't know today, August 10th, is Agent Orange Awareness Day. Frank says this morning we sent information regarding Agent Orange Awareness Day to all of our emails. He would greatly appreciate if we'd recognize, remember the families and the veterans who've been affected by Agent Orange, especially those in the WSP listening area. I had no idea, so I apologize, Frank, but I would have worn orange. I've got red on. Is that close? It's in the family. I guess it's in the family. I had no idea today was Agent Orange Awareness Day. Today is National Spoil Your Dog a Day also. That's every day. That is every day. Oh, there it is. You had it on my list. I didn't even see it, Deborah. Oh, on the list of stuff today? Yeah, today's holidays. Lazy Day, National Smore. We get little stuck with Lazy Day. Yeah, let's just do Agent Orange Awareness Day. So thanks to all who served in the families and the veterans that had to deal with Agent Orange. Not is that's outlawed now, right? Like Agent Orange is banned. We're not going to see that in episode two of Lioness.

I don't know what we're going to see in Lian. I'm very excited about that. You know, I love Publix where shopping is a pleasure. This did not happen at a parking lot in a Georgia Publix, right? It's got to be Florida. It's a Florida public. It's absolutely a Florida Publix. So I'm going to give you the preamble. Deborah's going to fill in. Apparently two dudes, I'm assuming men, have a little dust up in the parking lot of Publix. I don't know if they were fighting over the last chicken tender sub or whatever. But it's not that. That's the story. It's the weapons used in this brawl. Okay. It's a bit of a love triangle, right? There's two guys and they're fighting for the affection of this one girl. Oh, wasn't even about food. No, no food. Unfortunately, no food involved here. And so a man is dating this girl who broke up with the other guy. They all know each other. And apparently they're at the public's all at the same time. And it's like the okay corral. They'll see each other in the parking lot. So one of them attacks the other one with a machete. He just happens to have it in his car. Just in Florida. You just carry a machete. I guess you got a lot of stuff to cut through whatever. So how does the other one retaliate with a hatchet? He's got a hatchet. There's literally fighting in the publics with a hatchet and a machete. And they cut each other. Now, luckily not severely, but enough that they both end up having to go to the hospital and get stuff looked over. And they're both held. They're both arrested. But yeah. They just happen to have these weapons with them. They attack each other in the parking lot. Of course, somebody was there called the police. Machetes don't kill people. People kill people. That's it. Of course it was Florida. Of course is Florida. Is there a security cam video of this? Because I... The story that I pulled did not have video, just the mugshots where they all have a lot of cuts and bruises on their faces. What city in Florida is it, by the way? Let me see if I can find it. Um... It's so funny. My parents go down to Florida for vacation. They go to Publix because they love Publix. And my dad will tell the deli person like, oh, my son does commercials for public. Washington County. I don't know where that is. Yeah, I don't know what that is. And the deli person is like, that's great. What do you want? What do you want? All right, Machete versus Hatchet. A love triangle story gone wrong. News weather and trafficking, too. When we come back, going to D.C., the latest on the Iran War and more. A ton of big local stories we've got to go in depth on. Social media is active at Mark Aramman at WSB Radio.