Mike Elam on the Trump plane story- h4

And, you know, over there, like Pike County, we're like the Pike County of Illinois. You always saw one blowing through. And my favorite was they would go, they would plant corn, then they would plant soybeans, then they would plant wheat, then they'd let it go fallow. And the wheat years were great because you have this beautiful sea of green wheat. moving and the storm behind it. That had to be some good pictures. It is great. My wife laughs at me because whenever the tornado sirens go off, I'm that Hoosier who goes out front and looks. And she's like, you're an idiot. And she takes the dog and they go to the basement. Yeah. And she's like, maybe we'll see you later. I'm like, well, I want to see before. This is a very strange flex because it's stupid. I bet I've gone to the basement twice. In my whole life. Yeah. I want to see it. It's a stupid thing to do and I know it. But I still, first thing I do when I hear those sirens, I'll stick my head outside. I can go, where is it? You know? I want to see the train before it hits me. I'm just that kind of guy. A couple of political things. Yeah. So Michael Kelly was on at the start of the show and I said, is the Democratic Socialist of America the new Tea Party? And he said, absolutely yes. Like he thinks that it's going to be that type of a movement. Now, whether it falls on its face. Right. in 28 or even in November, but it seems to have, it's sucking up all the energy on the left. 100% it's soaking up all the energy. I don't know that I agree with them that it's the Tea Party. The Tea Party was more... Across the board, it had a lot of independents who felt like they didn't have a home, that they felt like Republicans and Democrats kind of sold them out, and it remade a lot of the Republican Party, but it also had some conservative Democrats who jumped on board. You had a pretty broad group of people who jumped into the Tea Party. The Democrat Socialist is not that. That's the far branch. of these folks it's more like maga it is i really think it is i think it's maga kind of on steroids but the interesting thing that we've seen so far is it really only seems to be working in those far deep blue areas yeah if you're not a deep blue area i mean you just saw what happened with Cori Bush here you know she gets thumped well she would be a poster child for that And they said no. So I'm curious to see... Now, Minnesota has been...

Very Democrat for a long time. So I'm not as surprised to see that, but that is like the big Midwestern state. You saw the Han get thumped. Well, she didn't get thumped. She got beat in Wisconsin. But even the AOCs and Bernies were kind of keeping her at arm's distance. They're like, yeah, she said she didn't like Thanksgiving. You're kind of crazy. But she was, you know, grabbing the brand. So I really want to see in November, how do they do when they go up against a Republican candidate? Because Michelle Tofoya in Minnesota, former sports commentator, right, very well known, not a far right person. I'm curious how she's going to do. You're going to have the same thing with Mike Rogers in Michigan, who not a far right guy, not necessarily a Trump guy. So I'm curious to see, how's he going to do in Michigan? And I think that's going to tell us more about, does this party have legs? Does the Democrat socialist have legs? Or is it just a phenomenon in the deep blue areas? I have no data to back this up. Okay. But it seems like on both sides, but particularly with Republicans, lately the candidates have been giant pieces of crap. You see more of that, like the Miller guy and Ken Paxton in Texas. I don't know that Rogers is necessarily a bad dude. I wouldn't put Rogers in that place. It seems like you guys aren't, it seems like you guys aren't being very careful. Well, I think we've talked about this before. When you get to this primary heavy area where you're not worried about the general, you're only worried about the primary. The primary is what's going to get you there. That's where you've started to see that kind of play out, where the more far right guy or the more far left gal is going to win in those areas. If it's red, then you can go very red. If it's blue, you can go very blue. What I thought was interesting is what St. Charles County did in saying, like with our election, the Bill Eagel part of the party got soundly defeated in a major way. I mean, all of his candidates who kind of aligned with him, they lost 70-30. So you're seeing on some of those issues where that's starting to push back a little. And I think that's probably going to be a good tell when we get to November and we start seeing how are some of these races going to actually play out. I think right now there's a lot we don't know. So it's going to be interesting to see it. Did you hear any scuttlebutt, any gossip about how the Eigle camp took the loss? Not well. And he deleted his Bill Eigle for County executive Facebook page that night.

and kind of locked it down, and nobody's really heard anything from him since then. And what's interesting is, and we've talked about this in the past, too, if you're one of those people who gets all your information from one source, like I'm right, I'm going to get all my information from right sources, or I'm left, I'm going to get all my information from left sources. You sit in those echo chambers and you don't have a good perspective on what is everybody saying who's not in my circle. And there are a lot of people I know in our particular races who were shocked that Eigel didn't win. They're like, oh, I thought he was going to run away with it. Well, of course you did because you sit in those circles who were all bill people. And if you were in those circles, you completely agreed. That's why it's important to get out and listen to people who don't agree with you. It's important to find out, okay, what am I missing? Is there something outside of my bubble that I'm not being exposed to right now? You also get some really good ideas when you step out of your bubble. I have to ask you this. We had a big fight about it earlier in the week, and I can't not poke the bear. Uh-oh. The whole Donald Trump, Houdini, act, going from one plane to another. Yeah. I personally, I won't speak for anyone else in the show because they disagree. I personally think that that was... unacceptable to unforgivable. The fact that they knew that there was a threat. Okay. Rage was making the point that maybe it wasn't that big a threat. And what we're hearing now is it came from Israeli intelligence that in this certain area in the flight path, they were fixing to shoot Air Force One down with a shoulder-harnessed. Right. Service to air missile. Yes. I thought that that was terrible. I'm not mad that they moved the president. Fine. Obama did it. Clinton did it. But they didn't leave the rest of the cabinet and the reporter's ass out flying the target plane. I thought that was awful. What would you think they should have done? Well, I would, I'm not at that level smart, but I think I would have just said, hey, mechanical difficulties, Air Force One's going to be on the ground for 90 minutes, maybe two hours, and let Trump get out of there and then put them all on a commercial flight. Rachel, where did you come down? I don't. I had said, based on the information we had at the time, which was, we didn't know, like, what the level of threat was. Yeah. And I was saying, I don't necessarily agree that these people were sent out as bait, because that's what had been repeatedly said during the segment, their bait, their bait, as if it's like, please come and...

kill these people. I disagree with that. We didn't really like Marco Rubio anyway. Right. I mean, I was really just trying to back up our guest, Brad, who had said, like, look, the Secret Services function is to protect the president. It's not then on them to arrange flights home for all of these people. And the question I posed was, so who was going to organize it? Who was going to make all that happen? Obviously, it wasn't credible enough of a, I mean, the threat itself didn't happen. All of these people are still alive. So I'm not saying like, oh, it's great and wonderful. And I'm so glad they did that. But I'm not willing to jump to these people were sent out to be like intentionally killed. Well, no one said that. All right. No one said they're being sent out to be intentionally killed. You called them bait like over and over again. Would you agree with the word decoy? Not really, no. I don't look at it as they were sent out as a, no, that's not how I view it. I don't think so either. They were allowed to go. Right. They were allowed to fly in Turkish space where they knew that there was a threat. sufficient for the president to get into a catering truck and take a plane that had no defenses. So let me ask you this. Are you more upset about the fact that they didn't tell them and didn't give them a choice as to whether they stayed on that plane or not? Or are you just upset about the situation in general? I think that's the minimum they owed them. I think that's the minimum that they owed them is to say, hey, look, there's a threat against the plane you're on such that, you know, you may not want to fly. And we can arrange something else. But don't you think they would have just grounded the plane at that point if it was that big of a threat? They would have just said, we can't take off tonight. Well, I feel like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth because if it's not that big of a threat. Why did they do this James Bond stuff with the president? Maybe the president didn't want to fly on the plane. Maybe the president requested to take a second. But don't you think that? We got to take what Trump says at absolute truth at all times. He would never lie. Don't you think, though, if they hadn't kept everything else the way it was, they would have just kicked the threat can down the street? I mean. By him switching, they were able to not worry about the president, which is the number one responsibility of the Secret Service. They took care of that. But they needed to get the plane wherever it needed to go. If they would have told all the reporters who were on that plane, you know as soon as they were told, that word's getting out. There is no trust factor between the White House and the White House press corps for a reason. So my concern would be if they would have done what you said and they would have told the press court, they would have spread that word. I'm fully confident that somebody would have. I don't think it's an acceptable alternative to that to say, therefore, we're just going to send you out there. Who's they? Who sent them? Who's they?

Well, the Secret Service. You mean sent the reporters? The reporters? Like, who's ultimately making that call? Well, in the... According to the President, the Secret Service. Well, I think the Secret Service made the call on him. I don't know they made the call on the plane, on the press plane. But I think once they got the president out, then it gave them an opportunity to go back. And this is me reading into something that I have no information on, obviously. But I think it gave them an opportunity to... reassess the situation and say, okay, we feel like that's gone. Now we can fly the plane. They just needed to get Trump out of there first. Because I think as soon as Trump was gone, they could have used back channels to put the word out. Trump's already out of there. He's not on the plane. That's possible. Because if the threat was real, they would have shot the plane anyway. But I think there was probably, there was an amount of time to where Trump's plane went through. I just don't think you can be intellectually honest and argue both sides and say there was no threat at all. Obviously it was no threat. They didn't get shot down, did they? It wasn't any kind of a threat. I think there was a threat. I think 100% there was a threat. And then at the same time, justify the president doing this. Yeah, how credible was the threat. He has threats all the time. Every day. Yeah, that's what I said. He has threats, right? I just think you guys are playing too cavalierly and too loosey-goosey with the lives of Americans. I think you're saying that they sent them out there to die. You started this segment by saying, like, I'm not going to speak for other people on the show because they don't agree. Well, the only other person on the show is me. So you already set it up as like, well, she doesn't think this was the right way to do it. And it's like, you know what? Is that wrong to say what you thought? I don't agree with you and Kevin. I don't take it quite as hard as you and Kevin took it. I would like to do a crazy thing that no one in this country is capable of doing. And I would like to wait for more information. Yeah, no one does that. Well, no, we don't. We react immediately to a lot of things. Can I ask a good question. Is this how conversations go in the Glover office between the two of you? I can just imagine sitting as a fly on the wall and listening to the two of you debate like this. No. Does it happen very often? Not often. Not often. Nope. I love having the seat that I have right now because I've never seen the two of you disagree that passionately before. Oh, we do sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. It was fun to be a part of. So it's good to have that seat. And I appreciate the opportunity that you let me come in today and you didn't cancel me. You are welcome. You're the best. By the way, can I just say? Yeah. Alvin was at Steve Elman's victory party. Yeah. It was so great. Alvin came around and he slapped me on the back and I was like, holy crap. Not only are you here. You're here in St. Charles. I was amazed. You made it from Kirkwood to St. Charles. I didn't think your car went west. Pretty cool.