BPR Full Show 6/9/26: Trump Ruins Everything!

Support for Boston Public Radio comes from the Cape Playhouse in Dennis Village, now playing Tina Faye's Broadway comedy hit Mean Girls, rooting for the new girl in high school in this warm and snarky musical. Tickets for Mean Girls at Cape Playhouse.com. And New Bedford Whaling Museum, presenting Melville in our Seaport, a four-day literary and cultural event honoring Herman Melville and the celebration of New Bedford's newly installed Herman Melville statue, whalingmuseum.org. I'm Jim Brady, head on BPR and GVH and NEPM live from the library. All eyes are on Maine's primary today, so we'll start the show getting your thoughts on the latest Graham Platner drama. Is he damaged goods going into the final with Susan Collins, or is all that matters is beating a Trump-friendly United States senator? Then it's Axios's business a user, Dan Primack on the SpaceX IPO, and Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire. Then CNN's John King on national politics. I'm Marjorie. In the second hour, it's NBC Sports Boston's Trini Casey with a World Cup preview and an NBA championship review. We'll check in with the MSPCA's campaign. Carol Homkers on a new bill that would ban the sale of dogs, cats, rabbits in pet stores and will end the show with you inspired by the loud booing of Trump at the Knicks game. We're wondering, does Donald Trump just ruin everything? Way and next on BPR Live from the Boston Public Library.

I'm he's Jim Browdy. I am Marjorie Egan. You're listening to BPR and GBAH and NEPM live from the Boston Public Library. Streaming at YouTube.com slash GPH News. Thank you. We're going to be back here tomorrow. Senator Ed Markey's going to zoom in. On Thursday, we're going to be joined by Rhode Island Senator. Well, he's not going to be here. He's going to zoom into White House. He's going to be with us. And Rachel Rollins, she was the DA of Suffolk County. She's running again for that office. Her first interview with Jim and Shirley Young, we're going to hear that on Thursday as well. Good morning, Jim. You know, before we start, see the headline behind you, Trump. Iran deal could come in two or three days. Is there anybody on the planet who believe – I mean, maybe it could come in two or three days. I mean, can you believe about – There's not a word that crosses his lips. I know. And it keeps saying they can't have a nuclear weapon. They can't have a nuclear weapon. I mean, maybe he'll get there. I don't know. I'm suspicious. But anyway. In any case, it's primary day in Maine, as you just heard. Even though we can't vote in Maine, and most of our listeners can't vote in Maine, some can. It doesn't mean we can't talk about one gram, or the oyster farmer, Marine Corps veteran, one-time Nazi tattoo wearer, and kick Sexter in chief. By the end of today, We'll know the results of the primary whether Graham Platner will face Susan Collins for the U.S. Senate in November, and how much of his expected vote was damaged by a recent New York Times report. We've discussed Graham Platner's candidacy with you, but not since the sex thing controversy, and since then the New York Times this past weekend, published a story citing, quote, unsettling behavior from some of the women he dated. in his 20s and 30s. He's actually one a little more recently. The description is sometimes volatile and toxic, physically threatening, a heavy drinker and philanderer. Actually, sounds like a perfect fit for the U.S. Senate. I'll tell you the truth. And one woman in particular whose credibility has been questioned by some as a Republican operative said he actually knew about... that the Nazi tattoo was a Nazi tattoo, despite what he said recently, and he laid hands on her, didn't hit her or anything. She went out of her way to say that, but pulled her out of a cab by her arm, etc. So many high-profile Democrats who endorsed Graham Platner sticking with him. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, the congressperson from California, are you sticking with him? Even if you can't vote in Maine, do you want to see him succeed? Do you want to see anyone but can Colin succeed? Reminder, she's the reason we have Brett Cabin on the Supreme Court and has voted with Trump 96% of the time. Or has Graham Platner, have the revelations about Graham Platner just been too much? And your view is he does not deserve your vote. There's a Democrat from Massachusetts, Jake Alkenklaas, congressman said before the most recent set of revelations that what he had heard about him was disqualifying. And as you know, Janet Mills, the current governor, while she suspended her campaign, she is still on the ballot in Maine today. Our numbers 877.

301-8970 to call or text. Were you on all this? I think I know, but where are you? Well, I mean, obviously this guy has done a lot of very, very bad things. I don't think he's been truthful about the bad things he's done. I think obviously he knew about these situations with these other women and they've got very credible stories. But I see this as a national emergency. I mean, we've got two and a half more years of this guy. You know, most political pundits think if Democrats can't win in Maine, that Democrats aren't going to win the Senate. That means that Donald Trump has two and a half more years to put people on the Supreme Court that could be an absolute total disaster for this country for decades to come. So in this case, I mean, he seems like a... bad guy. I said before I cut him a lot of slack because I went through four tours of duty and saw a lot of horrible things and I think he legitimately suffered from PTSD and I, you know, I've never fought in a war so I'm not going to criticize somebody who fought in a war for those kinds of things. He's a troubled guy. But, you know, look at what the alternative is. The alternative is four more years with a guy who's cut everybody's cancer research, gas prices through the roof, foods through the roof. He was found civilly liable for sexual assault in New York State. If he'd done what he did there in Massachusetts, he would have been found civilly liable for a rape. He's got a guy head of national security that's going to make a mockery of these, try to make a mockery of the election, say these elections are stolen. He's decimated the DOJ. And most of all, to me... Climate. Climate. We got the alpha gal. I was mispronouncing it the other day. It's alpha gal, not alpha gal, Marjorie, alpha gal. I mean, we have got a climate change emergency that Donald Trump was making worse every single day. So for my money... You know the old Louisiana quote by Edward Edwards, Jim? One of the best quotes of all time. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, this is a great one from Edward Edwards. He said on the eve of his own re-election, the only way I lose this election is if I get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. As far as we know... Greta Lattner has not been in a caught in bed with a dead girl alive boy. I mean, it's a pretty bad situation, but I think this is a national emergency. So I'm, I'm... Well, you left something out, which I think really matters. I am troubled by a lot of his behavior, too. Let me read you something he said. Unlike, for example, Ken Paxton... in Texas and the President of the United States who not only admit to nothing that they've done wrong, but double down on it. Here's Graham Platner. Throughout this campaign, I've been open about what was a very dark period of my life, where I struggle with undiagnosed PTSD, too often self-medicated with alcohol.

Far from a perfect boyfriend. I take responsibility for all that. I wish I'd been better. Any characterization beyond that is false. He's talking about the physical stuff, and I believe politically motivated. So, again, doesn't excuse it, but at least he takes some accountability. I have to say, you know what troubled me, and maybe I'm exaggerate, but it's too much. I think it was Friday night, Saturday night, one of these nights, I actually watched his whole town hall on... Fox News Digital. Did you ever hear of that? I have heard of that. You have? Well, I watched the whole thing. And what troubled me was he spoke at length, I thought, pretty eloquently. He had some people come up on the stage. It was a prepared thing. I'll play one piece at a minute. And then he had questions, and he never mentioned. It was a couple of days after the New York Times, most recent revelations. Don't you think the way to deal with that? is to deal with that rather than not even mention that it came out? I think he's not truthful. I think he knew something more about that Nazi tattoo than he says he does. But like I said, I mean, to me, this is an emergency, and I don't think we can, I'm afraid we won't make it two and a half more years with this guy running the country for a whole lot of reasons that I mentioned. Not to mention, you know, just the corruption. is just stunning. Anyway. And by the way, where are you? Where are you? Would you vote for him or not? Yeah, I would. But with some great trepidation. Also, there was another moment there was staged, which was sort of cute. This is during the town hall. After he spoke before he took questions, a woman brings him a hand-signed card and listen carefully to what she says. So I had this idea to make this card, and then I passed it around to see if anyone wanted to sign it and support a Graham. We are your gramelly gram. We are your gramelly gram. Fairly cute. 877301. 877. Jamie, of course, says. You had nothing better to do than watch Fox News Digital, no new fancy restaurant to visit. I actually ate early and taped it and got home and watched the whole damn thing. He ate early at a fancy restaurant and he went home. Thank you very much. Okay. Robert and Lowell, thank you for calling. Hello, Robert. Hey, good morning. I haven't called here in a minute, but it's nice to talk to you. You too. Thanks for calling. What's up? Well, first of all, I have to say, Jim. I was very put off by your lead, as if the most important things to think about today, Graham Platner's. problems in things that he's been through and he's admitted to. As if, as Marjorie says, we have a national emergency on our hands, and I don't understand, I think you're playing into what the Republicans want us to be talking about when that's the most important thing. Robert, Robert, obviously you've never heard the show before because what you want us to be talking about, we talk about every single...

and we'll talk about more today. However, a critical way to rein in the man who you want to talk about, as Marjorie said a few minutes ago, is making sure, say, the Democrats and independence and I guess some Republicans support Graham Platner, that Graham Platner is elected as the Democratic senator. So with all due respect, Robert, we can't talk about Trump from 11 to 1, five days a week if that's what you're looking for. Unfortunately, there are other things going on. Go ahead. Can I ask you one more question? Sure. Does either one of you have any experience in your family or personal life with veterans who have suffered from PTSD? As a matter of fact, yes. So what's your point? I do. And I do. And I just want to say from what I've seen with Graham Platner, I think he has come a long way in excising many of his demons. Because I have firsthand experience of people who are unrecovered. 20 years later. Robert, he's been married two and a half years. He's been sexting six to 12 women while he's been married. Robert, I think, thank you for the call. Thanks, Robert. I do think that plays into a lot of people's thinking. I mean, you've heard him talk about watching his buddy basically get blown to bits right next to him in a car when he was in Iraq. So I think people... But, you know, but that's not the right question with all due respect to Robert. The issue is not, do you have empathy? for someone who suffered, and by the way, suffered in service to his country, I hope almost everybody does. The issue, Robert, is it should he be a United States senator? And obviously, even though I'm not crazy about what he's done, whether it's PTSD-related or not, my vote is yes, and Marjorie does as well. But thank you for a call. We appreciate your opinion. This guy behaved like Pete Hegseth. Find a better candidate, Maine. But, texture, we must say, first of all, Pete Hegseth's own mother said he was a bomb. I mean, that hasn't happened with Graham Platner's mother. And the problem is, I think the only other person is Janet Mills, and Janet Mills... most people think could not win against Susan Collins. So I think that's what they got. That's all they got is Graham Platner. By the way, before you take the next goal, we're going to speak to John King a little bit. And John, I hope I think we'll have an answer about. Looking at these numbers, everybody says Graham Platner is going to beat Mills today. The question is by what margin? And we'll talk to John about whether or not there will be worrisome numbers vis-a-vis the fall, vis-a-vis November, if Graham Platner is, let's say, only at 65% or something. Yeah, and a lot of people in Maine, obviously they've told different reporters, including people from CNN and from the Globe and New York Times, every place, that they have changed their mind. So we'll see how many do change their mind. Marty from Brookline, thank you for calling.

Marty. Hey, I haven't talked to you for a while. Oh, hey, Marty. How are you? I'm good. How are you guys doing? And I'm glad to agree with both of you, unlike your Middle East stuff. But anyway, so my take on this, and I've taken a little interest because my niece and her family's up in Maine, and I really find annoying the reference to character that they say that he's got a character flaw. The article in New York Times was really grossly exaggerated that I'm looking at the headline right now. Flattner could be unsettling some women say, and they had three ex-girlfriends from 10 years ago. So getting back to the character issue, it seems to me the issue of character is important for Susan Collins. She has a terrible political character. And Marjorie talked about Graham Platner was not truthful. What is she truthful about? about Brett Kavanaugh, the Brett Kavanaugh. Great point. Great point. Can you explain Marjorie? I know we assume most people know what she said about Brett Kavanaugh after she interviewed him prior to the vote. You want to share with people what we're all talking about? Well, the big issue was Brett Kavanaugh going to overturn Roe v. Wade, and Susan Collins said she'd talked to him. He'd come to her office, and he assured her that he was, you know, precedent was going to stand, and he was going to stick with the law. And then she went and voted for him anyway. And then, of course, he ended up voting to overturn Roe v. Wade. The big rap against her is she votes with Trump almost all the time except when it doesn't matter. There's no sticking her neck out there. And so I think she does have a problem with... Marty, can I ask you one last question? Are you saying that character should not be an issue when people decide who to vote for or in this case it shouldn't? What are you saying? No, what I'm saying is the character issue is being misstated as his personal character versus her. Oh, I got it. Got it. I'm more concerned with her voting record. She votes for all the cabinet members. She voted for the DHS. budget bill last week. Yeah. And she's a 96% with Trump. That she is. Marty, that thanks. Nice to hear from you. That's an important distinction. I think the most classic example of that is right here in Massachusetts of Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. I mean, most people think I certainly think that Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. left a woman in a car to drown and she drowned and he knew she was in that car. And boy, I mean, doesn't get much worse than that, does it? But what do you do for the next? 30 years or 40 years, I think. Well, I think he's the greatest senator who ever lived. Doing penance for the horrible thing he did. Now, he never admitted he did it, and he probably should have admitted he did it. He never did, but he did a great job as a senator. But listen, this is what Mike and JP says, and I think this is very important.

Graham Platner has acknowledged and apologized. Right, just read it. He's not, oh, you just read it. I read what he said, yeah. Most politicians haven't come close. And by the way, in terms of the things in the New York Times piece, it did talk about some stuff that raises your eyebrow. I mean, how this woman, this Feifield, I think, what's her first name? Yeah, her first name is Lindsay Feifield said that he grabbed her by the shoulder, sometimes hard enough to leave marks. He yanked her out of a cab by her wrist. At one point, they were fighting. They had been drinking heavily. her arm behind her back and shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed until she said he said she should calm down he said he denies all the physical contact things by the way he denies the physical contact things yes and he said it didn't cause an injury it didn't break my arm he never hit me and never punched me so that's what she said about him in terms of physical stuff and he does deny she also talks about keeping AR 15 lying around his apartment and sharpening an axe while he was watching TV so I don't know what to make of that. Dean and Leverett. Hey. Good morning. And to you. Faithful listener here. Thank you very much. So I just wanted to add about Lindsay Feifle, who you just mentioned, that in the New York Times there was a line and it hasn't been picked up on or talked about, but that she's currently works as a Republican media strand just somewhere. And I thought, well, that's interesting. She piles on late. and piles on hard, but nobody's picking up on this business about who she works for and why she'd have a reason to dump on Graham Platner at this point. Well, you know, Dean, if I may, I think that's... True, but there's a woman we haven't mentioned here, Genevieve McDonald, is that her name, who worked for the campaign, who is the woman to whom Graham Platner's wife disclosed the sexting information. She left the campaign and then disclosed it to the press. She is, from what I understand, she was a big-time Graham Platner person who said she was disillusioned. She's not a Republican operative. So there's some people who I think her. While a lot of people are criticizing her for disclosing that confidence, there are a significant number of women who've been critical of him who don't have any credibility questions about their politics at all. Would you not agree? Oh, I agree with that. No, completely agree with that. He's got a lot to answer for, and I think he's taken responsibility even with reticence. That's important. As Markery said, even with a bit reticence, which believe me as a guy, I must confess, I get it. Dean, thanks for you. We really appreciate Cole. Thanks a much. In terms of her politics, she's affiliated with independent women, this conservative group, but she has insisted her political beliefs have nothing to do with a choice to come forward. She worked briefly on Nikki Haley's 2020 for a presidential campaign, and before that the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank, but she has not been involved with any campaign, including Susan Collins campaign, and the Times verified that. She's not... had no connection to the campaign of Susan Collins. A couple of Maine voters have texted us. Here's Bob from Maine. Graham Platner needs to resign his campaign immediately. He will not beat Susan Collins. He's losing support among women and others who refuse to vote for an unworthy candidate. Kathy from Maine. I'm going to vote for Graham now. Maine is a different place in Massachusetts and New York and his network and following are huge.

And the fourth anonymous text, third one, voters have to hold their nose vote for Graham Platner and hope he doesn't turn into John Fetterman. And John Fetterman has made a pledge. Senator Feneman has made a pledge. Let's see how you explain this one. No, why don't you do it, Marjorie? Well, you can look at this one up. I'm not going to repeat it. He criticized. Yeah, he said. No, no, Graham Platner criticized in that town hall. He mentioned John Fetterman critically and John Fetterman responded. What did he say? John Fetterman vows to ditch his hoodie and wear a suit. Graham Platner-Prouse, he didn't send certain kind of explicit photographs to miners. Yes. By the way, there's no evidence that... No evidence. No evidence of that. No evidence of that. Okay. David, for me. Hi, David. Hello, David. Welcome. Hi, how are you? Good. First time, long time. We're glad to cold. Thank you. So I used to live in Boston for 40 years and now living up in Bar Harbor, so I feel like I have a little bit of an interesting perspective on Graham. But the general feeling is that from Mainers is that everybody else should bet out that we're voting for Graham, and that's the best way to be, Susan Collins. Do you have any hesitation or you're all in? Well, I mean, you talk about John Fetterman. There's a little bit of me that wonders about that. But I've been to two of his meetings here in Bar Harbor and one in University of Maine in Orno. And he's a great speaker, very charismatic. He is. And I just feel like, I mean, first we have to be Susan Collins. And I do feel a little bit of that kind of naivete of. Is he really going to be able to be effective in today's Washington, D.C.? But I think he's the best candidate. And David, thank you for your call. We really call us again, and thanks for weighing in as you're voting there. I guess he is charismatic. There's an awful lot of women here. There's six women telling this, and there's three other women telling that. There's a lot of women involved in this. No, by the way, the town hall that I mentioned. A lot of girlfriends. While I was hoping he would at least reference the New York Times story and respond in the way I just read, I think there was around the sex thing. I'm not sure. He is a very effective speaking. You only also said, which was interesting, and I didn't fact check this, so my apologies. He said that the night when I saw him do his town hall was his 83rd town hall of this campaign, and that Susan Collins in her last term has done none, meaning not appeared before crowds, audiences that were open to anybody who wanted to walk in. We can squeeze one more in. Okay, let's go to Nancy and Cambridge. Hi, Nancy. Hello, Nancy. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Of course. See, I haven't asked, I guess there's nothing. That's our full. I can do about it. We're fine. Thank you. Okay. Okay. I moved to Cambridge a month ago from Maine. Oh. I question whether...

that I question the idea that Janet Mills couldn't beat Susan Collins. She's very well respected in Maine, and I wonder if there's going to be a groundswell of women who are going to vote for her. That's who I would be voting for if I were voting in that primary. You're not still a Maine voter, obviously. No, I'm not. And I'm thankful that I'm not. Nancy, we'll only have 20 seconds. We'll see what happens today. It could be. Most polls show, at least until Wigio, platinum crushing mills. Why do you think that is? You know, he's young. He is charismatic. His message has resonated, but I think people are disillusioned. I certainly am after all the revelations. Nancy, thank you much for your perspective. We really appreciate it. Okay, we are out of time. Thank you for your calls and your text. Coming up, have his quick break. Dan Primack, Axios, business editor, joins us to tell us what the heck is going on with the economy, our 401ks and all these IPOs, including the one involving Elon Musk. I'm Marjorie Egan. He's Jim Browdy. You're listening to BPR, GBA, and NEPM. live from the Boston Public Library and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBIH News.

Welcome back to BPR, GBH and NEPM, Marjorie Egan, Jim Browdy, live at the library, streaming YouTube.com slash Gbhys. Back here tomorrow, Senator Ed Markey will zoom in about 1230. Thursday, Senator White House from Rhode Island will zoom in. Also on Thursday, Rachel Rollins, the former Suffolk DA, and U.S. Attorney, who wants to be the Suffolk DA again, will do her first interview. That will bring you that on Thursday. Join out live with the library by Dan Premack, Dan Sullivan business editor of Axios and author of the Daily Axios Pro Reddit newsletter. Dan Primak, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure. So tell us about Elon Musk, SpaceX, IPO. This could be like a trillion dollar. Deal? Yeah. So it's supposed to happen on Thursday night. It's going to price, which means people can start buying SpaceX stock on Friday morning or probably actually Friday afternoon. This will be the largest initial public offering of a company in the United States ever. And it's not even close. It's not like, you know, maybe it'll be a little more. No, no, no. It's going to smash probably double the prior record. He's going to raise around $85 billion. None of it's him selling or other employees selling. It's all coming from the company. And it would be worth about... at the price they want, $1.75 trillion, just for context, that would make it one of the ten most valuable companies in on any U.S. exchange. More than Walmart companies like that. Still behind Amazon and a few others, but not by much. It would be worth more than Tesla. And the only thing I'm worried about, I want to be sure he will end up being a trillionaire by the end of the week. On paper, yes. On paper, yes. That's great. That goodness. He'll be able to buy a cup of coffee. Okay. So I have to say, so we know there are three big IPOs from what I understand, Anthropic, OpenAI, and this. Why do we mere mortals care about this? For a few reasons. One, even though it's not going to be immediate, all three of these companies, given their size, they'll all end up in the so-called big public indexes eventually, the S&P 500. SpaceX is going to be the NASDAQ 100 on day one. They change their rules to allow that. What that basically means is even if you're not somebody who is actively trading stocks and buying SpaceX shares or selling OpenAI shares when they become public, If you've got a 401K, chances are you're exposed to it because the 401Ks and all these other retirement plans, they buy into these indexes. They're heavily exposed to these indexes. So if these companies go up and the biggest companies have a real outsized impact on the S&P 500, it's one of the reasons we hear so much about NVIDIA because it's currently the most valuable company in the world. When NVIDIA does well, your 401K probably goes up even if the other 499 companies went down. So, bottom line, it's probably going to be good for people's 401Ks. If the stock does well, it should be, yeah. Okay. Let me just do another 401K thing really quick. You were talking about, in one of the pieces, about Trump rule for private equity in these 401Ks and what people think about it. What should we think about it? This is apparently going to happen because he wants it to happen.

And the industry wants it to happen very badly. You know, the private equity industry, which is massive now, right? There was a reporter I remember a couple years ago from the Wall Street Journal who lived in New York City, and she tried to go a week without purchasing or using any service that was owned by private equity. She made it half a day. She couldn't pull it off. So private equity is everywhere. It owns pieces of everything. However, most people can't invest in it. You can maybe if you're part of a state pension fund, state pension plans are big investors, college endowments are big investors, etc. 401ks have not been allowed in. They are about to be, or at least they've been allowed in, but there's been a lot of legal restrictions. It's made it practically impossible. That's going to change. And then the big question becomes, if you're somebody who's got one of these 401Ks, is the risk premium. Private equity is... potentially very lucrative. It's also much higher risk than our other things, and there's less transparency for average investors. But there's also a lot of hostility toward it. Every time you go to the vet or the dentist or even the doctor's office that have been taken over by these private equity firms, all you hear is complaints about that, you know, so I worry that that's... You do. I mean, I personally think some of that's overstayed. There are good private equity firms, they're bad private equity firms, just like there are good public companies and bad public companies and good politicians and bad politicians. You know, Private equity is in this for profit, right? That's the complaint, the cost. You've seen the cost. On the other hand, the people who are selling to private equity, that's the physicians, that's the doctors, that's the vets. Yeah, look, are they looking for profit? Yes. I mean, you could arguably... You could argue ultimately they need the companies to do well in businesses. You know, if the company goes bankrupt or struggles, private equity gets nothing out of that. But look, it's become kind of part of our lives. And with this new rule, it's going to get integrated more, not just into us as consumers, but also us as investors. Okay. But it's not bad necessarily for your 401K. It's not necessarily bad. Private equities had decent returns over the years. Okay. When Marjorie asks, you don't know Marjorie well enough, Dan, I do. When Marjorie asks one follow-up question, it's because she's a good journalist and cares about what the audience. They're looking at her. No, second might be on the merits. When you get to three, which we just did, she's calculating the impact. You have a 403B here, by the way. I have a 403. I have a 403B. It's a variation on the thing. Let me say one thing. It's a very long-term asset class. So unlike, say, a SpaceX stock that could go up 5% or 5%. go down 5% in the day. Private equity, you're talking about 10-year time frames. Write that down, Marjorie. Now, you also talked about Trump getting into the AI stuff. And again... Well, buying chunks of a lot of things, right? Well, he has. And equity in private companies, I mean, isn't this kind of borderline socialism, isn't that what we call? No, I think I keep writing it as quasi-socialism, but no, it's socialism. That is what socialism is in terms of state capital and economics. It absolutely is. I mean, when it... comes to this stuff, Trump and Bernie Sanders are really close. I think they'd both be horrified to hear that, but it's true. Yeah, but Bernie Sanders, then you figure yourself with these data centers all being built all over the place, sapping up everybody's water and electrical bills and all that kind of stuff.

Why shouldn't the citizens of America have a big piece of the action here? Explain a little bit more what he's doing, by the way. So what Trump has been doing, so this started, there was something I don't know if you remember a couple years ago called the Chips Act. This was under Biden and Gina Romando, the former governor of Rhode Island. And the Chips Act was basically this idea of, oh my goodness, the United States doesn't actually make any chips anymore, any semiconductors. It's all made overseas. And we need those for everything, our cars, our phones, et cetera. Let's onshore it. So we, the government, are going to provide these big grants to companies to do this to build factories and what they call fabs in the... U.S. Trump took that money and said, okay, we're still going to use it for that, but rather than just giving you the money and in exchange the taxpayers, you know, getting onshore semiconductor manufacturing, we the government are going to take equity stake, shares in exchange for the money. Trump is a professional investor. He views, even though he's now president and a public servant, he views this through the same lens. Now, so he's done that in a lot. So the U.S. government owns part of Intel. It owns parts of a bunch of quantum computing companies, some mining companies, which mine critical materials. Now he wants to expand that to the big AI labs, open AI, anthropic. He hasn't talked to SpaceX yet, but... We'll see. And again, is that good for the American people? I mean, all this... If he wins, it's good, right? I mean... I mean, it could be good financially. And look, Bernie Sanders wants to do it differently, right? He wants to basically apply a 50% tax, say, on Open AI and take 50%. The Trump plan would be much smaller, two or three percent, probably with Open AI actually just seating the shares, giving it to the... So there's a value to this potentially, right? If you believe that these companies are going to become so all-encompassing, not $1 trillion or $2 trillion, but, you know, $20, $30 trillion companies. and also put a bunch of people out of work, so the government's going to have to figure out how to pay them. There's value to that. The downside to it, though, is, and look, usually as Republicans talking about picking winners and losers, there's some perverse financial incentives, you know, if the U.S. government is reliant now, or in the future, on open AI or anthropic, say, getting bigger, right? Because that's how we're going to pay pensioners. That's how we're going to pay Social Security. We need these companies to get bigger. Well, the regulations then kind of, or potential regulations always get shut down. Because... What's best for Open AI and Anthropic is now suddenly best for the U.S. government, even if there are sorts of other downstream concerns. You know, the beauty of you comparing Bernie Sanders and Trump there is it gives us an opportunity to do something that Marjorie loves when I do is tell a story for the 10,000th time. Oh, here we go. So I will, since you haven't heard it, Dan Premack. When Marjorie and I were in New Hampshire for a week for the primary in 2016, we worked hard to find people in the street who were uncommitted and find out who they were deciding between. And the vast majority of the uncommitted people who we encounter were deciding between Bernie Sanders and Trump because of that different approach of sort of populism in both these guys. Which the thing, what's interesting though, Bernie Sanders' argument when it comes to say Open AI are taking a stake. I mean, part of it's economic, part of it's also kind of. fear, right? Like, let's have people have some control over this. Trump says, and Trump wouldn't really have any control. And Trump so far has been on the so-called accelerationist side of AI, which has been, go do what you want to do. There had been some talk, for example, that they were going to have an executive order, which was going to be kind of like an FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, for AI, where if you were coming out, if you were open AI or someone else, with a new model, the government basically had to approve it before it could go out into the wild and get used because of cybersecurity concerns, bioterrorism concerns. Trump's EO, though, last week basically just...

just kicked the can down the road. He got a phone call, I believe, about six or seven hours before he was going to sign it from David Sacks, who used to be his AI czar, who was very libertarian, he is very pro-A-I and talked them out of it. So who other than the Anthropic guy in that industry is even remotely not for the accelerator approach, as you described. I mean, Sam Altman of Open AI talks a good game on it. I mean, Sam is... But Anthropic lost contracts and put on that risk list because of it, right? They did. They are also the ones who have created mythos, which... which is this model that we can't, when I say we, all of us can't use yet because it creates these massive cybersecurity risks. The question, anthropic, yes. You could argue they're the best of a group of bad actors if that's how you view it. But it's not like they've shut down. It's not like they've said, you know what, we shouldn't be making these things. You know, we should stop making the dangerous material. They're just doing it a slightly different way. But don't you think, you hate to think there's going to have to be one terrible mishap? But the first time there is some kind of mishap, I can't imagine what that would be, with AI and non-regulation, that you know what's going to hit the fan. I think they're going to wind up getting regulated at some point. I mean, Sam Altman's already said that he thinks somebody could probably use these technologies to create a new bioweapon. He said that, like today, you know, somebody could already do it. And look, this isn't that different than early Internet conversations, right? Oh, my God, you can use this to learn how to make a bomb. You don't have to, you know, go to the library and get 30 books. We're in the BPL. I think you can probably figure out how to make a bomb here, too. But it's a lot easier to do, you know, just sitting on your laptop. Okay, so the question we will ask you every single time you're here until this war is over, which is probably going to be never. Donald Trump says every time he's asked a minute and a half after the war is over, which is going to happen in the next two or three days, of course. Prices of everything are going to go down immediately. Normal people say that is totally not true. What is the reality? Let's assume it were to end to the next 30, 60. days. What's the time frame for prices to go down, not just oil, but those things that are dependent on gas and oil? And how far down are they likely to go? Not back to where they were pre- February 28th. We have seen gas prices go down significantly over the past two weeks. They'll go down, but it will take months and months. I mean, to get back to pre-war levels, assuming nothing else, right? Because you don't know what the other variables are that could jump in. Oh, you're talking quarters, you know, three, four, five, six months. And remember, when Trump ran for president, he didn't talk about slowing inflation down below where it was. He talked about reversing it. He talked about how prices weren't going to just stop rising. They were going to go down. There's no reason to believe that's coming. Well, if that's the case, speaking of inflation, I don't know when the Fed meets next. When's their next thing? I should know that and don't. You should, boy. incredible. We always say about you... I think there's a Jackson Hole. I don't get to go to them. We say behind your back when you're not, obviously, you know, we say this guy knows everything. Obviously, you don't. I don't. So Kevin Warsh is the new head. He's allegedly independent. but normal people, once again, say interest rates should probably go up at the next meeting. Will they? And would he have the courage to vote along with that increase? I don't think he'd have the courage to vote along, but I could, I mean, the Fed is a weird thing, right? You know, it's kind of like the Supreme Court debating things amongst themselves. You never really, you know, you know, ultimately what happens and how everybody votes. You never really see how the sausage gets made in those conversations around the table. You know, so the question for Kevin Warsh isn't so much necessarily what his vote is, because, again, he just has one.

He leads the meeting, right? The person who leads the meeting can push really hard for something or they can just sit back a little bit. My guess is he would just sit back a little more, but you're right. I mean, the general kind of traditional economic argument right now is that interest rates should go up. Obviously, Trump wants them to go down. All presidents want them to go down. So despite prices going up and possibly causing interest rates, next Fed meeting is June 16th and 70th because he knows everything. Wait a second. It's next week? Is it next week? If 16th and 17th, that would be next week. So spending, from what I understand from a New York Times piece I read, is holding fairly firm. But the place out of which money is coming is your credit card and your savings account. I assume that'll accelerate, particularly if interest rates go up too. Maybe it's obvious. Why is that such a horrible thing? There's something, I'm going to screw up the acronym, but there's something about personal savings rate, I think, is the official term. It's only been lower than it is now twice ever before. Once very briefly in 2022, the other time was actually right before the great financial crisis. In short, Americans are still spending money. We're still buying lots of stuff, and we're also paying a little bit more, so it's hard to tell if we actually getting more goods or paying more money. But either way, we're spending more on stuff month over month. But the amount of savings that people have is going down and down. And what that really means is when there is another price shock. People are kind of screwed, and the economy as a whole is in trouble. Okay, so we're going to end today's show with the topic that we're both looking forward to. We are? Trump ruins everything. It's going to be our discussion. Do I leave for this one? No, this is actually you can say whether they should add it to the list. Explain what on H-1B visas is, and explain what it's trying to do, which a court is now at least for the time, being stopped around 100 grand to buy one of these things. Yeah, H-1B visas. They are visas that companies apply for to bring in specific work. from overseas for a job, for specific jobs. So it's not just, oh, we want to bring in 100 people. Where they're theoretically are not American workers available to do that. For certain sorts of labor, tech, particularly Silicon Valley, uses these a lot. And again, companies are the ones who apply for them, even though they apply for them on behalf of an individual. Trump decided he wanted to put a basically $100,000 tax, if you will, or fee on each of these applications. In other words, to say to companies, if you want to do this, it's going to cost you some money. that down, said it wasn't legal and now the White House is going to appeal. And my understanding is the plaintiffs were a ton of Democratic attorneys general who were saying we're having enough trouble finding even international workers. to take the jobs that we can't find Americans for. And with a $100,000 threshold, you're creating yet another barrier to us being able to get the tech. And that it was making it harder for smaller companies, right? That a meta or an Amazon or whatever can easily afford that $100,000 per employee. So the people who are, or the companies that were getting harmed by this were more the mid-tier companies who really can't afford it. There was an argument before Trump did this, that maybe what you should really have is if you're going to have a fee, have a tiered fee. So if a company is a certain amount, it should be different. But it wasn't.

It was flat. So if you're a company, say, with 20 people and you want to bring in, say, two, $200,000 is a lot of money for you? Dan, Premier, we can only have about 30 or 40 seconds left, but I just wonder, is it good for America that a president, because I think it's unusual for a president to be getting involved in how 401Ks work and taking, you know, advocating equity in private companies and stuff like that. So that's unusual, I take it. 20 seconds. Relatively unusual, yeah. Is that? A good thing for us? I don't know if it's good or bad. I mean, he's promoting a policy in this case, but it is his SEC, and the SEC is going to enforce it. Presidents do give the SEC guidance. You know, Biden was very tough on private equity vis-a-vis-vis and tough on crypto. Trump is being lighter. How do we subscribe to your thing? No more questions. Getprorata.axios.com. Get pro-rata.axios.com. Get pro-rata.axios.com. And of course, that is... is Dan Premack, who is with ProRata and the editor, the business editor at Axios and author of the daily Axios ProRata newsletter. John King is next when I talk with him, CNN's guy about the war, about Graham Platner, about California elections. How about your 401K? We're not going to bring that up again? We're not going up again? I'm not going up the 401K. I guess I don't have it anymore. I didn't know that. Okay, he's just... We're moving. Bye.

Welcome back to BPR and GVH and NEPM. Marjorie's checking out her 401k or 403P. Whatever it is. You can't find it. Live from library and streaming YouTube.com slash GVH News. We're back here tomorrow. Senator Ed Markey will zoom in at about 1230. On Thursday, Senator Sheldon White House from Rhode Island will zoom in. And Rachel Rollins will do her first interview. And since she announced, she's going to try to reclaim her old job as Suffolk County. We're joined now on Zoom by CNN's chief national correspondent John King, the man beyond the great reporting project, all over the map. Big Day, John King. Hey, John, how are you? It's another big primary day. Greetings. Yeah. And to you. So we've talked about listening about Graham Platner. A lot of people have mainly tortured. They like them, but now they're worried about these revelations, about his sort of messy personal life. So in the primary today, what are we looking for? I mean, what could be trouble for him in terms of the turnout today? Well, I think you look for a couple of things. Number one, the expectation in Maine is that they'll win the primary comfortably. I'm a very cautious person, as you know, on election days. I like to respect the process and let people vote. But if you assume that Graham Platner is going to be the Democratic nominee, I think one of the things you're looking for tonight is how many Maine Democrats decide they want to cast the protest vote. Whether they vote, you know, Governor Mills is still on the ballot. There's another candidate on the ballot. But do these Democrats decide? They want to send Graham Platner a message that they are unhappy. Now, Remember at the end of the primaries in 2024, excuse me, we were counting the Nikki Haley vote. And did that show dissatisfaction with Trump? The answer was yes, it did show dissatisfaction with Trump and the Republican base and Trump went on to win the presidency. So I would not overstate the protest vote. You see a significant protest vote tonight. But I also would not understate it in the sense that Senator Susan Collins is known as a survivor. In the presidential year last time, against a strong opponent, she got 51% and each got a win six years ago. in the 2020 presidential election was the last time she ran. So that's what we're looking for, really. How big is the protest vote? And then you have to circle back to see how many, I'm looking mainly at professional women, college educated professional women in Maine. How many of them, maybe vote for Governor Mills today to send a protest, but then what do they do in November? Yeah. I've been communicating with a number of the people I talked to when I went up there and did my piece. Some are still going to vote for him in November. Some are not. Some are not sure. So this is actually a reset, if you will, in this race. So there are other primaries in other states today, John? Anything we should be paying particular attention to? I really think Maine is the big one. There are some other issues as we go across the country just to pick some candidates. But for me, the main race is the most. There's nothing out there that says, you know, this is a huge civil war. This is a huge brewing thing, at least in my view. But we'll see what happens tonight. So, Jon Ossoff I assume every listener knows, we have the two finalists for... governor in California, the two finalists, a Republican and a Democrat. Two finalists for mayor in Los Angeles happens to be two Democrats. Obviously, we have heard the elections were totally rigged, even though once again there's absolutely no evidence of the rigging. A couple of questions. One, there's no reason this is a double negative, not to assume that this is just a dry run for what we're going to hear from Trump.

in any place where he loses come November. And secondly, when you visit people on your all over the map stuff, do people buy this everything, all elections we lose are rigged things if Trump says it? Or do they know it's just part of his shtick? A decent slight of Trump's base is very skeptical. Do they believe him completely? I would say no. Some do. But they think that there's a problem with the process and that Trump is on to something here. And so that just creates doubt. This is the one thing, I always say it's not my job to take sides. This is the one thing I get pretty fired up about. And that the people who count both are honest people. underpaid people, a lot of volunteer people, they're Democrats, Republicans, their independents, they're everything. They do amazing work to protect our democracy. Could you make a case that we would like California to count faster? Sure, who's going to pay for those people? They have a mailing system. Everyone, you know, everyone gets a ballot in the mail. You can deliver that ballot on election day. You can be postmarked on election day. So that's their process. The Constitution says states will decide their elections. There is, I should say, Jim, that I might storm out in the middle of this interview if you keep asking me questions about it. But I'm bum, thank you. There's just zero evidence. You can question the process. Do I wish states could come faster? Do I wish we knew quicker, especially in this environment where the president of the United States and other people constantly question the integrity of election officials? Sure, it would be better for trust in the system that went faster. But this is the way California does it. It has always been, not always, but it's been this way for my adult lifetime. This, California always takes days and sometimes weeks to get to the end result. It is not a rigged system. Maybe a system you want to go more quickly. But no. But, you know, one last related question. A really underreported story, unless I'm getting it wrong, is as early as, I think, the day after tomorrow, but... sometime in the next several weeks, the Supreme Court could come down with a decision around mail-in voting. And from what I understand, they could go as far as generally in a bunch of states, as long as the postmark date on the envelope is by election day, you have X number of days based on state law for the voting authorities to receive that thing. They could totally change those rules and create... chaos in terms of mail-in voting that I assume could be in place or order to be in place by November. Am I wrong about any of that? You're not wrong about that. Look, again, the Constitution is pretty clear on this. The state shall decide how to administer their elections. But the Supreme Court has taken us into interesting places throughout the Trump era here. The conservative position, if you are a constitutional conservative, and you read the Constitution, it says this is not a decision for Washington. But what Trump would argue is the U.S. Postal Service delivers those ballots. That's a federal agency and so on and so forth.

This is a really unprecedented cycle. So much of the Trump era is taking a place that we've never been before. But they're redrawing the maps late in the campaign, and now we have a Supreme Court decision that could impact the administration of the election, the rules for mail-balloting, what counts and what does it, late in the campaign. Welcome to Trump era. We're talking with John King from CNN. So Todd Blanche, the former personal lawyer of Donald Trump, the acting attorney general now, has been nominated by Trump to become the attorney general. What do you think? He's going to go before Congress on this one. What do you think? This one to be, it's fascinating because as we watch these primaries play out, we have seen more and more Republicans. beginning to break with the president on a certain issue. We've seen more or even House Republicans, moderate Republicans who are in battleground districts. I was just in Pennsylvania. There are three districts, the first, the seventh, of the eighth, and you have three Republicans there who are trying to navigate a very difficult environment. Now, Todd Blanche will be confirmed in the Senate. You have Susan Collins, who has a tough race. We just talked about the main race. You have some people who are leaving, like Thom Tillis and Mitch McConnell, who are not fans of Trump and who do not believe that Todd Blanche's qualified to be the Attorney General of the United States. So if you're Trump, you want this confirmation process to start yesterday. Because the closer you get to the election, the more emboldened I think more Republicans are going to be. He has another controversy with his DNI pick. So I would not, if I were Mr. Todd Blanche, I would not be in the prediction markets or in Vegas betting on my confirmation. That doesn't mean he won't get it. But the president has put his party again in a really difficult spot because most Republicans know you privately, they don't think he's anywhere close to qualified. Well, the other thing besides not being qualified is that, you know, Trump... Trump's base did divert from him over the Epstein files, and people may recall that Todd Blanche went down to prison to do the interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, after which she was moved from a more secure prison to a low secure prison, where apparently she's getting a lot of special favors. I mean, I can't... Plus, Pam Bondi the other day said that Todd Blanche made all the decisions about Epstein. At his feet, so... I don't know. That could be someplace that people that don't want him to become Attorney General are really going to constantly refer to in the hearings. Jim texts me all the time, Audrey, that you wrote all the questions. Talk about a happy workplace, right? Yeah. But again, again, you know, yeah, Pam Bondi threw Todd Blanche under the bus. It wasn't. Todd Todd Blanche went to the White House and handed out those binders at the beginning and said, I have the empty files on my desk. Yeah. But, you know, I have more revelations on my desk, the client, which I think she said on her desk, and she didn't. But again...

You're right. You're right. So not only do Democrats opposed to Todd Blanche, not only do more centrist Republicans think he's not qualified, but he is an easy target. If you are a more Trumpy Republican, or at least you have a history of being with the president, you can stand up and say, Mr. President, he's not one of yours or he's not keeping your promise. So there are ways to get at Todd Blanche, to criticize Todd Blanche, to oppose Todd Blanche, that might actually allow you to say, I'm not abandoning the Trump base. I'm actually standing for the Trump base. You know, John, a second ago, you threatened to storm out of the room, a la Trump in Wisconsin the other day. You know, I never did you guys. I love you guys. Well, he said he loved, no, he didn't say he loved her, actually. He called her darling. I forgot. I always, I know you're not a mind reader, so my apologies in advance for this question. When I wonder, when Fox has, when Trump has unlimited access to right-wing media in this country, I always wonder why he does an interview with legitimate... news source and the only conclusion I can reach is he decides he's either going to curse at hopefully a woman reporter or a woman of color reporter even better or storm out to fire up his base because they're the only ones that actually ask a follow-up question like where's the evidence that the election is rigged do you draw the same conclusion that it's to reach a point where he can yell or walk out so that His people love that he treats mainstream reporters like crap. I will yield my thought next Tuesday to Dr. Freud or Dr. Phil or whoever it is you can get to try to climb into his brain and figure out. Look, he consumes more mainstream media, even though he calls us the fake news. He consumes more mainstream media than I do. The scene the other day, I interviewed him the day Obama released a birth certificate long ago, and he walked out of the interview at the end because I kept asking for evidence of things. It's part of his act, if you will, that he's always had. But he does have particular contempt, obviously, for women reporters. Christopher was asking great questions. He attacked my colleague, Kaitlan Collins, yet again. Boy, did he ever. The other day. She is one of the best reporters in Washington. She is a rising store in our business. She has the spine of steel. It's what he does. And yes, I do think we see a number of things, Jim. I think you raise an important point. The president's base is demoralized because of Epstein, because of gas bright suits. Again, I was just driving to Pennsylvania in these rural areas that are Trump countries and everybody's like, what is going on with this war in Iran? Gas is hard. Yeah, I got to drive 30 miles from work or 25 miles to get gas. So he's throwing homes every now and then. I think he try to keep his base in fight mode and attacking NBC News, attacking a woman of color, who was asking very simple questions. Third, do you have evidence to that? Her composure throughout that was something to watch, and I think that's the keeper Trump. Don't take his bait. Don't get in a fight. Don't take it personally. Just keep asking the question.

And she's smart enough not to make it personal because that's playing his game. Yeah, no, she's very talented. I've watched her career, and she must work 23 or 24 hours a day. That's all I can say. John, before you go. Invent the source of the day. What? She adds hours today. She works 28 hours today. Okay. We only have about 30 seconds left. Could you answer a couple of questions about Marjorie's 403B before you go? We didn't get enough answers out of the guy from Axios. Can you weigh in on that or no? No. I grew up in a triple decker on King Street in Georgia, Massachusetts. You want to let me invest your money? Okay, forget it then. Well, I do know, John, that I don't have a 401k anymore. I realize that now, so I don't have to worry about it anymore since I don't have one. So there you go. Okay, good enough. Well, there we go. Thank you very much, John King. We're wonderful to see you. We'll be watching tonight. Yeah, be watching tonight. Very exciting day. Thanks so much. We were speaking to tonight. We were speaking to tonight. Thank you for CNN, Chief National Correspondent, John King, the man behind the great reporting project all over the map. He was up in Maine, talking to a lot of Congress.

afternoon. We're going to keep going here in Boston after this quick break, Sports Authority, Trini Casey on the World Cup. A lot of tickets remain unsold. The NBA finals that all of America is worked up about and the 89-year-old who wants to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I'm Marjoriegan. He's Dearbrow. You're listening to BPR, GBAH, and NAPM live from the BPL and streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News. Support for Boston Public Radio comes from M&M Skylights, installing and servicing the full range of commercial and residential V-Lux Skylight products. More information about their installation process and consultations can be scheduled at MMSkylights.com. And the Museum of Science, from live science demonstrations to hands-on exhibits, families can explore the wonders of Earth's evolution and the frontiers of space this summer. Learn more at MOS.org. Welcome to hour number two of Boston Public Radio, 897 GBAH, Jim Brady and Marjorie. Thank you. We are broadcasting live from the Boston Public Library streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News. Ed Markey, the senator is going to zoom in with us tomorrow at 1230 on Thursday. We're going to be joined by Senator Whitehouse from Rhode Island. He's also going to zoom in. And the first interview with Rachel Rollins, done by Jim and Shirley Young, Rachel Rollins, as people probably know, was the district attorney of Suffolk County. She is now running again for that. office and you guys have the first interview we'll play that Thursday. Is it Thursday? We haven't done yet, but we will be. Okay. Hello again, Jim. Hello again, Marjorie. We're joining out the library desk by Sports Authority, Trini Casey, anchor and reporter NBC Sports Boston. She and Christina Quinn did a wonderful job filling in yesterday, even though Jamie whispered to me that Tranny sat in my chair, which you're not allowed to do in Brighton, but that will be fixed going forward. Tranny, it's very nice to see. It's very nice to see you. Apparently, I also take on your personality when I said. I didn't want to say that. In the chair. You said, you became a variation on me, which I'm really sorry to hear for your sake. It's like you just sit in there and you just absorb part of gym. It's very sad. I just gross jammy out. So let's just move on. Exactly. Let's leave it right there. You were great, by the way. You two of you really were great. That's been really fun. So you may have noticed at Trenti, you know me, you know Jen. I'm not a fan of Donald Trump. No one is. I mean, I guess not no one. No one with brains are. So all I was, could think about last night was what's going to happen when he was at Massa Square Garden. And I was not disappointed. We have a little sound of the, of the reception that the Trump appearing on the jumbo tron last night in Massa. Square Garden of the Knicks game. When asked by reporters later, this is how... We have both. The booing and when it was asked about the booing. Let's hear the booing first. Let's hear the booing first. It's all together. Okay, here we go. Here it is. It was, I think, mostly tears. It was loud and it was very enthusiastic. By the way, one of the major papers, either the New York Times or the Washington Post used the adjective thunderous about booze, which...

Not a quote. They said he was booed thunderously, if that's a word. I mean, that's pretty cool guy in there. Sometimes when he's at events, particularly like a football game or like a wrestling match, which is more of a 50-50 split crowd, it's sort of like you can hear the booze, but you also hear some people cheering. Or at the very least, it's not like, it's not. As obvious, this was like, we don't want you here. We didn't want you here in the first place. I said, I didn't understand why he went to the game in the first place. The NBA is not, like, I can't think of the last NBA champion that went to the White House. Like, can you think of the last NBA championship team that went and visited the White House? Well, except you read what the reason theoretically is, is that Dolan. Well, with him in office. I shouldn't say White House. With him in office went to White House. Dolan owns the Knicks. Dolan invited him. Dolan wants to move Madison Square Garden, and apparently Trump has some interest in this. So the speculation is, this is a Trump-Dolan kind of deal. 100%, but also at the same time, like sometimes. I guess, though, he just doesn't listen to anyone, right? Like, I would have to imagine someone on his staff is like, do you really think, Mr. President, this is the best idea, the optics of this aren't going to be good, you're going to get booed? And was that his golfer granddaughter? Yes, yes, she was like smirking when they were booing, and I'm like, this is. Well, she's in a tough spot in all fairness. I mean, she's the grandfather and she's getting humiliated. But also I feel like that's sort of like. That sort of embodies how everyone around him sort of spins it like, oh, they don't like us. You know, they hate us because they ain't us. Like this sort of... encouragement to do these things regardless of how it looks or how it's like rooting. I'm convinced the next loss because he was in the building. Let me, well, I want to talk about the game in a minute because I can't believe how into it I was. I didn't even think. I can't believe you stay up for it. I did. I'm in bed. I'm literally in bed by the time like midway through the first quarter. Not last night. I lasted. But I want to ask you, you've broadcast sporting events. We've talked about the Olympics you've done. To the bosses, for example, I was really disappointed that when he was booed during the national anthem, some guy sang it from Broadway, who was spectacular. I don't even know his name. Jamie, do you mind when you have a second? The guy was really brilliant. They Jumbotron faces Trump saluting or something, and he gets this thunderous booze. The broadcasters, even at the end of the national anthem, they obviously can interrupt that, didn't comment on it. The cameras never returned. To my knowledge, maybe I missed one, to the box he's sitting in with the owner of the Knicks. To the bosses in a situation like this.

I assume, say to the broadcasters and the directors, stay away from this. Like, listen, I've never broadcast such a high profile event. It's certainly nothing that a president has ever attended. How about gold medal curling in the Olympics? Yeah, but it was a pretty big deal. It was a pretty big deal, but there was no controversy around it, right? Like, there wasn't anyone there that we needed to discuss, like, how will we handle if this person is shown on television? But speaking of that gold medal year, there was an issue where one of the teams had been, had tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, which everyone laughed about in curling, but it was a thing. Oh, that's right. I remember. And like, so we are talked about like, okay, like we are given guidance on how to address sensitive topics. Like they have entire legal teams that, and like PR teams, crisis PR teams. network executives who do come together and sure there were high level conversations. You sit down in your production meeting before the game and you say, listen, we know that President Trump is going to be there. We know that they have to show him on the JumboTron, which means we're going to show them because we're taking the Jumbotron. We're just not going to acknowledge it because we can't win, right? We can't win. Let the moment play out and then move on. And they probably felt to themselves, we're just going to take them the one time and we are not going to make it. We're not going to put our announcers in a position to put themselves in, you know, in a position to say something that they don't want to say and give out any political leanings. People do try for the most part to tune into sports to watch a game. And this isn't, this isn't like Colin Kaepernick kneeling or all of the NFL players kneeling, which was like, a league-wide movement. This was just a narcissist wanting attention. I watched the whole pregame show with people like Barclay and Shaq. Barkley will say anything about anything. He'll say anything. He didn't. I watched the whole. Oh, really? That to me is interesting. So that to me, I did not see, I did not see the preview show. They were fabulous, by the way. They were really good. That does surprise me, and my guess is, again, he was told we're not going to talk about it. Because Barclay will say whatever he wants, whenever he wants. And usually he's pretty eloquent about it. He can certainly ruffle some feathers. But he... He is someone who is not afraid to take a political or, like a social equity stance. So they must have been, they must have been ruled with an iron fist to say nothing. By the way, Avery Wilson is the Broadway star. He was, if you haven't seen. Is that the guy who's in Ragtime? I don't know. It was beautiful. Can I say one more thing? We almost never talk about the game itself with you because that's for sports stations, stuff like that. If anybody's a Celtics fan and wants to know what's wrong with the Celtics, watch the Knicks. Celtics cross half court and somebody shoots from 35 feet out. They cross half court and they're like, ooh, we can shoot now. It was incredible. I didn't count them. There were times in that game last night, which was a fabulous game, where the Knicks maybe passed eight times before they took a shot. It was such classic.

beautiful basketball. It was really great. Well, you know, we had a story a couple of weeks ago. We never got to it with you, but it was talking about why the NBA is in trouble. And that was one of the theories is that people... Too much three point shooting. Exactly. And I remember even being a fair weather watcher of basketball, watching the stealthiness, and thinking, okay, if you're getting them all, you get a hot night, I get it. But if you're missing them all, why do you keep going? That's usually how it goes. You're hot one night? You're not hot the next night. And they just... keep doing it. And wasn't that one of the big reasons the coach was in trouble here? Uh, yeah. Joe Missoula there have, I mean, listen, he won coach of the year. He won coach of the year in the NBA. So he's, but he is still on the hot seat despite winning a title in 2024, winning coach of the year this year. And a large part of it is their play style. And also his inability in big games to make adjustments from game to game or even within the game itself, um, to counteract what the other team is forcing them to do. Um, he also made a wild decision in game seven against the 76ers to throw a starting five. He had never used in the postseason when Jason Tatum. So there's just, there's a lot of very questionable decisions that he makes that's put him on the hot seat. But a big one is, and he would argue and people who are supporters of Joe Mozilla would argue that, well, the reason they shoot the three so much is because that's how their roster is built. So if they want to play a different style of basketball, they need a different style of play. Pass the damn bowl. It was beautiful to watch. They lost the game last night. I assume everybody knows, but they were great to watch. So let's move on to the World Cup. I hope that part of the reason, so there are tickets unsold at some of these opening days of the World Cup is because the prices are so through the roof that nobody can afford to go. So yesterday when Christina and I filled in for you guys, our opening segment was like, wow, there's this really cool six weeks coming up, and we've got the World Cup and 250th and tall ships. And are you know, usually Boston's really packed. pessimistic, but are you excited about this? And people, while I think excited for like tall ships, people were really anti-World Cup. And the number, the consistent reason was it's too expensive. Yeah. How in the world can a regular family afford or even just a couple? How could you possibly afford to go to a World Cup game when tickets are astronomical? They're four figures. They're thousands of dollars to go see a game. I am curious to, see like I was telling Zoe that I kind of wanted to I went onto the FIFA website to register to go to one of the days of the FIFA like the fan fest because it's in government center it's right near where I live I can register to go to fan fest yeah which but makes sense because they want to control how many people are in and out right like you don't want to get overcrowded and then it's uncomfortable and you can't enjoy yourself I think also for security reasons I think it's probably part of some security screening that that make sure you have and you know who's coming in and who's coming out. I didn't know which day I wanted to go, but I am curious, like, if those ancillary events around the World Cup, you know, watch parties in cities, bars, restaurants staying open later, like, if that's where we'll see more of the excitement. I also wonder if, like, right before kickoff, are people, is it kind of like Taylor Swift? Like, I know a lot of people when Taylor Swift came to Gillette Stadium, and tickets were through the roof. People were paying, like, $1,100 for an obstructed seat up in the corner on the secondary market, but people would wait until, like, the opening actor, like, right before she went on, and then you could get in the door because people would drop the price just to get rid of the ticket. Like, I do wonder if that will happen with World Cup games, but it's just, it's a travesty. It is a travesty that this is a global event.

And the United States is like our economics are wildly different from anywhere else in the world and being cost prohibitive and keeping people. But I think it's by design. I think it's to keep people out. I think it's to not have. What this administration deems undesirable people out of our country. I really think they're doing all these different things to not make people want to come here. I'll give you two examples. Journalists being denied visas. Referees, one referee who was the world something referee of the year. The Senegalese players having their body cavity search the players. Yeah, disgusting. I mean, it is disgusting. Yeah. Somali referee has been denied entry through he's being sent back. not going to be able to work. First ever Somali official to be chosen to work. 2025 Confederation of African Football Men's Referee of the Year. Yes, he's obviously a very good referee. You've got Iranian and African journalists being denied visas. You have, we talked about the other day, even like Scottish fans who were once given the Estes that like the tourists, basically a tourist visa, a tourist pass to come in. They were first approved. Now they've been pulled back. They've spent all this money. now they're not being allowed in. And it was funny. I was reading, the athletic puts out every morning something called The Pulse. It kind of hits like the best topics of the day, the biggest sports stories of the day. And on the Somali referee story, the last line was, you know, We shouldn't be shocked. They did say this was going to be the most welcoming World Cup ever. We should have known, but we should have known, essentially, was like the last line. And it's just like, it's such a bait and switch, you know? And I feel bad for players. I feel bad for international fans. I feel bad for, like, communities trying to grow soccer programs here. Like, the World Cup can catapult the sport, especially when it's on your own home soil. And everything this administration touched turns to poo. Well, how about this Globe story, Michael Silverman's done a million great story. about the World Cup sports writer for the globe. Chris Saras and Milton Valencia, three violence in the story. But they're talking about volunteers being disgusted by the disorganization and chaos. And some guy was talking about how he was dying of volunteer, but it's been a big mess. And I couldn't figure out if it was FIFA's fault or Boston soccer, 2026 fall. But. He just talked about... You know, I wonder, like, listen, not that I'm sticking up for Boston Soccer 2026, but my guess is it's a trickle-down effect, right? Like, FIFA's kind of a mess, and they, and the U.S. government probably isn't really communicating all that well with everybody, and it's so it's like you can't do anything locally without, I think, probably running it by the governing body. There's probably all these different steps you have to take, and when it's a mess at the top, it just trickles down to the bottom. Like... I am really curious to see, especially someone who lives in the city, to see starting Friday, Saturday, like when things really start going, like, what it is going to be like, what traffic's going to be like, what if, although, you know, I will say on a positive note, like, you can sort of feel the energy. Like now when I, I always can hear other, you know, languages when I walk through our neighborhood. It's a tourist destination. But, like, you can see there's an uptick of people wearing, like, their country's shirts. And you can already kind of see, like, a more tourist than usual.

I had yesterday off after I did your show and my husband are like, oh, we're rarely home in the afternoon. Let's go grab lunch together. We're like, let's eat somewhere we can never go because it's always crowded. Well, all the places we went that we can never go, we're crowded on a Monday afternoon, which is great. That's awesome for the city. It's awesome for business. And you know what else, I remember the last time the World Cup was playing, not here, it was just the World Cup in general. And I saw all these bars in Brighton and Austin just packed. Because kids now in their 20s and 30s and even 40s grew up playing. soccer in a way that people certainly are. Yeah, we went to brunch the other day at State Street Provisions and like I walked in and looked around, they had all these flags hanging. I was like, what that? I'm like, oh, duh, the World Cup. So I think there are a lot of businesses that are really going to benefit from this. And I hope that's where people, if they can't get in, don't, you know, if you don't want to give your money to FIFA, don't give your money to FIFA. Go support your local bar, your local restaurant, your local watch party, do something, because it is a really cool worldwide event. Are they going to have the FIFA Peace Prize at your, at the Fan Fest? Wait, the what? The FIFA Peace Prize. You know, if it's going to be? I don't know. I'm hoping I'm up for it. You know, like the local Peace Prize, just bringing people together. Before you go. Before we go, I have a one quick question about FIFA, though. Forget FIFA. We've got to talk about this 89-year-old guy. Oh, what about Tom Brady's new coconut? I don't care about Tom Brady. Okay, Tom Brady's out to. that one quickly. Tom Brady's has a new coconut water and it's called go nuts. Good nuts? Good nut. That's all you need to know. Like how weird. I just weirded out that Tom Brady has good nuts. 89 year old is about the clown. This is so awesome. I love it. So there's this 89 year old who did not start climbing mountains until he was in his 70s. And I love the sub sub headline of this story. It is. Don't. Oh, shoot. Somebody can find it for me. It's so great. He's trying to climb for his birthday this summer. So he's been trying to climb Mount Kilimanjara. He tried one other time, but he started to feel if. feel ill and had to turn around. Right. And so now he's been training. He's been like walking like 55 or 60 flights a day. Yeah. Um, he has moved it like to like a more favorable time. I think he's going at the end of June. He's going to land in Tanzania. His wife has done it before. But if he makes it to the top of, of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, he'll be the oldest. He'll be 90 years old. He's 8 to 9.9 right now. He's turning 90. He'll be the oldest person ever by three years to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. And he's like just a really interesting guy. like his whole thing is like you're never too old to try something pretty cool like we all put these limits on ourselves because we think we can't do something what if we flip that narrative and thought about what we can do and what we can accomplish i have to find the line we're not in our we got a i'll find it i'll put it somewhere by the way on the same date late june Marjorie, you and I were talking about this morning, my hope is to be able to get all the way to the newsfeed cafe. And get your own lunch? Un-aided. Great, great. No help from Jamie or Marjorie. Okay. That's my goal. Three more weeks to get there. I'm hopeful. I just want to get my own lunch. Yeah. Well, maybe I don't know. We have been speaking with Trini Casey. Don't go too far. You know, Christina and I don't make Jamie get us lunch. You're saying, guys. Excuse me. Excuse me. I don't make anybody. Do I make you get me the lunch? It's just the look. It's the look.

Why is there no answer to that? Can I make him get me the lunch? Because Jamie's getting his lunch. Excuse me. Does he get your lunch? Not for quite some time, actually. Gets me a cup of coffee. Thank you. Maybe you should ask nice to you like I do. We're going to go here. Trini Casey anchor reporter NBC Sports Boston. Thank you, Trini. We're going to speak with the MSPCA's Director of Advocacy to learn about why the state of Massachusetts is pushing to ban the sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits at pet stores. That's next on Boston Public Radio. Welcome back to BPR and 897 GVH, Marjorie Egan, Jim Browdy. We're live at the library streaming at YouTube.com slash GVHs. We're back at the library tomorrow. Senator Ed Markey will zoom in to our show at 1230. Thursday, Senator Sheldon White House from Rhode Island will zoom in our show and... We'll play for you an interview with Rachel Rollins, who, as you know, wants to beat the Suffolk DA. Again, it's her first interview since she announced her candidacy. In March, the Massachusetts Senate, I think unanimously passed a bill that would ban the sale of pets like dogs, cats, and rabbits from pet shops across the state. Joining us now on Zoom and talk about the legislation is Kara Holmquist. Kara is the director of advocacy at the MSPCA. MSPCA.org. Kara, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Our pleasure. Tell us, Kara, so what will happen if this bill passes in Massachusetts? Sure. Well, this bill will stop the puppy mill to pet shop pipeline in Massachusetts. And so what we know is that in Massachusetts, the few stores that still sell puppies get those puppies from out-of-state large-scale commercial breeders, where often referred to as puppy mills. It's not a legal term, but that's what most folks call them. And the standards are extremely low. A dog can... live in a cage just six months bigger than her body for her entire life. And that is where pet stores generally source their animals from. And then we hear a lot from consumers who have purchased sick pets, pets that are genetically compromised and then heartbroken because they have fallen in love with this animal but are facing big medical bills. So this bill would stop the puppy mill to pet shop pipeline in Massachusetts. You know, as you've mentioned, Kara, which is what I'd read, the vast majority of pet shops, the ones I go into to buy food or stuff for my kids' dogs, don't sell dogs and cats anymore. Why did they stop and why did some not?

You know, most of the pet shops, we think there's about 208 in Massachusetts and six cell puppies still, so you're exactly right. And I should mention that this bill will not say that those pet shops can't exist. It would just have them convert to a humane business model where they can sell all of the stuff that I know I buy for my dogs, the toys, the food, All of the supplies we have these days to entertain our animals can offer grooming services, training. So I really think that most pet stores have moved away from selling puppies because the public is more aware of the problems and are now successful selling toys and services and things like that. Before we continue, you're the Director of Advocacy for the MSPCA. How many pets do you have? I have five. What are they? Five. What are they? What are they? So I have two dogs and three cats. Can you bring them to work or do you have to wait for you until you get home? You know, the best thing, well, I love the MSPCA. I've been there for a very long time, but one of those things is we can bring them to work. Oh, okay. So, yeah. The dogs are seldom alone. So let me ask you about this, because, you know, a lot of people are looking for puppies, and I think that's one of the problems with shelters. There's all, I mean, there are some puppies in shelters, but often there aren't puppies and shelters. So they end up going online and getting rescue dogs from, like, Tennessee or someplace else. How do people know what the deal is with those dogs? Sure. Well, there's, the bill will still allow. the pet shops to partner with shelters or rescue. So I didn't mention that before, but they can still partner. And so people who come in to adopt animals can still buy the supplies there. And so there's a lot of stores that do that now and are very successful. But people can also get a dog from a responsible breeder. I mean, the problem with the sources that the pet shops get their dogs from is that consumers can't see. firsthand how the dogs are being raised or treated or cared for. So, you know, there are responsible breeders across the state where people can go if they want a certain breed or a dog that's a young puppy and can meet the people who are breeding, can meet the dog's parents usually, see the type of environment the dog is being raised in. So there's a lot of, that's really... Between the shelters and rescues and breeders locally, with only six pet stores, that's really how most people get their animals. And we do have on our website tips for people to ask whether they're acquiring any pet, you know, about how the animal fits into their lifestyle and how to make really good decisions for their family about finding that good match. So they would be able to find out from your website about rescue dogs because I think that's... I mean, you don't know that much about the rescue dog either, do you?

Well, sometimes we do. I mean, I think that's actually a benefit of adopting a pet and an older pet. You know, we get a lot of information, either from an owner, if the owner has had to surrender, the animal, which we see a lot for housing situations and other reasons, but we take a full profile. So sometimes you know a lot more about what you're getting because the dog has a history. If it's a dog, it's a little bit older. And then sometimes we do know about where puppies come from. Sometimes we get litters with the mom. and can really help. And they go in foster home, and the foster home gets to know the dog. So can help potential adopter really understand the energy level of the dog or anything that would be helpful for a potential adopter. And we do get a lot of puppies. I think people would be surprised if they go to our website that we do get a lot of younger dogs too. It's definitely worth, and not just the MSPCA across the state shelters. and everybody's community has a shelter. And so it's always worth checking. And there's platforms like finder so that you can go on there and see, you know, look at dogs and see where they are in the state and try to get that match. Hey, a couple more quick things for you go, Kara Holmquist from the MSPCA. We were looking around to see who would oppose this. And surprisingly to me, there was a column in the Boston Herald. by someone who thinks the bill's a bad idea, and he's the former head of the ASPCA. What are his arguments and why in your estimation is he wrong? Yeah, so it's a little... I mean, I don't think there's full disclosure about his role. He, you know, he was the former head of the ASPCA, but he also worked for the pet trade industry for a long time. So there's a group that represents a national group that represents pet people in the pet trade. And so there is, you know, that's what the opposition that we're hearing. It's just. those who want to profit off of the puppy mill, the pet store pipeline, and that's really the opposition. But what's his argument? Obviously, he's not arguing that we want to profit. What's his argument, and what's wrong with it? We hear sometimes just consumer, like a v consumer choice argument, you know, and there's still plenty of choices for people to find their match. Last thing, last thing for me, if I can. Our history, I'm right that it passed the Senate unanimously, right? Yes, you are right. The legislature goes home in a month and a half, and we know that the history, you don't have to say this because you want something to happen. If the Senate loves something, then the House hates it because the leaders can't stand each other for the most part. Does this have a shot in the house in the next, whatever it is, seven weeks before they go home? You know, the amazing thing about working on animal issues is not just that sometimes I walk around the building with a puppy and I'm more popular than I ever, which I could be, is that... These animals are, the issues are bipartisan, and I think they, you know, House and Senate, I think everybody really enjoys doing the animal issues, and there's something really good to do. And they make a real difference. And not just to animals, a lot of the issues impact people, too, whether they're consumers or people who are living with pets. So we have a lot of really...

The issue. So we should have people who care about this bill should call particularly their house member because that's where the vote has to happen. And say it's for the puppies. For the puppies. Is there a name of this thing? Forget the number. People remember. What's it called the bill? It's called the nickname is the Pets Act. Pets Act. The Pets Act. Karen, it's good to meet you. Thank you very much, Karen. Thank you very much, Karen. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Be well. Good luck for this. I've been speaking to Kara Holquist, Director of Advocacy for the MSPCA. Want information about where to get a dog or anything else, animal related, ms pCA.org. Okay, coming up after this quick break, Jim, since Trinney and Christina yesterday chose to avoid Donald Trump. We, of course, are taking the opposite approach today, opening the lines to hear from you about why it seems like everything this guy touches gets ruined, including the NBA finals. I'm Marjoriegan. Heaston Browdy, listening to BPR 897GBH live from the Boston Public Library, streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH news.

Welcome back to BPR and GBAH, 897 GVH, Marjorie Egan, Jim Browdy, live at the library streaming at YouTube.com slash GBAH News, Senator Ed Markey tomorrow, Senator White House on Thursday, and Rachel Rollins on Thursday as well. We talked about this with Tranny, but we just can't get enough. Last night, Trump attended game three of the NBA finals between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks lost, maybe because the energy in Madison Square Garden, when fans realized he was in attendance, was... I don't know less than positive. As Trump said, that was mostly cheers. It was very enthusiastic. It's actually no cheers. So the lines are open at 877301, 8970. Is this guy cursed? Why does it seem like, as Marjorie said, Trump ruins everything? That could be a bumper sticker, Marjorie. The Nick's hopes of winning in four. The World Cup is a mess. The National Mall, Medicaid, America. The lines are open. What does Trump ruin for you personally? For our producers... He's ruined the sacred end talker where we usually reserve the time for something lighthearted and enjoyable. Obviously not today. The number is 877301. 8970. Well, you do feel bad for the people that were going to go to the big watch party right outside of Madison Square Garden. No watch party. The watch party got canceled. They had to get there two hours in advance. Apparently, they went through extensive security and searches before they get in there. Body cavity searches. I don't think they did body cavity. Well, they were thinking of it. They didn't do it. If you asked for a body cavity search, they'd do it. Yeah, that was the poor coach from, where was he from Somali? Senegal, I think. He was from the coach. No, he's a player. I think it was a player. Oh, I thought he was coach of the year. No, that was the guy who wasn't allowed in and all. The referee of the year. The referee of the year. The referee of the year was not allowed in all. Okay. And the player had the body cavity search. We don't know about any body cavity searches last night. But we do know that the big watch parties were all screwed up and people outside the traffic, you know, the big motorcade. He had all these signs. He'd get lost. Donald Trump and all these insults to him. He's waving. Like, everything is great. But any case, that was one thing. And they point out that, you know, I mean, we talk about this a lot, that he's sort of come between friends and between family. I mean, that's the worst thing about, well, it's not the worst thing. How about let's be positive? What is he not ruined? Go ahead. I don't know. I feel somehow some days he's ruined my whole life. He's ruined. I have to read about him for a couple of hours every day. Then I'm going to talk about him. I'm going to think about him. I mean, I just, it's really upset. That's why I must admit I was really glad he got booed last night. I said Madison Square Garden. I would have been so disappointed if he hadn't been booed because he's going to get cheered at his birthday on the 14th with the UFC big fight out there. Well, if the court doesn't stop it, you don't know. Jeffrey Toobin, your favorite guy, you guys, the court doesn't.

have a chance to stop it. It's a Vietnam veteran and somebody else who's suing, but Tubin thinks they do not have standing to stop this thing. You know he ruined it for overweight members in the military? Do you hear that if you're not fit, you're not allowed to go to the U.S.C. fight? But there's a whole list, come and cause it, a whole list of things that he's ruined, and they talk about things like grocery prices that's still higher. Family businesses, Trump's family businesses are making billions in rather nefarious ways. Small business owners are seeing higher prices, smaller margins. Our streaming platforms are more expensive because he's making these big mergers with these big people that are his favorite donors like Paramount and stuff like that. Corporate media consolidates and we all pay higher prices while we in public media get cut to the bone. Trump's big beautiful bills slash Medicaid, other social services, SNAP, food programs for hungry people. Well, wait, wait. No new wars. At least no new wars. No new wars, that's right. We don't have any new wars. Let's read a couple of texts. Anonymous text here, he doesn't ruin everything. He's self-centered. He has enriched his family with generational wealth through his grift on the American people. Don't let him fool you about the booing. He doesn't care because of the jokes. Well, that's a good point. Did you see Ivanka on TV? She was last night. She was giving a podcast. And she's talking about, we went into this beautiful island. And we were swimming on a private boat. And then we went for a dip. Uninhabited island. Uninhabited. And we have to delicately take the whole place over. Thousands of people took the street in Albania. They went crazy. They said, you're not going to sell this island. But you know what? She'll probably get the island. She and general will probably get the island. And they're going to turn into a massive development. Tastefully done. It's very good. Here's Andrea in New Hampshire. For me, Trump has ruined my lifelong faith in humanity and belief that good wins over evil. Peter and Mystic Connecticut. What is he ruined? The last 10 effing years is what he's ruined. You know, I'll say again, I've said it many times before. I yearn for the days when you have the election for the President of the United States and your team wins or your team loses. And then you hardly ever think of the President until there's some big crisis. He's living in our brains. Every hour. And I can't get him out. That's true. It's really horrible. Susan from Newton. Thank you for calling. Hello, Susan. Hi. How are you? We're excellent. Thank you. First-time caller, long-time lover of your program. Thank you. Thank you. Trump has ruined everything, including getting my kids back from the Netherlands to return to their home in Arlington. But more importantly, sense of safety and security and American history. His idea of painting the reflecting pool. On the mall, I can't take it. It's ruined my memories of being in Washington, D.C. I know. Susan, let me tell you, in terms of first calls, that is right up there with a great one. Susan, thank you. Call again. How about these millions of tourists that have gone to visit the White House and where do they enter the East Wing? There is no White House.

It's gone. He ripped it down. It's just wires and asbestos and everything all over the place. Listen to this. This is from Whiteansville or Witnessville. Whitensville. Whitensville. Trump has ruined my sanity signed insane in Whitenesville. Oh, my God. It's just, yeah, from insane in White andsville. I'm with you at insane in White andsville. You know, also. Sometimes I just say to myself, I can't take it anymore. I can't take it anymore. And also for those few people, by the way, feel free to call and say, knowledge you know, I'd ruin something for you. He's made it better. Look at who's a guy who would have said a couple of days ago, Trump has been great to me, Benjamin Netanyahu. He has totally humiliated Benjamin Netanyahu the last few days saying, I'm in charge here. He doesn't have any power. I call the shots. There is nobody who where it doesn't come back. Well, some text are just reminding us of the great Rick Wilson book. I think I've lost the text, but I think he said, everything Trump touches dies. That's true. That is the name of the book. It is true. Josh and Bridgewater, we know Josh. There's nothing sacred anymore, Mr. President. Now you've ruined the second BPR talker. What's next? Jim's beloved Whole Foods hot bar? I pray it doesn't come to that. Okay. 8773.1. Read the other text. Anonymous text, looks like I picked the wrong week. Just stop sniffing glue. Just pick the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. Yeah, that's it. It's amazing. We all aren't sniffing glue at this juncture. Maybe I should try it. Next play, Jim and Marjorie, sniffing glue, $10 a month, $120 all at once. Yeah, that would make me feel better. Let's go to Beaver in Forge Village. Hi, Beaver, how are you? Hi, Beaver, how are you? Oh, Swell. Oh, fabulous. Thank you. Swell. Go ahead. First. First, I want to shout out to my cousin Linda Kane up in somewhere in Vermont listening to you guys online. Oh, great. But I had bumper stickers made up for my friends and family. Yeah. They just say, they say three. And across the bottom it says Trump ruins everything everywhere. Pretty good. Oh, boy. That's lovely. I'll send a couple of you guys. Please, too. Thank you. Jim Browdy, one guest street, WGPH, Brighton, Massachusetts. Well, just. Your name's easier to remember, I think, than mine. Everybody miss spells my name. I think that's great. You know, you think about it. This is driven to me to be supporting, as I did earlier in the show, a guy with an extremely checkered past who may be rather off the deep end himself, I mean, because I'm so worried about Trump getting another, being unfettered for another two and a half years. I mean, people are voting for Graham Platner, some people, in absolute desperation. Here's one of our colleagues wrote, and this is true, unfortunately. Jim and Marjorie branded M. amphetamines would do so well during pledge, and they're suggesting that we give for the next pledge. Elmer's glue all. Well, that's because the famous line was sorry about giving up drinking, smoking, were you here for that? Amphetamines, and then sniffing glue. After which... I picked the wrong wait, quit sniffing glue. And then there straight up on his head, goes up straight up straight.

If people haven't seen that movie. You are so easy, though. It's very on PC, though. We get in trouble showing it now. Yeah, Michael in Boston. Thank you for calling. Go ahead, Michael. Hi, how are you today? Oh, excellent. We're good. We're good. Welcome. We're having fun, but I just wanted to comment because we constantly talk about Trump. Yeah. And we're concerned about Trump. Trump is really not the problem. Nope. Problem. Our half of our country, approximately, support this kind of character and this level of morality. That's the issue that we should be talking about what is going on with the people of our country that think that he could lead a hot dog card. What do you think is the answer your own question? What is your analysis? Yeah. What is wrong with half the country? Well, a little less, but what's wrong with half the country? Well, I believe that... We have lost the ability to think critically. Ask questions. How and why do you think that there will be no war? How and why do you think a person who has no moral character can actually manage a national economy and move it forward to improve when we need it? How can he lead the world? Well, those unfortunately are very good questions. I mean, those are really good questions. Well, to be serious for a minute, I get it the first time around because he did talk about being a populace. He did talk about prices. People could have seen him on TV and his show and not realize he'd all these bankruptcies and all this kind of stuff and that he inherited his wealth and stuff like that. But it's the second time around. That's what I don't know. Well, prices are going to go down on day one. He's going to end the war in Ukraine on day one. No new wars. That was after he got up there and told everybody that that riot that we all. also on television on January 6th was the day of love. It was. The day of love. The FBI agents and the police officers, they just welcome those people with the pitchforks into the Capitol, no problem. Mike from Providence, thank you for calling. Hello, Mike. Hi there. I just want to talk about how to the Trump. And what do we are saving whites in America? The reasoning is he got rid of the National Labor Relations Board. So if you're in a union and you have a legal matter involving in the union, you have no way to resolve it. I've been directly affected by something similar to this situation. So on top of that, he got rid of all infrastructure money for wind farms and solar farms. And I was working on actually part of the infrastructure as a union member. The union was geared towards renewable energy, like a lot of the union structure that's been going on, and he basically gutted all the jobs they were doing. So, you know, like the building trade has been totally decimated on top of, like, our rights in general, being able to be in a union as a member. It's terrible. So now I'm over here doing Grubhub. because that's all that I have left to do because there's like no work because of what he's done to the economy on top of the task you know like think about think about how that screwed up construction and just like the regular like working Joe has no

like ability to make money anymore. That's a great point. I want to clarify one thing you said. That was a great call. The NLR, NationalA Relations Board still exists, but a majority of the appointees are Trumps, which means it's not going to be helping working people in this country. You left off your comprehensive list, Mike. He is unilaterally taken away. hard-won collective bargaining rights from tens of thousands of federal workers. And he's limited OSHA rules and regulations so bad. If there's something unsafe at your workplace, it's very difficult to get any accountability for that. A lot of regulations around keeping food safe. I mean, he's done terrible things to cancer research. Who does bad things to cancer research for children? I mean, who does that? Donald Trump did that. So, you know, student loans made it more difficult, and the climate stuff is just... is just kind of devastating. And First Amendment rights, First Amendment rights. And due process rights. Okay, that's just two amendments. It's a constitutional stuff, Jim. But, you know, Constitution's overrated. It's overrated, no question about it. So just to lift Marjorie's spirits, we're going to play yet again. Here's Trump, the greeting. I'm not going to characterize it. Okay. Here's Trump appearing on the Jumbotron last night during the national anthem being sung. And... his description when asked by reporters later of what that moment was like for him. Here it is. It was, I think, mostly cheers. It was loud. Loudon, very enthusiastic. By the way, we did. Jamie did some work during the show. We did identify two people out of the 20,000 at the garden who did not boo him last night. Yeah. They were mostly cheering and very enthusiastic. And you know, it didn't rattle him one bick. Right after he got booed like that, fell right asleep. You know, that, you know, we didn't even mention that, by the way. He ruins the game. For the 20,000 people who are there. How do you fall asleep in the middle? And then he falls asleep in the middle of an NBA final game. With all that noise coming in. And that's one of the great things about going to the Celtics, you know, all the clapping and the cheering and the stuff that gets you going. But apparently maybe he can't hear. I mean, he's tired. Maybe you can't hear very well. That could be possible too. Dan in the car. Thank you for calling. Trump ruins everything. That's our theme. Go ahead, Dan. It's upbeat so far. Go ahead. He ruins everything. He ruined my retirement. Oh. I thought that I'd spend time with my grandkids and travel and read. Now I have to fight fascism. I didn't think that wasn't on my list. Yeah. No, not mine either. That does take time. It's true. It's very time consuming. Go see the grandkids when you can know, Dan. Dan, thank you for the call. We appreciate it. Let's go to 8773-01, 8970. Izzy in Worcester. Thank you for calling. Hi, and thank you for taking my call. Of course. Wait a minute. I'm the salami lady. Oh, hi, salami lady. How are you, is he? He hasn't ruined salami, has he? Is he still okay? No, this is what he seriously ruined. What is it? He ruined our country because it shows how many cowards we have that don't, excuse me, I hope I can say this, that don't have the balls to stand up and say.

This is horrific. That's a very good point. I'm 80 years old. I have to live long enough to see him gone. You know, Izzy, everything you said was great. That's a great point. But at the beginning, you said, did you bring up salami or was that somebody else? Because Marjorie's worried that he's ruining salami. You and I had a salami discussion. Oh, last time. Okay, salami. The salami's okay. He's not ruining salami. You can still get your salami. Okay, Izzy, thank you. That was an excellent call. But, you know, Izzy has a great point. You think of these people that have more money than God, like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook, these people from Apple Computer. I mean, I think Elon Musk has kind of got some mental health issues. You think so? But, you know, you think that money buys you freedom. Isn't that wonderful things about money? You don't have to say, take this job and shove it. You don't have to put it up with this, don't put it up with that. How fell they fast? Paul Wise. How fell they fast? How fast they fell. Okay. I was anticipating talking about Paul Bari Weiss. He's not a person. He's a law firm. But he could be. Yeah, that they just knuckled under in two seconds. So as millionaires, they just knuckled under. When I think of Paul Bari Weiss, you know what I say to myself? That I goofed it up. How fell they fast? I mean... I don't even know what it means. I just know it's bad. They fast fell. They did? They fell fast. They fell fast fell. They did. And you know what? But what's the one in Boston, Wilbur Hale? They stood up strong. They didn't tell fast. They did not. They did not. And Joseph, in the McCarthy hearings during the 50s, they stood up then. That's where Joseph Welch came. Was Joseph Welch, the guy who said. Have you no decency, sir? That was pretty great. Wasn't he from Massachusetts? It was the Boston law firm. You used to be called Wilmer Hale then. I think it's something different now. Or Wilmer Hale is... Actually, Wilmer Hale's going to be on the show tomorrow. He's at lunch of them last week. I said, hey, Will. He said, what? Yeah. I said, are you free next week? Can you bring Paul Bari Weiss with you? So we're taking the two of them out to lunch. Paul Bari Weiss. Is Edgar around? It's not a person. What's happening? He has ruined 60 minutes. That's another great point. He's working that. Edgar, you there? I'm here. Yeah. He hasn't ruined the curiosity desk. Not yet. But I'm working on a gym. You know, he might drive you insane. I think he's driven me insane. I'm holding on by my fingernails here. I hadn't noticed, Marguerite, really. You know what, though? Here's the thing, like, the Knicks game getting ruined in that weight. I mean, to a certain extent, you know, it sucks to ruin a basketball game. But I don't feel that bad for the, you know, Ben Stiller and Timothy Shalamee and everything. But... There are Nick's fans who are so long-suffering. Yeah. It costs 5K to just sniff a ticket to get in there. I guarantee there are dozens, if not hundreds of people who like...

way overpaid money they don't have to go to that game. That's right. That experience to get ruined. He screwed that up too. I think it's just kind of awful. Okay, so as of the moment, Edgar is not totally ruined the curiosity show. Not yet. So there's a little breathing room. What are you doing today there? Well, we're going to do one thing which is a little more serious, which is, you know, we've been talking the staff at the curiosity desk for a while about the fact that, you know, it is now five months since events in Venezuela. And we, it's, totally off the headlines. Like, people have not been talking about it. And so we're just going to do a check-in on what has happened over the last five months in Venezuela and just kind of get our heads around it a little. Oh, good. Fabulous. Oh, good. And then it's pigeon paloosa. That's right. Pigeon Paloza. So there's new research that's looking at just how long humans and pigeons have been coexisting together, longer than we thought. And then we're going to talk with one of the very few... professional. This is this person's job. Professional pigeon racer. Local guy. Wow. A pigeon racer. And we're going to have a pigeon. We're going to have, reportedly, we're going to have a pigeon in studio with us, a racing pigeon. Edgar, Edgar. I can't believe I'm not on the show. Do you know my first job was as a kid? Go on. cleaning pigeon coops at Old Doc Flynn's. Oh, amazing. Right next to where I grew up. Yeah, it was incredible. Old Doc Flynn. Well, come on, come on back to Brighton from the library. We'll get you on the show. You know what happened? Trump got me fired. Yeah, that was it. He ruined the pigeon cleaning coop experience. Yeah, the pigeons can't stand him either. Thank you, Edgar. Beharic the 3rd. We're listening to that show. Thanks, Edgar. Edgar comes out as soon as we're done here. And thank you for listening to another edition of Boston Public Radio 89.7. Thanks to people came down to the Boston Public. Library, keep up with this 24-7 way of our podcast or check out our TikTok page at Boston Public Radio. Tomorrow, we're back here at the Boston Public Library with Harvard National Security expert, Juliette, Gary Mitchell of the Cambridge Deli, the S&S, which is closing after 107 years. I was there on closing day. You were? I was. Jim is going to give us a report. Nicole is with me. On that day, it's going to be very exciting. Carolyn Chu of Homes for All Massachusetts on the rent control ballot question, and Senator Ed Markey is going to zoom in. at about 1230. I want to thank our crew, Zoe Matthews, Nicole Garcia, Hannah Loss, Ariana Gonzalez, our engineer John the Club Parker, our executive producer, Jamie Bologna, our BPL staff, Maddie Guy, Bill Francis, Juan Jose Cadena, our security team, Darius and Derek, our host at the News Feed Cafe and across the street at the Lenox Hotel. Curiosity Desk with Edgar, and Edgar's above the fray. He's keeping up. So far. So far. It starts right after us in 89-7 GBAH, the culture show with Jared Bowen, starts at two. He'll speak with photographer, Matthew Conner, on his new book, The Axe will Survive the Master. That sounds like a good one. I'm Marjorie. Kim Browdy. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you can tune in tomorrow and have a great day.