Fill In - Leland Conway: Capitalism & Home Ownership, Gun Rights, Budgets, Mayorkas Border Lies, Men in Women's Locker Rooms, & More

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the conservative circus with James T. Harris. James is off today. Leland Conway is sitting in for the legendary James T. Harris one more time. There are two headlines that are connected that we should be very concerned about. One of them is that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now the leading contender for the Democrat nomination in 2028. Now, it's far-fetched that she would become the president, but here's what this ties into and why we should be very concerned about it. Here's another headline. President Trump's housing revolution takes direct aim at the biggest crisis young Americans face. And we'll dig into this, but Trump is proposing a fight to protect the American dream for young generations. In a truth social post yesterday, he asked Congress to pass the 21st century Road to Housing Act. What this does is it prevents big venture capitalist companies from buying up individual housing units. They are competing with home buyers. Now, what does this connect to young people? What's the nexus to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? There are a lot of disaffected youth in the Generation Z that have given up on capitalism. because they don't see a path for them to participate in it. And this is an important issue because it's actually a real problem, and they actually have a point. Now, this isn't me getting ready to go all socialist on you, not anything of the sort, far from it. This is, we have to come to an understanding that young people are seeing the world differently than we saw it. and that they have challenges that are much more difficult to overcome when it comes to participating in the American dream. It's easy for us to say, well, just work a little harder, right? But when you look at the price of housing, there's places in America where you can still buy it. I was driving through Missouri the other day. Don't ask me why I was in Missouri. It's not someplace I want to go back to, but I'm driving through Missouri. I think it was in Springfield, and there was a billboard on the interstate, and it said new construction homes from the 220s. And I was like, I haven't seen those numbers since shortly after my wife and I bought our very first house in the early 2000s. Like, that's an unreal number, right? And I was like, well, who wants to live in Springfield, Missouri? But I mean, yeah, but I mean, still, there's places where you can do that. But if you want to go someplace and live someplace that has, you know, a vibe, has, has something to it, some pizzazz to it, you're not buying a house. You're not buying anything for less than half a million.

And wages haven't risen commensurate to the price of homes. Nothing else has risen to the price of homes, right? The price of homes are ridiculous. It's insane. I was talking to a builder the other day, houses that he's selling for about $800,000 in an area that's supposedly known for lower cost housing. Prior to COVID, he was selling for about... 450 500 right and that's just six seven years ago that's not sustainable so here's my point what am i talking about here's my point And Republicans and Democrats are both guilty of this. And we're going to talk later. Congressman David Schweikert, who's running for Governor of Arizona, is going to join us in the 7 o'clock hour. And I will reference this part of the conversation because I want to get his thoughts on it. But the reality is both Republicans and Democrats have allowed capitalism to be invaded by cronyism. And I think the Democrats are actually the worst at it right now because if you read articles. about how the Democrats do business, about how they carve out exceptions for large businesses that circle back money to them. Let me give an example. They will pass an act. Let's say there's, let's just use this as an example. Say the anger of the day is at big banks. And they will pass the stop big banks from screwing the American people act, right? And what will end up happened? This actually happened. This is a real thing. This actually happened after the 2008 financial crisis that was tied to housing. So they'll pass an act and they'll call it the Stop Big Banks from Screwing Americans Act. And the big banks will send their lobbyists over to the congressional offices, mostly the Democrats. And they'll be like, hey, look, we get it. We get it. You know, this is really bad. It looks bad. You know, here's what we'll do. We'll support this bill to keep us from screwing the little people. We're going to slide a little campaign money your way to into a little pack, so it can be as much as you want that you supposedly don't control. We'll slide that little campaign money in there for you. And all we want from you is just carve out a little exemption for the Bank of the USA here because we're not doing that stuff. And we need to do this stuff over here. And this stuff's really vital to the economy. So we're not saying we're against it. We're just saying if you carve this out, be really really really appreciated down the road. if you ever want a job or your kid wants a job, you know, and be able to find a place for you. And then the Democrats go, okay, well, let's write that in. They go to their staffers and they write that in. They write out that carve out. And the next thing you know,

after servicing a number of those big banks that come in, the big banks end up with an exception to the stop big banks from screwing the American People Act. And really, the only banks that end up saddled with more regulations are the mid-sized banks or the small banks. And if you notice after the 2008 financial crisis, a lot of the independent small little one-town banks, they dried up. They went away. They couldn't compete in that regulatory atmosphere. The bigger banks had the scale. and they had the carve-outs. And that's how cronyism works. And so what you end up with in a business setting is not capitalism. And so young people are getting these degrees in humanities and they're $200,000 for college. So they start in the world saddled with debt that used to be the price of a house. That's before they even get started. They've got to figure out how to overcome that. and then they've got to figure out how to save up for 20% of a down payment on a million dollar house my wife and i bought our first house we were in our late 20s when we got married 2005 late 2005 2006 i think it was we bought new construction three bedroom two bath that was not big it was like 1200 square feet right it was a small little house but it was brand new construction And we paid, I think we paid after we bought a couple of upgrades. I think our closing price was 1095. 1095. There are pickup trucks that cost more than that now. 1095. We got a profit on that in two years, cashed in just before the crisis, turned that profit into a slightly bigger house. wrote out the crisis in that house, then sold that and moved on, moved up, moved on, moved up, moved on, moved up. And we're in. And once you're in, you can build wealth, right? Like, once you're in the housing situation, once you've been able to borrow the money for a house, your equity is theoretically outpacing what you put into it. And so you're making money and you're on the path to some level of financial health and wealth, right? That has become almost impossible for young people to do. They've got to rent until they're 40. The average age now that younger people are buying homes is 40, whereas it was late 20s when my wife and I bought ours. So here's my point, and we'll get into the details next on what Trump is wanting to do. Keep an eye on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She is dumb as a box of rocks, but people like her in the younger generation because she's young. She strings together a word salad that you have to really think about to understand how dumb it is, but it's very dumb. And they're looking for an alternative to the old white guys in suits in pinstripe suits that seem to have enriched themselves while the rest of people, whether they work hard or not, are trying to figure out how to get by. Now, this is, again, I'm not lamenting capitalism. I love capitalism. And I don't want to give up on it. I'm not going to give up on it. I don't want America to give up on it. We're built on it. But we have to be able to see it through the eyes of somebody who just graduated college.

They're young and dumb and full of vigor, right? And they've just graduated college. They're looking at their bank account. They're looking at their debt of $200,000. And they're like, well, how am I ever going to get a piece of the American pot? And that's a very real consideration. So if the Republicans want to win long term, they have an opportunity here. And it's along the lines of what President Donald Trump is offering and doing. And I'll tell you what's in that when we continue. Leland Conway in for James C. Harris, 550 KFYI, 790 KNST. A survey in 2025, Leland Conway is sitting in for the great James T. Harris, found that 49 to 60 percent of Gen Z, ages 18 to 34, hold a positive or favorable view of socialism. Favorability rating survey highlighted 60% of Gen Z years hold a positive view of socialism. Several studies showed a rise in socialist sentiment among younger generations with 49% of Gen Z expressing a favorable opinion of the term. So different surveys have come out, but the bottom line is the lowest support was just under 50%. uh systemic shift roughly 31% of gen c supports the gradual elimination of the capitalist system in favor of a socialist system which is terrifying That's terrifying because socialism is collectivism. Capitalism is individualism. It's the free enterprise system. It's the idea that you can think about, hey, I'd like to start a business and go start a business. And that's becoming increasingly hard to do in the regulatory atmosphere set up in America. You've got cronyism that protects the big companies, and you've got a regulatory atmosphere makes it impossible to ever become a big company. And young people are seeing this. with their own eyes. They're seeing that it's almost impossible to get into the housing market, which is the pathway for the last 50 years for Americans to build traditional familial wealth. And they're feeling like they can't get on that train, so why should they support that train? Now, President Trump has come up with an idea, a plan, and he has proposed this to Congress. And he has asked Congress to pass it. It's already passed the Senate. And it passed bipartisan, believe it or not. 90 votes. Let me find the truth social post that Trump put up. Where is it? Here we go. President Trump reignited the fight to protect the American dream for young Americans for generations to come. And a truth social post on Monday. Trump asked Congress to pass the 21st century Road to Housing Act. which would codify executive order 14376, stopping Wall Street from competing with Main Street homebuyers.

The order established a policy that a large institutional investors such as BlackRock should not be allowed to buy single family homes that Americans could otherwise purchase. The order directed federal agencies to review rules and issue guidance, limiting federal support for such purchases. Now, here's the interesting thing about this. This is how crazy messed up the government intertwining with the... economy has become and this so basically what we're getting this is what young people don't understand what we're seeing is a form of socialism and that and how that form of socialism is is actually shading people out of the things they want out of life right we're actually seeing when the government kind of moves in and starts to take control of the levers of the economy this is what you get And so what's happening here, they apparently were already somehow supporting the purchases. Like, look, if a big company wants to buy a house over there, fine, but the government is somehow supporting them, being able to do that? Like, how is that happening? The American Dream doesn't belong to the highest bidder, wrote JD Vance, Vice President JD Vance, on Wall Street. It belongs to the American people who work hard, save up, and play by the rules. I applaud President Trump's leadership on this issue and urge the House to pass this bill. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to address the housing shortage by both reducing competition from large corporations and increasing overall supply of homes. What they're doing is they're going in and they'll buy eight or nine units in a neighborhood and then they'll just rent them out. And they'll own them as assets. It's an investment strategy for large companies. And yes, having a big, huge portfolio of property is definitely part of how you would assess your assets at a large company. But there's plenty of commercial property out there they can buy. Now, this is something that's kind of weird to me, right? Because I'll admit, I... I really look at this with kind of what you would, kind of a suspicious eye where I'm like, wait a minute, it is a free market system. So let's say I have a million dollars and I'm just Johnny Joe and my buddy, you know, Steve over here has four million dollars. And I want this house over here. on Main Street, and that house is currently priced at 750, and I've got that million, so I go over and I offer 750, and then Steve comes in, and he says, I'll give you a million five for it, right? That's capitalism, and I wouldn't fault the buyer for saying, okay, I'll take a million five, and then I lose out on it, right? That is capitalism. I don't have a problem with Steve having more money than me and outbidding me for something that I want. It's more valuable to him than it is to me because I don't have the money to... to support that value. That's free enterprise, and the owner of that home has the right to get the highest price possible. But this play is a little bit different when you have a big company that's, you know, traded on public, you know, is publicly traded on Wall Street.

and you take a neighborhood with a street that's got eight or ten houses on it. You've got 12 people that are competing to buy one of those houses amongst each other. And then a big company comes in and says, we'll just take all 12 of them. Thank you very much. Here's a check for twice what you want. And these companies can pay cash. They don't need to worry about, they don't need to worry about, like, date for closing. They don't have to worry about all the due diligence. My wife and I just purchased a home. I think it's our fifth or sixth home that we've purchased. And we just went through the whole due diligence process. And it was ridiculous, right? Like, it's like all the things we have to do to prove our income, to prove, you know, our debt or non-dead, whatever. All the stuff that we have to do to make this stuff work. And we sit there and we're like, wow, that took a long time. Well, a Black Rock just comes in and goes, here's a check. How much do you want? Fill in the numbers. And so because when we're buying the house, right, the bank has to go through all that mess. The seller has to go through all that mess. And if a seller can just say, here's, you know, Oh, this guy in a black suit and a big Cadillac just rolled up and handed me a check. And I'm done? um that's a lot less trouble than having to wait 60 days for these people to sell their house over there and then make sure the deal goes through and then get all the due diligence done and the punch list and the walk through list and all that stuff we'll just take the money now because it's just one it's more money or maybe even it's just a little bit less money but we'll take it because we don't have to go through all the trouble this is causing a problem for people that are looking for homes in areas so president trump wants this i want to get your thoughts on this i will um I'll share his full truth social post in just a bit. But look, the point is we have to save capitalism because capitalism is on the line. Younger generations don't understand it. They've been brainwashed against it. And they're having a hard time participating in it. And that's a big danger sign for 2028. We'll continue. Leland Conway in for James C. Harris 550, KFYI, 790 KNST. The American Dream. He posted this on truth social news. Alila Conway is sitting in for the great James T. Harris on the conservative circus. He said for a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered a pinnacle of the American dream. It was the reward for working hard and doing the right thing. But now, because of the record high inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, the American Dream is increasingly out of reach. for far too many people, especially younger Americans. It is for that reason and much more that I'm immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations. I will discuss this topic, including further housing and affordability proposals and more at my next speech. So there's President Trump on Truth Social, essentially saying no more Black Rocks buying...

hundreds of homes and putting the american people out of being able to do uh... to be able to participate in the housing market and that's that's that this is a huge and crucial thing and again look i'm a capitalist i'm a a shameless ruthless capitalist bring me the money let me bring you the goods let's do the trade let's do the thing that the exchange of value i love it i love business i love that businesses get big i want businesses to get big i want billionaires to be made we talked about this yesterday when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that you can't earn a billion dollars. And I explained exactly how you can earn a billion dollars. Of course you can earn a billion dollars. You can earn a billion dollars with your brain and your skills. You simply organize people around an enterprise. And if you have working capital and you can gain working capital through taking a risk and borrowing it, which most businesses get started. You know, it's interesting to me, and this is probably part of the problem with young people viewing capitalism through a jaunticide. Number one, they've been brainwashed against it in the school systems. We have the most dangerous thing we've done to the American free enterprise system and, frankly, the future of our country being a country. the most dangerous thing we've done is allow our schools to be infiltrated by crazy blue-haired nose ring marxists that are trying to de-genderify our children and are trying to turn children against parents and trying to turn children against the country that they were born into That's a real thing. That is happening. And you can see the roots of it. When you have 60% of Gen Z that experiences financial hardship and has been told all these bad things about capitalism their entire life and sees it play out. And for the first time in generations. The younger generation has it worse financially than the older generation. So the young people are seeing this. And, you know, Elon Musk has warned against this. He's like, hey, this is a real problem. These kids are not seeing capitalism for what it is. They're seeing capitalism for what it's been distorted by the politicians that run Washington. And this is both parties guilty, more so of the Democrats, right? And so Trump is trying to do something about it. And I was thinking about this yesterday and I was like, look, this is a dangerous topic for a libertarian free market guy to tread because I don't like the government telling somebody they can't do something even if it's a corporation called Black Rock. But there are certain things that are the essence of average hardworking people being able to build above average wealth, right? And the thing about America is you can come here from any country in the world and your lifestyle, even living in our shelters, would immediately most likely improve from where you came from. We are still the richest country in the world in every possible way. Our poor people are fat.

Think about that for a second. Let that settle in for a minute. In America, our poor people are fat. That's because nobody misses a meal. in America. Nobody misses a treat in America. There are meals hanging from trees. There's a government agency or an individual willing to give you a sandwich on every street corner. Look, you can say that that's not truly, but you cannot deny the facts and the numbers, and the numbers are what the numbers are. And you look at the average weight of the average American. And yeah, we don't miss meals in this country, right? So even being poor in America is being rich in many other countries around the world. But our young people aren't seeing that. They're not being taught to be grateful for that. They're being brainwashed that capitalism is bad and that they have no say in the process. And I think it's worth maybe even just kind of revisiting this crazy, dumb attitude that... That was displayed in the comment that, oops, sorry about that, in the comment that was made by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the other day on a podcast. And if you, I want you to listen to the host's sort of response to what, what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is saying here. There's a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. Right? I mean, like this laugh. I wish you could see if you're imagining in your mind's eye a leftist, especially a liberal white female, okay, because that's what this podcast host is. And you're imagining this sort of condescending, ignorance-based... I'm looking for the words to describe this. This condescending ignorance, I guess, is the best way to put it, right? You're probably imagining exactly what she looks like. You can't earn a billion dollars. That's right. You just can't earn that. That's exactly correct. And she's got her hand under her chin, and she's well coiffed, and she looks like she's very well put together, and she's looking very intelligent. That's right. that's exactly right and it's enormous ignorance you can you can get market power you can break rules you can do all sorts of things you can abuse labor laws you can pay people less than what they're worth yep but you can't earn that right and so you have to create a myth that Since you didn't earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it. Now, if you really listen to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and we talked about this yesterday, but you can tell she doesn't know what she's saying, but she thinks it sounds really intelligent. And so she's really getting into it. This is something Kamala Harris would do. And she'd shimmy her shoulders, right? When she was saying, she thought of some long word salad sentence that she thought would sound profound. Like, um...

I really love Venn diagrams, because Venn diagrams show the essence of the overlapping, of the things that have been, and how they're unburdened by what is to come. Right? And she would shimmy her shoulders, and she would be like, I'm going to say something and it's going to sound really intelligent. And then to an actual intelligent person, you're going, what the hell did she just say? And that's kind of what would. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is doing here, you know, she's thinking it as she's speaking, which a lot of people do. I get that, but she's like, oh, this is going to sound, I'm going to drop a little bomb here. It's going to sound so great. This is going to be a mic drop moment. And it's just dumbness. But it's put together in a way that a lot of young people who've been trained up in Marxism, who've been trained up to think that capitalism sucks, to be trained up to think the world is against them, that they can't get through this. It sounds like somebody who understands their point of view. And so a capitalism in order to defend it, we're going to have to understand their point of view and counter it by cleaning up the regulatory atmosphere that is driving up the price of housing. that's driving up inflation we're still seeing inflation i mean trump needs to end this iran thing pretty damn quick because new inflation numbers came out today and we'll talk to david swikert about that next hour and they're not good because what you will have inflation from increased price of energy because it gets passed on to the consumer and we are dangerously close to the precipice of everything that trump has done good on the economy potentially not making it, not making it through. So we've got to deal with all of that. We'll continue. I'm Leland Conway in for James T. Harris, 550, KFYI and 790 KNST. Sitting in for James T. Harris, there is some good news on the horizon. We've been talking this hour about how young people are favoring socialism over capitalism, which portends for a rough retirement for us in the Gen X era. If we don't get this turned around and help them understand why capitalism is the best system in the world. But that's going to be a tough road, right? We have a lot of cronyism and government that's been put there by both political parties. But there is some good news because that's down the road, right? Gen Z's not quite in charge of the world yet. And CNN ran a piece the other day. A lot of people have taken it for granted that the Democrats are going to win the midterms this fall. And CNN has put out a poll that says, hold on not so much. I think this poll serves as a big time reality check for Democrats. And that is, it ain't over yet, especially with the redistricting. And when we look ahead to the 2026 race for Congress, you would have thought that the Democrats lead would expand on the generic congressional ballot. It didn't happen. Look, in March, Democrats were up by six points. Look at this now.

Democrats are up by three points, and I want you to note the yellow lettering. No clear leader. It is within the margin of error. So despite all of the talk about Donald Trump's unpopularity, the fact is Republicans very much remain in the game when it comes to the congressional midterms, which are occurring in what? Six or seven months at this point. There you go. So that's fascinating. Look, there's still a lot of challenges here. Donald Trump's approval ratings need to go up. Some. They don't have to go up a ton, but they got to go up some. And this Iran war has got to get over with, and prices need to drop. And I heard yesterday an analysis by some Wall Street types that they think gas prices should be dropping relatively quickly starting in June if things stay on the pace that they're on right now, and that by the end of July, we should be back to a more normal pricing structure for gas. which is interesting, and if that's true, that gives a little bit of space and time ahead of the midterms. to potentially pull something off here. So look, the historic advantage that the party not in power has in the midterms of a presidential term, that that is a historic advantage that usually goes the other way, meaning that the American people just don't like for one party to be in power for a long time. And that's actually ultimately a good thing. It was one way that we were able to kind of slow down the Joe Biden administration and their crazy destructive agenda. It didn't stop a lot of the damage that Biden was doing, but it stopped some of it, right? And so if you're on the left, you're looking at it the other direction. And I just think the Democrats are so unlikable and so out of touch with the average hardworking American. Again, Gen Z problems aside. um there's just there's no connection i mean when these people talk and the corruption that they've covered up right and the fact that here's this one thing and we'll talk about this more later but this one thing that really baffles me about how the democrats approach campaigning and it's how they have absolutely been over backwards for one constituency and that constituency theoretically is not allowed to vote And that is the illegal immigrant constituency. I don't know what polls they're looking at. I don't know what insider information they have that is telling them that this is a winning proposition. I think it's they're laying into the classic, because a lot of their voting base are progressive white females who are affluent, right? They have HR jobs. They work in the HR department at companies. And they sniff around the company for transphobia and homophobia. And they make $200,000 a year to do that, right, to be the phobia police. And so these liberal, progressive white women have an enormous amount of misplaced empathy. And I guess that's what it is they're looking at. But who knows, man? But at least there's some good news on the horizon.

When we continue a good guy with a gun in a very hard place to own a gun, stopped a bad guy with a gun in a place that it's very easy for a criminal to get their hands on one. Yeah, I'm talking about a blue state and a good guy with a gun saved the day. Stop the mass shooting. I've got to tell you this story next. I'm Leland Conway in on the conservative circus for James T. Harris. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the conservative circus with James T. Harris. Leeland Conway is sitting in for the man, the myth, the legend, James T. Harris, one more day with you. This is a wild story. A Marine veteran with a concealed carry permit helped stop a felon's crazy shooting spree. This happened in Massachusetts, which is essentially a gun-free state. And I'm so sick and tired of as a gun owner myself. And, well, I used to be. I lost all my guns in an unfortunate boating accident, right? Wink, wink. No, I have, I don't know how many guns I have. Somebody asks you, how many guns do you have? And if you can tell them, like if you don't say at least three, you haven't even gotten started yet, in my opinion. I'm to the right of the NRA on guns, like way to the right of the NRA. Like if you, when President Biden said you can't own a cannon, I was like, I beg to differ. I know three people to have one, and I've shot them, and you can have them in America. And taking away people's privately owned cannons at Lexington and Massachusetts was what started the hot war. in the 1700s that led to the revolutionary war right that was the first shots fired it was actually a concord i think but there was a there was a raid of the lexington storehouse of cannons and munitions and these were privately owned And when the red coats took them, that was the spark that set off the violence that led to the American Revolution, which is amazing. And we don't have guns because, you know, shooting sports or hunting. We have guns because tyranny. That's why we have guns. A Marine veteran helped Massachusetts State Police halt the gunman's brazen shooting rampage in Cambridge. So this Marine veteran had a concealed carry permit, which is very difficult to get in Massachusetts, and pretty much everything's illegal in Massachusetts, especially the gun that the assailant was using. So Cambridge Police, they received a call at 1 p.m. from Boston Police Department, that a person acting erratically and armed with a rifle might be in the area.

State police came upon what was described as an active shooter scene and then alongside a military veteran who had a concealed carry permit confronted the gunman. So this is interesting. The military veterans stayed in the fight even after the police got there. Quote, after being confronted, the suspect allegedly continued to fire the weapon, striking a police cruiser. Both the civilian and trooper fired their weapons, and the suspect was struck multiple times in the extremities. The suspect was treated on the scene by police officers and transported to a Boston hospital. Video obtained by CBS Boston showed the gunman brazenly firing a rifle while on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts. with authorities saying that at least sixty rounds were fired the civilian who aided law enforcement has been described by multiple media outlets as a it's they say former marine there are no former marines he's a he's a he's a retired marine who had a concealed carry permit. The suspect, get this, this is, because you know Massachusetts is one of those blue states with crazy-ass liberals who let these criminals back out over and over and over again. I want you to listen to this because you know exactly what happened. The suspect, 46-year-old Tyler Brown, had a lengthy criminal record. including receiving a five to six year prison sentence for firing multiple rounds at police officers in 2020, according to a 2021 release from Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. So it's 2026. So this dude went to jail for just five years for shooting at police, and he gets out of jail in less than a year he's shooting at everybody, including police again, in the street. In the May 2020 incident, Brown fired a 40 caliber Glock at a police officer, ultimately firing at least 13 rounds, while police returned fire. Brown later pled guilty to multiple crimes, including armed assault with intent to murder. He's currently being held while being treated at the hospital and could be charged with two counts of armed assault with intent to murder. The Cambridge Police Department did not respond to requests for additional comments. This dude is probably going to be back out of jail in three years. He's probably going to be back out of jail in three years. Because he's going to survive these gunshots. He's going to survive. They treated him. He's going to survive. And he's going to go back out and he's going to kill somebody else. Guarantee it. Guarantee it. If they don't lock this guy away and throw away the key, this guy is going to kill somebody else. This is why you should be armed because at some point he's going to be out. Now, let me ask you a couple of questions here.

First of all, I'm looking at the, I'm looking at video of him right now, and the rifle he's holding. It is an AR-style rifle. I don't know what caliber it is. I can't see it that close, and it's kind of fuzzy. But it's an AR-style rifle, and it's scoped. And how did he get that? He's a felon. This is the point that I want to make. We hear progressives all the time talking about gun control is what will prevent things like this. And it's absolutely untrue because gun control will simply prevent the retired Marine from helping to take this guy down. Right? And it's pretty clear that the police were happy to have anybody in the fight with them. that was willing to be in the fight with them in this situation because this dude has a high-powered rifle and he's firing indiscriminately in a public place and thank god he was taken down and two victims are in critical condition by the way he hit two people so let's do a quick this when i when i hear progressives talking about gun control i i flip my lid right Because I'm going to tell you some statistics. I happen to be a firearm instructor. And I get really geeky about this. The percentage of people, let's start with concealed carry permit holders. How do I put this? I want to frame this the right way because I love our police. A concealed carry permit holder. Someone who has gone through the effort to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm is less likely to commit any kind of crime, not just violent crime, white-colored crime, still in a penny out of the take-a-penny bucket at Circle K or the 7-Eleven. Any kind of crime is less likely to commit any kind of crime than the police. They are less likely to commit any kind of crime than any other social group that exists. So the point, and here's why, let me give me the logic behind them. When I become a concealed carry permit holder, I'm doing two things. One, I am taking the time and the effort to train. to learn the law and to learn the functionality of the firearm that I'm purchasing and that I'm carrying. This is a step of extra work that I'm willing to do, which says that I am a responsible person. In addition to that, when you get a concealed carry permit, you are submitting to a background check. And when you are submitting to a background check, you are a person who has nothing to hide. And so this is the type of person that it gets a concealed carry permit is a rule follower, a law and order type citizen, right? Otherwise, you would just carry and not, you would just ignore it. Now, again, the vast majority of people who own guns are very good people.

And they're also very, very unlikely to commit any kind of crime, but particularly can still carry permit holders, are the least likely to commit any kind of crime at all ever. So the point that I'm trying to make here, number one, is when people are armed, when good people are armed, the world is safer. And if you actually look... at crime rates in states where people own more guns, they're lower in states than states where people don't own guns as much. That's a true statement. In addition to that, 87% of mass shootings that have happened in a non-gun-free zone have been stopped. by a law-abiding citizen with a gun so it's over and over and over and over again we see law-abiding citizens with firearms stepping up to protect themselves or others from bad guys with guns and the main point is This guy has a felony record eight miles long. He was just in jail for shooting at police. He gets out. And within a year, he's doing it again with a firearm he's not even allowed to have in the state of Massachusetts, let alone have as a felon. The bad guys will always get the guns because they don't care about the rules. So the bad guys are never going to be disarmed. So gun control only disarms the good people. Thank God some people still have guns in Massachusetts because a good guy with a gun, along with police, stopped this nut job. And they will probably be released within two or three years. And the state will probably have to pay this guy restitution. And he will probably sue. the law-abiding citizen for pain and suffering, and he'll probably win that case. And at the end of the day, some prosecutor or some DA is probably going to bring charges against the Marine. We've seen it happen. We saw it happen with Daniel Penny in New York, and that didn't even involve a gun, right? Good guy does the good thing and he gets punished. I will be watching this case very closely. But by the way, I'll explain what I meant by tyranny is why we have guns when we continue. This is an important point. Also coming up at the bottom of the hour, Congressman David Schweikert's going to join us. We'll talk about new inflation numbers that are very concerning. And of course, he wants to be governor of... Arizona. So we'll talk about the budget stalemate between the state legislature and Governor Katie Hobbs and how that might play and how he would react. And we're also going to ask him if he would suspend the gas tax. That's all coming up. I'm Leland Conway in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. It's awesome that a retired Marine helped police take down a mass shooter in Massachusetts. Pretty awesome what took place there. But we don't have guns.

the people will be armed. So in other words, we were always intended to be armed as citizens of America for the sake of keeping our government in check because our government is our employee, not the other way around. So anyway, I just, it drives me absolutely nuts. This is a weird story. Do you remember Irina Zaretsky? Irene Zerutska was the Ukrainian immigrant who was mercilessly slaughtered, riding a metro transit train in North Carolina. Up in Providence, Rhode Island, an artist was trying to do a mural in her honor. It was a beautiful piece of art, and it was being put on the side of a building. And this is the headline from Fox News. Mural honoring murdered Ukrainian refugee Irena Zerutska taken down in Providence after local outrage.

On Tuesday, a construction crew was seen near the exterior of the Dark Lady and LGBTQ Club in downtown Providence working to remove the partly finished mural. The mural which was painted on canvas was lowered to the ground, folded up, and taken away. Artist Ian Gudreau confirmed the news that the artwork would be removed after local outrage. Quote, a lot of people voiced their frustrations. The voices were heard, and the work is coming down as a reaction to that. the mural's removal came as residents and elected officials complained about the artwork the office of mayor brett smiley told fox news that he wanted the artwork taken down saying that the art is divisive and does not represent providence imagine being outraged by honoring a ukrainian immigrant who was sliced in the throat by somebody who was led out by leftist policies who had a long record of felony and violence Imagine not wanting to honor a woman who sat there and bled out on the floor of a bus while other people just continued to read their newspapers. What's controversial about this is the fact that leftists have been caught in their horrible policies. where they don't enforce the law and they let criminals out because of misplaced empathy and total, total, I would say, almost hatred for the victims for some reason. And to take this, she's an immigrant. I thought the left loved immigrants. But it calls out their horrible policies. Imagine living in a town where there's outrage so strong against putting up a mural that honors a young woman who is an immigrant from another country. Imagine living in a town without outrage forces that to be taken down. I would never want to live in Providence, Rhode Island. That's for sure. All right. When we continue, he would be governor. He wants to be governor of Arizona. He's currently a congressman from here in the Phoenix area. We're going to talk to Congressman David Schweikert in just a few minutes. We're going to talk about the governor's race. We're going to talk about inflation numbers. We'll talk about the local debate over the budget. and whether or not he would suspend a gas tax. All that's coming up. I am Leland Conway sitting in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. The conservative circus, Leland Conway, sitting in for James T. Harris. On the line with us now from Washington, D.C. is Congressman David Schweikert, who also would like to be the next governor of Arizona. What's going on? Congressman, how are you? Oh, I am fine. As always, you and I talk, I'm worried about everything, but that's just my nature. You are singularly stressed out about the future of America, and I like it because we need people that are in elected positions to be stressed out about the future of America. It shouldn't be an easy job to be congressman.

Well, look, as you and I've joked about for years, you know, and I tell my kids, daddy works in the math-free zone. You know, whether it be running for governor or, you know, being a member of Congress, you get up in front of groups, audiences, fellow members of Congress and say, hey, we're going to borrow like $87,000 a second. today and people get upset because they want stuff. They want free stuff. They want subsidized stuff. They want to regulate their competition. And, you know, Leland, think about this. So far this fiscal year, every dollar of taxes we've taken in, we've spent a dollar 47 cents. No, no, hopefully it's going to bend over a little bit. But last year, we spent $1.43 for every dollar we took in. Is that because of the Iran War? When you tell them the truth. Yeah. Yeah, is that because of the Iran War? Is that why it's so expensive this year? No, no, these numbers are before the Iran War. Oh, dear God. It's the thing we're not allowed to talk about. It's demographics. We don't have enough children in our society. So next year, we calculate. There'll be fewer under 18 than 20 years ago, but double the number of those who are 65 and up. Yeah, which means you have people retiring from being, from their productive years and their taxpaying years. By the way, $87,000 a second sounds like me in a gun store, just so you know, Congressman. It's an expensive, expensive hobby. So you mentioned when we were texting earlier this morning, you mentioned new inflation numbers. concerned that inflation was going to come back due to the iran conflict and the the oil prices is that what you're seeing yeah um and we're we got the first read of some of the higher fuel prices now remember even before the iran conflict we were running hotter than expected And part of that is beyond the United States. It's hard for folks to get their heads around, but like China is borrowing money at incredible rates. And so when you have governments pumping cash, making, you know, debasing their currencies all around the world, you're pushing up inflation all around the world. And the United States is one of them. Yeah. The problem you start to go is, is this thing we interest fragility. It's a big word. It basically means you're running very next, you know, like maybe late this summer, $40 trillion of U.S. sovereign debt. And you've got to refinance 10, 11 trillion of it and add 2 trillion new. That's all up the higher interest rates. Right. And interest now is the second biggest expense in the federal government. That's scary, scary stuff. Let's talk about the governor's race. State of Arizona right now, there's a big stalemate between Governor Hobbs and the legislature on the budget for the state, and she is currently holding hostage the idea of suspending the gas tax in Arizona because she wants some concessions that are more progressive in nature. How would you handle the fuel crisis if you were elected governor today?

Look, you've got to be very careful on, don't want to be too gimmicky. And remember, the federal government would have to do it in hand and glove. If you're trying to do sort of a short-term retreat, particularly on, you know, when you see what diesel prices are at, that's fine. You know, it's got to be a short-term mitigation with the hope that you start to see fuel prices sort of come back. But Leland, can I give you a crazy, this is my conspiracy theory of the week. Okay. I love conspiracy guys. I'm ready. Yeah. One of the reasons the governor's playing this game is to keep the legislature in session. If you remember the legislature, you can't raise money from certain lobby of certain groups while you're still in session. And you have multiple people in the legislature who are in competitive races. If she can keep them locked down. in session as long as possible, while Democrats are out raising stunning amounts of money, you know, trying to take the legislature, trying to keep, you know, a leftist as governor. So there's more going on. You know, we see it as the fight over the budget. I actually think the governor and her team also have a political motive of keeping this craziness going on. That's interesting. If you were elected governor, what's the first thing you would do to try to put the state on the right path? Day after the election, you get everyone in a room that's willing to work with you. So hopefully you're Republican members of the legislature, people who are smart, and you build a plan. I was Majority Whip many years ago when we had Governor Siamington, and it's what we did. You keep getting these folks that say, the first day after I'm sworn in, I'm going to do this. That's not the way you do it. You build a plan. And then you execute the plan the day after you're sworn in because you've got to take on water, fuel, electricity, the amount of fraud we have in our Medicaid system, which is access, the redesign of state government, the adoption of technology, you're doing 100 moving parts. You've got to build a plan. And I'm sort of frustrated because you could do some amazing things for Arizona. But we're in misery. Think of this last month. We lost, what, 10,800 jobs. Yeah. Arizona now is number 45th in affordability. Yeah, that's crazy. Wages in Arizona on two of the three categories have actually gone down in the last 12 months. Arizona's getting four. And this is a big deal. People are suffering in our state. And there's not enough fixation on making Arizona prosperous. Well, how do you do that, though? You do what we had success in the past. You go out and steal every good business from other places in the world or other states.

Because you want competition for your willingness to work. You want multiple businesses trying to hire you. That's how you raise wages. Lean, think of this. Last year we only produced about 24,000 new jobs all of last year. Every single one of those jobs was in health care or welfare services. Jeez. Manufacturing, traditional private sector jobs actually we lost. jobs in Arizona. Wow. Wow. I want to go back to something you said earlier about the fraud. Does Arizona have a Minneapolis fraud problem? It's different. The Minneapolis fraud was specifically in a couple programs. And the thing, I also share oversight in ways and means. So we're the team that have launched the investigation of the hospice fraud in L.A. County, the Oregon procurement fraud in some of these hospitals on the East Coast where they're selling them to foreigners. We have the big investigation that's been going on for two years into Medicare Advantage trying to fix the problems there. We had things like the sober living home from Arizona that was allowed to go on for years. And a simple data package, a simple AI data package would have seen it on day one. Too many lawyers, politicians want to hire a building full of auditors and lawyers. And I'm making the argument, we have technology today where you could. stop this. You could stop ineligible people from scheming benefits. Yeah. It's challenging and it's cheap and it's really good. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of common sense things that can be done pretty easily to stop fraud. California, for instance, one of the reasons why they have the fraud in the Medicare-Medicaid area is because they just simply didn't do a double check on some of the businesses that were popping up supposedly hospice care. And they just weren't checking on the licenses. And so the money was coming in. And I just saw a report this morning that 90%... of the businesses that were getting this flow of money when it was shut off by the Trump administration. 90% have remained quiet. And Spencer Pratt actually said, or Chad Bianco said something the other day. He was running for governor of California. He said, look, that's how you know who the fraudsters are. If they're quiet, that's the ones you want to go arrest. Think of this in New York and California. And for New York, I know it's absolutely true. The number one job creator has been a Medicaid program where you can hire family members and those to visit grandma. And that, so when you talk about the scale and the attacks we got when we did the big, beautiful bill of trying to reform and fix the eligibility.

New York, if New York had the same spend per capita, per individual, on Medicaid, it would save the federal government like $50 billion a year to understand the scale of these numbers. Yeah. And how do you go to your public and say, you know, we're going to have to cut this and this, and yet you're still financing the fraudsters. Yeah, it's unbelievable. You can back to my comment about build the plan. Yeah. You design programs so you use the technology. that the check never goes out the door. Yeah, perfect. And then chase, pay and try to put someone in prison, pay and try to recover the money is insane. That's insane. So the money never leaves the office. Great point. Hey, I've got to run them up against the clock. But as always, it's a pleasure to talk to you. Congressman David Schweiker, I appreciate your time today. Thanks for popping on with us. Thank you for having me. Awesome. Congressman Davis Schweiker, candidate for governor of Arizona. I'm Leela Conway in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. Leelan Conway is sitting in for the legendary James T. Harris on the conservative circus. I love when we get an opportunity to peek behind the curtain of the scripted politics we suffer through in America today. It is... insufferable sometimes to watch these people try to stick to their message and defy what everybody sees with their own eyes. And it seems like they don't ever face any consequences for it because there's never anybody to really call them out. The media doesn't do their job anymore. And occasionally we get candidates like President Donald Trump who just bust through all of that scripted. pre-written, pre-assigned nonsense. And one such candidate has gone viral nationally, and he's running for mayor of L.A. And I wanted to play our sister station, KFI, over in L.A., interviewed Spencer Pratt yesterday morning, and he described... the first time that he met Karen Bass at a debate. And it is hilarious to listen to how he describes this. So what was it like when you got there? Did you have to sit in a green room before you guys went on air in the studio together? So they put me, they said it was the best room, but they put me in the basement, which it was, you know, so that was funny. I was in the basement, but it was a beautiful basement. And when I got to come up from the basement, I was in a hallway and she had her amazing LAPD, you know, security team all securing the hallway. And I could hear her voice and it was like out of a scary movie. So I'm thinking, this is surreal because, you know, I've never been near a real life. Yes. Monster. Right. This is out of a scary movie. And so we go out there.

And we stand next to each other. We set up. And they go, okay, we'll be here for five minutes. I'm like five minutes. They're counting down like four minutes. And she looks over at me and she goes, you've done this before. And I go, a debate? And I was like, yeah. I was like, no, that's my first one. She's like, oh. Your first one like this. I'm like, no, my first debate ever. She said, you didn't do them at the university? I was like, no, I didn't do debates at the university. She's like, oh, wow. And I'm thinking to myself, lady, I'm going to eat you alive right now. And then I saw that she was looking at my notepad. Yeah. And so to throw her off, I just start writing my kids' names and my wife's name, my parents' name, just to confuse her if she's trying to cheat off my notepad. Oh, my God. That is awesome, man. I've never. I've never met a monster before in real life. God, I just love when they get through. They just, so people don't say things like that in politics, right? And he's saying those things. And so I think that's why people like him, because it breaks that mold. It breaks that, that nonsensical, scripted thing that we're dealing with. I love it. So anyway, all right. Coming up next hour, Alejandro Mayorkas has resurfaced. Remember him? The DHS secretary said the border was secure during President Potato's term. He's now saying, boy, I wish somebody would have done something about that border. It's really weird. And we have another instance of a woman getting kicked out of a planet fitness because she felt uncomfortable in a person that she thought was a man in the women's locker room. This is getting weird. We'll talk about that as well. Leeland Conway in for James T. Harris on the Conservative Circus. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the... conservative circus with James T. Harris. James T. Harris is off today. He'll be back with you tomorrow. Leland Conway is sitting in for the man, the myth, the legend here on 550 KFYI and 790 KNST. I, you know what I love about progressives is their revisionist history. And sometimes I have to ask the question in my mind, like, are they really this stupid or are they just evil? Former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, remember him? He lamented the delay in immigration enforcement actions until the final year of President Biden's term, despite the fact that he testified to Congress several times while in office that the U.S. border was secure. So that would mean that he perjured himself. And in appearance Tuesday at Politico's Security Summit, why would you invite that guy to anything

like anything surrounding security. He was, maybe he knew, I, I, you know, Mayorkas was a fascinating character. He was, he was, he was, he was, he was provably a liar. Um, he, at the best, the, the most charitable explanation of him with regards to border security was essentially carrying water. for whoever the goons were in the Biden Potato administration that were running the administration. He let terrorists in. He let people in without vetting them. He went after Catholic churches. He went after parents who were upset about the transgendering of their kids and called them domestic terrorists. He thought that the biggest, most pressing danger to American security was white supremacy. I mean, the guy was off and wrong on absolutely every issue. So he shows up at the political summit, the political security summit, to discuss aspects of the, quote, broken immigration system in America, acknowledging that a low bar for those expressing credible fear of prosecution. allowed too many migrants into the country during the Biden administration. So now he's going back on, you know, somebody probably should have done something about that. More than 8 million people entered by the start of the 46th president's final year in office before Biden moved to shut down the border and crackdown on illegal crossings via an executive order. He did not do that. There was no crackdown. The crackdown came when Trump took office. The former DHS chief testified several times in Congress that illegal crossings were not an issue under Biden and the border was secure leading to his impeachment in February 2024. With the authorities and the funding that we have, it is as secure as it can be, which is fascinating, right? He said it is as secure as it can be. And then the next president takes over and shuts the whole damn thing down. And look, I grew up in cells down south of Phoenix. not maybe 20, 30 miles from the border. So I have some context on this over time, right? Because we moved there when I was seven years old in 1984. And at that time, Border Patrol was pretty present. You know, I remember my dad... He had a job in construction, and he had a white van that didn't have any windows, which was perfect for transporting illegal immigrants, which he was transporting tools. But he got pulled over by Border Patrol so many times when he was working jobs down by the border. It just became a thing where he just knew when he passed a Border Patrol vehicle he was going to get pulled over. And it got to the point where he knew most of the agents. And they finally got to the point where they recognized the license plate and they stopped bothering him because they weren't trying to bother him. It was just there was a white van with no windows. And so that's a kind of vehicle that would be transporting people. So I'm a kid. We had a wash behind our house.

like a dry wash and um this was the number one sort of pathway for folks to come up when they came across the border they come up through the desert they come up this wash bed and they would go to this house which was you know next to the parcinage that we lived in so my dad's a pastor and um You'd go in this house, and that's where they would get picked up and then take into wherever they were going to go, right? And we would sit, my friends and I would sit on the roof of the house and just watch them walk up the thing. And they would get picked up eventually by Border Patrol. They would get taken to a transfer station in Tucson, and there was a big bus that looked like a Greyhound bus type thing. And this bus would sit there, and every four or five days when they had enough to fill it up, they would take them bound to Mexico. And then they would come back in. But back then when I was little, when I was a kid, these people were just coming in to work. That's what they were doing. They were doing day labor. And they were able to live well in Mexico by wiring that money home because it was more money they could make down there. Right. And, you know, they weren't causing a lot of problems. They were just to be anything. If anything, they came up here and outworked us. And, um, You know, they had an incredible work ethic, and they would just come up here, and they would just bust tail, man. And so people love to hire them because they knew that the job would be done, and it would be done well, and they could pay them maybe a little less, but to them it was a lot, and it just kind of worked out well. And so over time, I saw this issue evolve. By the time I was a teenager, it was much more drug-heavy, and it was much more human trafficking heavy. And I remember a couple of times, They found semi-truck trailers in the desert where these people were being trafficked in, and they just didn't pay or whatever it was. They were supposed to pay to cartels. So they just left them locked in a semi-truck bed, and they found, you know, truck beds full of dead people that had just rotted in the... the Arizona Sun because the cartels didn't get their money. They just locked them up and left them in there. I mean, it became much more of a human crisis. And then over the last 10, 15 years, it's really burgeoned into a real mess. One of the best movies I've seen on this issue is Taylor Sheridan, Sicario, too. Really fascinating, really realistic. So anyway, this is all going on. And then during the Biden administration, it was like they just shut the, like, even Obama deported, like, more people than Trump did in his first year in office. I mean, Obama actually did do some deportations. But whoever was running President Potato's office, there was none of that. So anyway, it's really fascinating. to see Alejandro Mayorkas come forward and be like, yeah, I admit, maybe we should have done a little bit more to close that border. But during that time, man, they were 100% telling us that everything was secure. There was nothing to see here. Meanwhile, we had military-aged, well-dressed.

technologically equipped Chinese men coming across the border in droves. I remember they had a whole bunch of them down in San Diego where I do a daily show on our sister station, Kogo, down near Otai Mesa, which is right on the border with Tijuana. So there was a whole bunch of those guys. They weren't caught. They were just interviewed. They came in, and then they went off to wherever it was they were going. They were brought in by the cartels. paid their fees and off they went. I mean, who knows how many of those folks are here? And are they Chinese spies? Are they Chinese military forward assets? What the heck? What the heck are they? So this is maddening. And I'm going to ask you this question. And you can hit the talkback. Go to the live feed for Kogo on the Iheart radio app and click that red microphone. Jump in here. Is this a bit of history resurfacing? Is this a guy that is... probably headed for investigation because I would think that they knew what they were doing and there's probably documentation to prove it. And I think they were trying to undermine national security. I think Alejandro Mayorkas is a traitor. I think he was, I think he was seditious. I think everything they did was on purpose. And it was designed. Well, I'll tell you what it was designed for when we continue. I'm Leland Conway in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. Former DHS Secretary Alejandro Marquez is a creepy demon weasel. He's now revising history saying that he did get the border secure, but that they should have acted sooner. You had the support from the president in order to succeed? There were areas of disagreement within immigration policy and in other areas. But I voiced my views. I was very pleased that in June of 2024, we took executive action that I thought made reforms that were sensible. If those again and that proved successful. If those executive actions had been taken one or two years earlier, do you think Donald Trump would be the president today? I am not in a position to speculate, but I will tell you that I would be far more better rested and less punched. Wow. Where do we even start with that nonsense? I mean, he's basically saying that the border was secure when Biden left office. but that Biden was just a little late in getting it done. So they're trying to both admit that they were wrong and take credit for what Trump has done on the border at the same time. That is the textbook definition of a creepy demon weasel. Right? Like that it's, we watched this. Do you remember when, when the Border Patrol agents on horseback in Texas were photographed trying? So. They had the reins of the horse, and this photograph was taken from an angle that made it look like they were whipping the illegal immigrants with like a leather whip. And it actually was the reins of the horse, and what they were doing was crowd control. They were actually trying to protect. These two agents on horseback were trying to protect people that were falling in the river and couldn't get out.

And even the photographer who took the picture said, hey, hey, hey, you guys are taking this out of context. That's not what was going on. But the media ran with it. And Mayorkas punished, punished the two agents. Even though the investigation found that they had done nothing wrong, they still punished these people. So we saw all this play out, right? I mean, obviously CNN doesn't cover everything and MSNBC doesn't cover everything. But if you were listening to KFII, you heard the whole story, right? And we watched all of this play out. And so we saw this. We saw that these guys were falsely accused. We saw that they were doing crowd control. We saw that the photographer said that they were taking it out of context. We saw the investigation come back and say they didn't do anything wrong. And then Mayorka still comes out. and punishes these people publicly despite that investigation and his own agency that found they did nothing wrong what kind of person does that what kind of character what kind of evil possesses somebody to do that nonsense right and that was permeating that entire administration because president potato was not resident running the country He had, there were people in his administration that were placed there by the Obama administration. The Biden was always a placeholder. Remember, he ran from his basement. He was supposed to be the adult in the room. He was a projection. He was a scripted, choreographed, media spun projection. He wasn't real in that sense, meaning he wasn't present in the office, right? Like he wasn't, he was just a potato. He was a potato wandering around the White House pooping in his pants. That's what was happening. So other people were running the administration, and I would suggest to you that Mayorkas was one of them. So what's happening here on a world and national stage is Mayorkas is trying to recover his reputation, but we all saw what happened. You know, there is no excuse for what they did. So this is fascinating to me. The other thing that was interesting to me is if you listen to the way he speaks in this, he's clearly trying to monitor his words. These are not straight answers. This is somebody thinking up a lie on the fly. Did you feel that you had the support from the President in order to succeed? There were areas of disagreement within immigration policy and in other areas. But I voiced my views. I was very pleased that in June of 2024, we took executive action that I thought made reforms that were sensible.

And that proved successful. If those executive actions had been taken one or two years earlier, you think Donald Trump would be the president today? I am not in a position to speculate, but I will tell you that I would be far more better rested and less punched. I counted 27 us. That is not somebody who is speaking straight truth, right? That is not somebody who has full command of the facts. That is somebody who is clearly trying to revise history. I don't know. I guess he wants to get a job at the government contractor or something, or maybe avoid jail. He's one of those administration officials from the Biden administration that I feel like should be behind bars because I think what he did to America was criminal. I think it was destructive and I think it was on purpose. And here, I told you I'd tell you the reason behind it. opening of the borders the way they did and shipping people to different parts of the country if you track how that went they went mostly to swing states and they went mostly to blue cities inside swing states and the goal there was to cheat in elections one of the things that we got that they were able to get that the liberals were able to get during covid and the mass hysteria was they took advantage of that nonsense to create, basically get mail-in balloting in every single state. They've attacked the idea of voter ID. And the goal was to be able to stuff ballot boxes with either stolen or bought ballots filled out by illegal immigrants. And then also to change the census so that it would weight heavier to Democrat voters in those areas. and add more congressional seats for Democrats. So literally we had that border wide open. We let in thousands of rapists, murderers, and other criminals, violent criminals from other countries. And we did all of that simply to expand the power of the Democrats. That's why what they did was treasonous and seditious, because they undermined your security for the sake of their own power. And Mayorkas was right at the heart of that. We should not let him get away with it. Coming up next, it's happened again. A woman was in a planet fitness. She was in the shower and what she believed to be a biological male posing as a woman was in there. She voiced her concern. She ended up having the police called on her. When is this nonsense going to stop? That's coming up next. I'm Leland Conway in for the great James T. Harris on the conservative circus. Leelan Conway is sitting in for the great James T. Harris. The New Hampshire woman says Planet Fitness canceled her membership after she reported a man in the locker room. I'm tired of hearing in these stories, man. It's crazy. A woman says she encountered someone she believed was a male near the shower area at a Concord, New Hampshire location. So the story gets weird from there, okay? So follow along on this. Fox News reported on this. Ladies name is Judy Walcott. She's been a longtime member of the Planet Fitness location there in Concord, New Hampshire. She told Fox News Digital that she felt unsafe after encountering someone she believed to be a man in the woman's locker room near the shower area. This happened back in April on the 11th.

And that matters here in just a minute. So she said, I was shaking. I was actually trembling because it freaked me out that bad. She said that she reported the incident to a young employee at the front desk who told her there was nothing staff could do because it was company policy. So I guess dudes can just go and shower in the women's restroom or women's locker room at this facility. I could just walk in just. in normal looking like dude and just say well I actually identify as a woman and I could go into the shower and watch other women shower which is terrible right They told her nothing staff could do because it was company policy. She claims the employee did not check the locker room while she was present. So she didn't even go look and see if this woman was telling the truth about this. She says she raised the issue again four days later with another staff member because she had safety concerns, but she said that employee called her transphobic instead of looking into her claims. Now, this is where the story gets a little weird, right? Because my first thought is, okay, well, there are... females who look like they could also be male and there are males who look very feminine i mean it's it it happens right some people could mistake uh you know i mean there's these all these silly rumors that uh manuel mcrone's wife the the prime minister of france or whatever is is a male right there's all these dumb conspiracy series about that no she's a female but she she looks kind of like maybe a little bit of masculine features like that could happen right so my first thought ran to that i'm like whoa did this woman just mistakenly think that another actual woman was a biological male and turns out that that's not true um so she she said um that she raised that issue again um with uh four days later with another staff member because she had safety concerns but she said the employee called her transphobic instead of looking to her claims she so concerned until i started telling her that there was a creepy guy in the lady's shower on saturday no one checked him out then before i could say anything else she interrupted me telling me she thought she knew who i meant and what a wonderful woman that is Now, again, this is weird to me because if you know this, then you would say, okay, the way that conversation would go, if you're like, okay, I think I know who you're talking about. That's actually a female. She just looks a little masculine. That is actually a female, biological female. That would be how you answer that question. Instead, she just says, what a wonderful woman that person is, right? then before i could say anything else judy says she interrupted me telling me that she thought she knew who i meant and what a wonderful woman that is she said the conversation went downhill from there alleging the staff member did not address her concerns and instead repeatedly called her transphobic before she decided to walk away

A couple of hours later, Walcott said the Jim's manager called her to tell her that her membership had been canceled for a, quote, policy violation. So I asked her what the policy did I violate? She didn't answer me. Walcott said later, she checked her account online and saw that she had been charged for another month. So they got another month. She also said she found a member cancellation or freeze form in her account that requested cancellation dated April 15th. A copy of that document which Fox News Digital can't authenticate shows an April 15th cancellation request with a request effective date of May 16th. In the comment field, it says non-discrimination trans. So what's happening here then is that they're admitting that there is a trans female, meaning there's a biological male, actually going into the locker room. and that they've decided to punish the member who's uncomfortable with that because they're going to keep this policy. This is what it tells me. And again, this is my opinion, and I'm sure there's other details to this, but that's how I'm reading it. Like I told you, this is a weird story. Walcott allegedly, she alleged the cancellation form was submitted without her authorization and said she believes her signature was forged. So now what she's saying is, that this location is forging her signature, making it look like she requested to cancel the membership when it was them who did the cancellation of her membership for a policy, but she's claiming that they forged her signature. Walcott said that after seeing she had been charged for an additional month in the days following the incident, she returned to the gym on April 17th to use the remainder of her membership. because they charged her for another month. She said the manager again told her that her membership had been canceled and the two argued over whether she was owed a refund. Walcott claims the manager told her she was not getting a refund before calling the police. When officers with the Concord Police Department arrived, Walcott was given a warning not to trespass the property. So this is what Walcott alleges. She says she takes the form, signs my name, charges me money, extends my membership, and then calls the cop on me. Like, what the hell? I feel like I live in an upside downland, says Walcott. A copy of the document labeled, quote, order to stay off the property, reviewed by Fox News Digital, appears to show an officer's signature, the gym location, and an April 17 date. So there you have the basic details. Planet Fitness says on its website that members who identify as transgender may use Planet Fitness, locker room facilities, bathroom showers, and all other facilities programs separated by sex based on their self-reported gender identity. Here's the thing I would say to Walcott, okay? I think this policy is dumb. But the planet fitness has the right to set up this policy if they want. And you have the right to join another gym. And I'm not defending the policy. I think it's dumb. And I think if what she's alleging happened here at this location, it's clearly mismanagement by the part of the individuals involved.

But also, look, and I don't do boycotts. I just don't believe in giving a political litmus test to every single product that I purchase. However, if something was going, I wouldn't let my wife join it because that's their policy. Their policy is clear. They went after another lady in L.A. that got was uncomfortable because there was actually a biological male in the bathroom. Like, You know, I think if I remember that correctly, he was, he was charged up. He was, they were stimulated, right? And, but that's their policy. And they made that policy very public. And they've said, this is the hill we're going to stand on. And so if it were me and my family, again, I'm not doing boycotts. I'm not calling for boycotts. But I'm saying if that's the policy, I'm not letting my wife join because I don't want her to be in that situation. And if I had daughters, I wouldn't let them join. because I wouldn't want them to be in that situation. And so I think at some point we have to go, okay, this is what that company says and this is what that company's policy is. You're not going to win that fight then. If you choose to continue to go to that gym, If you're a female at some point, you're going to have a trans female in there who may be faking it. I don't know. They may just be a pervert, right? That's going to happen at some point because they've set up an environment where that can now happen. Because they're not going to question anybody, right? Is it really somebody living as a female? Or is it some dude that just wants to go in and address and pretend so that he can see women taking a shower, right? Like we don't know. And if they're not going to question that and you feel unsafe in that environment, then walk with your feet, you know, vote with your feet and just choose not to go that route. And then if enough people do, then they'll have to either change the policy or they'll suffer by the consequences. I mean, that's really capitalism at its best, right? And again, I'm not defending the policy. I think the policy's stupid, right? I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams that the Democrats who did all the work, and I'll credit them for this because I believe in women's rights and I believe in equality of genders. um and all the work that my democrat friends did over the years to to lead america to this place where we we do have uh equal rights for men and women and that women can now you know be successful in the workplace and all that kind of stuff like i totally believe in that i never would have thought that those same democrats would now be like oh no

You know, like just a few years ago, it's believe all women, hashtag me too, you know. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, don't believe the women that are in the shower in the planet fitness. Like that is wild to me. I can't really wrap my head around that. But I also know that it's a free country and property owners have a right to do what they want on their property. And if that's what they want to let happen in their locker rooms, cool. Let's all vote accordingly with our feet and make that choice, right? So anyway, fascinating. We'll see where that goes. There's clearly some details left out. Fox can't verify that. And I think sometimes we have people that just kind of, again, you should know better by now. It was so publicized. what Planet Fitness' policy was. It's like, why would you even, if you feel the slightest been uncomfortable in that type of situation, why would you put yourself in a situation where you could be in that? You know, that would be my question. So anyway, Leland Conway in for the great James T. Harris on the conservative circus. 550 KNST. Thank you for letting me hang out for the man, admit the legend. Always fun. He's such a good dude. One thought about the gas tax. I just wanted to kind of end the hour with this. We talked to a lot of folks about what would that actually mean if we could suspend the gas tax in the state. And I was looking at the numbers of Arizona's gas tax is 19 cents per gallon. It's 18 cents plus a one cent underground storage tank tax. And so that's actually one of the lowest gas axes in the country. I think California's is 47 cents. state of Kentucky where I'm originally from, I think is 27 cents. Colorado is like 27 cents. So Arizona has actually one of the lower gas taxes in the country. But at 19 cents a gallon, then you add the 18 cents from the government, the federal tax. So if they would suspend the gas tax in Arizona, temporarily as the prices are what they are right now. It would save you almost 40 cents a gallon. It's a little bit more for diesel fuel. You pay 26 cents for heavy vehicles. But that's just for over 26,000 pounds. So I guess diesel, well, my truck doesn't weigh 26,000 pounds. I have a RAM 2,500 that I use, you know, it reuses diesel. So I don't know if they're charging 26 cents across the board or just 26 cents for the big trucks. But anyway, the point is it would save you almost 40 cents a gallon if you're not driving a diesel. Is that real money to you? I mean, if you think about, like, let's say you have a pickup truck and you have a 25-gallon tank, let's say.

Yeah, I mean, times 40 cents. I mean, that's $10 a fill-up. If you do four fill-ups a month, that's $40 a month back in your pocket. So that's real money. And right now it appears that the state legislature is at... A stalemate because Katie Hobbs is holding the legislature hostage wanting to get some liberal concessions before signing off on what the Republicans want to do and freezing gas tax or suspending it. And President Trump, as we mentioned yesterday, is also asking for a suspension of the gas tax. Hey, how about we just go ahead and whip Iran's ass and get our boys back home? And then the gas prices will go back down, right? We could do that. I'd like to see that happen. But in the meantime, yes, they should suspend the gas tax. Save people 40 cents a gallon. I mean, we're not getting what we're supposed to get for it anyway. It's not like they're filling potholes, you know. It's not like they're building roads and bridges at the rate they need to. They're just building bike lanes with it. Nonsense. Anyway. All right. Coming up next hour, a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun, like we always say it will. And Congressman David Schweikert will join us, and we'll talk about his run for governor. And would he suspend the gas tax? That's all coming up. I'm Leland Conway in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, welcome to the... A conservative circus with James T. Harris. Leland Conway is sitting in for the man, the myth, the legend, James T. Harris. One more day with you. This is a wild story. A Marine veteran with a concealed carry permit helped stop a felon's crazy shooting spree. This happened in Massachusetts, which is essentially a gun-free state. And I'm so sick and tired of as a gun owner myself. And, well, I used to be. I lost all my guns in an unfortunate boating accident, right? Wink, wink, wink. No, I don't know how many guns I have. Somebody asks you, how many guns do you have? And if you can tell them, like if you don't say at least three, you haven't even gotten started yet, in my opinion. I'm to the right of the NRA on guns, like way to the right of the NRA. Like if you, when President Biden said you can't own a cannon, I was like, I beg to differ. I know three people to have one, and I've shot them, and you can have them in America. And taking away people's privately owned cannons at Lexington and Massachusetts was what started the hot war. in the 1700s that led to the revolutionary war right that was the first shots fired

It was actually a Concord, I think, but there was a raid of the Lexington storehouse of cannons and munitions, and these were privately owned. And when the Redcoats took them, that was the spark that set off the violence that led to the American Revolution, which is amazing. And we don't have guns because, you know, shooting sports or hunting. We have guns because tyranny. That's why we have guns. A Marine veteran helped Massachusetts State Police halt the gunman's brazen shooting rampage in Cambridge. So this Marine veteran had a concealed carry permit, which is very difficult to get in Massachusetts, and pretty much everything's illegal in Massachusetts, especially the gun that the... assailant was using. So Cambridge Police, they received a call at 1 p.m. from Boston Police Department that a person acting erratically and armed with a rifle might be in the area. State police came upon what was described as an active shooter scene and then alongside a military veteran who had a concealed carry permit confronted the gunman. So this is interesting. The military veterans stayed in the fight. even after the police got there. Quote, after being confronted, the suspect allegedly continued to fire the weapon, striking a police cruiser. Both the civilian and trooper fired their weapons, and the suspect was struck multiple times in the extremities. The suspect was treated on the scene by police officers and transported to a Boston hospital. Video obtained by CBS Boston showed the gunman brazenly firing a rifle while on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts. with authorities saying that at least sixty rounds were fired the civilian who aided law enforcement has been described by multiple media outlets as a it's they say former marine there are no former marines he's a he's a he's a retired marine who had a concealed carry permit. The suspect, get this, this is, because you know Massachusetts is one of those blue states with crazy-ass liberals who let these criminals back out over and over and over again. I want you to listen to this because you know exactly what happened. The suspect, 46-year-old Tyler Brown, had a lengthy criminal record. including receiving a five to six year prison sentence for firing multiple rounds at police officers in 2020, according to a 2021 release from Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. So it's 2026. So this dude went to jail for just five years for shooting at police, and he gets out of jail in less than a year he's shooting at everybody, including police again, in the street. In the May 2020 incident, Brown fired a 40 caliber Glock at a police officer, ultimately firing at least 13 rounds, while police returned fire. Brown later pled guilty to multiple crimes, including armed assault with intent to murder. He's currently being held while being treated at the hospital and could be charged with two counts of armed assault with intent to murder. The Cambridge Police Department did not respond to requests for additional comments. This dude is probably going to be back out of jail in three years.

He's probably going to be back out of jail in three years. Because he's going to survive these gunshots. He's going to survive. They treated him. He's going to survive. And he's going to go back out and he's going to kill somebody else. Guarantee it. Guarantee it. If they don't lock this guy away and throw away the key, this guy's going to kill somebody else. This is why you should be armed because at some point he's going to be out. Now, let me ask you a couple of questions here. First of all, I'm looking at the, I'm looking at video of him right now, and the rifle he's holding. It is an AR-style rifle. I don't know what caliber it is. I can't see it that close, it's kind of fuzzy. But it's an AR-style rifle, and it's scoped. And how do you get that? He's a felon. This is the point that I want to make. We hear progressives all the time talking about gun control is what will prevent things like this. And it's absolutely untrue because gun control will simply prevent the retired Marine from helping to take this guy down. Right? And it's pretty clear that the police were happy to have anybody in the fight with them. that was willing to be in the fight with them in this situation because this dude has a high-powered rifle and he's firing indiscriminately in a public place and thank god he was taken down and two victims are in critical condition by the way he hit two people so let's do a quick this when i when i hear progressives talking about gun control i i flip my lid right Because I'm going to tell you some statistics. I happen to be a firearms instructor and I get really geeky about this. The percentage of people, let's start with concealed carry permit holders. How do I put this? I want to frame this the right way because I love our police. A concealed carry permit holder. Someone who has gone through the effort to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm is less likely to commit any kind of crime, not just violent crime, white-colored crime, stealing a penny out of the take-a-penny bucket at Circle K or the 7-Eleven. Any kind of crime is less likely to commit any kind of crime than the police. They are less likely to commit any kind of crime than any other social group that exists. So the point, and here's why, let me give me the logic behind them. When I become a concealed carry permit holder, I'm doing two things. One, I am taking the time and the effort to train. to learn the law and to learn the functionality of the firearm that I'm purchasing and that I'm carrying. This is a step of extra work that I'm willing to do, which says that I am a responsible person. In addition to that, when you get a concealed carry permit, you are submitting to a background check.

And when you are submitting to a background check, you are a person who has nothing to hide. And so this is the type of person that it gets a concealed carry permit is a rule follower, a law and order type citizen, right? Otherwise you would just carry and not, you would just ignore it. Now, again, the vast majority of people who own guns are very good people. And they're also very, very unlikely to commit any kind of crime, but particularly concealed carry permit holders, are the least likely to commit any kind of crime at all ever. So the point that I'm trying to make here, number one, is when people are armed, when good people are armed, the world is safer. And if you actually look... At crime rates in states where people own more guns, they're lower in states than states where people don't own guns as much. That's a true statement. In addition to that, 87% of mass shootings that have happened in a non-gun-free zone have been stopped. by a law-abiding citizen with a gun so it's over and over and over and over again we see law-abiding citizens with firearms stepping up to protect themselves or others from bad guys with guns and the main point is This guy has a felony record eight miles long. He was just in jail for shooting at police. He gets out. And within a year, he's doing it again with a firearm he's not even allowed to have in the state of Massachusetts, let alone have as a felon. The bad guys will always get the guns because they don't care about the rules. So the bad guys are never going to be disarmed. So gun control only disarms the good people. Thank God some people still have guns in Massachusetts because a good guy with a gun, along with police, stopped this nut job. And they will probably be released within two or three years. And the state will probably have to pay this guy restitution. And he will probably sue. the law-abiding citizen for pain and suffering, and he'll probably win that case. And at the end of the day, some prosecutor or some DA is probably going to bring charges against the Marine. We've seen it happen. We saw it happen with Daniel Penny in New York, and that didn't even involve a gun, right? Good guy does the good thing and he gets punished. I will be watching this case very closely. But by the way, I'll explain what I meant by tyranny is why we have guns.

When we continue. This is an important point. Also coming up at the bottom of the hour, Congressman David Schweikert's going to join us. We'll talk about new inflation numbers that are very concerning. Of course, he wants to be governor of Arizona. So we'll talk about the budget stalemate between the state legislature and Governor Katie Hobbs and how that might play and how he would react. And we're also going to ask him if he would suspend the gas tax. That's all coming up. I'm Leland Conway in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. It's awesome that a retired Marine helped police take down a mass shooter in Massachusetts. Pretty awesome what took place there, but we don't have guns in America for the purpose of shooting sports or hunting. Of course, we use them for that, but a lot of leftists like to say, Democrats like to say, I support the Second Amendment. I believe in a hunting, and they've never been hunting in their life. Remember when John Kerry famously went on that. uh it was a turkey hunt or a goose hunt or whatever it was i can't remember what kind of hunt it was but they came back and he looked like elmer fudd carrying a bird over his shoulder clearly has never fired a shotgun in his life ridiculous anyway little little history lesson um when the second amendment was put into the constitution The debate that was happening in America at the time was over federalism or anti-federalism, meaning the Alexander Hamilton wing of... Congress and the founding fathers wanted a centralized government, and the Thomas Jefferson wing wanted a more confederation, loosely bound, somewhat connected, but autonomous states to sort of move in a collective direction together, but also be autonomous at the same time. And this was the anti-federalists. And so these were the two factors that were fighting at the time. And they were debating this issue of, They weren't even debating the Second Amendment. They were actually debating this issue of centralized government. And the federalists said, the Alexander Hamilton wing said to the Thomas Jefferson wing, they said, hey, don't worry about the centralized government being tyrannical because the people will be armed. And the anti-federalists said, of course the people will be armed. That's no-brainer. But we still don't want a centralized government. And so that's how the Second Amendment came about was that it was the only thing they actually agreed upon. It was always a foregone conclusion that the people of America would be armed and that that would therefore blunt any effort towards tyranny from the government. It was just a matter of how strong do we want to make the government. to begin with. And so the Second Amendment was birthed out of that in that nobody even argued that guns were going to be a thing to society. And the purpose of the reason why I bring up that point.

is that when leftists say that the second amendment is just about militias, they're wrong. Because when you're studying the Constitution, you don't have to do more than just study the words. Clearly, you have to have the context of how it was written and why it was written. The purpose behind it. You know, they talk about the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. And the spirit of the law matters. In this case, the letter of the law is... that the right of the people to be armed shall not be infringed that's the letter of the law and that's pretty clear but in case you had any doubts from how clear that was understand the context of the spirit of the law and the spirit of the law is for the sake of forestalling tyranny the people will be armed So, in other words, we were always intended to be armed as citizens of America for the sake of keeping our government in check because our government is our employee, not the other way around. So anyway, it drives me absolutely nuts. This is a weird story. Do you remember Irina Zaretska? Irene Zerutska was the Ukrainian immigrant who was mercilessly swattered. riding a metro transit train in North Carolina. Up in Providence, Rhode Island, an artist was trying to do a mural in her honor. It was a beautiful piece of art, and it was being put on the side of a building. And this is the headline from Fox News, mural honoring murdered Ukrainian refugee Irena Zerutska, taken down in Providence after local outrage.

On Tuesday, a construction crew was seen near the exterior of the Dark Lady and LGBTQ Club in downtown Providence working to remove the partly finished mural. The mural which was painted on canvas was lowered to the ground, folded up, and taken away. Artist Ian Gujarro confirmed the news that the artwork would be removed after local outrage. a lot of people voiced their frustrations the voices were heard and the work is coming down as a reaction to that the mural's removal came as residents and elected officials complained about the artwork The office of Mayor Brett Smiley told Fox News that he wanted the artwork taken down saying that the art is divisive and does not represent Providence. Imagine being outraged by honoring a Ukrainian immigrant who was sliced in the throat by somebody who was led out by leftist policies who had a long record of felony and violence. Imagine not wanting to honor a woman who sat there and bled out on the floor of a bus while other people just continued to read their newspapers. What's controversial about this is the fact that leftists have been caught in their horrible policies where they don't enforce the law and they let criminals out because of misplaced empathy and total, total, I would say, almost hatred for the victims for some reason. And to take this, she's an immigrant. I thought the left loved immigrants. But it calls out their horrible policies. Imagine living in a town where there's outrage so strong against putting up a mural that honors a young woman who is an immigrant from another country. Imagine living in a town without outrage forces that to be taken down. I would never want to live in Providence, Rhode Island. That's for sure. All right, when we continue, he would be governor. He wants to be, governor of Arizona. He's currently a congressman from here in the Phoenix area. We're going to talk to Congressman David Schweikert in just a few minutes. We're going to talk about the governor's race. We're going to talk about inflation numbers. We'll talk about the local debate over the budget and whether or not he would suspend a gas tax. All that's coming up. I am Leland Conway sitting in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. I would like to be the next governor of Arizona. What's going on, Congressman? How are you? As always, for you and I talk, I'm worried about everything. We need people that are in elected positions to be stressed out about the future of America. It shouldn't be an easy job to be congressman. Well, look, as you and I joked about for years, you get up in front of groups, audiences, fellow members of Congress, and say, hey, we're going to borrow like $87,000 a second today.

And people get upset because they want stuff. They want free stuff. They want subsidized stuff. They want to regulate their competition. And, you know, really think about this. So far this fiscal year, every dollar of taxes we've taken in, we've spent $1.47. Now, hopefully it's going to bend over a little bit. But last year, we spent $1.43 for every dollar we took in. Is that because of the Iran war? When you tell them the truth. Yeah. Yeah, is that because of the Iran War? Is that why it's so expensive this year? No, no, these numbers are before the Iran War. Oh, your God. It's the thing we're not allowed to talk about. It's demographics. We don't have enough children in our society. So next year, we calculate there'll be fewer under 18 than 20 years ago, but double the number of those who are 65 and up. Yeah, which means you have people retiring from their productive years and their taxpaying years. So you mentioned when we were texting earlier this morning, you mentioned new inflation numbers. I've been concerned that inflation was going to come back due to the Iran conflict and the oil prices. Is that what you're seeing? Yeah, and we got the first read of some of the higher fuel prices. Now remember, even before the Iran conflict, we were running hotter than expected. And part of that is beyond the United States. It's hard for folks to get their heads around, but like China is borrowing money at incredible rates. And so when you have governments pumping cash, making, you know, debasing their currencies all around the world, you're pushing up inflation all around the world. $40 trillion of U.S. sovereign debt. And you've got to refinance 10, 11 trillion of it and add 2 trillion new. That's all up the higher interest rates. Right. And interest now is the second biggest expense. in the federal government. Let's talk about the governor's race. The state of Arizona right now, there's a big stalemate between Governor Hobbs and the legislature on the budget for the state, and she is currently holding hostage the idea of suspending the gas tax in Arizona because she wants some concessions that are more progressive in nature. How would you handle the fuel crisis if you were elected governor today? Look, you've got to be very careful on, you don't want to be... And remember, the federal government would have to do it in hand and glove. If you're trying to do sort of a short-term retreat, particularly on, you know, to see what diesel prices are at, that's fine. It's got to be a short-term mitigation with the hope that you start to see fuel prices sort of come back. But Leland, can I give you a crazy, this is my conspiracy theory of the week. Okay. I love conspiracy. I'm ready. Yeah. One of the reasons the governor is playing this game is to keep. the legislature in session. Do you remember the legislature, you can't raise money from certain lobby of certain groups while you're still in session. And you have multiple people in the legislature who are competitive races. If she can keep them locked down in session as long as possible, while Democrats are raising stunning amounts of money.

trying to take the legislature, trying to keep, you know, a leftist as governor. So there's more going on. You know, we see it as the fight over the budget. I actually think the governor and her team also have a political motive of keeping this craziness going on. That's interesting. If you were elected governor, what's the first thing you would do to try to put the state on the right path? Day after the election, you get everyone in a room that's willing to work with you. So hopefully you're Republican members of the legislature, people who are smart, and you build a plan. I was Majority Whip many years ago when we had Governor Siamington. And it's what we did. You keep getting these folks that say, well, the first day I'm, day after I'm sworn in, I'm going to do this. That's not the way you do it. You build a plan. And then you execute the plan the day after you're sworn in. Because you've got to take on water, fuel, electricity, the amount of fraud we have in our Medicaid system which is access. The redesign is state government, the adoption of technology. You're doing 100 of these parts. You've got to build a plant. And I'm sort of frustrated because you could do some amazing things for Arizona. We're in misery. Think of this last month. We lost, what, 10,800 jobs? Yeah. Arizona now is number 45, 45th in affordability. Yeah, that's crazy. Wages in Arizona on two of the three categories have actually gone down in the last 12 months. Arizona's getting four. And this is a big deal. People are suffering in our state and there's not enough fixation on making Arizona prosperous. Well, how do you do that, though? You do what we had success in the past. You go out and steal every good business from other places in the world or other states because you want competition for your willingness to work. You want multiple businesses trying to hire you. That's how you raise wages. Lean, think of this. Last year, we only produced about 24,000 new jobs all of last year. Every single one of those jobs was in health care or welfare services. Geez. Manufacturing, traditional private sector jobs, actually we lost jobs in Arizona. Wow. Wow. I want to go back to something you said earlier about the fraud. Does Arizona have a Minneapolis fraud problem? It's different. The Minneapolis fraud was specifically in a couple programs. And the thing, I also share oversight in ways and means. So we're the team that have launched the investigation in the hospice fraud in L.A. County, the Oregon procurement fraud in some of these hospitals on the East Coast where they're selling them to foreigners. We have the big investigation that's been going on for two years into Medicare Advantage trying to fix the problems there. We had things like the sober living home fraud in Arizona that was allowed to go on for years.

And a simple data package, a simple AI data package would have seen it on day one. Too many lawyers, politicians want to hire a building full of auditors and lawyers. And I'll make you the argument, we have technology today where you could stop this. You could stop ineligible people from scamming benefits. Yeah. It's technology, and it's steep, and it's really good. Awesome. Congressman David Schweiker, candidate for Governor of Arizona. I'm Leela Conway in for James T. Harris on the conservative circus. Leel & Conway is sitting in for the legendary James T. Harris on the conservative circus. One candidate has gone viral nationally, and he's running for mayor of L.A. And I wanted to play our sister station, KFI, over in L.A. interviewed Spencer Pratt. uh yesterday morning and he described the first time that he met Karen Bass at a debate and it is hilarious to listen to how he describes this what was it like when you got there did you have to sit in a green room before you guys went on air in the studio together so they put me they said it was the best room but they put me in the basement which it was you know so that was that was funny i was in the basement but it was a beautiful basement And when I got to come up from the basement, I was in a hallway and she had her amazing LAPD, you know, security team all securing the hallway. And I could hear her voice and it was like out of a scary movie. So I'm thinking, this is surreal because, you know, I've never been near a real life. Yes. Monster. Right. This is out of a scary movie. And so we go out there. And we stand next to each other. We set up and they go, okay, we'll be here for five minutes. I'm like five minutes. They're kind of like four minutes. And she looks over at me and she goes, you've done this before. And I go, a debate? And I was like, yeah. I was like, no, that's my first one. She's like, oh. Your first one like this. I'm like, no, my first debate ever. She said, you didn't do them at the university? I was like, no, I didn't do debates at the university. She's like, oh, wow. And I'm thinking to myself, lady, I'm going to eat you alive right now. And then I saw that she was looking at my notepad. Yeah. And so to throw her off, I just start writing my kids' names and my wife's name, my parents' name, just to confuse her if she's trying to cheat off my notepad. Oh my God. That is awesome, man. I've never. I've never been, I've never met a monster before in real life. God, I just love when they get through. They just, so people don't say things like that in politics. Leland Conway in for James C. Harris on the Conservative Service.