AI Loneliness, Election Deniers, Midterm Money & J6 Fallout | Filtered

An 85 year old woman lets an AI robot move into her home. Researchers say the secret to happiness isn't success, it's feeling loved. Olympic figure skaters are scrambling over copyright law instead of choreography. Republicans open the midterm cycle with a massive, massive cash advantage. An election denier now runs the Election Integrity Unit inside the federal government and a pardon 1-6- defendant is convicted of child abuse and child sexual abuse. And the politics are painfully familiar. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome. Thanks for joining me today. Happy to have you with us. We've got a fun, fun, action packed show for you today. Let's dive right in. AI Companion Living in our AI companion in the living room, an 85 year old woman living alone in Washington's Long Beach Peninsula agreed to try an AI companion robot called Elliq, or LiQ. The device, provided through a state pilot program, engages her in conversation, games, meditation and daily check ins. The company says users interact with the robot an average of 41 times per day and more than 90% report reduced loneliness. Over time, the woman formed a meaningful bond with the machine. After one year, her resting heart rate had dropped slightly and some cognitive scores improved. Critics raised concerns about surveillance and emotional dependency. Supporters argue it helps seniors age in place. The bigger question when human connection shrinks, does technology fill the gap or redefine what connection even means? Let's dive a little deeper here. This is a profoundly interesting story to me and I think probably to a lot of us. And I've got mixed emotions. On the one hand, it's great that A senior citizen, 85, can live independently, doesn't have to give up her home, things of comfort, her favorite chair, favorite living room, the kitchen, just the way she likes it to move into a retirement center. Not that there's anything wrong with a lot of nice retirement centers, but many, many people don't want to have to do that. So to the extent that an AI program and a robot can help someone maintain years of quality life and the surroundings they want, that's certainly you'd have to be hard, hard headed or hard hearted to think that that's a bad thing. Also, the fact that there is demonstrable evidence of cognitive improvement coming in for this woman and physical resting heart rate, things like that better, it seems like it's actually helping her a great deal. And again, 90% of the people who've tried this report reduced sense of loneliness. Loneliness is an epidemic not only in the United States, but in many parts of the world Especially for senior citizens. Now, unfortunately, it affects children and people in their 20s as well. But for right now, let's just focus on seniors. The fact that our heart rate slightly decreased in a positive way is something that, again, I would think you have to look at this as a benefit. Now, on the downside, there are a lot of them. Do we really want to evolve as a species of humans where we've got 8, 9, ultimately 10 billion people, all isolated, not even talking to each other? Do we want increased isolation? Do we want people spending all their time deluding themselves into thinking they're having meaningful conversations, building meaningful relationships with zeros and ones, which is what computers are made of. They're programming. There's a part of that's troubling. Not to mention, just think of what Mark Zuckerberg or the boys at Google could do with the data. If they have a robot able to probe you every day, think of the vitamins and medicines they can sell and home improvement gadgets they could sell. The potential for abuse of the elderly by capturing the data from this is potentially quite troubling. Let's look at some more facts of the issue. America faces a rapidly aging population crisis. More and more of us are getting older. Well, we're all getting older, but the percentage of people over the age of 65 and the percentage of people who are above 80 is growing compared to the rest of the populace. Loneliness is linked to a 30% higher mortality risk. So while people worry about too much smoking or drugs or sleep, all important issues, loneliness is a huge risk factor in dying. So anything you can do to eliminate that has to be at least considered. The Surgeon General has labeled loneliness a public health threat. In modern America, families are geographically dispersed. It would be nice to say, let's be like France and Italy and a lot of the world where people stay together, they're a couple blocks away from their parents, their grandparents, their children, and everyone takes care of each other. That's not coming back to the United States anytime soon, and I'm guilty of that as well. I have taken jobs in other places and moved for other reasons to other places where I'm not as conveniently close to family as might have been in past times. Technology is stepping into the gaps left by this social fragmentation. There is public funding subsidizing these emotional AI companions. $60 million was invested in this program to engineer emotional intelligence. And we are seeing a combination of markets meeting the need through technology and governments paying for it sometimes. Now, many conservatives like to emphasize family first. And for that matter people across the spectrum, but it does kind of ignore the fact that we as Americans move for our careers, we move for other jobs, we move for opportunities, we move just because it's exciting to move to new places sometimes. So elderly people are often isolated, they don't have any family close to them, and their friends quite often have died. If you're 85 years old, statistically speaking, many, many of your friends, your peers have already died or they perhaps have dementia, Alzheimer's, and cannot continue recognizing it so hard to have a meaningful relationship there. So I think it's got to be studied. I have family members myself where I think an AI companion like this, to be clear, it's not yet to the point where it looks like a full human sized robot where it's doing your laundry and cooking for you and picking you up off the floor if you fall down when that happens, that's going to be huge. There's no doubt about it. This is something for those of you watching on YouTube or any other social media platform. It's a small looking robot, appears to be about 6 inches high, so it's not particularly big, but it can have all sorts of conversations and it can engage and it can ask you things like do you want to hear a joke today? It certainly seems better than just passively watching cable news. Or I hate to say it, it may even be better than watching or listening to Filter with TJ Walker. Although I would certainly hope people of all ages would watch and listen to this show, I do think it's coming. It's absolutely coming. And governments need to figure out how to regulate this properly. Otherwise we could see the same thing that has happened in so many other sectors of society. We're going to see Facebook or Google gobble up some startup, control it all, control the data. And before you realize it, your rich grandma or grandpa who you thought was leaving you $10 million in the will. Not that I have any of those. They're going to give all their money to Mark Zuckerberg and the Google boys. And one thing I hope we can all agree on is those guys don't need more of our money.

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The Secret to Happiness New research highlighted in the New York Times argues the real secret to happiness isn't wealth or achievement. It's feeling loved. Psychologist Sonia Luberinsky and co author Harry Rice says happiness depends more on whether we feel valued and understood than on how much love we give. Their practical advice is surprisingly simple. Listen better, don't interrupt. Don't offer unsolicited advice. I need to follow that more myself. Ask follow up questions like tell me more. They recommend focusing on one relationship and intentionally deepening three conversations in a week. Their thesis is bold. Feeling loved is not passive. It's a skill and largely within your control. Let's end Full disclosure I've not read this book before. I have read, I believe other books by these authors and it's getting very good review. And you know what? You're getting a review on the front page of the New York Times. You're doing something right. It was released this month and it's part of the advice is not particularly surprising. And yet it's a constant reminder because we have so many people in our society focused on if I can just be more successful, I can just be the CEO. I could just make my startup go public and become a billionaire. Then I'll be happy and feel great. Not really. So this is something directly from the book. When someone feels deeply seen, valued and understood by you, they become more willing, motivated and eager to do the same. Feeling loved is not out of your control. Many people feel like it's beyond their capacity and it's simply not true. You can feel loved, but you've got to build skills involved around it let's look at some more facts. So happiness research is shifting from just being more positive, which, hey, I like positive thinking and a positive mindset. I do still think that's important, but to more of a relational science. Western culture is often criticized, perhaps justly as overemphasizing self improvement over connection. And really the two should be seen together. Part of improving yourself is improving your actual connections with other human beings. Loving them and them loving you and you feeling loved is what generates a tremendous amount of happiness. Emotional fulfillment is linked to perceived belonging. Now, there's been a lot written about how in America, people aren't in bowling leagues anymore, people aren't going to churches together. There's not that sense of community that there used to be. All fair criticism. But now we have a loneliness epidemic and it's being documented in public health data. As we talked about in the previous story about AI companions, reciprocity is central to human social evolution. According to these authors, deep listening is rare, especially in a highly distracted environment, because what's the number one problem most of us have is we're trying to have a conversation with someone and they're staring at their phone. Now, I try to be a good role model in my own household. My daughter or wife are speaking to me. I don't simply put the phone down. I try to put it out of sight in my pocket, ideally in another room somewhere, dinner time, not having it on the table. It's what I try to do. And I'm trying to build that habit, that skill with members of my own family as well. Not always successfully, but if someone, be honest now, if someone is in front of you and you're talking to them about something you care about, and they're also staring at their phone saying, huh, huh. It's annoying, it's frustrating. Deep down, you know they're not really giving you 100% of attention. How could they? They're staring at what's on their screen and it makes you feel disrespected, certainly doesn't make you feel loved. You can't necessarily control others, certainly instantly, but you can control yourself. So start by treating other people the way you want to be treated. Listen to them, really listen to them, and put your phone away out of sight. Chances are you're not so important that anything bad will happen if you don't look at your phone for the next five minutes or the next hour. So put it, put it away. Social skills increasingly monetized by coaching industry so there are coaches out there teaching people how to like Put your phone away. Sad that that is something people have to be taught. But it is. Now. You could say, well, T.J. you're an old boomer. You didn't have that opportunity. You're right. When I was growing up as a kid, if I wanted to talk on the phone, I had to go into the kitchen. There was this long curly Q cord attaching a phone to the wall and I had to have a conversation in front of my mom, my dad, and my two sisters. Guess what? Using the phone wasn't something I wanted to do more than about five minutes a week, if that. When I was a college kid, there was one phone at the end, the of, end of the hall and it was used, I think typically Sunday night for a five minute conversation with my parents. So there was not this temptation to be staring at it every. You had to connect with other people. There was nothing else to do. It was boring. Well, now, unfortunately, every single person has competition for attention. And it's called every interesting idea form of entertainment ever created because it's in every cell phone in the world. So it is driving people apart. It's not necessarily destroying relationships, although it can do that. It prevents relationships from ever starting in the first place. I see that in my own environment. My daughter goes to the school bus, the kids are lined up neatly in a well organized way, and every single kid in her middle school is hunched over staring at a cell phone. No one's saying a thing. Is that destroying relationships? No, it's preventing relationships from ever starting. That's the real problem. So to the extent that you can have any influence over your relationship, family, friends, certainly yourself, let's all try to spend a little more time talking to actual human beings. And that means listening to human beings, which you can't do if you're staring at the phone. So if I do end up reading this whole book, I'll give you a more detailed analysis and review. Meanwhile, I don't think there's anything stopping any of us from from at least trying to enact some of the principles today. And first of all, I want to acknowledge you and thank you for listening to me. Thanks. It makes me feel loved.

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Figure skaters and copyright chaos at the Milan Olympics, Figure skaters are facing a new obstacle, copyright compliance. Several athletes were forced to change music just weeks or even days before competing after discovering they lacked proper licensing. One American skater was accused online of using music without permission. A Russian competitor had to swap programs two days before taking the ice. Licensing can cost from a few dollars to several thousand dollars annually. And the IOC does not cover. That's. The International Olympic Committee does not cover those costs. Historically, the better funded. Excuse me, that's. That's the next one. Sorry about that. So let's look at this a little more deeply because this to me is a little bizarre. Full disclosure for any conflict of interest. I have worked with the United States Olympic Skating Organization in the past and I can't even remember. It's been so long. I don't remember if I trained their athletes or their. I think it was their PR team, but I just want to get that out there for conflict of interest enthusiasts. To me, this is a huge shame that the International Olympic Committee, with the hundreds of millions of dollars over decades, billions of dollars of revenue they receive that they can't pay for these skaters royalties. I mean, there's so many people making so much money off of the Olympics and now you have these ice skaters, most of whom never make any money. I mean, if you're not getting all the gold, and especially if you're not from an English speaking country that has huge advertisers clamoring for you, most of these skaters don't ever really make any money. For them to have to go into debt or to sweat it about copyright issues seems ridiculous. And certainly big countries that have so many sponsors like the United States, for them not to just cut a deal with a recording artist I think is disgraceful. Especially when you consider that they make a lot of money off these ice skaters. Because ice skating is much, much more popular as a televised sport, gets a lot more ratings, gets a lot more ad revenue than archery. And I realize archery is not in the Winter Olympics, but you get my point. There are plenty of obscure sports where, okay, nobody's really making much money off sponsorship advertising and the athletes kind of need to keep costs low. But for something like this, which is prime time entertainment Seen by around the world, tens, if not hundreds of millions of people. Why scrimp on a few thousand dollars in royalties? Because the musicians who created this music deserve to be compensated. These skaters who have devoted their lives, for the most part, these skaters have devoted every second of their childhood to. They've given up parties, friends, sleepovers, summer camps, prom. They gave up all of that to entertain you and me in the Olympics, to be the best in the entire world. And to see them sometimes, you know, a week before, in this case, two days before, worried about, oh, I'm going to get sued or I'm going to owe a bunch of money or I'm going to go into debt. These athletes, many of them already go into debt to get to the Olympics. They shouldn't have to go into debt to cover something like this. Now, copyright is a tricky issue. I mean, just yesterday I had a claim filed against me apparently in one of my online courses on presentation skills. Somehow a copyrighted image got put into a course that I was then selling. So shame on me. It was taken down right away and we're trying to get things rectified. I try to be very careful. Ultimately, if my name's on it, I'm ultimately responsible and I accept that. I try to respect copyright. I want others to respect copyright. I do have people steal my courses all the time and put them on phantom website. I don't chase them down because if they're stealing my courses, chances are slim they have the wherewithal to actually make any money off of it. But we live in a world where creators spend time, energy, money. I'm spending time creating this show for you. They deserve to be compensated. So I'm not questioning that at all. I am questioning the Olympic poobahs, many of whom have very nice cushy salaries and benefits. I'm questioning why they can't somehow figure out a way to get somebody to pay for the rights to the music for these skaters. It just seems to be a shame. My challenge to you though, as a creator, whether you're an athlete, a tiktoker, someone making online courses, someone making movies, the more you can control everything that comes out of you, the better, the more you can control your creative process. Now, I understand it's a bit much to expect someone who's a world class skater to also be a composer and a piano player and a singer. I get that that's asking too much. But you know, maybe you do like Spike Lee or Francis Ford Coppola and you have family members who are musicians and you make it a family fair. That may be a temporary solution, but long term. You know the Olympic committees at the international level and the national level, they need to cough up some cash. What I have found in anything to do with big time sports, whether it's professional sports officially like the NFL or the NBA or things that really are professional like the Olympics, even though most athletes don't get a salary, is things are very, very skewed. You've got a handful of winners, you've got less than 1% or big time winners. Yeah, Michael Phelps is going to make hundreds of millions of dollars before his life is over because of the fame he got from the Olympics. But most Olympians make nothing. I remember once I was checking into a hotel in St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and the person checking me in had won several gold medals in the previous Olympics in swimming. She didn't make any money off of it. Here she is working a front desk at a hotel. So most Olympic athletes, even those who win quite often don't make any money. But a handful make fortunes. Certainly the top executives in state or country level and international level get paid very nicely. They need to take care of some of these incidental expenses for some of the top athletes because I know my family members enjoy the ice skating. To have to throw away your whole routine or learn a whole new routine sometimes two days before because you couldn't get the rights to it seems a bit absurd.

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Republican Cash Edge in the Midterms Republicans are entering the midterm cycle with more than double the cash reserves of their Democratic counterparts, roughly $320 million to $137 million. Among key party groups, President Trump's aligned super PAC alone holds more than $300 million. The RNC started the year nearly $100 million ahead of the Democratic National Committee, the DNC crypto and AI linked super PACs are also building large war chests. Democrats who dominated fundraising in 2024 now face donor fatigue. Research shows the best funded candidates wins most congressional races. Not all, but most. But history also shows that money is not destiny. For example, in the 2016 Republican primary, Trump was heavily outspent by candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. Bush and his allies raised more than $150 million. Trump relied instead on earned media and small dollar energy, and he won. Money is oxygen in politics, but it's not always the deciding spark. Okay, so what are we to make of this? This does spell some. It does not look good for the Democrats to be this outspent. Money doesn't decide every elections, but it sure does have a huge, huge impact, especially in close elections. Now, I mentioned the example of President Trump. To his credit, he was able to win 2016, the Republican primary, not because he spent more money, and he certainly didn't spend much of his own money. He, he did it through communication, through spoken communication, in media, interviews, and in social media. Now, you could make an argument that that's better for democracy. You could also argue that if you're getting attention because you're telling the bigger lie and you're a demagogue, that's not necessarily good. But we're going to leave that aside for one moment and delve more into some of the facts and why I think it's relevant to you as you try to figure out how to communicate what you're doing. So, again, the facts that the GOP holds $320 million in cash, and that's just for their congressional races. The Trump Super PAC has $304 million. The Democrats actually raised more money in 2024. They, they raised $2 billion in 2024. Trump and the RNC raised $1.2 billion in 2024. So money did not decide things. I mean, the $290 million that Elon Musk gave to Donald Trump obviously helped, but you could certainly make the case that if money were the deciding factor, there would have been a different result. So here's what I think is important to realize that if, in the modern social media world, if you have messages that are really interesting to people and it strikes them as thinking, okay, here's a candidate saying something interesting to me, relevant to me. He's trying to solve my problems. You can win even though you're heavily outspent. That's clearly the message of what happened in the New York City mayoral race last year, you had a candidate, one of the least funded, Andani, and he ended up winning, winning big time. Not because he outspent Cuomo or any of his opponents, because he had a superior communication ability, his use of social media, the clarity of his messaging, putting a spotlight on affordability, and he won. And you could say the same thing about Trump, certainly going back to 2016. He put a focus on his messages, and it were very different from conventional Republican messages. Traditional Republican messages say, hey, let's cut Social Security and all this big government. He said, no, I don't want to do that. Traditional Republican messaging was, America does need to provide leadership to the world and stand up for democracy. Trump essentially said, no, I don't want to do that. Let's stay out of other people's affairs. We can debate another time whether those were worthy messages, but there's no doubt that he came up with different messages than all the other better funded candidates in his party nomination hunt. And that is, in fact, why he went. And because he said it in such a provocative way, he got tons and tons and tons of free media exposure. He was live on CNN seemingly half the time. So money doesn't decide everything in political campaigns. But if you have any kind of mainstream messaging, whether you are a Democrat or Republican, and you are campaigning against someone else who is a representative of their party and is doing mainstream messaging, then money is often the deciding factor. Unless you have a district where the voting is so skewed for one side, it almost doesn't matter what the messaging is. Here's what Jesse Ferguson told the New York Times. He's a Democratic strategist. Donald Trump has 99 problems going into the midterms. Money isn't one of them. Stephen J. Law, a former Senate GOP PAC leader, says the next frontier is finding ways to put more money directly in the hands of candidates and campaigns, because so much of it is going through these PACs, which technically, the candidate is not supposed to have any influence over that and have any control over the messaging. Here's what Brian Derek, a Democratic fundraiser, had to say about Elon Musk's spending last time. More toxic than the Chernobyl gift shop, which, by the way, is a great sound bite. It's got humor, it's attack, it's got emotion. It's got a reference to pop culture of Chernobyl, and an example. You can visualize a gift shop. So as a side note, putting on my media trainer cap. That's a fantastic quote. So Hats off to Brian Derek, regardless of whether you agree with his political positioning or not. It's a fantastic classic, classic sound bite. Now let's look at some more facts. According to the Federal Election Commission, that's data from the FEC, in House races, the better funded candidate wins roughly 85 to 95% of the time. So if I'm a Republican incumbent and I don't even bother raising money, and I spend $5,000 on my campaign and you're the liberal Democrat running against me and you raise $10 million, but my district typically votes 30% points more for the Republican than the Democrat. If I, if I'm typically winning, you know, 65 to 35, I'm going to still win that race. Absent me getting caught committing some horrific felony that involves a child, you're going to lose that race. I would win even though I spend no money because the demographics of the district so heavily vote for one side, but typically if it's that lopsided of a House, of a House race, you're not going to get $10 million. People won't give money if they think they can't win. Now, in Senate races are a little different. The better funded candidate wins 75 to 85% of them. It's still most of the time in presidential general elections. The higher spending campaign has won seven of the last 10 elections, so that's 70%. Now, I would contend the reason that's lower is because when it comes to presidential elections, you get so much publicity, so much attention, you get so much mainstream media and social media attention that ads have a fewer or much less of an impact on voters, has an impact on primaries, but not general elections because people are inundated with information about the two candidates. So that to me is not surprising at all that the correlation is much lower when it comes to general elections. So what does this mean for you and for me? I do think it means that, hey, if you're running for political office, you, it's not enough to say, you know, message beats money every day. If you're really serious about winning political office, you have to communicate and you have to communicate with people who don't necessarily follow you on social media, don't necessarily follow political media and mainstream news. So the only way to reach them is quite often through advertising, where you're meeting them, where they are. You can buy ads to get in front of anybody these days. You can say, I want to reach 21 year olds who've never read news a day in their life, but they follow mixed martial arts. You can get an ad in front of them and then try to encourage them to vote for you. So there's always going to be a need for some money in politics now. Most countries heavily regulate this. Most countries do not want their politicians essentially bought off and bribed the way we do in the United States. We're going to have to leave that for another day. My other more important message to you is whatever you're doing, whether it is promoting a new nonfiction book you've written, whether it's promoting an online course, whether you have produced a documentary, whatever it is, focus on having the absolute most interesting message possible and then communicating in a captivating way. And quite often that will lead you to success. That will make up for the fact that you don't necessarily have the most money. So that's really my message to you because there are plenty of examples of people who become wildly successful. I gave you two in the political world, Mondami and Trump, who did it through interesting messages, not simply by spending more money.

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Election Denialism inside Government Kurt Olson, a lawyer who pushed claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, now serves as director of election security and integrity in the federal government. An unsealed FBI affidavit revealed he investigated or he instigated a new investigation into the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, despite repeated debunking of fraud claims. Olson previously helped pursue lawsuits attempting to overturn election results and was sanctioned in at least one case. Critics argue his appointment signals that election denialism has moved from political activism into official authority. Supporters defend him is committed to election integrity. Opponents warn that using federal power to relitigate settled elections erodes trust in democratic institutions. Okay, I'm sorry, folks, but this is troubling. And it should not just be troubling to Democrats, liberals, progressives, Bernie Sanders. It should be equally troubling to centrist, to moderates to libertarians, to right of center political unidentified and yes, it should be profoundly troubling to Republicans. We now live in an era where certain people say, if I win the election, that's great. I'll say I won and we'll do things as we normally do. If I lose the election, I'll just say it's fraud, not leave. And if I just say it's fraud, it's fraud, it's fraud. And it was stolen here and here and here and here and here and here and here. Every time someone says, well, no, there's proof this wasn't stolen, I'll go to over here, I'll eventually win. And if I say it with enough conviction and enough authority and act like I believe it, I'll convince a bunch of stupid rubes out there and they'll start following what I say and repeating it and acting on it. I mean, that is the philosophy. And I want you to step back for a minute and ask yourself, let's say hypothetically, you are a supporter of the current administration. How would you feel if Jimmy Carter had simply proclaimed that he won the 1980 election if he just said, okay, Ronald Reagan stole the election, his followers support it. They stole it, they miscounted key states, and I'm not leaving the White House? I think you'd be pretty upset. I think you would be screaming at the top of your lungs that this is an absolute thumbing of the nose, a shredding of the United States Constitution. It means democracy is over. And indeed, if Jimmy Carter, who was roundly destroyed at the voting booth in 1980, if he had in fact simply said it was all fraudulent, if he had started gathering voting boxes and seizing votes in states where he lost, well, A, it would have been a pretty tough time because there were so many states he lost. B, it would have been a lot of work. And C, if he had done that, I think there would have been outrage across the political spectrum. I think the New York Times would say, hey, we endorsed him over Ronald Reagan, but he lost. Democracy is democracy. America is America. Our founding fathers had a system. So Jimmy Carter, you are in the wrong, you must leave office. And Ronald Reagan, you are the rightfully elected president and you should be inaugurated in, in January of 20 in, in 1981, which in fact he was, that would have been the response from people who were Democrats, who were liberals, were the, even communists would have said, okay, Jimmy Carter, you've got to step down. And yet somehow, now that things have reversed, you change the D to an R. And a lot of people are saying, you know what, forget this whole democracy thing. Overrated. We're simply going to take a heads, we win, tails you lose position on all future elections, current elections, past elections, future elections. If the votes add up and we win, we do things normally. We're all in favor of democracy. And if the votes say the other person won, we're just going to proclaim fraud abuse and say the election didn't really work that way, that our team still won. Now, don't take my word for that. Listen to a candidate in 2016. When asked, what are you going to do if you lose? He said, first of all, win. But if I lose, I'll just claim fraud. I'll just contest it. Who said that? It was in fact Donald J. Trump, who, contrary to popular belief, does sometimes say the truth. He does sometimes honestly speak truthfully, and I happen to believe that is one of them. He admitted to all of us that his first response if he didn't get enough votes would be to simply proclaim fraud. Now, he did actually get enough votes to win the electoral college in 2016, so he didn't have to do that. But in 2020, he did not get enough votes, popular votes or electoral votes, and he did exactly as he promised. He just proclaimed it was fraud. And, you know, it's interesting to me, for those of you who are film buffs out there, Donald Trump and I do have something in common. One of his favorite movies of all times is Citizen Kane. One of my favorite movies of all time. Citizen Kane. What happens to Charles Foster Kane when he runs? I believe it's for mayor of New York City and he loses. He had since he owned newspapers, he was a fictitious. Look at William Randolph Hearst. And before the election was counted, he already had his newspaper men, and they were men, come up with two headlines. One, you know, Cain wins in a landslide. And just in case he lost, he already had the headline up of massive fraud Mars elections, something to that effect. And that's Trump's favorite movie. There's no doubt in my mind that that made a big impression with him because he thinks of himself as a big shot, like Charles Foster Kane, like William Randolph Hearst. And if it worked for them, it would work for him as well. To reiterate, all the 2020 fraud claims of the election have been repeatedly debunked, not just by liberals or Democrats, but by centrists, by Republicans, by conservatives, by anyone who actually believes in a fact based universe. Now, has there ever been a fraudulent vote cast in America sure, but we're talking about maybe dozens a year. Certainly nothing that would have even had an impact on a race as close as the year 2000 where there were a mere 323 votes that decided Florida. So we've never even had any documented evidence that in any one state that could have changed an election there's been more than a a few dozen fraudulent votes. And even then there's no evidence it had a positive impact for one side or the other side. This is clearly an example of just sour grapes and people who want to skew things so that again, heads I win, tails you lose. And the fact that we're seeing people who are officially election deniers talk about the fox guarding the hen house. I mean, this is just an egregious, egregious example. Unfortunately, it's happening everywhere in this government. And the Democrats who think the 2026 elections are going to be run normally, I think are diluting themselves. I've spent time on this program talking about that. I hope not ad nauseam, but I have talked about it. I think we live in a new reality and Democrats are delusional if they think that they're going to be close elections where the Democrat wins House seats by a few dozen, a few hundred, even a few thousand votes. If you think those aren't going to be discounted, thrown in the garbage, overruled. You are living in fantasy land. Not when clowns like this Kurt Olson are giving positions of authority in this administration.

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And we are back. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. This is the show where every day we look at the top business stories, culture stories, health, technology stories, and then filter them through the lens of personal development skills so that you become more successful in every aspect of your personal life as well as your professional life. Let's dive right into our final issue of the day, and it's not a happy subject, but I cannot disregard it. Pardon capital rioter convicted of child abuse. Andrew Paul Johnson, who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack and insurrection, it should correctly be called, and later received clemency, was convicted in Florida of multiple child sexual abuse charges, including molestation of a child under the age of 12. Prosecutors say he faces the possibility of life in prison. That's, you know, assuming he doesn't get a full pardon once again from the current president. Johnson was one of roughly 1500 January 6th defendants granted clemency. The case is already reverberating politically. The parallel some observers are drawing, although not enough, is to the 1988 Willie Horton episode, when a single violent crime committed by a furloughed inmate became a defining symbol against or used against Michael Dukakis, the then governor of Massachusetts who was the Democratic nominee for president. In both cases, one individual becomes the face of a broader policy decision. The political lesson from history. A single story can eclipse complex debate. And in campaign season, symbolism often outweighs nuance. Let's look at some more details. I'm perhaps being a little overly optimistic there because I don't see the media giving this Andrew Paul Johnson any attention, in part because every day the news is filled with more and more examples of Epstein and various people tied to, if not outright acts of pedophilia with Epstein than, than collusion, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and tacit support of a pedophile. So one more pedophile, especially if he's not molesting thousands of children the way Jeffrey Epstein did it, almost gets lost in the conversation and it's not really fair. So again, Andrew Paul Johnson would not have been able to molest this 12 year old or this child under 12 if he had been in his rightful place, which is prison. This guy waged war on the United States government. This guy was there when another human being was killed in these riots. This guy was there when a police officer was injured and then died hours later on January 7th. This guy is an insurrectionist and he was given a full pardon. Now, Michael Dukakis did not give a full pardon to Willie Horton, the convicted felon, who he gave. He put him out on a work program, a weekend work furlough program. And when he was out, he apparently murdered, raped and murdered a woman. And this became sort of a way of defining Michael Dukakis is Weak on crime. Well, I can tell you, in a million years, Michael Dukakis would have never given a pardon to 1500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, threatened to kill the Vice President and numerous senators and members of the House. Michael Dukakis would not have given a full pardon to someone who was a part of a mob trying to destroy American democracy and ending up killing people. That is what President Trump did. And yet the people who claim to be tough on crime just ignore it. Say, oh, he's on our team. If he does things that end up with more death, more children, molest, hey, it's okay. He's on our team. That's how tribal American politics has become. No matter how good you are, no matter how much you help the economy, the stock market, you're on the other team. We'll just say, you're an evil communist, you're worse than Fidel Castro. We all starve to death when you are running things. If you're on our team, you can give complete pardons to hardened criminals, to monsters, to child molesters. They can go out, commit all sorts of other crimes, molest children. And we're not going to say a peep, hey, you're on our team. That is the world we live in, unfortunately. Let's look at some more of the facts here. Andrew Paul Johnson, convicted of five, not one, not two, not three, but five child abuse related counts. Charges included molesting children under 12 and under 16. He was arrested in Tennessee, extradited to Florida. The case began with discord messages discovered by the victim's own mother. The alleged abuse occurred in April 2024, when he should have been serving time in prison for committing acts of insurrection when this child was 11 years old. The prosecutor says the potential penalty includes life in prison. But who knows? Maybe he just has to say, I love Trump and click his heels together and get out again so he can maybe come less, more children, maybe yours. So don't tell me you care about children. Don't care. Tell me you care about law and order if you support not just the sort of person, but the person who lets this guy out. And that person is sitting in the White House today. And again, he, he pled guilty to January 6th related charges in, in 2024. But like all of those criminals, like all of those traitors, because, yes, when you're rebelling against the United States and committing acts of insurrection, you are a traitor to this country. He was given full clemency. Now, Johnson claimed he'd be awarded $10 million as a January 6th or so. Maybe that's what he was saying to lure these children, to impress them. That sounds bizarre, but this is. According to the Guardian, Trump has allegedly discussed giving compensation to defendants. Actually taking your hard earned tax dollars if you're an American citizen and paying these criminals the inconvenience of them having to go to trial for committing real crimes. That hasn't happened yet, but there's no doubt it could. Again, the part of the problem the Democrats have is there's so many different ways you can talk about Trump being complicit to lawlessness, felonies, child abuse. It's hard to even pick one. When you were Michael Dukakis, there was only one thing you could focus on, and that did get the attention of the Republicans running the campaign and the super PACs running the political campaigns way back in 1988. It's a shame, I guess. Apparently we live in a country where crime only matters for one tribe. The other tribe says, oh, crime all the time. Crime matters for the other tribe only if it was perpetuated by someone you don't like of another tribe. It's a sad day in America. I'm T.J. walker. Most of what we talk about in this show and Certainly the first 50 to 60% positive news stories designed to make you happier, healthier, more successful, but I'm here to give you a sense of what's really going on in the world. So we have to talk about ugly stories like this as well. Thanks so much for joining me. Please post your comments on social media, wherever you're watching this, wherever you're seeing it. So thanks so much. I'll see you again tomorrow.