College Millions, MAGA Chaos, and a President Unhinged

Foreign. Hi and welcome. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me today. Let's dive right in on Filtered. We start with a 54 million dollar goodbye in Baton Rouge. LSU is paying Brian Kelly a fortune not to work while students and taxpayers pick up the tab. Then Speaker Mike Johnson all but admits he's not really running the House of Representatives, describing his job as triage and survival mode. We'll look at Treasury Secretary Scott Besant's creative spin on tariffs and inflation and why your grocery bill says he's wrong. JD Vance's aura of inevitability in 2028 is cracking as new polls tighten abroad. Trump's Ukraine peace plan looks a lot more like Putin's wish list. And we'll end with Trump's Thanksgiving meltdown, slurs, smears, and a president sounding more like an online troll than a head of state. All that and more today on Filtered. So lots of fun stuff to come here. Thanks so much for joining me today. Again, if you're new to the show, we do this live every day. Today's recorded in advance because I'm traveling for the holidays. So we typically look at stories that have happened just in the last 24 hours, but these are all stories that have typically happened in the last 48 hours. So very much happy you're here with me and happy to be a part of this. So thanks so much. And back in a moment. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Okay, let's dive right in with the top story of the day. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, but confession. I have not been able to convince a lot of people to my way of thinking, but let's go ahead and try LSU's $54 million Goodbye to Brian Kelly, LSU Louisiana State University has finally made it official. According to reporting in the Athletic and confirmed by Sports Illustrated and others, the university has formally fired football coach Brian Kelly without cause, which means he is owed the full remaining buyout and $54 million over the next six years. A letter from new LSU president Wade Russo says the school will pay, quote, liquidated damages as required under the agreement, while requiring Kelly to make, quote, good faith, reasonable and sustained efforts to obtain qualified employment so LSU can reduce the hit if he lands another job. Kelly arrived from Notre Dame in 2021 on a 10 year, 95 million dollar deal and he won 34 games and lost 14 games in Baton Rouge. And remember, he was already among the top 10 highest paid coaches in college football. In a market where multiple public university coaches now make more than $10 million a year. It's all financed in an ecosystem soaked in taxpayer money and tax breaks. Okay, what's the real message here? When conservatives scream loudly about waste, fraud and abuse in government, and when's Doge going to do something? Here's the real waste, fraud and abuse. Taxpayers are paying a state government employee $54 million in the next six years to sit on his buttocks. I'm talking about Brian Kelly, that recently fired coach from lsu. It's an obscenity the way any football coach gets paid more than the President of the United States. When these people get your tax dollars. Let's dig a little deeper here. I have found I. I can't speak to every country in the world, but I found that certainly in the United States, the second sports is involved with something. People who are normally sane, rational people become crazy. They lose the capacity to even count one plus one. It's as if they put a bullet to their brain. And in so many cases, you can go to someone and say, hey, give me all your money. But it's for sports people. Oh, sure, we need to close schools to give you more money, fine. We need to shut down public roads to give you more money, fine. This is true whether it's building a stadium for a billionaire. And it's true when giving taxpayer dollars to coaches. So here's the real problem I have. If it's a public university, the money is coming directly and indirectly from taxpayers, state taxpayers, federal government. Every state university gets massive, massive, massive funding from the federal government in many ways. Sometimes direct grants, sometimes all of the tuition is coming from students who get federal government loans and subsidies. So these coaches are essentially government employees. Is their job important? Okay, if you love football, yeah, it's important. Is it more important than being President of the United States and deciding when to go to war and how to run our country? I would argue no. Well, the President of the United States has a salary of four hundred hundred thousand dollars a year. Most Americans would kill to have a salary like that. So the proposal I've been putting out for years, and I have not convinced a lot of people, I'll be transparent with you, is if you accept public money and, and if you're a public employee, let's say you don't get paid more than the President of the United States. Let me ask you this. What is the worst thing that would happen if all of a sudden overnight nobody in higher education made more than $400,000 a year? All of those football coaches couldn't suddenly get jobs in the NFL, they would have to somehow get by on $400,000 a year, provided they currently make more than that. If they make less than that, wouldn't have any impact on them. What would be the negative impact for society? Absolutely nothing. Okay, let's say the top 10 football coaches in college go to the pros and those schools get other good coaches. Okay, maybe your team doesn't win a couple of games next year. What's the negative impact? Why should a taxpayer, especially one who doesn't care about football, have to subsidize your hobby? Watching football is a hobby. I realize it's important for schools and important for branding and a lot of other things. People are very emotional about it. But I'm sorry, you can call me a conservative. I think it's wasteful government spending because there is no demonstrable need to ever pay any state government employee who coaches a game, a sport that is technically unrelated to any academic pursuit, more money than the President of the United States. I would like to conserve these collectively hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year to put it back into your pocket as a state taxpayer or a federal taxpayer. Let's look at some of the numbers here. And it's just, it's absolutely obscene to anybody who isn't just a drooling fanatical sports fan who would rather see children in their neighborhood starve than to lose the big game against the big rival, which seems to be so important to so many people. So Kirby Smart, the Georgia football coach, makes $13.28 million a year. Ryan Day, the Ohio State coach, $12.58 million a year. Dabo Sweeney, 11 million a year. Lincoln Riley, USC coach, 11 million a year. Dan Lanning in Oregon, 10 million a year. Kalyn DeBoer, Alabama. Boy, do they take football seriously in Alabama, having lived there. $10 million a year. Bill Belichick, $10 million a year to coach the University of North Carolina. Now he needs the money. I mean, if you're, you know, 150 year old man dating a 24 year old, I guess you need a lot of money because how else are you going to get the 24 year olds? Okay, so look folks, this is obscenity and I get sick and tired of people telling me, yeah, let's cut government waste. Yeah, let's cut out the funding from USAID. God forbid we spend $2 a day keeping someone in another part of the world alive or giving them a couple of crumbs of bread or giving them a mosquito Nut it's okay to let 600,000 people die, which is what's happened because of Elon Musk Doge to get rid of usa. But oh my God, asking my college football player coach to get by on less than $10 million a year, that's the end of the world. I mean that's the mentality a lot of people have. Now it's not just public universities. There's, there's a lot of so called private universities out there who also pay their coaches obscene amounts of money. But guess what? These, these private universities, this is not Intel's team, this is not Microsoft's team, this is not Google's football team. These are from non profit organizations, supposedly 501c3 tax exempt status organization. So they don't pay taxes because they're supposed to be there for the public good. What is the public good at taking vast, vast amounts of money from a society where the average person has essentially zero or close to zero net worth and giving it to one guy. And it's a guy, let's not kid ourselves. Tens of millions of dollars over the course of a 10 year period. What is the, what is the public good rationale for that? There is none. And you can say, well tj, these are private universities, they should be able to do what they want. Well guess how they get their students, they get their students from public funding because so many students at private universities get direct subsidies from the federal government, state government. They get their loans backed by the federal government. These so called private universities get millions, tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars of grants from the federal government. So they are awash in taxpayer dollars. So I, I think it's an obscenity that the United States Congress doesn't simply pass a law that says no public employee and nobody who works for a nonprofit organization shall make more than $400,000 or whatever the President of the United States makes. I defy you to really make a compelling case as to how society would be harmed. And I've had this argument with people before. They're like, well tj, you know, this is the market. It's not the market. It's, it's propped up by government spending. And even, even professional sports isn't really free market enterprise. There's nothing more socialistic than the way the NFL is run. If you really look at the inner workings of the NFL and how they share their revenues and the way they get governments to pay for their places of business, their stadiums. But everyone's teacher, the multiplier effect and it's all complete nonsense. Every economist who's ever looked at the investment spent on stadiums will tell you you could get a bigger return on your investment and things like building good schools and parks and roads in a community rather than on a building that's used sometimes seven times a year for the benefit of billionaire owners and employees who make tens of millions of dollars a year. So lsu, good luck with your new coach. You're going to need it, although the coach doesn't. You know What? You make $10 million a year and get fired. You got a nice cushion. Too bad everyone doesn't have that kind of a cushion. Back in a moment.

We'll be right back after this break.

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You'll wonder how you ever did without it. Welcome back to Filtered. Thanks so much for joining me today. We've got lots of fun in store for you. Next issue. The speaker who says he isn't really speaker, According to the New York Times, Speaker Mike Johnson just admitted out loud what a lot of Washington already thinks on a friendly podcast hosted by Katie Miller. That's Stephen Miller's wife. He said, quote, we have this joke that I'm not really a speaker of the House, talking about how he and his wife talk about it. That's kind of saying the quiet part out loud. That's not a joke. To a lot of people, this joke sounds a lot like reality. Johnson described a job that's completely out, out of his control with a Republican conference he can't manage and a schedule he can't tame. Quote, we're in triage every day. He said there's no pattern or schedule. We're kind of in survival mode right now. He complained, I haven't had a vacation day in two years and claimed literally quotes as a quote, literally 100,000 people have his cell phone number leaving him missing hundreds of calls and text messages in a day. This is the man second in line to the presidency, presenting himself not as a leader, but as an overwhelmed middle manager in Donald Trump's political organization. Okay, what's the real message here? Speaker Johnson. Speaker Mike Johnson went on a friendly podcast this week, admitted to the whole world he's complet the overwhelmed, out of his depth. And the jokes about he's not really the Speaker. Well, you kind of are, but you also kind of aren't. You basically handed all your power to Dear Leader in the White House and it's an embarrassment. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. I do think it's troubling at some level for forget 100,000 people having your cell phone number, but even 100 people a day texting you, calling you at some level. From a pure information technology standpoint, if you are going to be running the House of Representatives, one of the most important, powerful positions in the entire world, you need to somehow have an organization. I would think at some point you'd have a chief of staff, a couple of deputy chief of staff, and just give them your phone, maybe get a second phone where literally you've got 10 people, your closest family, the President of the United States, maybe the Senate leader. They're the only people who have your phone number. And you can have a team of people vetting all of these calls and texts coming in. Because I got to tell you, Mike Johnson, he seems frazzled, he sounds frazzled, he looks frazzled. And when he jokes, he's not really the Speaker. It's not funny really, because it seems to be reality. It is yet another sign our federal government is dysfunctional. And it just seems like he is out of control and he doesn't have any sense of, of what he's doing. He describes himself as a firefighter, always answering late night crises. And I understand you don't get to be speaker of the House because you want a typical 9 to 5 job. I'm not suggesting that, but if you're the speaker of the House, you could certainly have a couple of really energetic, bright 28 year olds who need almost no sleep, where they could be monitoring calls coming in. There needs to be some choke point that isn't just the one individual cell phone. Now, I'm a little older than the Speaker, I believe, but I gotta tell you, I have difficulty managing things just on a cell phone. I want it to come to my desktop. Sometimes I even print things out. I can't imagine the sheer volume you got 189 voicemails. How do you even find the time to listen to them? How do you find the time to read them? It just speaks ill of how our government is running now. And Mike Johnson was never anybody's first choice to be speaker of the House. He got this position because there's so many warring factions among the majority of the House that everyone else was sort of, you know, chewed up, spit out, and he was kind of last man standing. But he does not enhance his reputation or his power by saying. He basically jokes that he's not even the speaker. This is an opportunity for others to say, I'll take the power. If he doesn't have the power, I'll take it myself. What's the real lesson for you and for me? All of us, I think, have to come up with some system for simply information management. I don't purport to have a foolproof system. I mean, one thing I try to do, though, is I look at any message once and figure out where to put it. An email comes in. It's not that I'm on it every two seconds, responding instantly, but certainly by the end of the day, I tried to have deleted every email or filed it somewhere. The ones I need to answer, I try to answer same day, deleting most of them, putting as many messages as possible into spam or unsubscribing, not giving out email in the first place. If a mess. If a text comes in, I try to do it on my time so my brain doesn't become frazzled. I mean, this guy, Mike Johnson, seems really frazzled. No vacation in two years. You don't think clearly in a situation like that. So I'm a big believer. You've got to have some digital detox time. I try to go for a walk every day, as I did yesterday, as I hope to in just a moment, and leave my cell phone alone at home. Turn it off, leave it at home. Go for a walk. Went to the movies last night. I didn't put my phone on vibrate. I literally turned it off. Watched the new Wicked movie with my family. Everyone enjoyed it. You've got to get away from your phone now. I realize I'm not the speaker of the House of Representatives, but you can be a leader and have balance, whether you loved President Obama or whether you love President Reagan. A lot of people would like one or the other. They both had the discipline to exercise every day, to have time off, to take family time, to set boundaries of when they start the day. And end the day. Yes, if there's an international crisis, a war started, someone can wake them up at three in the morning. But they're not, they weren't sitting there scrolling their phone at three in the morning. And because of that, both leaders went down in history as being generally thoughtful and wise and on top of things and not overwhelmed. So Mike Johnson, someone needs to, you know, some management expert needs to come in and give this guy some tips on how to manage his inbox. Whether it's his phones, messages, his text or his email. Because he sounds like someone who's just going to keel over and have his head explode. And I don't wish him ill or anyone else back in just a moment.

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We are back here on Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Besant Spins Tariffs while Prices Stay High According to the Times, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is trying to convince Americans that Trump's tariffs are painless and that inflation is under control even as people feel squeezed every time they buy groceries or pay the rent on Meet the Press. Percent brushed off concerns, saying so inflation hasn't gone up and even suggested unhappy consumers should, quote, move from a blue state to a red state if the they want lower inflation. Okay, here's a reality check. The latest official consumer price index shows prices up 3% over the last year through September 2025. A year earlier, that 12 month increase was roughly 2.4%. Now remember, that was supposedly the big reason everyone couldn't stand Biden and Trump was going to come in to slay this monstrous 2.4% inflation. Well, it hasn't gone down. It's gone up to 3%. So inflation has risen, not fallen on Trump's watch. Percent used to call tariffs inflationary. Like most Wall street guys and most economists, Scott Besant said, no, you shouldn't have Tariffs, they're inflationary. In fact, he warned people before Trump took office, don't worry, he's not really going to do this tariff thing. Now he calls them, quote, a melting ice cube and tells Americans that access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream. Okay, imagine if Biden had tried that for families staring at higher prices. That sounds like a lot less like economics and more like gaslighting. Okay, what's the real message here? Scott Besant spent his career saying, tariffs are bad, tariffs are bad. Now he's saying, not that bad, and there's more to life than buying stuff. Oh, and by the way, if you don't like inflation, move to a red state. This is obtuse to say the least. And if you're a billionaire like Scott Besant, you can move yourself, your husband and your children any place in the world. You can move to Florida. But for most Americans just getting by, just barely paying rent, just barely paying for the groceries and seeing inflation take more out of their pocketbook, they can't afford to just pick up and move to a cheaper state that cost a lot of money. Let's go a little bit deeper here. Fox News polls show that 76% of voters rate Trump's economy as bad. This is a Fox News poll. So you can't just say, well, that's MSNBC or, that's the liberal news media. This is Fox reporting this. Now, economic issues and things like inflation are tough for any politician of any party. Biden tried to make the case that, hey, inflation's gone way down. It did go down to 2.4% in his last year. People didn't care. It was still above 2%, which is kind of the magic threshold for the Fed and others. And it had been higher earlier in his administration, and he made the case that, hey, inflation's lower here than most of Europe. Didn't persuade anybody, but now we're seeing Trump with the same kind of problems trying to spin this, to see his Secretary of the treasury say something as lame as, oh, you don't like inflation move. Moving is simply beyond the ability of tens of millions of Americans for economic reasons. One, they don't have a job in a red state. If they've got a job that pays them, you know, $35,000 a year working, let's say, security at a local bank, and they're just barely able to pay their rent or their mortgage. They can't just say, oh, well, taxes are lower in Texas and Florida. I'll move there. They don't have a job, number one. Number two, to move. Even if you don't have a lot of possession, even if you don't want to take anything, you still have to have first month, last month deposits for new apartments. If you're buying a house, well, there's tons and tons of expenses there. You're selling your house, there's expenses. So you're either moving your stuff so you have moving expenses or you're getting rid of all your stuff. You got to move to a new city and buy all new stuff. Again, if you're someone like Scott Bessant, if you're a Wall street wizard and you're worth 500 million or a billion as Besant is supposedly worth, it's no problem. It's pocket change to move. And if you're someone in his situation, probably already own five homes anyway, and you can just declare residency in the least expensive state. But that is not the life of most Americans. Most Americans have one home or one apartment and they're living on a very thin margin. Tens of millions of Americans are about $300 away from being insolvent. So when they hear a glib billionaire say, I'll just move to a red state, I think it comes across as pretty, pretty callous, not particularly persuasive, and is one of the reasons why the Trump administration is quickly losing its political support and its favorability on the economy. Now, it is true, an extraordinarily high percentage of Republicans still support Donald Trump, there's no doubt about it. But his primary reason for support by so many voters last year was the sense that he was better on the economy. He was better for things like inflation. He was going to solve inflation where there's those bad old liberal Democrats, those radical left Democrats were somehow loving inflation. They wanted to go to 10 or 20% again. According to the most recent impartial, unbiased sources, inflation last year was 2.4%. It's 3% this year. For some things like turkeys, it's gone up even higher. Are you feeling inflation? Go ahead, let me know. Post your comments here. We are recording this today. We're not live other than for my friends on TikTok Tock. So if you are watching this, even if it says live, we're not live today. I'm recording this on Friday, November 28th. But please leave your comments. I do respond to all comments in our review. Comments on every social media platform. More in just a moment.

We'll be right back after this break.

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Welcome back to Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. Let's move on to some more political news, this time involving the Vice President of the United States, J.D. vance. He's in the news, according to Newsweek. The once inevitable that may be a bit of a stretch, but the once high polling JD Vance is starting to look a little less inevitable when it comes to 2028. Citing new polling from McLaughlin & Associates, Newsweek reports that Vance's lead over Donald Trump Jr. In a hypothetical 2028 Republican primary has been shrinking month after month. In August, vance led Trump Jr. In hypothetical matchups, 36% to 16%. That ballooned briefly in September, then slid to 38 to 20 again, 38% for Vance, 20 for Donald Trump Jr. And now sits at just 3424 in November, a mere 10 point advantage over someone who's never held political office, someone who's never really had a job other than working for Daddy, other than being a bartender. That's Donald Trump Jr. Now, why does this matter? Because Trump can't run again in 2028, barring a complete destruction of our democracy, which has been talked about on a regular basis, and a dismantling of our system of government. But if we keep any semblance of a constitutional democracy, Trump won't be running in 2028 and he won't be in the White House in 2029 other than as a visitor. And Vance has been sold as the natural heir to keep Trump going. If his numbers are softening inside the GOP base, it may be early evidence that voters are souring on the whole project. One expert told Newsweek that while polls this far out are pretty meaningless, I agree with that. Vance is chained to Trump's fortunes, and Trump's approval rating is scraping new lows. So what's the real message here? JD Vance's polling numbers are down in the dumps, and that's not really his fault, because the Trump administration is seen in a very unfavorable light by More and more Americans. Right now, J.D. vance is running neck and neck with a Nepo baby who's never really had a job outside of working for daddy other than being a bartender. I'm talking, of course, about Donald Trump Jr. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. So being vice president is a huge step up if you want to be president. There's no doubt about a number of vice presidents have become president and it can be a great way to get a party nomination. Now, you don't always win. Walter Mondale had been a vice president. He got the Democratic nomination in 1984. It didn't turn out too well in the general election. Doesn't always work that way. Dan Quayle was the vice president under George Herbert Walker Bush. He ran for president and came in about last place. Not a good presidential campaign. But George H.W. bush is the most recent example of someone who was vice president and went on to become president. Now, Ronald Reagan was a fairly popular president. Sometimes people overstate how popular he was, but still pretty popular. The economy was in pretty good shape in 1990, in 1998, excuse me, 1988 and George H.W. bush one. What is going to be the perception of J.D. vance in 2028? I would argue, and this is not exactly groundbreaking analysis, it's going to be based on the perception of the Trump administration. If the whole country, or at least a sizable plurality thinks the Trump administration has been great and that the economy is great, then yeah, J.D. vance should do very well. He'll certainly have all the money he needs because J.D. vance is really, really good at sucking up to right wing tech billionaires, the Peter Thiel's of the world. They love him. He is seen as their boy. And barring some epic disaster, I can't imagine him not having all the money he needs to run a successful or at least a very credible campaign for the Republican nomination for a president in 2020. Again, if we actually have elections. But will they matter? Now? The advantage Donald Trump Jr. Has is people can say, well, I like Trump and I like the way he, he speaks out and says strong, vicious things, says whatever he wants, calls it like it is. Donald Trump Jr. Is like that. He has that advantage. And yet any bad policies, Donald Trump Jr. Could say, I don't have anything to do with it. I'm just a private sector guy. So there, there is that advantage of Donald Trump Jr. The problem, of course, is Donald Trump Jr. Is, is very untested. He's never run for anything. He's never hosted his own PrimeTime show on NBC. He's really never done anything that I'm aware of that suggests he has any talents or any skills or any accomplishment to his name other than his name. Could that be enough? It certainly could be. For people who love Donald Trump, it may be seen as a final act of love and worship to try to perpetuate it in the same way that certain people love kings, want to perpetuate the dynasty. And he might benefit from that. But when you look at the current poll rate and polls can change, someone can have low approval ratings as Ronald Reagan did in 1982 when the country was in a severe recession and bounced back as he did in 1984. So I'm not suggesting the polling data can only go down for Trump could go up. We will see. Let's look at some more data points. An economist. You go. Poll recently put Trump's net approval at about -19%, his lowest since returning to office. And analyst Mark Shanahan says Trump has to be in lockstep with the president. So if Trump numbers tank, so do Vance. Now, speaking of vice presidents, I guess it says something that I almost forgot about Kamala Harris. Obviously, she was the vice president under Vance and yes, it helped get her the nomination. It was basically handed to her. Didn't seem to help that much in the general election because anyone who didn't like Biden voted against Harris. So being vice president generally only helps if you were the vice president for someone who was a popular president. Richard Nixon almost became president in 1960 because he'd been the vice president for Eisenhower, who was a popular president in the 1950s. It still wasn't enough to make Richard Nixon win, although it did have the id, the name ID help him where he eventually did get the nomination in 68 and win the presidency in 68. So I don't think you can ever discount the power and the impact of being a vice president. But it doesn't help that much if people don't like the top name. We'll be following the ins and outs of JD Vance and the messages of of all the campaigns as we get closer to 2028 plus 2026. But in some sense, the ability for a vice president to do independent messaging is hampered if they are running while still serving as the vice president of a current administration because the messages and the actual successes and failures of that current team is always going to be what people associate, not anything else, with new messages from the candidates. More in a moment on what's going on, what's really going on in these so called peace agreements in the.

Ukraine. Imagine having a communication coach who never sleeps. Meet your new secret weapon, the TJ Walker AI clone. Go to TJWalker AI and start getting custom coaching 24 7. No scheduling, no hourly fees. I train presidents, prime ministers and Fortune 500 CEOs but the same exact communication I've delivered to world leaders is now available to you online anytime@mediatrainingworldwide.com whether you're speaking on camera, pitching a client or handling a crisis, you need these tools. These are fluffy motivational videos. They're practical, battle tested techniques to help you speak clearly, confidently and persuasively. Go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and take your communication to the next.

Level. Welcome back to Filtered. I'm your host, TJ Walker. According to the New York Times, President Trump's latest 28 point peace plan for Ukraine blindsided Europe and thrilled the Kremlin. European leaders first learned about it from headlines, not from Washington, and then scrambled to Geneva to claw their way back into the talks. The plan, as leaked, would let Russia keep more Ukrainian territory than it currently controls. It would block Ukraine from ever joining NATO and even freeze billions in Russian assets that Europe wants to use or unfreeze billions that Europe wants to use to help Kyiv. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy warned his country could soon face a brutal choice, either the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner. Only after a frantic European push did Secretary of State Marco Rubio start calling the proposal a quote, living, breathing document, hinting that Europe might get a separate track. Critics say this is not an American peace plan so much as a highly edited Russian wish list. Okay, what's the real message here? No, I don't have proof of a pee tape or that Russia has dirt on Trump and that he's acting as an agent for Russia. You have to ask yourself, if they did, if he were truly an agent of Russia, wouldn't he be doing the same things he's doing now? It is weird and bizarre that every single time Trump has to deal with Russia, he always seems to love everything about Putin. He always seems to want to give him whatever he wants. Meanwhile, allies, people who believe in democracy, he always sees flaws and failures. If any other president did the sorts of things that Trump did, routinely giving away the store to Russia, they would be called a communist dupe. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. If Trump is not acting as a Russian agent, the Kremlin must be wondering what more could possibly get from this guy because he seems to be giving them everything he wants now for years and years and years. Any president, certainly of the Republican Party who acted like this would have been run out of Washington, D.C. for that matter, Any Democrat who did this would have been run out of town. Let's not forget that Marco Rubio initially said, oh, we're just working off of Russia's wish list. He then kind of backtracked and said, well, no, no, it's. It's our list, too. We were a part of that. But why would he say it's Russia's list unless it actually were his list? Now, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has said that what Trump is doing is basically worse than Neville Chamberlain. Neville Chamberlain, famously, for getting into Hitler, trying to appease Hitler. And of course, you can't appease dictators who are greedy for land all over the world, want to take over the world. You give them an inch, they take not only an inch, but another mile or a kilometer as they do in Europe. This is a reward to Russia for aggression. This is punishing an ally. This is punishing people where we're on the same team. And it's, it's truly, truly bizarre. Let's look at some more facts here. In 2019, Trump was impeached after freezing nearly $400 million in Ukraine military aid while pressuring Keef to announce investigations into his political rival. There's been so many. We always. We forget about these impeachments because when you're a felon and you're committing new atrocities every day, it's hard to keep up. But, yeah, there was a time when at least members of the House of Representatives had some sort of moral clarity, and they impeached Trump for how he dealt with the Ukraine and the sleazy, absolute sleazebag things he did to that country for his own political gain. Now, he's not trying to get the Ukraine to investigate any political opponents that we know of, but what is he trying to do? Now, in that same year, he told G7 leaders that Crimea is Russian because everyone there speaks Russian. Now, this is a talking point directly from the Kremlin. Guess what? Russian is spoken in a lot of former Soviet Union countries that broke away for independence because they wanted democracy. So we see Trump again and again and again using Russian talking points. Russia State TV celebrated these Crimea remarks with on air boast that Trump is ours, treating his comments as a propaganda coup. Well, they were right. Sometimes a propaganda outfit is correct. In this case, they were. In 2016, Trump's team helped soften the GOP platform so it would not call for arming Ukraine against Russia, breaking with decades of Republican hawkishness. Trump has repeatedly called NATO obsolete, really? And reportedly discussed pulling the US out of the alliance. Well, now he did discuss that and remember prompting Congress to pass legislation trying to block an exit. On the eve of Russia's full scale invasion, Trump praised Putin's move into eastern Ukraine as very savvy and a genius strategy. So this just gets more and more bizarre every day. The way history has been rewritten is that just because investigations couldn't find any one document or any one testimony saying, yes, Trump is a complete, total agent under control of Russia. We have videotapes of him committing illegal acts, we have financial transactions showing how we bribed him repeatedly. Just because that doesn't exist, he somehow gets a free pass to do things that by any other stretch of the imagination, in any other political era would be considered anti American and acting like a Soviet dupe, a Russian dupe. And yet he gets away with it because there's not some threshold up here showing an actual payroll where he's on the payroll from them. It's totally bizarre. It's totally against everything this country stands for. And I wish the best for Ukraine. I hope Europe, unfortunately you had to realize America doesn't stand with you. Many Americans do. I do. But the American government in its current incarnation has contempt for democracy, has condemned for what Western Europe stands for. The current administration only has a love and a love affair with Putin and dictatorship because unfortunately, that is the role model of our current leader. Folks are out of time today. No time for your questions on communication skills and personal development skills, but I'll be back to normal on that tomorrow. Hope you are enjoying your weekend and this holiday time. I'm TJ Walker. Please subscribe to the Show. Follow It Leave Reviews thanks so.