Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Hegseth's War College Address: Troubling Shifts in Military Culture
The military-civilian divide continues to erode as new policies threaten longstanding American principles. Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson dive deep into Secretary Pete Hegseth's alarming speech to the Army War College, exposing plans to establish "authoritarian zones" at U.S. borders where military personnel would be authorized to detain civilians and check documentation.
Beyond this unprecedented expansion of military authority on American soil, the hosts unpack Hegseth's troubling claim that the Inspector General system has been "weaponized against commanders." This rhetoric signals a dangerous attempt to remove crucial oversight mechanisms that protect service members from toxic leadership and ensure accountability within the chain of command.
The conversation turns to the case of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, highlighting how the administration's narrative shifted from calling his deportation an "administrative error" to claiming gang connections – despite court documents explicitly prohibiting his return to El Salvador due to safety concerns. This pattern of retroactively creating justifications for actions already taken reveals a disturbing governance approach.
The hosts also examine plans to reinstate approximately 8,000 service members discharged for refusing COVID-19 vaccines, complete with back pay. This decision not only undermines military discipline by rewarding those who disobeyed lawful orders but sends a dangerous message about command authority.
Throughout the episode, Adam and Dick connect these military policy decisions to broader political narratives, noting how rhetoric about "restoring military lethality" falsely presupposes America's military was somehow weakened – a narrative designed to justify dramatic shifts in policy and culture that ultimately threaten longstanding democratic principles.
Join us as we examine these critical developments from a veteran's perspective and consider their implications for both military culture and American democracy. Want to engage with issues affecting veterans and their communities? Follow Left Face for weekly discussions that bridge the military-civilian divide.
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Hello everyone and welcome to Left Face. My name is Adam Gillard, here along with Dick Wilkinson. How you doing, buddy? I'm doing great. Good morning, adam. Good morning. We are the Pikes Peak Region's political podcast with a veteran's point of view Coming to you here from our crowded office right now in some moving state here. So let's get this show kicked off. Let's talk to our. Go straight to our Kilmar state here. So let's get this show kicked off. Let's go straight to our Kilmar count here. Right now we're sitting at 43 days since Kilmar Abrego-Garcia was removed from his family. A few days later, he was deported. What do you got for updates on that story?
Speaker 2:Dick. Well, I was watching the news last night and I saw that Kilmar's lawyer was giving some statements to the media and she stated that there's a surprisingly, there's a one week stay in the judicial process. His own lawyers agreed to that because they want the discovery and evidentiary process to go, you know, without perfectly, if you will say Right. They didn't want there to be any confusion or chance for backtracking by the administration, and so they're allowing the judge to kind of, I guess, do what the what the judge sees best, so that they can get him out as fast as possible, which unfortunately requires a few days delay in the process right now.
Speaker 1:Well, I thought it was already decided that the administration had to help the process along.
Speaker 2:They did, and here's where the things have shifted right. Two things have happened. The administration basically retracted their statement that his deportation was a administrative error. They said that was released in an unauthorized fashion and however that information got out even though it was apparently on judicial branch documents that that was just wrong information and they are now trying to present evidence that he is directly connected to MS-13 and that he had criminal activity, drug or human trafficking associated with his gang membership, and they've completely flipped the story around.
Speaker 1:And so that's what's going on now. Their defense is literally like don't believe the evidence that you saw. Yes, Believe what we're telling you now?
Speaker 2:Yes, correct, that's it. We're going to change our story and give us some time to figure it out.
Speaker 1:It's so brazen how every day it's something like this. It's crazy. Unheard of type stuff the way that it's just being swallowed up by folks too. I still talk with some right-wing folks and they're still convinced that this is God's work. Yes, and it's just disgusting how they're taking things like this and wrapping it up.
Speaker 2:You know how they're taking things like this and wrapping it up, and Well, they're committed. The folks that are OK with the idea that someone could be deported. They're going to find 10 different ways to justify that, whether, even if he wasn't a gang member, that just the fact that he ever came to America without permission, that's just enough, even though we gave him permission to stay. And the only place that in the court I found this out, there was a bar to deporting him to El Salvador, because that's where he is here from as far as his asylum request, and so he said that the danger to his life is from being in El Salvador. And so the only place on court documents in the world where this dude, if the government decided to deport him, they were banned, and before all of this, they were banned explicitly back in 2019.
Speaker 2:Never send this guy back to El Salvador. If you send him somewhere, just don't send him to El Salvador. And that's the only place. You know one way trip to El Salvador. So you know another ripple in the whole story there that the government.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's just by chance, because if they would have known that they were just stuck them in Guantanamo, well, sure I guess, but the plane you know flew to El Salvador. Yes, it's kind of one of those by chance things.
Speaker 2:The situation right now is that the government is trying to prove that he's an MS-13 gang member. There's just, it's the shifting line of um, what's what's the truth? Yeah, the shifting position of like what, how many times do we have to say different bad things about this guy until one of them sticks right?
Speaker 1:and it just the whole change in the narrative. Um, I was just listening to secretary hegseth's um speech to the army College and he also talked about how we have given over control of the Ukraine conflict or armament thing to UK and Germany. But the way that he said it it was like it was a peace accord. Like oh no, yeah, we're letting them take the lead now.
Speaker 2:No, we pulled the rug out from underneath sure, sure they're trying to figure shit out now, um, but but the narrative changes, yeah yeah, your vocabulary and the words that you use to describe basically the same thing. You can paint very different pictures with wordplay and the administration is. You know they're. If there's something they are good at, it's that right.
Speaker 1:I mean they hired a fox news personality to be the sex, yeah, so yeah, that's exactly what he's doing right now is just playing to the media, or playing to the people you know as a media personality, as a talking head, and just spinning it to get their approval that's true.
Speaker 2:Um can read a cue card you know yeah yeah and uh. Well, let's let's dig in on the you know hegseth story a little bit more well. We'll actually skip over a little bit of signal gate 2.0, because it's really part of the same original story. You know, misuse of of a not very secure channel talking to people that shouldn't be talked to about things that they had installed onto his work computer his personal phone work phone, work computer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it was his primary comps channel. It sounds like right For a while there, anyway, yeah, so we're, we're going to blow past that a little bit.
Speaker 2:But what, uh, adam mentioned that he, that secretary Hickseth, gave a uh speech or he addressed the army, uh, war college. So, uh, that's those are folks that have come back the war college or people that are at the oh five pay grade level. So their majors or oh five, you know promotable type, right there in that space. And it's when you come back, and a lot of times you're going to the um, uh, you're going to the war college because you're probably going to make Colonel and you're on a path for you, you're getting a master's degree out of that whole thing. So that's just, that's the education level and the type of folks that we're talking to their career officers, mid grade officers, so yeah, so he had a whole line of what we're going to call propaganda, you know, straight up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's no other way to look at this, like when we look back. You know, years down the road, this is going to be one of those speeches that it was just kind of gross to listen to, because you know one, you know he says his whole DEI is dead. You know, you know, done with wokeness, all those things, all those key fired up words, sure Got to hit the bullet points, yeah, and you know, we promote merit and we don't see color and, like you know, he said all of those things. But but then, you know, as he was talking about a few different things, uh, some really concerning things jumped out at me. One, the biggest one that I heard was they're setting up an authoritarian zone at the borders to control our borders, where DOD members will be allowed to detain people and check for papers and then turn them over to the proper authorities. So again, this is a moment in time where our military will very likely come in contact with our civilians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it seems unavoidable right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean because he didn't say where exactly this zone is. But once you establish one, you can establish more and you can grow those zones and then you can put them into other sanctuary cities where you have these authorized zones. Um, this is another one of those lines that he's just they're running past them now and they're they don't look down to see if they're going to trip on them, they're just running past all these lines well and the you know let's.
Speaker 2:Let's take a moment to pause and just talk about where, where's their break with precedent or legal framework on doing something like that? So usually, usually, when we, when the United States, deploys military service members, we send them overseas, they have all kinds of title, authorities is what it's called to do, a variety of different missions, and actually the task force or the named mission comes along with the authority, the congressional authority, to say, hey, this is what this mission is for. It's a humanitarian mission, which means you don't, your rules of engagement are different and what you're allowed to do or not do is different. Law enforcement is a type of role that it's not unheard of for the military to perform, but only in certain situations, temporary authorization, and usually, like you say, done in a way where it's not to police up American citizens. They're used as law enforcement support in either humanitarian efforts or sometimes in other countries, right when we're, when we're occupying those countries, right.
Speaker 2:But in the United States the idea that a military member would have any kind of law enforcement authority is kind of it's forbidden generally, and so the the issue here is in the united states we have the department of homeland security. We have the fbi, we have the uh immigration control, um, and we have the regular border patrol, right, and then all the just standard police force that is part of the border patrol and has been for forever, really. So the idea that we need to mix military members into that line of duty in US territory is the thing that doesn't make sense. Right, because we already have I just mentioned five, you know, law enforcement organizations that you could send there that are already there. But that's against Doge. Right, we got to draw down all these federal employees, right? We? We can't, we want to spend money on all kinds of things, but dhs and fbi and all these other law enforcement agencies, y'all are going to take these massive cuts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so now we're going to change the rules and backfill you with soldiers because they're cheaper than fbi agents that is true, so and that's another thing that he talked about, because he mentioned that that 8% cut that we talked about a few episodes ago. He kind of complained about how the media spun that as being kind of reckless. He's like no, all of his responses, though, didn't have any substance to them. He's like this is how you plan for the future. No, like how, just by cutting shit, like you're not actually saying a plan here, you're just saying words that don't really mean anything but people eat it up. And it's crazy how like this is a straight up propaganda speech to our Army War College, and in that speech he talked about how they're going to review IG complaints and how the IG system has been weaponized against commanders so that they're they can't really lead like they should lead, right. So he's gonna like embolden commanders to act recklessly and endanger people or they create toxic environments and just tell them to harden up.
Speaker 2:Yep, you know soldier, of all the things you listed out that you heard that were concerning, that was probably the one that sticks out the most to me, that gives me the most, you know, pause and most like place of concern in my mind is that the. I mean we go through great care to uh select and promote people that are going to be in command positions, even all the way down to company command in the army, as captain 03 tends to be the first place where you're in charge of troops from a legal officer perspective. Uh, you know the intention there is that the ig is the um way, this the the third rail, if you will. It's the way out of the command that if there's a problem with the command, you can. You can get off the, the command track and get over onto this ig track and say, hey, I believe that something that's against army policy, we'll just keep it. You know, I'm army guy, so we'll say this is against army policy and if I go tell my commander, well, that's the person that's breaking army policy.
Speaker 2:So that's the whole point here is that anybody in the formation, in the unit, has a channel to go outside and say, hey, something, something's wrong. And what Pete Hegg says he sees that as, uh, this accountability and this oversight is tying the hands of people to innovate. Maybe it would be a word that he might choose to um, be a forward leading and, like you know, increase the warrior mentality, those kinds of things. So warrior ethos was a big thing during the speech. Um, just readiness, you know, increase the warrior mentality.
Speaker 1:So warrior ethos was a big thing during the speech. Just readiness, you know, make sure you ensure readiness and things like that. Yeah, it was just another one of those things that when you read between the lines, we used to have something in the Space Force, air Force, called the frozen middle, like a bunch of people that just like you're sitting in spots, sure Right From a pay grade structure. You're sitting in spots, sure Right.
Speaker 2:From a pay grade structure perspective From a pay grade yeah.
Speaker 1:Like there's some E9s just sitting out there, there's some O6s just sitting out there yeah, just any idea that comes up. No, because it's not good enough. Like those folks need to stand up and start doing stuff and start making some noise because, like these things coming down, if you don't stand up right now, there's alpha personalities out there that are going to take control, seize on that and yeah, they will jump and they will. It's going to get pretty bloody in the ranks here politically.
Speaker 2:There's a let's talk about culture for a second there, because the IG thing is part of what keeps, we'll say, bad culture from running rampant. Right, we talk about toxic culture or toxic leadership outside of the military, but that's also, you know, it's also a term inside the military to have the toxic unit culture, to have a hostile work environment from a sexual assault or, you know, harassment perspective. But even hostile work environment can just be aggression and bullying and, uh, quid pro quo, but not around sexual things. But you know, just like just getting screamed at that.
Speaker 1:You're an effing loser. And effing this Like if somebody's screaming at you constantly like no man, let's be more professional. That and that happens a lot.
Speaker 2:And, like I've seen complaints for people just it's just too hostile and when it doesn't need to be, yeah yeah, and the concern there is we may, we're willing to hand an excuse to the commander or the senior sergeant in the formation and go. Well, that person is under a lot of pressure. That person is being told by someone that holds their future in their hands that they must perform, that the unit must do X, y, z, and so they're willing to push those boundaries now because their performance is on the line. The statistics on how ready is your unit is what those commanders are measured by, and so when they have what they perceive as readiness issues, that they think that you know and it's their job to correct those readiness issues.
Speaker 2:But right now, those options I'm not going to say they're limited, they're really not you just need to confer with JAG If you think you're going to push on a boundary right, to have that conversation first, and then you don't ever have to worry about the IG.
Speaker 2:Go to the IG first, right, and I'm not saying ask permission, but get advice. You have a JAG officer that is assigned to advise you when you are a commander, no matter what level you're at, and you have a hotline to that person. When you take command, they give you that card that day and say I am your advisor. That's what they're there for, right? So these processes to be able to allow a commander to have flexibility and keep their unit in line work within the boundaries of professionalism, but when you take that just one kind of thin layer of supervision away, professionalism can quickly go out the window. Right, and so the culture is what bothers me there, and you're right the, the idea of a gunslinger mentality is what's going to get you promoted, and if you break things along the way, break people along the way, you could probably still come out looking like a rock star, and that culture is going to follow you up the ranks. And that's just terrible, wasn't there?
Speaker 1:there's an old like Stanford prison study where we're like how people behave in those environments In authority.
Speaker 2:If you give someone a white lab coat, then they can tell someone else to like hurt somebody and they'll believe you because you look like you're in charge. Right, yeah, the commander is the lead does look like they're in charge. They can wear it right in the middle of their uniform, right, there's a picture on the wall. So, yeah, for sure. And and that trickles down fast. You know where the what we call pressure turns into coercion and you know we understand the military culture is meant to be hard. Uh, the work is hard and the consequences are big, but that we do. We do well with this checks and balances system and taking that away, it's there for a reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the big things I took away from Heges' speech was he was always talking about how we're refocusing on readiness or lethality and just being more effective. I take pretty big offense to that. More effective like like.
Speaker 1:I take a pretty big offense to that, you know, like like to sit there and think that you know at any point in the last four years like we've like dropped off significantly because of you know a biden administration like the people serving should be insulted by that especially the career people that maybe joined during trump's first uh administration right, I joined because donald trump was the president, right like there are for sure people in the military that did that well and I guess they're bringing back like 8 000 some people that kicked out because of, uh, covid reasons okay, you know, like you refused the vaccine and stuff like that, yeah, yeah, and they're getting full back pay too.
Speaker 2:I gotta I gotta a whole big. We can do an episode on, you know, disobeying a lawful order and then eventually being rewarded for it yeah, it'll make me throw up.
Speaker 1:Man, let's get into that conversation so it was one of the big reasons why I retired, because I didn't like how it all came down and how things were communicated and stuff like that. Um, but like, yeah, once it came down. Yeah, because I was deployed when I got my first vaccine and my commander she was, you know, pretty right wing, oh yeah, and we all went down there and got them together. Yeah, because it was an awful order and we were in a deployed location. Yeah, like you just go do it man.
Speaker 2:I served with a guy up at Buckley back in 2010,. 11 timeframe. Buckley back in 2010, 11 timeframe years. You know, 10 years after the anthrax vaccine had come back onto the scene of like people deploying certain areas need the anthrax vaccine and this guy was about to deploy or had got orders and need to start his you know, medical prep and anthrax vaccine. He decided that was the bone he was going to pick with the air force. He's an air force officer. No-transcript get out of here.
Speaker 1:You're wasting everybody's time.
Speaker 2:So he went and found a private lawyer that thought, oh, I can take on the military. Sure, I'd have never heard of UCMJ. I don't know what any of that is, but you know, you give me money and we're going to, we're going to do something, right, okay? And so he would sit at work and talk about his legal case and, you know, his lawyer told him I'm like well then, you know, I can't believe you're the smartest guy in the air force that in the last 10 years are the only person that read a regulation and somehow you found the secret code that means you don't have to get an anthrax vaccine. That didn't happen, right?
Speaker 1:your lawyer just keeps taking your money to convince you that that happened absolutely yeah, because, like you said, with commanders having a jag, like when those things get go through, they go through a huge rough. Well, they used to, they're not going to anymore. Like now they're just going to fire from the hip. But some of those old laws, you know, like they were written down and they were combed over, you're not going to like find a whole lot of loopholes in there, you don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so anyways that, that mentality when it when it pops up there's, there's only a few things in the military that I was just like man be in lockstep or dress right dress, or like you know, just um. Individual thought is not required in certain places. And when someone decided that they wanted, as my drill sergeant would say, you want to be a freaking individual. It didn't matter what pay grade they were or how long I'd been in the military. I could hear my drill sergeant yelling at that person saying you want to be a freaking individual? You know that's the person that gets shot. The person that's not in formation is the person that gets shot.
Speaker 1:You know, and I'm like go for it, yeah, and so now, as we were talking about increasing our readiness, we're bringing these people that have already dissented once back in, and bringing them back in Yep, absolutely, with a lot of money too, yeah, yeah and setting the tone and the culture for what?
Speaker 2:the warfighter mentality? You can't see my face, but I made a face on that one.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, trump made a comment a couple of days ago. I yeah, trump made a comment a couple days ago. I don't know it's all a blur, but he made America is going to be bigger than ever.
Speaker 2:Well, if we get Greenland, it will be.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Physically that's 20 percent bigger.
Speaker 1:People really need to listen to what he's saying.
Speaker 2:If we get, Canada, we'll double in size.
Speaker 1:Right, we're going to be the aggressors. What does our military do at that point, like when we just decide that?
Speaker 2:you know you definitely need some cronies if you want to invade Canada, right, well, so you need another part of cronies.
Speaker 1:Another part of Hegseth's speech is that they're starting a war room for mineral deposits, like natural resources, like that. So, instead of being focused on oil now, like they're setting up like a war room for natural minerals and things like that.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because we've figured out that we actually do have enough oil in already in the United States that we can get by, and if we really had to, we could spin up some new plants. Like energy is not really the dependency and crisis that it ever was advertised to be, but now that maybe the wool is getting pulled off of that trick, we've got to switch gears.
Speaker 1:I never really thought of that. They could very easily just spin up our refiners and stuff like that. So the threats of Canada's oil going away.
Speaker 2:It's not really a big deal. Yeah, we've got more natural gas under Alaska that will run the United States for the next thousand years, or whatever. We just have to go get it, you know. So, but the I mean I agree that the the idea that we've got to install this totally different mentality and culture in the military being offensive to certain career people. It's the same tone as make America great again requires an assumption that was currently not great and that it was currently in disrepair or even headed towards collapse, and so the whole mantra of make America great again jives perfectly with you know. Make the military lethal again. Uh well, when was it not lethal, you know? When were we not? When were we at risk or at threat from a more dominant power? When were we fighting to maintain our territory? Yeah, not not in your lifetime, pete, you know not it hasn't happened.
Speaker 1:So, um, and another thing again on his speech. There's a lot of stuff in there so I had to go read the speech online because the uh, the pbs, like the audio was cutting out and it was just kind of pain in the ass to us too. Yeah, um, but when I read it there, uh man, I I even lost track what, what I was going to say right there, I don't know. Yeah, there were so many things going through all these things.
Speaker 2:Well, we've all served long enough. I saw that you wrote as one of the notes up there. The recruiting numbers are through the roof. That was one thing, which I guess is I say, through the roof. That was one thing I say through the roof.
Speaker 1:I'm back to it. What he was going to say was talking about our weapon system, the procurement of our weapon systems and things like that they're going to go through all of our procurements and look at the contracts To me. They're going to be handing out some big contracts to their friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just a clear another one of those power grabs to me is going to be they're going to be handing out some big contracts to their friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's just a clear another one of those power grabs. And with the whole stock market fluctuations lately, how like they're like I swear Trump is just saying shit to make it tank so that his folks can buy that dip Like it is so like blatant yeah.
Speaker 2:This disregard? Yeah, riggingging racketeering at the biggest level possible, right, right.
Speaker 1:And you know when their base sits there and screams that. You know nancy pelosi trade stocks. Yeah, their base screams that. Yes, they do. And we see trump having billionaires in the office.
Speaker 2:They know you made one billion today you made 900 million today, oh you got to catch up to him, yeah, like it's disgusting man, and yet that is literally applauded.
Speaker 1:People are like yeah, rich people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just ongoing. I'm not mad at billionaires, but I'll never clap for somebody because they're rich. You know what I'm saying. Good for you, but I'm not going to cheer your name because of your bank account.
Speaker 1:I just can't do it, you know it's just a disgusting culture that we have, and I do hear that Elon is kind of on the outskirts with some things right now. He's getting into screaming matches with cause.
Speaker 2:I mean, and I you know, I don't know that it's the most american car there is, that's made as far as manufacturing, you know, components and final, final, uh, assembly, and the whole idea is that we want to restore american manufacturing. That's the whole. That's the financial plan that donald trump says. Trump says he's trying to execute with all the tariffs and everything. And if, by executing the tariffs, you destroy or severely hamper the progress of the most American manufacturing car company there is, man, talk about you shooting yourself in both feet right.
Speaker 2:You're really just screwing the pooch all the way, because the guy who's supposed to be helping you flip the tables around is losing his business because of it. That's the opposite of what was supposed to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like, how has a cyber truck become like a symbol of you know?
Speaker 2:MAGA yeah. Like electric vehicle is now that is true, because I've I've thought that the whole time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all is now that is true, because I've thought that the whole time, yeah, all these the process that happened. Downtown there's a black maga truck that drives around okay, on my cyber truck, yeah, you know, with all their flags on and stuff like that but yeah, it's just comical to me that, like they were so terrible until you realize that the guy selling it was a nazi and you're like okay, I'll take one well, it's also, I mean, as the symbolism goes it, it's a symbol of excess or or largest if you will, it's, it's very expensive, you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's big, it's gaudy, it's expensive, and so nevermind that it's an electric car, right you know? Like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It's. It's a.
Speaker 2:Hummer from the future. Right Like this dude brought us a Hummer from the future. It's still a waste of natural resources. Yeah, I mean whatever, whatever you know, but that that's, that's how that that car specifically gets a pass, you know. So I've also thought that the idea that donald trump was out there pushing electric cars at the white house just totally is a whiff to the base. You know that, we're we're. You know where's my five liter cummins.
Speaker 1:You know turbo diesel, right like that's what I need to get down the road this battery pack ain't gonna do it right and well, and I guess what has pulled uh trump off his tariffs right now is that all the ceos from the big you know retail stores like came to him and said like hey, man like we are gonna be shrewd, yeah, and like so that was.
Speaker 2:You want to talk about cause and effect, because that meeting the media covered it, but like it was still pretty quiet, right, you would have thought that would have been caught a lot more attention, especially on the liberal side of the media. You would have thought they would have really been like here it is, here it is. They didn't, but we noticed, and the very next day, or maybe even that day, trump was like oh, we're going to be nice to President Xi. What do you mean? You know? Trade war, like, let's call it something else.
Speaker 2:You know, the tune changed, they flipped the sheet music over and said play this song instead. Guy, you know I mean, that's what happened, right? They went in there and said just we're gonna lose a trillion dollars in retail next year if you keep this up, right, like the just 20 30 percent shrink in the retail sector, if you keep doing this, yeah and so now, how is he gonna spin this into the art of the deal?
Speaker 1:what we're we're gonna? We're gonna come out on the other side of this with maybe the same deal as we had walking into it, probably worse. I don't think China's going to care about his art of the deal. Trying to scare tactics They've already called this bluff.
Speaker 2:Donald Trump is the epitome of a guy who would break a lamp and then glue it back together and try to sell it to you saying that it was found art. Then glue it back together and, like, try to sell it to you saying that it was found art. You know, and like you know, there's he, he, he will break it and then tell you that he made it better. Yeah, I built this by hand. Yeah, exactly Everything. That he will ruin something and then, when it bounces back and has this, like giant, you know he'll lose 300% of something and then it'll get a hundred percent of its value back.
Speaker 1:you know, so you're still down two-thirds yeah, and he'll say I had, I had a hundred percent gain in one day, biggest gain ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, come on. That was after you had a month of you know solid losses and then in one day you got a bounce back and the headline is biggest you know gain in value, and that's it. That's his story. That's the only thing he'll ever mention about that series of events, that business failing or that political gain. It's just we had the biggest day in Wall Street ever right and it's because we had the worst day ever, the day before that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the last four days have been pretty bad, but the story is biggest stocks day ever. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy Period. The last four days have been pretty bad, but the story is biggest stocks day ever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Period, right, but you broke it, dude. And he's like no, no, no, I made it. I made the biggest day ever happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I guess technically that's true, but you made it happen because you ruined it in the first place. You don't get credit for that right, but to first place, you know, don't? You don't get credit for that right, but it to him you do. Yeah, anybody else would be ashamed of that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, shame does not exist in that that family there um, one thing that I've been noticing uh, with the protests downtown, um, I've been seeing more republican and republican signs, like republicans against trump and things like that okay, like there are more folks like seeing it and coming out and actually supporting it, which was they kind of stood up, they had their own little circle off to the side there.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't want to get cooties? Yeah, there's a lot of that going around. Yeah, democrats have cooties. I'm telling you, man, if they're standing outside with a sign, they have cooties, all right.
Speaker 1:If you stand too close to them, you might come back. You might come back next weekend. Catch the gay or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you might come back and protest again. You might say oh, this is what they've been doing all along, right. Next thing you know, you're on a podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just fun to see people having a space to come out and actually voice their opinions in some place that traditionally has not been, you know, friendly to. You know democrats, progressives, you know this has been such a staunchly republican area for so long. Just talking about el paso county.
Speaker 1:El paso county colorado, uh, colorado springs, yeah, um, it's such a red area and it will be for probably a few more cycles, but, you know, getting thousands of people to show up and to see like republicans out there it's, and not as many guns pointed at us, which is cool. That's like during the floyd protest there was guys up on the, on the parking garage, yeah, with like just walking, pacing with rifles, with rifles like on like on the roof, like yeah, at the crowds that was defensive in the uh ags uh yeah, yeah, yeah, so, but that's not happening.
Speaker 1:So I mean, yeah, that's progress, that's what we're all about.
Speaker 2:It's in the name. It's in the name of the podcast, right? Well, you know what? I think that might be a good place to you know, let's, let's leave it on a high note. You're not getting guns pointed at you at the protest anymore. That guns pointed at you at the protest anymore, that's America at its finest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:Thanks everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, join us again next week. Thanks,
