There's too
many of you brother brother brother
Good morning and welcome to the Earl Ingram show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-752-4842.
You can text us at that same number.
Good morning to you, Cardi.
How you doing, man?
Man, I'm doing pretty good.
Earl just got some breaking news last night.
My younger brother has leukemia, so...
kind of going through that with the family and trying to get everything situated with that.
Well, ma'am, our prayers go out to you and your family, man.
I know, you know, God is able.
But, you know, sorry to hear that, man.
And, you know, we'll certainly send up prayers.
Appreciate that, too, by the way.
Thank you.
You know, it's it's Friday.
And so as we await.
Sandy Williams.
And I guess he should be arriving any moment.
I just wanted to at least say that we're headed towards some warm weather.
I'm excited about that.
And let me see where we are with Sandy.
So I'm excited about the warm weather.
And at least, you know, we'll be 50 and above starting at 60, a couple of days of 60 next week.
And so excitement is on tap.
We might have, if I have finally turned the corner with this bad weather.
You know, there's,
There's so much going on.
And a lot of things that Sandy and I are going to be covering this morning.
And with with Donald Trump and and Republicans, you know, I don't know how I'm looking at the fact that Trump is preparing to close the Department of Education.
You know, the the jobs report.
doesn't look very good right now in the economy.
The economy is slowing.
And there are just so many negative signs, it's hard to see positives happening in this country right now.
And the horrors of what, you know,
are coming down the pike.
Um, it's just unfathomable.
You know, some of us been around a little while.
We've seen some times, you know, but the nation always seems to spring back as, as there he is.
Uh, Sandy Williams is finally making his triumphant return.
Yeah, I've been I've been in hiding.
Good morning to you, my friend.
How are you?
I'm all right.
I'm all right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I looked at the Lakers who are coming to Milwaukee soon and they can't seem to lose.
No, man.
You know, you know, one.
Well, they didn't make one.
It may one big trade and then smaller ones.
But the big trade seems to have triggered them into, you know,
a winning proposition.
The other part of how smart they were with that trade Sandy, bringing, what is it?
Well, Danzig.
Look at Danzig.
Yeah, they brought Danzig in, and Anthony Davis, the guy they traded for on the big point, he's not even playing, so they sort of lucked out in the process.
Well, here's the other thing.
Long term, what they benefited from was,
LeBron James at the end of his career.
Yeah, now they've got his replacement.
Yes, they've got a young man, right?
Yep.
Yeah, they're pretty smart.
They made a great deal.
You know, Sandy, we're going to get started and talk about a lot of different things.
But the first thing I want to ask you before we go into what you want to tell, I'm watching the news and
And the latest thing is the jobs reports are not looking good.
Yeah, they aren't.
They at least they aren't looking as good as they the prognosticators had predicted.
What does that mean?
And obviously, what does it mean?
You know, the people, the people who predict.
No, I know about the
prognosticators, but the fact that the jobs aren't looking.
What Trump is doing is rattling the economy.
Every part of the economy is unsure about what the future looks like, and you don't hire someone that's a new source of cost to you, a new annual payroll cost, unless you're pretty sure about your ability to earn the money to pay that new employee.
Uncertainty causes businesses to pull in their horns.
You don't hire people.
You don't make investments.
You basically sit on your hands until you can figure things out.
So is
this 101, 101 on how the economy and things
that
impact and affect the economy?
Yes.
I mean, it doesn't, it isn't even finance 101 before you get to business school, before you decided to go to business school, you understand that.
that uncertainty is the enemy of good business.
Uncertainty is the enemy of investment.
Uncertainty is the enemy of people of the stock market.
And the stock market is also responding in a very disappointing fashion.
Yeah, but Sandy, let's get into, we got a lot of stuff we're gonna cover, a lot of areas we're gonna cover this morning, and you kinda wanted to talk about Donald the Don.
The Don, yeah, you know, the Don is, you know, he likes, he's always called himself the Don, and I didn't realize that it was Don Corleone that he was, that he was referring to.
But, you know, when you look at the style of leadership now, I read an article by a guy named Ed Kilgore in New York Magazine, and he did a really good job of describing how it is that
Vladimir Putin rules and how it is that Donald Trump is now moving in the direction of trying to rule, which is not trying to obtain the admiration and respect of those who might work for you or those out there who you want to be subjugated to you, but what you demand is absolute loyalty.
And the response to a lack of absolute loyalty is revenge and retribution.
It's whack-a-mole.
In Russia, it involves falling out of windows.
But in the United States, it also can play a different kind of a game.
It's the mayor, the crooked mayor of the city.
And every big city machine mayor operated this way, which is you've got the building inspectors.
They're your army.
and if someone owns real estate in your city and decides to stick their head up and and be a mole and to say something that might be derogatory about you the next day
The building inspectors are at every property and they're finding all of the deficiencies that might exist and some that might not exist that make your life absolutely impossible and miserable.
And you learn your lesson.
You don't stick your head up ever again and talk about the mayor because keeping your head down avoids a lot of problems.
And what's happened now is that pursuant to Project 2025's playbook
Donald Trump has seized control of the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of the local U.S.
Attorney's offices, and the U.S.
banking regulation, the Department of Treasury.
All of these people, and the SEC even, and all of these people are in a position to regulate the dickens out of any business that might have the temerity to stick its head up and say something negative about the president.
And so we have federal investigations of news networks.
We have the potential for antitrust actions against Amazon.
We have all of these arrows in the quiver of this Don, this Don Corleone president, who can now threaten or implicitly threaten everybody to either get in line or be in line for federal prosecution.
And James Diamond, one of the most independent bankers in the country, has lined up.
You know, Sandy, when you speak on that level,
And all of these other entities and institutions that really kind of at the apex of our nation and what and what it does and how it works The average person is the one who's gonna be impacted
the most well in the end
Well, what we should understand is that this is a form of repression that causes everybody to line up.
You look at William Gates.
William Gates meets with him, finds out that USAID and the things that they do that he William Gates is interested in in terms of world health.
Donald Trump makes him some promises on that.
And when William Gates begins to line up in a manner that he hasn't in the past, the president can use his tools to thwart
any sort of dissent, and he's doing so.
They're investigating universities that have been places of dissent.
They're particularly investigating institutions and universities that are liberal in nature, not conservative.
And when you are a business and you're threatened with enforcement that might come out of left field, if you stick your head up, you keep your head down.
You know, that's you're protecting youth.
You believe you're protecting the jobs of your employees, the, the institution that you've developed.
And so this is the form of repression that is most effective and it is in play right now.
I know for Sandy, all of those people and entities that you talked about who are keeping their heads down in the end, people, the average American citizen, uh,
You know, it's gonna be impacted by the decisions that those people make
Yeah, I mean the the victims of the mistakes of the of the government of the United States are always Tom Dick and Mary You know the the people who have great wealth
have a big landing, they have lots of cushion on their landing pads, and they don't have to worry about recessions.
They can, they'll sit in and swing the ice cubes and their cocktails around while they talk about the pain they're experiencing from the recession that's causing their stock portfolio to be simply half of what it used to be, but
They aren't experiencing pain.
They're just unhappy because they aren't as quite as wealthy as they used to be.
But Tom Dick and Mary actually experienced the
pinch.
8-5-7-5-2-48-42 is Friday.
That means Friday is with my co-host Sandy Williams and you on The Earl Ingram
Show.
Well I know what that is.
Don Coleon.
Welcome back to The Early In The Room Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
Text us at that same number as Friday.
It means Friday's my call.
I'll send you the music.
Well, I picked music that reflects the style of leadership of someone like Don Corleone.
It's the mob.
It's the mob in terms of...
the form of whack-a-mole that keeps everyone in line.
And I think that's what we're watching right now.
And what I've talked about on earlier shows is my concern about process and the American democratic architecture.
And what we have in place now is a government that's wholly intent on
I'm taking that apart and giving all of the power that used to be subject to checks and balances to an individual.
And that individual is apparently inclined to use that power in much the same manner as Don Corleone, which is either line up or I will take all these arrows in my quiver of governmental power and I will aim them at you.
And so you'll learn your lesson very quickly.
And you don't need many examples of that.
to cause everybody to decide that they're simply going to keep their head down so that in the game of whack them all, they aren't the object of the whack.
You know, Sandy, as an American citizen, the the the outrage that I have and that I feel is that those people who are going to keep their heads down to protect themselves, even though, you know, wrong be damned.
I've got to sell preservation.
Is what I'm concerned about yeah, and not the American people
Well, what's happening is that the self-preservation of the people in power is gonna cause the damage to be done to all of us Yes, the Tom Dick and Mary, you know, we're gonna we're the ones that are gonna feel the pain while they avoid the pain of Doing the right thing or doing the thing that they would be would be right from their standpoint Because of their fear of being
Wacked and you know if this was going on locally if the mayor of Milwaukee was behaving like this I think it would be uncovered and and we would all be Involved in local politics to try and make sure we try we'd be on a let's clean up government campaign and and here we are watching our federal government Reduce itself to being just that kind of corrupt process that we would worry about a great deal if it was going on locally,
you know sending now now
that you expressed it and explained it in that manner.
How do you stop it?
Well, that's what you know the founding fathers foresaw this because they understood that that absolute power corrupts Absolutely, you know that you need to have no one can have absolute power under the architecture of the founding fathers Because there are these checks and balances that are built in and you know the Supreme Court has maybe stood up to Donald Trump on this USAID matter
You know, and I don't know how long Justice Roberts and Barrett are going to keep their backbone intact.
But, and we'll see whether the government responds by, by.
obeying the court with respect to the USAID matter.
Interestingly, that $2 billion that was involved with the USAID embargo on expenditures was money where the contractors had already done what they were supposed to do under their contracts to get paid.
So this was another case.
of Donald Trump welching on his contractors, much as he did on his casino projects and every other project he carried out, where contractors galore, everybody would walk away saying, don't work, don't go there and work, you aren't gonna get paid.
You know, Sandy, the fact
that he acts as though he's doing this to benefit the American people,
When nothing could be further from the truth it's all about.
You know him and
well you know I think I think he's an empty suit I think that he is a tool of a bunch of ideologues.
Donald Trump is not an ideologue.
I don't think he has an ideology other than Donald Trump and power to Donald Trump.
But there are people, the people who are the architects of Project 2025 who are very much ideologues.
They're not pragmatists.
They have an axe to grind.
They want to accomplish a change in the U.S.
government structure.
And they want to create essentially a very powerful president and to strip
the federal agencies of their capacity to implement federal laws that have already been adopted.
And so that happens to line up, the sun, the moon, and the stars line up for Donald Trump, because these are people saying, we're going to make you more powerful.
And he doesn't care why.
He just cares.
He's just happy that they're giving him a bigger whip.
So, Sandy, we've got a new caller.
We're going to take her, Don, TSA.
Good morning to you, Don.
You have a question to comment?
Good morning to you both and thank you.
I think there is a potential solution, but it's a real heavy lift and I think that would be that we start across this country a concerted effort to recall members of Congress and if we can flip sufficient numbers in both the House and the Senate we can then impeach Trump, but it's a heavy lift and federal office holders
impeachment has never been tested in the court.
So the Supreme Court, like after all that effort, could undo it.
But that's, I'm looking for solutions.
Don, thank you very much for the call, Sandy.
Well, Don, actually, whether the process succeeds or not, the effort to do it might well grab the attention of a sufficient number of Congress people that it might change their course of action.
My problem with all of the solutions we have as people, which involve changing Congress, is that currently the president's strategy doesn't involve Congress.
It basically involves the imperial presidency and making that a reality.
8-5-5-7-5-2-48-42, you know, my co-host Sandy Williams, and we've got a lot to cover, a lot to talk about.
You're tuned in to the Earl Ingram show.
And now the end is near And so I face the final curtain My friend, I'll say it clear I'll state my case
Of which I'm certain I've lived a life that's full
All
right, welcome back to a melancholy Sandy Williams on the Earl Ingram show
I Was I was picking music not only that might be about the Dan but might be the kind of music that Dan Corleone would listen to so
eight, five, five, seven, five, two, 48, 42.
You're tuned into the Erlingham show.
It's Friday.
I mean, it's Friday's my co-host, Sandy Wim, Sandy.
There's been this, you know, haranguing now and pressure placed on Donald Trump.
He seems to be feeling some of the pressure.
about what Elon Musk has been doing.
And so Donald Trump now is coming out and he's saying, hey, uh, uh, Elon Musk is the department heads are making these calls and making these decisions, not Elon Musk.
Is it has he learned his lesson or is he trying to pull another another fast?
No, I think I think he's just listening to his lawyers.
I think this is legal cosmetic.
I watch, uh, I think.
There's no question that Elon Musk and his guys are calling the shots, sending out the memos.
giving the instructions.
But from a legal standpoint, Elon Musk is not a government employee.
He has no power.
He has no capacity to issue orders.
The only people in the normal chain of command who would have the capacity to issue directives that a court might honor would be the secretary of the agency, the president, and people down the chain of command of actual employees.
And so I think this is all just done to create the record.
so that in court they can again claim that Elon Musk is not really in charge uh... it's actually you know they named a woman last week who was like absolutely nobody in the administration and said she's the one she's the government employee who's actually doing this and i think the lawyers must have gotten together and said yeah that's not gonna fly now we need to do something much more formal and so they've had this this formal press
opportunity.
Now they've had the press in there so they can hear the president instruct the cabinet officials.
And now they've got a record they can take to court.
But who's really in charge from all intents and purposes?
It appears that it's Elon Musk.
So, you know, the cabinet members and clearly as you just stated, there's a lot of pressure.
Initially, Trump totally ignored it.
But now even Sandy conservatives, Congress people starting to, you know, say some things is starting to, as you stated, and long ago affect their constituents, their constituents are making noise.
Well, you know, you can't you can't fire a whole bunch of people you can't renege on a whole bunch of contracts without creating a bunch of pain out there in various congressional districts and And that's what's happening.
I mean, I've run into now several people I've talked to each one of which has an individual story to tell that involves
them experiencing or members of their family experiencing problems associated with these cutbacks.
In particular, the USAID cutbacks, which I think Donald Trump thought was going to be an easy blow, but it's being experienced locally in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
There's a lot of people who are affected.
It isn't just ivory tower elite intellectuals who are experiencing
the benefits from these government grants that are associated with, for instance, medical research.
There are people in experimental programs right now trying to get over the cancer they have who are dependent upon grants from the federal government, which have been put on hold.
You know, Sandy, they clearly, you know, I was doing Dominic Selvia's show with him on yesterday.
I was on his show yesterday.
And I asked him a question.
You know, he had been to many Trump rallies.
I had been a couple, I think a couple.
And so you watched this early on, Sandy, and it was kind of a court jester kind of thing.
And you watched Donald Trump, and you watched these starry-eyed people all dressed in MAGA attire.
and with the signs and all those kind of things, and you never once even in your mind could have believed that they could have pulled this off.
There was nothing, but I guess as you stated, it wasn't Trump who pulled it off.
It was all of those masterminds in Project 2025
who pulled this off.
Well, they're the ones who are pulling the strings in terms of what's happening now.
You know, we've got Peter Navarro and the tariff hawks who have persuaded Donald Trump that number one, these are all things he can do unilaterally.
So if you're a sort of megalomaniac, and if you like not only proving to everyone else, but proving to yourself that you have a great deal of power, then when someone whispers in your ear, you can implement these tariffs unilaterally.
Sir, you can do this without talking to anybody else.
This is your Individual power, then well you you like doing it.
It's like this is how you get off I can I can put a tariff on that
And so, you know, we've got people talking to the president about how he can exercise power unilaterally, and this is someone who likes nothing more than the capacity to exercise power unilaterally.
And being able to turn it on and turning it off are both exercises of power.
So we have this guy who's turning tariffs on, then he turns them off, then he turns them on.
I mean, that's the kind of instability that rocks the...
the economy just as badly as the uncertainty about whether you're going to turn them on.
So Sandy Sandy in this morning's Wall Street Journal, Trump's tariffs are no emergency.
The president invokes a law that doesn't give him power to impose sweeping tariffs.
Someone should sue.
So yeah, absolutely.
I'm his tariff this unilateral tariff policy does require that he makes certain findings associated with emergency the tariffs that he's imposing that contradict that the trade agreement that he entered into and declared to be the best trade agreement ever in the world the one five years ago that he entered into with Canada and Mexico only allows him to implement tariffs
contrary to those treaties in the situation of an emergency.
So he declares an emergency.
An emergency about what?
His emergency theory is the fentanyl trade.
And
the tariffs are the necessary weapon that he has to use in order to stop an emergency, which is the fentanyl trade.
But let's face it, that's a made up emergency.
And it's made up particularly when you aim at it.
Canada, for instance, where there's no evidence that the fentanyl trade is materially being impacted at all by importation through Canada.
And so almost everything that Donald Trump is doing, including all of what was in Project 25, is based on his declaration that America at large.
our economy, our society, are all in an emergency condition, and they require his kind of conduct to solve for the emergency.
And my question is, what emergency?
What, our economy is as solid as ever.
And what is the emergency in our society that he is addressing?
Well, you know, he talked about the emergency at the border.
He talked about the emergencies everywhere and Sandy.
But I guess what this gentleman is really talking about or asking is, should he have to prove that there's an emergency before he can get away with doing the things that he's doing?
Well, absolutely.
And that's the issue that's going to be the tough one with respect to the Supreme Court, because I do believe that the Supreme Court, as currently configured, is going to be very reluctant to get into the mind of the president with respect to deciding whether or not
an emergency exists that warrants the conduct.
Because we might well have a fentanyl emergency.
The question is, what are the right responses to it?
We might have had an emergency at our border with respect to the rate at which we were having infiltration over the border.
But what is the proper response to that in the emergent power of the president?
There's an altogether possible likelihood that at some point,
This president is going to believe there's an emergency that warrants declaration of martial law.
You know, martial law can involve suspending elections.
Martial law can involve using the military in the United States with respect to the domestic citizenry.
I mean, so, you know, it is going to be important that we have a court that is capable of interceding and deciding whether the
There is an emergency and number one and number two, whether the president's conduct in response to that emergency is appropriate.
You know, Sandy, I'm looking breaking news.
Trump threatens new sanctions on Russia.
Sandy, you know, what's next?
Is he going to threaten sanctions on Earl Ingram and Sandy Williams?
I mean, what?
That's what I'm looking like.
Here's the problem.
This is a president who likes.
If he had if he has a gun, I'm sure he would like to just shoot it.
You know, it doesn't matter This is the question of of the
the possibility of using power.
And if you are power hungry, then what you want to do is exercise that power, whether it means turning something on or turning something off.
I think this again is cosmetic eye wash.
Donald Trump just wants to prove to Congress that he's a tough guy with respect to Russia.
And so how tough is it to
claim or to state that you might increase sanctions on Russia.
All you're doing there is bluster until, in fact, that happens.
And, you know, I think that so far what Donald Trump has run into is a problem associated with the extent to which he's become way too cozy with Russia.
So let me ask you, Sandy, you know, in several weeks.
Uh, the, the, um, Congress is going to be faced with, uh, you know, the budget and Democrats are clearly stating, Hey, we're not good.
They don't want us to be involved in governing anything anyway.
And they're going to basically not even be involved in this.
The budget is going, you think it's going to be an albatross around his neck?
I do.
I said to you a couple of days ago, I think that the Democrats will be perfectly willing to sit on their hands.
And if the Republicans can't organize themselves in a way to pass a budget, I think that the Democrats will let the government shut down because.
the Republicans are hell-bent on shutting the government down anyway.
And what is happening right now with the conduct of the Republicans is more and more people are realizing the actual benefits that are provided by the federal government, that the federal government is not just a bunch of paper pushers and that when you lay off a bunch of federal employees and when you terminate a bunch of federal programs, it actually hurts because those programs and those employees are not just
paper pushers, and it's not just a balloon that when you pop it, it doesn't matter.
You know, Sandy, when the shutdown of the government, which almost appears to be inevitable because Congress, the Republican Congress and Republican Senate aren't on the same page, at some point in time, when will they start having these discussions?
Well, they've already started.
They understand, I think, that the Democrats are going to be willing to let them hang themselves.
And they've started a process of trying to figure out how they can extend the budget on an interim basis, out through September, and get through the next hurdle.
8-5-5-7-5-2-48-42.
It's Friday.
It means Friday's in my coat, Sandy Williams and you on the Erel Ingram
Show.
He did it.
Can't doubt it Let's fly way up to the clouds Away from the maddening crowds We can sing in the glow of a star That I know our love has enjoyed peace of mind Let us leave the confusion and all this illusion behind
Just like birds of a feather, a rainbow together will find.
All right,
welcome
back to the Earl Ingram Show.
As always, you can join us at 855-752-4842.
Check us at that same number.
It's Friday.
I mean, Friday's with my co-host, Sandy Williams.
Sandy, your music.
Well, I asked artificial intelligence to give me some music that the mob listens to.
Really?
Really?
Yeah.
And they gave me this one.
I don't know how they decided that, but I'm innocent.
So artificial
intelligence knows about the mob?
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
I've got a couple of different artificial intelligence apps.
I'm currently using one called Claude.
And Claude provided me with a lot of music cues associated with Don Corleone and
the mob.
You know, you know, Sandy, um, as we watch what is happening before, uh, before eyes and it's, I mean, in such a short period of time, the dismantling of the levers of government, um, and you, and you just, even as an American citizen,
you sit back and you watch this and you and you just say, okay, do they ever even give it a second thought that, you know, after four years, the damage that they're going to have accumulated, then the people push, move back to the Democratic Party.
Don't they understand or do they not plan on ever relinquishing the power that they have?
That's what I believe it is.
I think they hope and plan that they won't relinquish the power.
Project 2025.
involves the discussion in the introduction to it, as well as the whole document, a two-year war.
So it's got a timetable.
They think they will have Congress for two years.
They think that in the first two years of this presidency, they can change the architecture of our government, put the power into the hands of the White House to micromanage the economy, to make sure that the policy that is the policy of the president will get impl...
up and down the line, that the war against the so-called administrative state will be won in those two years.
They'll knock the stuffings out of the number of people who work in Washington and make the agencies much less capable of doing what it is they were otherwise doing.
And what they're accomplishing is if you picture a pendulum, a pendulum on a short string swings very rapidly back
and
forth.
pendulum on a really long string swings slowly back and forth and what's happening now is they're shortening that string on that pendulum and they're making it very short indeed four years because every president who gets elected is going to be capable under this new architecture of being the new sheriff in town.
They even talk about that now, the people in the White House, that we've got a new sheriff in town.
And that new sheriff is going to be able to implement all new policies.
And so that pendulum is going to swing rapidly back and forth.
And that rapid swing is going to knock the stability out of the American processes, including our economy.
These people, in the name of creating a golden age, are
gonna kill the golden goose they're gonna kill our the stability that is the underpinnings for the american economy
so sandy i always speak from the perspective of the average american citizen that's who i am that's that's the community and the life that i live in and most of the people listening to this show that's who we are this continue
If now, you know, Democrats two years later or four years later get their chance to come and swing things back, it's going to take years.
This uncertainty and continue swinging back and forth damages the average American even more because there is no stability.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it damages the business community because they have trouble making the investments.
and the investments which might create jobs.
I mean, if you believe at all in the notion that our private economy requires a stable basis upon which investments can be made so the jobs will be created, we're knocking the underpinnings of that out with this process.
And this is the problem with ideologues
Getting control.
You know, there are people who look at Donald Trump today as the ultimate pragmatist.
Well, he's pragmatic about Donald Trump obtaining power.
He's not pragmatic about doing the things that are going to help America and Tom Dick and Mary.
And this new process of his securing power
is at the behest of a bunch of ideologues who want to change America in some very basic, dramatic ways.
It's an experiment, a huge experiment, and what we don't need is an experiment because experiments fail 90% of the
time.
So tell me how it makes sense.
I know this doesn't make any sense.
So he put Meg Mann in charge of the Department of Education so she can shut down the Department of Education.
I mean, yes, these are just nonsensical things.
Well, the problem is that they are.
very important policy initiatives, which are being done without any sort of public deliberation.
And deliberation is what's necessary to carry out the rational revision of our government.
And our government needs to be examined.
It probably needs to be revised in some fashion.
It needs to be made more effective.
But what we don't need is this lack of deliberation and just Medax smashing.
We're going to take your calls, you know, in the second hour, 855-752-4842.
It's Friday.
That means Friday's my call.
Sandy Williams and you.
All right, welcome back to the Euro League room show as always you can join us at 855-752-4842 that's 855-752-4842 It's Friday and only Sandy Williams can go from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson As Sandy the music
it's a big bracket and yeah, that's this that's the smooth criminal by Michael Michael Jackson,
so did your AI
Send you to that
Yeah, it you know, it turns out you can formulate music and AI is pretty good at tying together some loose ends some of them are fairly disparate like Michael Jackson and and but but you know, I am amazed by AI I've been using it an increasing amount and
the two amazing things about it.
One, what it does, and two, how rapidly it does it.
I mean, you know, it can do amazing things.
It also uses an amazing amount of electricity and it maybe replaces a careful thought.
Well, it certainly helps me when I'm writing a sentence to make sure that my grammar is right and that my verbiage is right.
You know, yeah, I mean, it's being increasingly used.
I suspect that we'll all start to speak haltingly and maybe without articles or other nuances of grammar.
All right, let's go to the phone line, Sandy.
We've got CJ's been waiting for a while.
CJ, you say what?
Well, thank you for taking my call, Earl and Sandy.
You know, as I listen to folks like you, you always say that or else I like saying that.
You know what he's doing?
He's driving a lot of these issues to the Supreme Court to get judicial decisions, not social and political decisions.
We saw it with the Biden administration with student loan forgiveness.
went three times to the Supreme Court.
And this is what he's going to do.
We saw the governor of Maine dispute that they're going to follow the executive order about keeping women sports for women.
We saw it with the fact that anti-Semitic fools
that universities with presidents that don't enforce those issues will be threatened to not get funding.
Okay, so CJ,
before you go any further, let me say this.
I don't think, Sandy, anybody should be celebrating the way Donald Trump and others are forcing universities to go after people for free
speech.
I don't either, but I don't understand CJ's point.
So CJ, what is what you're saying that it's a good thing that the president is testing the constitutional powers of the presidency and that and that what you're applauding is the notion that we will have the Supreme Court frequently determining what the range of power is.
Is that your point?
No, I love the fact that the liberal progressive socialist
threaten the fact that these things are happening.
So he's going to drive and force these representatives to vote on issues like they did.
I don't understand because you're talking around in a circle now because the executive orders get tested in court.
They don't get tested by Congress.
I just don't understand, because I think what's happening is we have a president who's driving us in the direction with these frequent tests of the edge of the constitutional envelope to a constitutional crisis.
The president can issue executive orders, but whether those executive orders have the power of law is a matter of contest.
Some things the president does by executive order are clear cut, and he's empowered to do so.
Many of them might not be.
You know, Sandy, when you refer to people as liberal, social...
these titles and these names, it reminds me of Archie Bunker and Pinko.
So, you know, I mean, if people refer to people by who they are, not liberal, social, I mean, come on, man, what is that?
Well, I'm concerned.
I had a telephone call last night with a bunch of my college roommates and asked the question, do you think that this assault on the institutions like Harvard and the Ivy League, the Stanford, the major coastal intellectual centers.
Are those attacks because of what it is they're doing?
Or are they attacks on them because they represent bastions of liberal socialism, as CJ would call them?
And so therefore the funding should be withdrawn because these people speak liberally.
And that's an assault on freedom of thought, freedom of expression.
And there's no place for this in the United States.
We're starting to decide
what kinds of thought processes liberal or conservative need to be talked about, considered in the context of universities and schools.
Universities are supposed to be places of open discussion, open to talk about anything.
And if anything, Harvard, who's being accused of anti-Semitism, what they're guilty of is letting people talk freely on both sides of the political spectrum.
And so, you know,
Freedom of speech is a very vital freedom and freedom of expression and freedom to hold political viewpoints.
And we should not have the tools of government deployed against us if we happen to disagree with the incumbent political ideology, whether we be liberals and there's a conservative in power or CJ, day after tomorrow, when you're a conservative and there's a liberal in power.
Well, you know, Sandy, the pendulum, as you always say, swings both ways.
CJ?
Well the mere fact that you're okay with students that are foreign students that come over here and hold rallies They have a freedom to do
that in America
CJ.
Yes,
they have a
Yes, they have a freedom to do that in America.
It's
always been the case You know what?
Take their funding away from the school.
God bless Donald Trump for doing it because well, that's not freedom of speech girl.
So what is it?
That's threatening people
Who are
they threatening?
Well, no, no, no, wait, let's, let's, let's, let's not conflate if, if people threaten people.
Thank you very much,
Cardi.
Thank you very much.
If there is conduct which is constitutes assault, which constitutes physical threats, that isn't freedom of speech and that's not permitted regardless.
So, you know, I think what we should worry about is, is the question of whether free speech
Not not unlawful conduct is being supported and you know free speech needs to be supported unlawful conduct Assault and what have you isn't condoned by anyone
You know the only person the president of the United States Sandy isn't the only person who has a right to free speech in our country.
Is it safe to say that?
Well, yeah, and at the point is that speech is free and and whether the speech is repugnant or not
because who's to judge what's repugnant?
And that's a very rapidly shifting sand that is dangerous to stand on.
And so we need to have freedom of speech in every direction.
And the ACLU has supported the right of Nazis to march.
So, you know, I think that that we need to be very protective of freedom of speech and we should not be withdrawing funding or otherwise using the tools of government to try and regulate speech and And we need to allow foreigners in our country to exercise speech as well We don't want to be traveling in London and be worried about what it is We say that we might be subject to arrest or deportation You know, that's not
That's not the way we hope the world order works.
All right, Tom, from LA, you're up, Tom.
You say what?
All right, I have some comments and a question.
One, we, the people, ultimately are the government, and we must never forget that.
If Republicans are spewing it, you can bet that they're doing it.
We are headed towards the Trump session.
money in politics and lobbyists in politics have ruined our country.
There was only one tow-tapper in a bathroom, and that was a Republican.
I am a proud Franklin Delano Roosevelt Democrat.
Now, for my question, when you listen to, I'll call it, factual radio versus conservative radio,
You know, you don't get on conservative radio.
You don't get an apology if the host was wrong about something.
You don't get a caller being called out.
All they do is go locked up with everyone.
Anybody on civic media will call out Democrats as well as Republicans.
Anybody on civic media will have an actual conversation that is longer than the different models that I said at the beginning of this call.
But they say the same thing every single day.
And that is the reason why I think they get some people that are in the middle to actually go along.
with Republicans because Republican radio never ever tells the truth about anything.
All they do is a talking point and then they give someone like a CJ to call up a factual radio station and give his talking point and then it's all discombobulated from there.
So I don't know what the answer is.
I'd like to know Sandy from you or even you Earl.
What is the answer to that because if their propaganda is never questioned And I'm talking about at the time that it's bad What is it that we can do on the factual radio side?
That we can somehow I don't know
so so time
let me let me first
let me first say you say it They're never questioned.
I think that you know every time CJ and others on the other side of this say something that's not right
They are questioned.
I don't know about anybody else, but they're questioned as CJ was today.
Well, I think, but I do think that would
you say what?
I'm talking about conservative.
Oh, OK.
All
right, Tom, thank you very much for the call.
Sandy, I'll let you respond on the other side.
8557 5248 42 guys hang on.
We'll come right to you.
You're tuned into the early show.
show is always you can join us at 855-752-4842.
That's 855-752-4842.
You can text us with that same number as Friday.
That means Friday's Michael, Sandy Williams, Sandy, the music.
Well, the music has been about the style of government of Don Corleone.
And what does the Don demand?
But respect, right?
I mean, Solinsky didn't give enough respect in that room.
And so he got called on the carpet.
You know, this is all part of the process, to demand overt actions of respect to avoid any sort of criticism and to use the tools of government against anyone who has the temerity to stand up.
That's what we're watching, and that's a very dangerous prospect.
All right, let's go to Don from Milwaukee.
Good morning to you, Don.
You say what?
No, man,
go ahead.
Go ahead.
Talk about what you want to talk about.
Go ahead.
Well, I have a little question here.
Why is it that ABC, NBC, CBS doesn't report a lot of the news at PBS reports?
I heard something very discouraging.
last night on PBS.
Now, you've often heard Trump say, we're not going to touch social security.
Well, there was an interview.
I don't know if you're familiar with a fellow named Martin O'Malley.
I don't know if you know him or not.
No, but go
ahead.
Okay.
Uh, he was interviewed.
Uh, as we speak, uh, uh, Trump's sugar daddy, uh, Elon Musk is busy at work.
Social security is going to cut 12% of their workforce.
So that's going to equal about 7,000 people.
Now that's going to cause longer waits on the telephone, longer waits if you go to their office.
In other words, he's touching it.
And no matter what he says, he's lying to you because the work is being done right now and it's only reported on PBS.
None of the other stations report this.
He said right out a Martin O'Malley whoever he is.
I never heard of them Social Security has never missed the payment in 80 years when you cut the workforce 12% This will be in jeopardy.
Okay.
Okay done.
We got you.
I just wanted to kind of fill you in on that
Trump is lying to you again.
Okay.
Okay.
Thank you very much for the call done.
Appreciate it.
Let's go to Robert from West Dallas.
Good morning to you, Robert.
You say what?
Good morning, guys.
Um, my question is, uh, has there been any reporting in terms of how much, uh, Bitcoin, um, you know, Trump must the people in the cabinet hold, um, I see Bitcoin as a Ponzi scheme.
It's a way for rich people to avoid taxes.
It's used for countries like Russia, Iran, North Korea to avoid sanctions or the terrible actions.
It's used for what hits out on people, for gun running, for human trafficking, for drug dealing.
And I think a lot of the chaos they're creating, because when I went to school, you learned that...
markets like consistency and stability.
I think a lot of the chaos that they're creating is to move us away from the dollar over to one of these other currencies.
Well, I think you brought up a very good point.
There have been a number of articles and a number of the financial press recently about the cryptocurrency.
policies of this administration.
In particular, one of the members of the administration who was the CEO of Cantor and Fitzgerald, Cantor and Fitzgerald actually owns a very big operation totally dependent on cryptocurrencies.
And the notion that they're going to set up a cryptocurrency reserve in the United States is
designed to create a great deal of an increased value for cryptocurrencies.
Both Elon Musk and the Trump family are heavily invested in cryptocurrencies.
Elon Musk in a currency called Doge and the Trump family several months before this inauguration started a family cryptocurrency based holding company.
Cryptocurrency has a place okay, and it could well be that at some point the dollar will become a form of cryptocurrency That allows electronic exchanges of dollars, but the cryptocurrencies like bitcoins and the strump coin and these others are Ponzi schemes They're not they're things that don't have any value other than if somebody wants to buy them and Bitcoin in particular has value only for one reason and that is that it permits
Totally secret movements of money and so the to the extent that Bitcoin has been used as a currency It's been used as a currency in the in the market of in the criminal market the the underworld essentially and
Cryptocurrency is something which is far more complicated than people give it credit for being and and is basically a Ponzi that is being perpetrated I think with respect to national policy so that there are people who will get a great deal of wealth and one of those people is Donald Trump
Robert
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the call.
855-752-4842.
855-752-4842.
Hang on, we'll come right to you.
It means Friday's my call.
Sandy Williams and you.
Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear.
And it shows them pearly whites.
Just a jack.
Mac the knife.
Has old magazine, babe.
And it keeps it out of sight.
You know when that shark bites.
Well, I guess I'll go home and
watch film noir Welcome back to the Erlingham shows always you can join me.
I'm always watching film noir anyway Welcome back to the Erlingham shows always you can join us at 855-752-4842
Texas is that same number, Sandy, your music selection.
Yeah, this is all about mob music.
This is sort of the configuration of our government right now is taking shape much like as if Don Corleone is in charge, sort of public whack-a-mole to keep us all in, keep us all in place, kissing the ring.
You know, Robert from West Dallas had an interesting point about Bitcoin and about cryptocurrency.
Howard Lutnik, who is the secretary of commerce,
came from Cantor and Fitzgerald, a very large financial institution in New York.
He's an old friend of Donald Trump's, but he's been heavily involved with the cryptocurrency called Tether to the point where it's made him a wealthy man.
It's made Cantor and Fitzgerald a very profitable financial organization.
Suggested that today there is a Bitcoin conference or a cryptocurrency conference ongoing and that President Trump is going to announce a us cryptocurrency reserve which will have the effect of Substantially put at least in the near term increasing the value of all cryptocurrencies and people who are invested in cryptocurrencies like
Howard Ludnick like Donald Trump like a fair number of people not Tom Dick and Mary and we should understand that currently Cryptocurrency's primary use is in
Criminal activities like the fentanyl trade that Donald Trump is so wired up about so on much the way the the gun manufacturers have been accused of providing weapons to the to the criminal drug cartels cryptocurrency including Bitcoin are the financial tool being used by these very same criminals and you know We should watch and be concerned about
public policies that are being adopted in a manner which may create immediate immense wealth for people in government.
All right, let's go to Brendan.
Good morning to you Brendan.
Thank you.
You say what?
Yeah, I just wanted to make three points real quick.
I had said a while ago that the ability to see inside the Maga mind or understand it is a tough thing to do.
But I think the simplest part we need to understand is the call just from CJ now, again, which is actually one of his first decent calls, but it's the bigotry.
It's the hatred because he doesn't have a problem with Trump selling $5 million citizenships to brown people that will come in from other countries because they have $5 million to shove in his pocket.
But he has a problem with college students who bring revenue and money to our college institutions who may not be happy with the fact that they see means of Palestine becoming a hotel beach resort.
My other point is, is I challenge any mega caller to explain why Doge who's going to save us all a ton of money and everybody thinks it's going to funnel down to us somehow, which is just a
pipe dream hasn't gone after the biggest department which is the biggest wasteful department and that's our military expenditure.
He is staying so far away from that.
Gee, I wonder why.
Maybe because they pay him billions of dollars so that he could send rockets up, leave people in Fort Lauderdale and Miami International last night stranded as his second rocket in a row comes down in pieces over the ocean.
How soon till one lands over a land mass, and I just hope there were no fishermen, commercial fishermen out there that suffered any harm from that.
But you know, I'll just stick with those two for now.
So all of the folks that are on the conservative side, please explain to me why he's not going after the one department that hasn't passed an audit in years and has more wasteful spending than anything.
It's so obviously in the hypocrisy is just amazing.
Have a great weekend you guys.
Thank
you.
Thank you very much for the call.
Let's go to Jack from Merrimat.
Good morning to Jack.
You say what?
Good morning.
Well, I have my usual long to read this morning.
So I think that one major problem that's allowed is a magus to basically take over our government has been the media.
And I don't just mean Fox News, but the legitimately they've allowed the constant repetition of lies and not just by Trump, but by virtually every mega, I mean, so-called Republican.
and they have been doing little real-time fact-checking.
There's one thing that should have been done during his speech and it wasn't done.
This line started in the 2015 campaign.
It's continued for over a decade now.
It's been flooding the media with statement after statement, misleading, misdirecting.
It's used every other method they can possibly use to keep the independent voter from understanding the real issues.
And the real issues, one of them at least, is, I would argue, the manipulation of the economy by the rich and huge corporations.
That's the thing that's kept people, that people say, yeah, it's the economy, stupid.
Of course it's the economy, but it's kept people off balance.
It's lying.
You remember the alternative fact statement?
And some people think this is a real...
I don't know, we lost you, Jack, so call back.
Sandy, I don't know if you got much of what he was talking about, but okay, we got a problem with the phones.
Let me go here, Sandy.
One of the things that I really kind of wanted to touch on, and that's this, war heroes and military first are among
26,000 images flag for removal in Pentagon's DEI.
And this is in today's Associated Press.
References to World War II medical, excuse me, Medal of Honor recipients, the Nola Gray aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training.
What did they do, Sandy, that they have to be erased from history?
Well, that's you know, that's this this kind of revisionist notion that that we need to have the American dream reinstated and one of the ways we do that is to erase everything that isn't that is inconsistent with the ideology associated with the dream that's being painted and you know apparently now
DEI which means different things to different people but apparently to Peter Hexeth and to the to the new regime at the Pentagon It means I guess anything associated with people that are either brown or black or women or Or in any fashion out of line with what they want to paint as the Aryan hero of the American army and
It's very troublesome.
I think that this unwillingness to embrace reality and to create and paint a reality which is different than the truth, but one which is consistent with an ideology, it is fascism.
That is exactly what the definition would be.
So they're doing away with tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion content according to database obtained by the Associated Press.
The database, which was confirmed by US officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images.
that have been flagged for removal across every military branch, but the eventual total could be in the hundreds of thousands.
One official who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public said the purge could delete over 100,000 images or posts in total when considering social media pages.
and other websites that are also being called for DEI content.
So anything with photos of blacks and women.
Pete Hextev is, this is Donald Trump's executive order to wipe that out of the military history.
Sandy as a person of color and knowing a little bit, you know, the enola gray.
was certainly named after a black woman.
And the fact of the matter that it dropped this bomb on Hiroshima and somehow, who does that hurt?
Why do they have to wipe that out, Sandy?
Why would the president of the United States make that such an issue that that's gotta be wiped out?
He can't find anything more important?
or is it because he's a racist?
Well, I think that this is the baby, the bathwater.
You know, these directives go out, they're not preconceived, they're ill-conceived, they're reflective of a viewpoint that is very narrow.
This notion of trying to repaint the history of the United States to make it what people want it to be rather than what it was,
is very troublesome and it's going to get us to a very bad place and it's going to try and create a false reality.
Right now we have the false reality that's being created which is that America is in an emergency.
We have a catastrophe on our hands and we need to take strong action to avert disaster when this catastrophe is totally bogus.
It's been artificially
painted, artificially created for the very purpose of now justifying these kinds of broad actions.
And it's what we talked about early on the show.
The fact is that, as the Wall Street Journal mentioned, I think the president needs to be reined in by the courts with respect to this capacity to define disaster and to decide.
to find emergencies where they don't exist in order to justify conduct.
Several photos of an Army Corps of Engineers dredging a project in California were marked for deletion because they're all black guys doing it, apparently because a local engineer in the photo had the last name Gay.
And a photo of Army Corps biologist was on the list seemingly because it mentioned
They were recording data about fish, including their weight, size, hatchery and gender.
In addition, some photos of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation's first black military pilots who served in a segregated World War two unit were enlisted to be removed from the database.
Sandy, you know, it is more than frustrating that they can't.
that they're focusing on things like this, Sandy, the economy, and what's happening there, and all the other things that should be where they're focusing.
They're focusing on this
nonsense.
Well, in the military, they ought to be focusing on waste and expenditures and the huge budget.
And this is all deflection.
This is the way we have had our attention deflected from real and important things.
they're spending time and energy in the military doing things which are a total waste of time.
Yeah, and not to mention just unacceptable to wipe out the history of black and Hispanic people who fought, bled, and died in this nation alongside other military people.
and to just wipe that out is more than insulting.
855-752-4842.
Jack, we'll come to you right away.
You're tuned in to the Erlingham Show.
It's Friday.
That means Friday's my co-host, Sandy Williams.
All right, welcome back to the Erlingham shows.
Always you can join us at 855-752-4842.
Texas is that same number.
Let's go right back to the phone lines.
And Jack from Merrimack.
Jack, welcome back.
So you say what?
Thanks for picking me up again.
Yes.
I just want to finish up with...
I just want to finish up with some quotes from Hannah Arendt, who is a German-American historian who studied the Nazis extensively.
You probably know the name.
And here are the quotes.
This constant lying has not ended making people believe the lie, but to ensure no one believes anything anymore.
A people who can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.
And such a people derived as a power to think and judge is without knowing and willing it completely subjected to the rule of the lies with such a people you can do whatever you want.
And here's the key phrase.
This is the ideal subject of totalitarian rules, not to convince Nazi or dedicated communists that I would add or dedicated Marga, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exist.
And of course, if you can't tell truth from fiction, how can you tell whom to vote for?
So you vote for the loudest, most recent voice, and that's what we got.
in the White House today.
You know, Jack, thank you very much for that.
You are absolutely 100% correct.
And that's where people are who still support Trump and those things.
Let's go to Kathleen.
Good morning to you, Kathleen.
Thank you very much for the call.
You say what?
Hi.
Hi.
Yes.
I am just appalled by what you said.
The AP is reporting now about all the black and brown people and probably the American Indians and women.
Yes.
Everybody who
called.
I sent a email.
to the White House every day about my satisfaction.
I am just, I am outweighed.
Every single day, but just like the other color said, it's a diversion and hopefully it's not deleted forever.
It's just maybe for the four years and then whoever gets the next will bring it all back.
Well, I hope you're right Kathleen, but thank you very much for the outrage.
Let's go to John quickly John you say what?
John Okay, so so Sandy, you know We've had you know a conversation about where we are with these things.
They're not going away, are they?
Well, my fear is that when you change the architecture of power in the government, whoever succeeds President Trump, whether it be a Republican or Democrat, will be urged by their party to use all of the tools at hand.
And so what Donald Trump is busily doing and what projects the people behind him, Russell Vaught, the authors of Project 2025 are doing, are changing the architecture.
of the U.S.
government trying to shift power dramatically in the direction of giving more power to the president.
Once you do that, then the people who inhabit that office are urged by all of those who back them to use all of the tools at hand.
And so when a liberal president gets elected to succeed a conservative president, all of the tools will be utilized by the liberal president in maybe the same manner that the conservative president used it to get their way.
This is how you swing from democracy to autocracy.
You swing from the exercise of power in an orderly fashion, in an orderly process, to the exercise of power by individuals when they get elected.
And this is what we've watched in South America.
We've called them banana republics for a long time, swinging from very conservative governments to very liberal governments, swinging from fascism to communism.
This is instability and this is a revision to our government that is contrary to what the founders had in mind because the founders were far smarter than the architects of 2025.
You know,
Sandy, you talked about the way it was in South America and look at they're still destabilized.
Yeah.
And through those swings that you're talking about, you're saying that could
happen to us.
Absolutely.
I mean, what's happening in Argentina, what happens in Venezuela, what happens in Brazil with these swings from one side to the other are the result of governments which are not structured to enhance stability over the long term.
And, you know, this thing that was called the deep state that is under assault, under the leadership of conservative thought people like Neil Gorsuch, destroying the deep state, destroying the...
the methods in which our government implements its laws through regulatory agencies is going to destroy long-term stability.
That has been the flywheel of the stability that allows business people to understand
What what it is that they might be experiencing in the in the economy five years from now ten years from now It's what it's allowed Everybody to plan for a future that might look something like the present and what we have right now is a future that we don't know what it's going to look like and the stock market is going to read is going to penalize Those who hold stock as the result of this instability and business leaders are not going to be making investments while they sit on their hands and try and figure
out what the hell is going on.
And so, Sandy, in all of those things, three things you just mentioned in the last 30 seconds, all have profound impact on the average everyday citizen.
Absolutely.
The traction is local.
The traction is on Tom Dick and Mary.
When we have pain, the people who experience that are Tom Dick and Mary, it's not Elon Musk.
It's not Howard Ludnick.
It's not the people who are calling the shots.
It's the people who will feel the pain.
You know, Sandy, the last thing I'd say is, you know, it's not a harbinger of a good thought for generations that are on the horizon and children.
It's a sad commentary for them.
Yeah, in particular, this short string on the pendulum is the most dangerous prospect, and it's what turns us from a stable government into the Banana Republic.
All right, Sandy, thank you as always.
Thank everybody who made the show.
Go thank you, Calvin.
Up next, Jane Mattenair, Greg Bach Mattenair on that guys.
Enjoy a great weekend.
See you on Monday.
