Good, good morning.
Welcome, welcome to Matt and Air on Air.
Jane Matt and Air, Greg Buck and Calvin Butenoff coming to you live from our studio at Radio Park in Racine and my dining room in Milwaukee.
You can always join us, call or text at 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube and what used to be Twitter jam packed show for you today.
Representative Mark Pope can that will be joining us.
After the 1030 news, I don't know, Greg, I feel we have a little bit to talk about with our representative Po Can.
Just a couple of things we will be kicking around, including the Trump administration looking at Medicaid.
It's going to affect a lot of folks.
And I would imagine some folks who are listening right now.
So I hope you can stick around.
and listen to our discussion with Mr. Polkan coming up right after the 1030 news.
Next hour after 1106, James Vanderloo, who is the head of the Milwaukee branch of the OEC group, is going to be joining us to talk tariffs and what he has been hearing from clients and how they are reacting to the news that Donald Trump is going to be instituting.
Tariffs it looks like we're gonna tariff everybody.
Yeah, anyone who anyone who's outside the US everyone you get a tariff you get We're like the Oprah of tariffs you get a tariff you get a tariff everyone gets a tariff
Exactly, so we will be talking about tariffs with James Vanderloo.
He has been on the show many times before very insightful I hope you will stick around for that We will lighten things up in the last half hour of the show as we always do What we call our audio Sorbet everybody can take a breath a little bit and lighten it up
We're going to talk about what's the movie that you are embarrassed to admit that you like.
OK, we
all have one.
Yeah,
we might
have one.
So be thinking about which movie it is that you are embarrassed to admit that you liked.
We all will share hours with you after the 11 30 news.
We'll wrap it all up as we always do with this shouldn't be a thing.
Today it's the I've got my eye on you edition.
So stick around for that.
It is Tuesday, February 18th.
The average price of a gallon of milk in Wisconsin is $3.18.
No change since Monday.
The average price of a dozen large eggs in Wisconsin, $5.86.
That is also the same as it was yesterday.
Just a programming note, tonight Governor Evers will be giving his address that starts around seven o'clock and our very own friend and colleague Todd Alba.
We'll be hosting that coverage so you can catch that across the civic media radio network governor evers and his address tonight at 7 p.m A couple of things we wanted to start off with though It's really nasty cold out there.
Oh my goodness It's oh, it's two here.
Oh, you're all of you're up to two Yeah, it was 10 below when I got here this morning And I thought if it's 10 below here when I was in the show with Pat who's up in chip wall falls if it's
10 below in Racine, it's worse up north than it was.
It is so dang cold right now.
Yeah, it absolutely is.
From the Milwaukee Journal, setting all the wind chill in Milwaukee to hit 20 below Tuesday before another cold snap overnight.
So this isn't done yet.
We have a couple of more days.
I did hear Brittany Merlot yesterday when she was on with you and Pat, and she did say Monday we're looking at 40 degrees.
Yeah.
And.
We're looking at Thursday and Friday and Saturday of highs in the upper 20s, low 30s.
So we're good.
We'll hopefully, well, at least be in the teens by the end of the week, which is, you know, as any Wisconsinite knows, you hit like that 10 below 20 below zero 19 feels like a pot.
He had a tropical island.
Oh, there's going to be people in
shorts.
Yep.
And certainly by Monday, if it's 40 degrees on Monday, we look for shorts and flip flops among the snow banks, but please, please be careful.
I had a brief walk this morning that I was not expecting.
Yeah.
You, uh,
which, which led you to be home today.
Yes.
From my home and undisclosed location, my dining room on, uh, in Northwestern Milwaukee.
So I had to work this morning.
About as I always do it's about 625 and I hit the road and I had gassed up yesterday full tank You know, I knew it was gonna be cold and I'm not more than 10 minutes from my house and all of a sudden the check engine light comes on the The swervy symbol with your wheels that comes on and then my cruise control is blinking off and on
I never use my cruise control.
I think my car is 13 years old.
I probably used it three times in all the years that I've had.
A cruise control is not something that I use.
And all I could think of was I can see myself halfway down to work and it's going to lock into cruise control and I'm not going to be able to get it off.
Yeah.
Maybe it was just your car's way of saying,
put me back in the garage.
I'm so cold.
I'm cold.
So I ended up dropping it off at my mechanic, who's just a couple of blocks away from the house.
And when I took it in and I explained to him what was going on with it, and I said, Yeah, the check engine light went on and the the cruise control is blinking off and on.
And he said, Yeah, that's not good.
That's, that's
not good when the expert in the field said, Oh, that's not good.
that's not good so this is why i am home hopefully that will be rectified but uh i have jury duty tomorrow as well so lucky am i lucky
yes i love jury duty i do i genuinely how many times have you been called for jury duty i've been only twice isn't that a shame
That seems high actually.
Yeah, I've been called.
I've only been
I was called in as an alternate once before and then this is only the second time and I've lived in Milwaukee for years.
I got
only the second time I've been called.
Oh man.
I'm so jealous.
It's I got called years, years, years ago and they, they, you know, I just stayed in the waiting room, watch must love dogs with John Q second.
Then they said, go home.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
And the second time they called me, I got on a jury and it was.
Amazing.
Was it really?
It really was.
It was really, I sell people this all the, well, not all the time, but anyone who will listen.
Our, my jury duty experience, our trial was, I feel the best, one of the best examples of what happens in the justice system as far as, you know, innocent until proven guilty.
evidence being a shadow of the whole thing.
We like went through the gamut and we had a hung jury on one of the counts and the judge was like, you must make a decision.
We're like, more pizza then.
And so it was, it was funny because they said this isn't going to be like law and order.
And it was kind of like law and order.
I was wondering about that without the major crimes.
It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't a, there was no murder or anything around that area.
It was, it was assault, but, but not like.
You know, I
still think though, in every jury proceeding, they should use the dun dun one order just to kind of set the stage.
All gavels should just be outfitted.
So now they don't make the slap, slap noise.
It just goes.
And then we go into the.
Yeah, I'll say I'm sure I'll suggest that tomorrow when you're questioning on whether or not I should
be your honor.
I have some notes
for you.
I have some thoughts to make it a whole lot more fun.
I think this would just want more people would want to do this.
if you just made these couple of tweaks.
Yeah, I'll try this.
So Greg is going to be handling the show tomorrow while I am on jury duty.
And I see that the wonderful Pat Crite low is going to join.
He will be joining us.
We're going to be talking about probably the results of today's elections as well as we were actually discussing this morning.
And I want to talk to him about what he'd like to discuss.
But I would like to actually further the conversation we had this morning about just
What we do to combat misinformation, what we do to, you know, we, you know, we see it on our live stream and we see in the text, people sending us information that is clearly untrue.
And what do we do to get the truth out there?
And I think that's something that we can even talk to Mark Bocanas about how do we combat all of this stuff going on?
How do we stand up and say something and make sure it's right and true?
We have an interesting clip from Jesse Waters of All People.
who's on the network that was fined almost a billion dollars for lying to its audience.
I actually agree with him.
Yes, this might be the first time in history.
But Jesse Waters actually had means me to say this, a very insightful comment about information.
Yeah.
We call it misinformation.
He would call it information that we're going to play for Representative Mark Hogan.
So.
Should be an interesting discussion.
Again, stick around for that.
I did go both this morning before I dropped off my car and I was number two.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's it's
it's primary election day.
Spring primary election day.
It's
spring primary election day.
I know it's not a sexy election.
Yeah.
There's no Senate race.
There's no Supreme Court race.
There's no presidential race.
There's still really, really important.
We talk about this a lot on the show and we talk about this a lot on many shows.
You know, we know that the presidential races and the governor races, those are all important.
They are important.
They are absolutely.
But these are races that affect your street.
These are, you know, the, the, the, the superintendent of, of the department of public instruction, the Supreme court of Wisconsin coming up in April.
These are.
These are elections that are going to make an effect on you here in your town.
And if you have, like I have a school board election on mine as well, that's important too.
I don't have kids, I don't have one in school, but I want Kenosha to have great schools and I want people to be on the board who are going to make the right decisions for everyone because those decisions affect all of us.
So it's really important to get out there.
The direct impact, again, I know the bigger races are the ones that people turn out for, but as you said, Greg, it's the smaller races that really have almost an immediate direct impact on people who
are
casting their ballots, which is why I don't want to say we harp on it, but we harp on it.
Please be a voter.
It's truly very important.
You can still vote, even if you're not registered, go to myvote.wi.gov.
All you have to do is put in your address, and that's going to give you all of the information that you need, including if you are not registered and you would like to vote today on what you need to do in order to make that happen.
The biggest race on the ballot, as you mentioned, Greg, is for the head of Department of Public Instruction.
There are three people running, including the incumbent Jill Underly.
She's facing challenger, sock prairie superintendent Jeff Wright.
and also Ritney Kinzer, who claims she's a moderate, but she's very big about school choice and voucher schools.
And again, I question why someone who seems to want to eliminate public instruction should be the head of the Department of Public Instruction.
That's a quandary there, Jane.
Right?
Yes.
I mean, that's like when Betsy DeVos was at the head of the Department of Education under the first Trump administration.
Her whole goal was to dismantle the Department of Education.
Yep.
And they're going to work towards it.
And the more people they have in positions of power, state and local, the federal will utilize that for their ultimate goal, which is to collapse the Department of Education.
And they have said that outright.
And to kill public schools.
Yeah.
That is that is the ultimate goal.
All right.
Some big, big money pouring into Wisconsin for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race will kick that around when we return.
You're listening to Matt Nair on air.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Don't go away.
Yeah!
Good morning.
Welcome back to Natanair on air.
Jay Natanair, Greg Bach and Sweet Calvi on the board coming to you from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.
You can always join us, call or text.
The number is the same 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube and what used to be Twitter.
Join us on Blue Sky.
It's much nicer over there.
Representative Mark Pokan is going to be joining us after the 1030 News.
We have a lot of things to talk about, including this just came out right before we went on the air.
Louis DeJoy.
Now looking at who should succeed him.
I know.
Okay.
Now that Trump is installed, apparently there's no reason for him to stick around.
I
want to get I want to get the top three lists from Mark Pokan who he thinks should succeed Louis DeJoy.
Mark, I think Representative Pokan might have some thoughts on that.
Mark Pokan joining us after the 1030 news.
Stay close for that.
I meant to mention this at the top of the hour when we were talking about the cold weather around here.
Kentucky just got crushed.
Now the death toll in Kentucky is up to 14.
They were hit by crazy flooding over the weekend that took the lives of at least 14 people.
And now they are dealing with a winter storm.
So if you would like to help out the victims of these of this flooding in Kentucky, I would suggest the American Red Cross.
Yeah, that's a good place to go if you'd like to make a donation.
So consider that to help out the people in Kentucky.
I heard Governor Andy Berchere this morning and it's just disastrous.
Again, they had all of this flooding.
They haven't recovered from that yet.
And now they're dealing with this winter storm that's going to go into tomorrow, which is only going to exacerbate the mess.
So consider donating to the Red Cross to help out the folks in Kentucky if you can.
Wanted to talk about this briefly before we get to the news.
And Elon Musk backed group, this from Daniel Bison, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, buys at least $670,000 of TV time to support Brad Schimmel.
Republican Brad Schimmel, former attorney general, running against Susan Crawford for the opening spots on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Musk, we knew that he was going to do this.
He had mentioned this last month, maybe even earlier, that they need this Wisconsin Supreme Court so they can reverse, I would assume, the fairer maps that we just got.
And I would think it's also an opportunity for them to enshrine should Brad Shim will be elected to make sure that we go back to that 1849 abortion ban, which includes no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.
Yeah, don't let Brad Shim will fool you.
He will do all those things.
He might seem like a level headed dude, but he is not when it no, it's it's and and and and I cannot tell you how
I get mad enough when we talk about Diane Hendricks on the E-Lines.
Elon Musk coming into our state and throwing down a nothing amount of money to him, a nothing.
It's lunch.
It's lunch.
It's in his couch cushions.
That's burnable money.
And he's going to try to influence our election because he's got a chip on his shoulder.
He thinks he's...
Full of power and no, he does not belong in this state is not belong in this election.
Stay out of it.
Stay out of
it.
It's interesting though.
When I was on Twitter last night, looking at some of the reactions about this when this news broke, there are all kinds of people who are delighted by this.
Of course there are.
Good.
Go get them.
George Soros has been doing this for you.
George Soros has been buying our elections for decades.
Now it's finally time for the right to fight back.
And that's kind of how they're embracing this.
Again, I don't understand what they believe Brett Schimmel is going to do that is going to make things so wonderful.
Again, unless it's about reversing the fairer maps, which were just instituted and ensuring that women have no choice if they have trouble with their pregnancies.
I just don't think they care about women.
I really, really don't.
Well,
you also take a step back and look at it.
Why is it?
Why do they get to complain every single day, whining and sniveling like a bunch of babies about George Soros, Soros, when Elon Musk is, and the E-Lines and Diane Hendricks and all of the other ones who put their money are just the same, but it's absolutely okay for them to do it.
It's okay for them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Wisconsin elections.
But the moment George Soros comes in, oh my gosh, the liberal agenda, Jane, the liberal agenda.
It's
discussing and
rotting us from within.
And this goes back to what we've said for more than a year.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
Never.
No, no.
The people who believe in this, the people who support this kind of FCC non-compliant word is just for me, it's the highest form of hypocrisy.
I have no respect for it.
And you can never justify it to me.
Why?
You're all right to do it.
Your guys are okay to do it.
But the moment that anyone else steps in, well, that's Highway robbery.
They're stealing elections, Jane.
I wish we could just all agree, both sides, I don't understand why we cannot agree that this dark money should be gotten rid of and Citizens United should be overturned.
Yeah.
That would alleviate a lot of these arguments.
Yeah, but two thing is that they have their side has all of that money that they can spend every single election cycle and and every election cycle now I'm not talking about presidential they're dumping they're dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into school board races Yeah, so of course they don't want that their guys have the money They guys have all the money.
So of course it works for them
One other side now quickly before we get to the news Elon Musk claimed
that there are hundreds of 150 year olds who have been receiving social security benefits.
Yeah, that's not a thing.
That actually is not a thing.
Apparently, the social security system uses a different kind of coding than Elon's 19 year old minions are familiar with.
And so, yes, the social security roles need to be updated in all of these things.
But for one thing, social security cuts off benefits at 115 years old.
Also 150 year olds, we know about that on the news.
I
know.
But that's what they're saying.
So anyway, after spreading this for two days, which went all over the right wing of sphere, yeah, that's not accurate.
Call me shocked.
News.
Yeah, I was going to say, you can't tell me that he's smart anymore.
You can't tell me that.
He's not.
News is coming up next.
When we return, Representative Mark Pocan will be here.
Stay close.
You're listening to Matt Nair on air.
This is the vast statewide, countrywide.
If you have the app, yeah, we're global, baby.
Civic Media Radio Network will be right
back.
Good morning.
Welcome.
Welcome to Matt Nair on air.
Jane Matt Nair, Greg Mock and the Calvinator on the board coming to you live from our studio here at Radio Park in Racine.
You can always join us, call and or text.
The number is the same 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube and what used to be Twitter coming up after 11 o'clock.
We're looking forward to having him back again.
James Vanderloo is going to join us.
He heads up the Milwaukee branch of the OEC group, which deals with a lot of overseas companies.
And we're going to be talking about tariffs and tariffs effects on the businesses and the economy and how this all kind of, yes, it will trickle down to us.
The tariffs that Donald Trump says, it's a beautiful word.
And it's going to fix everything.
So we will talk to James Vanderloo about that after the 11 o'clock news.
We are waiting, I assume, for Representative Mark Pocan.
He is here.
He is.
He is on the line.
Yeah, he is on the line.
Good
morning, sir.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Second good rational district.
Representative Mark Pocan is with us.
Good morning, Representative.
How are you?
Hey, doing well.
Thanks so much for having
me.
Thank you so much for making time for us.
I'm sure there's a lot going on in Washington from what I understand.
Representative, I didn't want to start off though.
I think there's a lot of frustration among Democratic voters who feel like there hasn't been enough of a response from Representative Democrats to push back on all of the things that Donald Trump has done in just the first couple of weeks of his administration.
Yeah, I think across the board we need to do more and I don't just mean elected officials I mean the groups that are doing great work on litigation We also need a national march.
We haven't had one this time.
We did with Trump the first time he was around We had 200 locations around to the country.
We had tens of thousands of people show up in Wisconsin alone We need that desperately not the little pop-up ones we're having now We need to get the message out and I can tell you from being home
It's not about waste, fraud, and abuse.
It's about a $4.7 trillion tax cut for Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and those can afford to belong to Mar-a-Lago.
That's what they're doing.
They're literally stealing from the middle class and those aspiring to be in giving it to the wealthiest.
And we have to make it that simple.
I think the problem is they've flooded the zone.
We're talking about lots of different issues.
But the umbrella of all these issues is that this is about stealing money from the middle class and giving it to people like Elon Musk, who now has controls of federal spending.
So I think that really is a part of it.
But one of the hardest things is when you walk past media in DC and they don't want to talk to you because they're waiting for a Republican to talk to, we need to be able to get this out.
And that's part of what I'm doing this week while I'm back home in Wisconsin.
Well, we certainly appreciate that.
I mean, messaging is very important, and it pains me to admit this, but Jesse Waters on the network that was fined nearly a billion dollars for lying to its viewers actually said something last night that I agree with, and I think Democrats need to listen and perhaps learn from this.
Calvin, can you please play that clip?
It's not really the same.
Dana, we are waging a 21st century information warfare campaign against the left and they are using tactics from the 1990s.
They are holding tiny press conferences, tiny little rallies.
They're screaming into the ether on MSNBC.
This is what you call top-down command and control.
You get your talking points from a newspaper and you put it on the broadcast network and then it disappears.
What you're seeing on the right is a
symmetrical.
It's like grassroots guerrilla warfare.
Someone says something on social media.
Musk retweets it, Rogan podcasts it, Fox broadcasts it.
And by the time it reaches everybody, millions of people have seen it.
It's free money.
And we're actually talking about expressing information.
They are suppressing information.
If you it's not really the
same.
I don't know that about the suppressing information, but
I'm curious
what you're
up to that.
Your opinion on that.
He's not wrong.
And you can say something on social media that's completely ludicrous and nonfactual.
And yes, then it gets picked up by some podcaster or Jesse Waters, and they broadcast it over there.
And it hits millions of people.
And I do think the Democrats can learn something from that.
Do you?
Yeah, we and we have the good news is I mean the one thing I think that all Democrats came out of November with
was we need to use alternative and social media far more effectively.
Um, 45% of, uh, undecided or was it independent?
I'm forgetting which one, but a big chunk of voters do not get their, uh, information from mainstream media.
And, you know, we still have consultants buying, you know, network TV.
Well, it's very profitable for consultants, but maybe it's not getting the messages across.
So, you know, we just started a podcast.
Uh, we've had it up for a couple of weeks now, uh, with Liberty and justice for some doing deep.
dives on on topics trying to use that format.
We're doing a weekly video that wraps up the week and I'm getting really great feedback from people in district on that because it's summarizing and putting out some of the BS fires that the Republicans have put there so yeah we do need to do all of that more and I think that message is getting out there so I'll
Members are trying to use it.
The one thing, though, that he doesn't tell you is that Elon Musk is throttling back.
That's why X is a sewer, but he's throttling back Democratic content.
And I've tested it myself.
If I retweet New York Times or NBC, it doesn't go very far.
It doesn't get the same penetration.
If I retweet a conservative, I get all kinds of penetration.
And if I don't put their hashtags in there with nothing that I'm retweeting, just put a thought, it gets great penetration.
So they lied to us and they have actually said they have not done anything to throttle Democrats.
But I think what they've done is they've throttled some media and they've, they've, they've throttled anything they think that goes after Donald Trump or Elon Musk.
So we're going
to have to get smarter to figure out how to at least use that platform.
If you're just joining us, Representative Mark Pocan is our guest from the Second Congressional District talking about messaging as Democrats try and fight to get their message out.
And as far as what you were just saying, Representative, anyone who has been on Twitter before Elon and after Elon certainly recognizes the changes that happened after he took over.
It was it was not subtle.
And since November it's even less subtle.
I mean, it's really very pronounced But you know, that's one platform and that's the best way of thinking about it You know while we still have tick tock available, but I won't even go into that whole debate that is very powerful Instagram is powerful I mean, you know Facebook even though it's a little bit of an older demographic is important but it's using a mix of all the different social media and podcasts and going on Fox and
you know, in a way flooding the media zone in a way that I don't think we traditionally have.
So I think that was a fair criticism of where Democrats at Republicans again got there a little quicker than I think Democrats.
But, you know, we are trying to close that gap right now and, you know, having some of our younger members quite honestly helping on that messaging, people like Maxwell Frost from Florida and others, I think has had a really positive effect as
well.
And I'll do respect to Chuck Schumer, but I don't ever want to see him standing in front of a microphone jumping up and down, again, going, we will win.
Yes, I agree with you.
And part of the messaging from Democrats, they still go back to certain folks that, and again, not to be agist on this, but we have a lot of octogenarians I serve with, people in their 80s.
And if it looks like the only spokespeople
are their 70s and 80s, we're not talking to a big chunk of the electorate.
So a lot of this is currently happening or trying to happen.
The biggest thing I think is just they're flooding the zone with disinformation and misinformation.
And you can chase every shiny hook and not get any penetration of your message.
Or we focus on really the 800 pound gorilla that's in the room, which is
This is about transferring $4.7 trillion of wealth from the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class to the wealthiest.
And if we let them get away with this, then shame on all of us.
Well, let's look at some of the things that they are eyeing.
The GOP budget bill wants to cut Medicaid and SNAP.
Now,
to be fair, again, because they're great at lying.
What the budget does, excuse me, is it cuts $800 billion out of the Energy and Commerce Committee's budget, and I think $300 billion out of the agricultural budget.
It never explicitly says those programs, but those are the biggest spending programs within each of those budgets.
So what they're trying to do is let Elon must be the bad guy.
Republicans will say, I didn't vote to cut X or Y, but the obvious.
you know, fourth grade or you'll figure this out when you look at the budgets, those are the items that are cut.
So, you know, they don't tell the truth.
I think we just need to be aggressive and get in their faces and say you are cutting Medicaid, which is 55% of the seniors in nursing homes, 45% of people with disabilities so they can stay in their homes.
A third of kids in Wisconsin are on Medicaid and that's what they want to cut so that Elon Musk
can, you know, have one more rocket ship go into space.
So those are, I think that's how we have to make sure we're framing it and going after, you know, that and the supplemental nutrition assistance program.
You know, when they went after USAID, it sounds like it's foreign assistance, but 99.9% of the food we send overseas came from farmers in America, including in Wisconsin.
And a lot of farmers are being hit by all of this.
So connecting it to back home is really important.
If you're just joining us Congressman Mark Pocan is our guest.
He is with the Wisconsin's second congressional district talking about all of the things going on in Washington, including Elon Musk and his Doge department, which just seems to be coming in.
I would assume that you don't dispute that there are areas where we can look for
fraud and waste, correct?
No one disputes that, but
you know, if they're going back 20 years in order to find it in some cases, like this is all a pretense to find money for a tax cut for the wealthiest.
So I think we just, you know, don't even let them get away with this.
I did a panel with some people who received Medicaid yesterday, people with disabilities, their children have disabilities.
It's the only way they can stay in home.
It's the only way they can have a job.
And they were saying, well, I call this stuff out.
Yes.
in very tiny amounts and we should always cut that.
That should be our job every single day as we're doing our budgets as members of Congress but you don't take away an entire agency or wholesale machete programs that affect real people because at that point what you're really doing is stealing money from the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class.
And you're just going to give it directly to the Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerbergs and Jeff Bezos of the world, as well as Donald Trump and everyone who belongs to Mar-a-Lago.
So again, I think just being more concrete about what they're up to and not even using their words, because it's BS.
And I hate for us to repeat what they've tested and want us to do.
I'm just not going to take that lure.
I'm not going to put it in my mouth.
This is a, this might be a question you want to answer on the other side of the break, but going back to the information thing is we're seeing a lot of people who are saying, well, I didn't expect that to happen.
Well, I didn't think he was going to do that.
I thought it was all just a game or he was just talking big or there's so many people out there who are realizing this is not what they signed up for when they voted for Trump.
How do we get ahead of it now?
I mean, it's too late now because they have voted for him, but going further, going forward saying like, you know,
This is how we combat the misinformation and the information and informing these specific individuals and saying, this is how it's going to hurt you.
This is how it's going to affect you, whether it's your benefits, whether it's farmers, whether it's whomever, but just really getting them in the room and saying, here is the information you need.
Yeah, you're going to cut VA staff for people who get health care from the VA hospitals.
You're going to cut education funding, which means there's less money for public education, which, by the way, means you're going to have property tax increases because the localities are going to have to pick that up.
It's explaining what all this means.
People will feel it.
The question is, will they feel it in time for this vote, where all we need are three House Republicans to vote against this largest transfer of wealth, probably in the United States history.
That's the goal.
Or to continue our conversation with Congressman Mark Pope Can, keep it here.
If you're listening to Matt Nair on air, this is the Civic Media Radio Network.
We'll be right back.
Good morning.
Welcome back to Matt Nair on air.
Jane Matt Nair, Greg Bott, Calvin on the board coming to you from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.
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Our guest is Representative Mark Pokan from Wisconsin's second congressional district.
Before we get back to our discussion with the representative I do want to remind folks it is dangerously cold outside so please please be careful if you do have to be out make sure you cover up.
and especially your extremities, your face, your hands, your toes, and watch out for your pets as well.
This is going to be with us at least through tonight and into tomorrow, but they say by Monday, it could be 40 degrees.
So again, just keep that in mind as you are out and about today.
We would like you to be safe.
As I said, U.S.
Congressman Mark Polkant from Wisconsin Second Congressional District is our guest representative before the break.
We were talking about the cuts that the Trump administration is instituting.
And this headlines from the Wisconsin Examiner, I think this is really apt.
Republicans worry Republican-led states will suffer from Trump's firings of federal workers.
Well, did folks really think that these kinds of cuts weren't going to go across the board and that Republican-led states were going to be exempt?
that's going to keep getting out there and make it harder and harder for them to get their agenda out, but they want to do this all by April.
And don't forget, right now they only have a one seat margin in the house because of a couple of the appointments by Donald Trump.
All we need once they get to full strength is three Republicans to have the courage nationally, not three Republicans from Wisconsin, three nationally.
to stand up and some of this cannot move forward.
And think of the hypocrites that they are.
They're going to add $2 trillion.
They're going to lift the debt ceiling so they can also fund these tax cuts.
And there are people who said they'd never do that.
Well, let's find out.
Let's see how much of a backbone they have.
Do we spend too much in their opinion?
Or is it all up to Donald Trump because he's the cult leader?
And Elon Musk is the person who bought that person into office.
You know, it'll be interesting when they see the cuts of the VA and you can't get service at the hospital as easily as you had previously or when you're paying more in property taxes because of the cuts to public education or the farmers who are going to see multiple cuts through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts and other things.
But a lot of that could only happen after they've passed this.
So that's the real challenge is making sure people know what could happen.
if this passes, even though they haven't felt the pain directly yet.
What kinds of conversations are going on in the cloak rooms in the Capitol?
Well, I mean, the Republicans, we had a hearing last week on appropriations and a subcommittee about community colleges that had nothing to do with the reality of what's going on right now.
And I kind of lost it.
I kind of said, you know, look, what are we doing?
I mean, you know, you guys are like parsley on a plate of a steak dinner.
You know, you're acting like you're doing nothing at all while major things are happening.
And that's what they're doing.
They're just totally giving up Article One Constitution authority, which goes to Congress.
To do things, they're giving up that congressional authority to Donald Trump, and worse yet, an unelected person in Elon Musk.
They're just afraid.
I just don't think I could go to work every day if I was that afraid of, you know, they're so afraid of their own base.
But unfortunately, we need to make them afraid of their actions.
And we do that by calling members of Congress and Senate, writing to them, using the social media to get the information out.
All of that is something we have to do.
And if we get to having a big national rally, not these little pop-up ones, everyone show up because we've got to show people that there's numbers who believe this.
Representative Mark Polkan is our guest from Wisconsin's second congressional district.
Greg, did you have a question?
Well, it
just sounded actually similar to what you were saying about, we have a Wisconsin state legislature who thinks that the most important things on the plate are things like voter ID and things of that nature when they're not really paying attention to the most important things.
And what you just said is very...
Telling is about it's about being afraid.
They're afraid of the base.
They're afraid of if they try to go after any of these Bigger ticket items they might get quote-unquote in trouble with their party now and what you're describing on a national level just sounds very very true to a state level as well
Yeah, and just don't forget the national messengers the people coming up with the messaging our Donald Trump and Elon Musk
And the reason they're doing this is because they want a $4.7 trillion tax break.
And the only way to get that is they have to steal that from programs that benefit the middle class and those aspiring to be there.
And if we keep.
repeating that and giving proof because luckily they're giving it to us every single day.
I think we get this across and you know the misinformation and disinformation that's out there like this you know this idea that somehow there's people who allegedly are husband proven by multiple inspector general reports it's not true but these kids who work with Elon Musk none of which have any experience don't know it and they put this out there they put on classified information on their website because they're too stupid to know the difference.
This is all things that put us at risk, and all of us, doesn't matter, your ideology should be pissed off about it.
Well, and it's interesting, even Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon of all people pointed out that, you know, there are a lot of magas who get Medicaid.
Cutting that seems like a bad idea.
We're just about out of time, Representative Pocan.
I see that Louis DeJoy is finally leaving.
I will help you write his recommendation letter.
Hallelujah, right?
Hallelujah.
Congressman
Mark Pocan has been our guest.
Thank you so very, very much for your time.
Really appreciated news is coming up next.
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