Pushing Pain on Purpose (Hour 2)

Transcript

Pushing Pain on Purpose (Hour 2)

Mornings with Pat Kreitlow · Fri Oct 31, 2025

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

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It's a special Halloween edition of Mornings with Pat Crichtlow.

Powered by Up North News.

Live from the haunted Lake Wissota studio, here's your ghost host at Bright Low.

Did

Pat Kreitlow

he say...

Crite Low or Frite Low?

I can never tell there.

Anyway, welcome back to a Halloween Friday, October 31st, 2025.

Nice to have you along, Parker Olson, producing things in Madison Studio A2.

And coming up, we've got our Week in Review panel, which will include former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob, and I believe we're also going to have Joan Esposito joining us from Chicago as well once we get her all connected here.

to talk about some of the headlines of the past week.

And then in our eight o'clock hour, Mike Clemens will take the day off.

So we'll bring in Emily Seffos to join me and Dr. Kristen Lierly.

Talk a bit about her campaign for state Senate over in the Fox Valley as well.

And you can join us, 855-75-CIVIC, 855-7524842.

We've had a few callers already telling us

about their Halloween costumes, either the ones they're wearing tonight or their favorite costumes from the past.

I would love to hear if you had any that were particularly creative or complex and what it took to bring those things to life.

I am dressed up as a Brewer's fan, which is the scariest it gets for me, the Ghost of League Championship Series past, trading in Halloween bats for Brewer's bats that go silent against Dodger pitchers.

I get frightened just thinking about it again.

Tony asks, no one dressed up like Derek Van Orden, the scariest person imaginable?

Well, I mean, you could dress up like him, but I

I can't talk out of both sides of my mouth in quite the same way to say, oh, no benefits are going to be cut.

And oh, it's so good that we passed this thing that's going to cut everybody's benefits.

If you missed it earlier, we talked about how there are already two Head Start programs in Wisconsin that are going to be closing their doors because of the government shutdown.

Head Start provides educational and childcare services to three quarters of a million children across the United States.

Each one of these individual Head Start programs gets a federal grant for a 12-month period, and it's staggered throughout the course of the year.

So on November 1st, two Head Start programs in Wisconsin are going to be closing their doors, and that's going to impact a couple of hundred kids, dozens of providers who will not get paychecks during this shutdown.

And then if the shutdown doesn't happen first, there will be

more head starts that have to close up.

And again, on January 1st, there'll be more head starts with well over 1000 kids each time that will no longer have that childcare option, their parents won't, it's going to affect their workplace, or they either have to take time off from work, perhaps even lose their job as a result of what is happening here with a president.

and congressional Republicans who have the power to end things anytime, but don't want to.

Because they understand what it is that Democrats want in order to get their votes to reopen the government.

And that would be to not have the astronomical price hikes that are coming to health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act marketplace starting tomorrow.

And we talked about that earlier.

We gave very specific examples.

of how these prices are going to go up.

And we have Republicans who are saying, well, that's what Democrats want.

That's why those premium tax credits expired.

Well, then let's renew them.

Let's extend them, just like we did for the Republicans' desire to extend the tax cuts for the very wealthy and for corporations.

And that's why you see such low levels of trust in the nation's capital right now.

Is that Republicans were willing to you know fight for what they want for?

The wealthy and corporations But you know when when Democrats do it apparently they're the ones that need to cave and that's not that's just not gonna fly Because there's one group out there looking out for health insurance premiums for everybody and not just tax breaks for their favorite donors This is something that's going to be affecting food assistance as well unnecessarily

There are contingency funds available to continue SNAP benefits, but the Trump administration doesn't want to pay it.

Ollie in the Northwoods is on the line at 855-75 Civic to tell us a bit more about some thoughts on SNAP.

Ollie, good morning.

Hi.

First off, I'd like to start with the thing President Herbert Hoover promised a chicken in every pot and Donald Trump is giving everybody an empty pot.

Yes,

and

I would

just like to to encourage everyone who's listening to Quit blaming one person after another and instead get on the phone lines the text lines Straight to the White House and talk to the man in charge And tell him get on the ball and start taking care of his own country

Pat Kreitlow

Couldn't agree more that you know, there's there's one guy that by the way You know, you know how he's got that that nickname taco for Trump

always chickens out.

Have

Pat Kreitlow

you heard that?

I mean you bet He just did it yesterday with China where he claims to have reached a deal But when you look at the details, it's all he gave up everything he won nothing out of this you think he could do the same for

for Americans health insurance and food benefits, right?

That's what I think it's terrible, leaving his country in time of need and chaos caused by him and trotting around the world pretending to do business and getting nothing done.

Pat Kreitlow

No getting nothing done and just allowing people to be hurt and and he seems to be reveling in it So all your advice is spot-on that people should call, you know the White House switchboard But they should also call their congressional representative, you know, whoever it

is doing that but

Pat Kreitlow

I

think you know like go to the top go, you know call them but go but don't be afraid to go to the top call the White House if you

If you're on X and you're on his buddy line and you're one of the people who voted for him, then you get on the ball and you tell him it's time to change things.

I watched a thing from Bernie Sanders and he did a town hall meeting in Virginia.

And those people were mostly Republicans, and they were every bit as worried about where their food and their health care was going to come from as any of us up here in a blue state or a purple state.

Everybody is hurting.

And the only one that can stop this is the man who started it.

Yeah.

Pat Kreitlow

without a doubt, and you know what, so much more in red states that are even more frequent users of SNAP and of the health insurance tax credits that come from the Affordable Care Act.

So I think Ali, a lot of these folks are gonna start seeing

the premium price hikes, they're going to start watching their local head start close, they're going to lose their stamp benefits, and I think you've got the right advice for them is don't just look at that and shake your head, actually pick up the phone and let them know.

Call the White House, call your local, but whatever number you can think of you can find, don't be afraid to do that.

I've even called, quite honestly, I've called the Ukrainian embassy and told Zelensky not to listen to Trump's promises because you can't trust him.

Pat Kreitlow

No, no, not trustworthy at all.

Ollie, it's good advice.

Thank you so much for the phone call.

I hope you have a good start to the weekend.

You too.

Happy Halloween.

Pat Kreitlow

Happy Halloween to you too, Ollie.

Thank you for the call.

Bye bye.

Again, 855-757-855-7524842 to reach out to us.

It is quarter past seven right now.

Let's take a look at some sports here.

There was Badger Men's Hockey last night, the 14th ranked.

Badger men's hockey team beat 19th ranked Minnesota five to two.

They will play the Gophers again, but it won't be until tomorrow 6pm at the Cole Center.

And you can listen to that game tomorrow starting at 530 on WFHR in Wisconsin Rapids and on WJMS in Ironwood, Michigan.

That's one of our new civic media stations out there.

Badger women's hockey, the top ranked team

country, they will be putting their 10 and 0 record on the ice tonight as they too host the Minnesota Gophers, the third-ranked team in women's college hockey.

That will take place at Le Bon Arena at 6 p.m.

tonight and then again tomorrow afternoon at 2 for Badger Women's Hockey.

Let's see, Badger football team, they are off this weekend.

The Badger men's basketball team begins their season on Monday.

Badger Women's Volleyball, the 11th ranked Badger Women's Volleyball team.

They are 15 and three on the season.

We'll have the match of the season tonight at the UW Fieldhouse taking on number one ranked Nebraska.

which is perfect at 20 and 0.

You can catch the Badger women's volleyball team versus Nebraska 8 o'clock tonight on the Big Ten Network.

And one more note here.

The Milwaukee Bucks Ryan Rollins set a personal scoring high with 32 points.

to help the Bucks beat the Golden State Warriors 120-110, even without Giannis Anticumpo, who missed the game.

Due to a sore left knee, Miles Turner added 17 points for the Bucks.

Steph Curry scored for Golden State, 27 points.

Steph Curry, by the way, had been working on the second longest string in his career of consecutive free throws, but he missed one after hitting 57 previous free throws.

a streak that is only exceeded by his streak of 80 free throws in a row from March of 2019 to January of 2021.

All of that and more in a losing effort in that case for the Warriors falling to the Bucks 120 to 110.

717 right now.

And we've got some folks who are calling in on the phone lines and the text lines, sharing their Halloween costumes and their other assorted tricks and treats for Halloween here.

And Parker, I know you're taking some of those calls.

I'm also noting that we've got one technical issue of streaming to Facebook.

And so we're going to work on that during the commercial break.

But for folks listening on the radio, you're getting some good response back from some of the listeners out there.

Oh yeah, I hear a lot of good stuff.

I always like hearing about what people are doing on Halloween because I feel like it's one of those holidays that's kind of a hit or miss for a lot of people.

So you get some varying answers.

Pat Kreitlow

Well, and you also get all the creativity in both the costumes and in the experiences, the candies and everything else that they're doing.

So anyway, keep the text coming, some of them with costume photos.

And again, you can also use the Civic Media app to leave us a voice note.

So on that Civic Media app, you can call us, you can text us, or you can record a little voice note that we may play back as well throughout the course of the show.

Let's see, I wanted to cover one other quick thing here in the headlines and then we'll get our Week in Review panel in here.

You'll recall that a few days back we mentioned that the Trump administration had rejected some disaster aid for Southeast Wisconsin because of the flash flooding that took place back in August.

Well, they just did it again.

The Trump administration has rejected a different kind of disaster aid request for Wisconsin.

This would be for the rebuilding efforts to do what's called flood mitigation.

In other words, when you rebuild some of these things that have been washed out or damaged, you rebuild them stronger and able to withstand the next flash flood.

But it's going to be local taxpayers who have to foot the bill for all of that as the Trump administration has denied.

Federal disaster relief for flood mitigation rebuilding for some of those communities in Southeast Wisconsin.

Our Week in Review panel is on the way.

Thanks for joining us live from the lake on this Friday, Halloween morning.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get

started.

Pat Kreitlow

I do appreciate the effort.

I wish I was playing along a little bit better.

I'm very disappointed in myself right now.

What can I tell you?

I've got the baseball cap that says last minute costume, and that's as deep as the spirit goes here.

But we like hearing what you're up to today.

The candy you're handing out, the costumes you're wearing, and the other things that scare you.

And let's not kid ourselves.

This is always the scariest part of the week.

It's when we talk about what's in the news with Mark Jacob and Jim Santel, the former U.S.

Attorney.

And in for Jennifer Scholesi this week, Chicago Radio's own Joan Esposito.

Joan, thanks for being here.

Always a pleasure.

Mr. Crite low anything for you.

Pat Kreitlow

Oh, thank you.

It's so nice to have you have you all here Mark I'm gonna start with you because as I've been looking through your feed on blue sky and by the way We now have on the radio show.

We have a presence on blue sky and Twitter just look up PK radio show But mark a lot of yours has been It's almost like you're in a batting cage and the misinformation just keeps coming from the president from speaker Mike Johnson from others and you're you're just out there

Knocking them down with each thing that comes out.

Yeah, I don't know if you want to start with anything in particular like, you know We can't use the snap contingency funds, you know or wherever you want to start

we can't you know what I think about that is that you know the is that Elizabeth Warren actually posted the actual thing on the government website that said they could use contingency funds to pay for snap that the government took off the website, you know this week the thing that got me most was Kristi Noem showing up in Gary, Indiana

to talk about, you know, about the crackdown on immigration.

And she says, there's no American citizens that have been arrested or detained.

We focus on those who are here legally.

And anything that you would hear or report that would be different from that is not true and false reporting.

And ProPublica had a story just recently about more than 170 US citizens have been detained.

I mean, there have been

report after report.

And I guess what gets me is that they just don't care whether their lies are even credible anymore.

It's just a parade of lies and they're in the parade and they don't care what anyone's gonna do to fact check

Pat Kreitlow

them.

It's so true.

I mean, Joan, you hear the same things down there in Chicago and feel like you have to probably spend your entire radio show setting the record straight day after day.

Well,

Mark is absolutely right.

I mean, the brazenness.

I mean, even with Donald Trump and the grift, you know, he had that group of American investors take a significant part of TikTok, which is why we took it back from the Chinese.

After, Wall Street Journal reported after that deal was all done, he went to every one of those rich Americans that has a piece of TikTok and basically said, you know,

this deal it's like you wouldn't have it if it weren't for me in the world of business somebody like me would get a finders feed I want a couple hundred million from all you guys according to the Wall Street Journal not one of them complained everybody said yes sir and they ponied up his finders feed their their grifters and liars

Pat Kreitlow

Pat you're so about that.

There you go.

The other the other thing about it is that he goes and announces this deal with China There is no deal mark.

It was one of the rare times the New York Times was actually truly accurate in its headline about the deal that you know China has figured out how to make Trump feel like he got something when he got nothing Right, right.

This is actually the gist of the headline.

Yeah, and it's well, and it's always the greatest deal It's always you know the deal no one else no one can believe how good this deal is or

the deal is so i'm so sick of the word deal i'd like to see the word deal banned from the english language because

Pat Kreitlow

he's he's abused

it

so

much and and yeah it's it he he everything is spun and nothing is reality i mean it's it's i'd really rather go to book back to earth one from earth two which is what he's taken this entire country on there's some some sort of fantasy land where just because he says it makes it true

Pat Kreitlow

Yeah, and Jim Santel, former U.S.

Attorney, those tariffs are going to be argued before the Supreme Court next week,

are they?

They are.

Next week, Wednesday, probably one of the biggest cases of the term.

The question is whether or not this Supreme Court wants to uphold the first article of the Constitution that says, hey, it's the Congress and not the president, not the chief executive.

who establishes tariffs.

There's a particular statute that gives the president authority to do that.

It's called the IEPA.

I know all your listeners are completely on top of that.

And the statute basically says, you can do this in a time of emergency, urgency, great need to act quickly.

And it's not there.

Two lower federal courts.

The deal with trade, the deal with commerce have said, not even close.

Can't do this.

We'll see what the Supreme Court says next Wednesday on all of this and whether or not they're going to uphold the law.

or once again, simply let Donald Trump do whatever he wants to do, which has been their practice over the past nine months.

Pat Kreitlow

Now, Jim's been following no shortage of cases of things the administration's doing, including hurling tear gas into trick or treaters.

Joan, I know that, again, you've got troops there that have been, you know, again, firing tear gas, even if it impacts Chicago police, not to mention the children.

And yet they say they're all going to be out there on Halloween night as well.

It's not going to be your typical Halloween on the streets.

Governor Pritzker made a plea.

Apparently he sent a private letter to Christine Ohm and then made a public plea.

Could ICE just take Halloween off?

Let's just keep kids safe because as you pointed out, ICE, tear gas, a Halloween school parade of trick-or-treaters, young trick-or-treaters in our old Irving Park neighborhood.

That was one of the things Judge Sarah Ellis said when she had Greg Bavino before her.

She was like, trick-or-treaters pose no threat, no security threat to your agents.

And yes ma'am, yes

Pat Kreitlow

ma'am.

And yet, there's Kristi.

No, I'm saying, nope, we're going to be on the streets.

We're going to continue this discussion with our weekend review panel coming up.

First, a reminder that head on Matt Nair on air with chain Matt Nair and Greg Bach, Dan Schaffer, Civic Media's political editor and founder of the recon population area will be joining them again.

That will be, oh, right around 9 30 or so.

But we continue with our weekend review panel from the heart of America's up north live from Lake Wissota.

Thanks for making this the place.

Then very part of your hollow

I'm Pat Critello, this is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back.

It's a Friday morning, October 31st, Halloween.

Hope it's a good, fun, and safe night for all of you.

We've got our Week in Review panel here.

That includes former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel.

It also includes Mark Jacob, veteran Chicago journalist, and veteran Chicago radio host, Joan Esposito, who's got a little fan issue there that we're still trying to address.

But I prefer to think of it as Joan's joining us from a water park.

We're hearing

the

Pat Kreitlow

waterfall.

She's she's got the microphone while going down a lazy river here.

So we'll talk to Joan a bit more in a bit.

But Jim, I want to start with you first in terms of snap benefits and what is happening with the the court action on that one specifically because there there are contingency funds available for folks that that don't know in

previous government shutdowns and there have been several snap benefits have never been cut.

This is the first time where families could go hungry because an administration refuses to use its contingency funds and that's in the courts right now.

That's exactly right Pat and here's the name that we should all be thinking about today maybe even the next couple of hours as the federal district court on the east coast opens in just a few minutes.

Her name is Indira Talwani.

She is a federal district court judge.

She's had hearings

over the period of last several days.

And as late as yesterday, she looked at the government lawyers and said, I don't get what's going on here.

She looked at exactly the information we talked about in the previous segment that says that the funds are there.

They can be accessed.

It's available.

And she said, you can't just let.

people die.

I'd offer you that that is a stunning thing for a federal district court judge in contemporary America to say because she is looking at the availability of these funds and looking at an administration that simply won't invoke them, won't access them, and anticipate that sometime the next couple of hours here she is going to direct

direct the administration to use those funds to again temporarily keep this program afloat so people literally on monday morning have food on their tables for their families and their children and then the question is in america 2025 does this administration abide by what a federal judge has told it that's the next issue but it may happen may happen

today that the judge says you've got to do this and good for her, good for the United States if the administration follows what she is directing.

Pat Kreitlow

So, Jim, you're talking about it from a court standpoint.

Mark's mentioned from the administration standpoint, you know, deleting language off the website that is about them being able to use that contingency funding.

Joan, you take callers throughout your afternoon radio show, and I'm sure that you have heard some very concerned voices out there about what happens when SNAP benefits run out.

I am not hearing Joan here.

We might have to see if she can unmute or Parker if you can bring her mic back up.

Let's take a look here.

I'm not

getting it right now.

Pat Kreitlow

Okay, well, we'll work on Joan's microphone there and we'll just go back to Mark on this because again, you read enough media that so much of the media coverage has shifted away from the political and the legal to the personal and same goes for social media.

You're going to see all kinds of folks.

And by the way, none of them look like, you know, the Ronald Reagan welfare queens.

They look like families who are really worried about being able to feed their kids.

Well, and Pat, they're working poor.

It's this idea that, you know, that they're not, they don't have jobs or something.

Most of the people who are, I think, statistically about half the people on food stamps or SNAP are working.

you know in effect they're working at jobs that don't pay them enough to you know eat and have a heat and stuff like that so the you know in effect the snap benefits are subsidizing employers who won't really pay their workers enough that's part of the issue but what we're really seeing here is a.

The Republicans now are holding poor people hostage.

In effect, their message is, if you won't let us jack up the health care premiums for tens of millions of Americans, we're going to make poor people starve.

I mean, it's amazing that that would be the place where they're putting their line in the sand, but that's what they're doing.

What does it say about Republicans that they think that squeezing the poor will hurt Democrats more than Republicans?

It's that while the Democrats care about this issue, so we'll really get them by squeezing the poor.

Pat Kreitlow

And by the way, here's the ultimate paradox.

If Democrats eventually say people are hurting too much, we're just going to have to let the health insurance rates go up the way Republicans want so that we can end the shutdown and bring the SNAP benefits back.

Democrats will actually be the ones to pay a big price because you'll have all kinds of people say, why did you cave?

Why wouldn't you stand up for us and avoid all these health insurance price increases?

So, I mean, it's a can't win situation by saying, yes, we're going to have to go along with this shutdown because letting you jack up health insurance rates is so much worse.

It's not a box I'd like to be in, but I know where I'd be on this.

And it's like, you got to draw a line in the sand and you got to draw it right here.

Right and another irony is that a lot of the people who would be hurt by these higher healthcare premiums and hurt by the loss of snap benefits are in red states And it's it's this con game that the republicans have been playing for a long time in which you know They want to make you think that you know that it's all happening in in blue cities and all this.

No, I mean when you did one of the major news outlets had a map that showed how much

health care premiums will go up for ACA in various states.

And those red states were very red on that map as far as how much more they're going to pay.

And many people are not going to pay more.

They're just going to give up on having health insurance and they're going to die.

Yeah.

Let's try.

Pat Kreitlow

Jonah, are you able to hear us?

Can we hear you yet?

There we go.

Okay.

Technology is fun that way.

I got you to ask what some of your listeners are saying about this.

Yeah.

I mean, there's

Right now, where I am, there are so many things going wrong.

My text feed, interestingly, Pat, is filled with people reporting ICE sightings, where ICE is right now.

And I put that sort of information out there.

I was talking to the head of the teachers union, and she's, you know, Governor Pritzker has said he's going to put 20 million of state money toward food banks, but the teachers union, they're figuring

that they are going to have to feed kids breakfast and feed kids lunch, not subsidized stuff, but more than they're doing now.

Otherwise, they're going to go hungry.

I mean, there's no two ways about it.

Pat Kreitlow

No, there's not.

And by the way, all of this happens with, as the government has shut down Jim Santel, you know, these are folks who are either being furloughed or laid off.

or working and not getting a paycheck, and that's another one of the court cases out there, is the ability to outright fire more than 4,000 federal

employees.

Here's another name, another federal district court judge.

And interestingly, again, the men are doing this as well, but it's the women this week.

Sarah Ellis, as we just mentioned, and Susan Ilston, she's in Northern California.

She is the one who, again, just a couple of days or so ago said,

You cannot fire 4,100 people just because you've got to shut down.

And as Albert said, these two things, yes, they're related.

We all get that in some broad way.

But because you've got a failure of the Congress to pass a budget does not mean that particular individuals need to be fired from the payroll whenever you may get around to paying them.

And she said exactly that.

Name is Susan Ilston.

And she has said Donald Trump and OMB, Office of Management and Budget.

You cannot fire these people.

There's no basis for doing it.

It is unconstitutional.

It is illegal.

Stop it.

Knock it off.

And once again, we ask the same issue.

Is that the kind of thing this administration will follow?

Or will we simply say federal judges, you and whose army as a famous president said in the past?

Pat Kreitlow

Exactly.

But let's go to the other branch of government, Mark.

And in a Congress that has the Republican leadership has neutered that entire branch of government.

We hear every so often rumblings that behind the scenes, some rank and file Republicans and Democrats are talking, and that there are actually, you know, fissures in both parties about the best way forward.

But again, I ask in the hopes that maybe this week we have an answer, are there any profiles and courage on the Republican side that are gonna say, no, no, no, there's too many people in my state that are hurt by the loss of SNAP, the closing of Head Starts, the jacking up of health insurance prices and so on.

Well, you know, as Trump has accumulated power and become more and more of a dictator, I mean, you can get into despair about that.

But one of the few positive signs is that public pressure still works.

You know, people power can make a difference.

And I do hope that some of these Republicans in Congress will start hearing more and more from their constituents and start talking.

I mean, this is not a hard thing to solve.

what's happening now is is that the democrats are wanting to negotiate they want to negotiate over those jacked up aca premiums which again it's going to mean that some people don't have health care anymore and the republicans are not willing to even talk about and if they would sit down and discuss it and come to some sort of way to maybe not completely but in some way ease the burden on these poor and middle-class people who are using aca

and they could solve it really easily.

And so that's the real pressure point.

The other thing that's new today is that Trump is calling for getting rid of the filibuster, which would mean that only 50 votes plus fans would be able to advance, would be able to solve the whole problem for the Republicans and not share power with the Democrats at all.

So if that happens, that'll be a giant change and a little further weaken Congress and make Congress even more irrelevant than it is now.

Pat Kreitlow

Let's switch gears slightly to your one of your latest issues of stop the presses.

It's stop the presses dot news Mark Jacobs column news outlets dance with Trump and his ballroom I mean in any other situation a president demolishing a part of the White House would be a much bigger story But of course we excuse this Donald Trump.

You can do whatever he wants But we can at least question, you know whether news outlets are playing fair with their viewers their readers their listeners as they cover this mark

Yeah.

And again, this has become maybe a one or two day story, and it would have been a one or two month story in a normal administration.

But so you have several news outlets doing questionable things.

You have CNN, their boss went to the White House to try to pitch them on an interview with Trump for their new streaming service.

And then he comes back to his newsroom and he tells the newsroom that they really need to downplay the

East Wing demolition story because nobody cares about it.

And nobody in the newsroom thinks that that's a coincidence.

So that's one way that CNN seems to be capitulating.

And you have Washington Post, which has just gone off the deep end, explaining to us that it's a good thing that Trump demolished the East Wing without asking for any permission.

And in fact, after lying about what he was going to do, because

It would have taken too long if he'd actually gotten the proper permissions and gone through the regular process.

And so this is in effect the Washington Post editorially saying, well, it's OK to violate all rules and norms.

Just go ahead and do whatever you want, because otherwise they'll take too long.

And it should also be noted that the parent company of NBC gave money for this White House demolition in the building of this giant ballroom.

And so did Jeff Bezos' Amazon, who, and he's the one who owns Washington Post.

So there's all these strings that are showing why people have conflicts of interest in journalism.

Pat Kreitlow

So that's Mark Jacob with his new newsletter edition.

News outlets dance with Trump in his ballroom.

Joan Esposito, you can hear her live local and progressive program on WCPT radio in Chicago.

Weekday afternoons from two until five.

And of course, Jim Santel has Amicus, a law review.

You can hear that Saturday mornings at nine on Civic Media stations around the state.

Learn more at Civic Media.

dot us to learn more as we continue things with our week in review panel.

But first, let me tell you what you'll find in the up north news daily newsletter.

Sign up for it at up north news wi.com.

And today's issue, of course, has a lot about, you know, Wisconsin, the Halloween traditions, the decorations, the costumes, the candy, the pumpkin carving and more.

But there's also a link to an article about the many challenges rural America is facing.

by the politicians that rural America typically supports.

And these are making for tough times indeed, and some confused voters across rural America.

The work here continues on these warnings with Pat Crite-Loe powered by UpNorth News on the Civic Media Radio Network after

Kathryn Lake

this.

Pat Kreitlow

Sports coming up across the civic media radio network.

There are some stations that will be doing level two of the high school football playoffs tonight.

Then tomorrow the Wisconsin Badger Men's Hockey team will be hosting the Minnesota Gophers.

Coverage begins at 5.30 tomorrow on WFHR in Wisconsin Rapids.

Then on Sunday, the Green Bay Packers host the Carolina Panthers.

Coverage begins Sunday morning at 10 o'clock.

on civic media stations in Richland Center, Park Falls, Racine, and Wattoma.

One more time here with our Week in Review panel, Joan Esposito, Mark Jacob in Chicago, former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel as well.

And I'm going to start with my Chicago folks here first, Mark and Joan, when I saw, I just saw it out the corner of my eye.

The note on the screen said, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he's almost definitely running for president in 2028.

And after I threw up in my mouth a little bit, I decided I needed to ask you guys why I feel that way about him and why others do as well.

Mark, we'll start with you.

First off, where has he been since he kind of sort of ruined the Obama administration's early years?

What would bring him to the thought of running for president?

Well, he has

always had a high opinion of himself.

So I think that he thinks that he's just a very energetic guy who knows how to work the press.

And so he gets way more precedent he deserves to get, all these charms and badgers.

uh east coast people there's an article in Atlantic uh by Ashley Parker that just that's kind of prompting this latest round of round mania and in the article she talks about how much he like is telling her who to interview and badging badgering her i think she found it amusing but i don't find it amusing i was metro editor at the Chicago Tribune when he was mayor and and there was a lot to be disturbed about we had to sue him for records he was hiding his records and and

He also, nobody needs to forget the Laquan McDonald case in which the Emanuel administration covered up the police murder of a 17-year-old young man, a black man, black young man.

And so, I mean, it was a cover-up.

It was a police cover-up of a murder.

And everyone knew it.

The police were there in the scene and saw it happen.

The guy was walking away and got shot.

So, and the manual administration did everything it could to kind of keep us from knowing about that.

And it should hound him for the rest of his political career.

Pat Kreitlow

Yeah.

Same to you, Joan, as far as, you know, is this serious or is he just doing what we've seen so many other people do, get a little extra attention by saying you're considering running for higher office?

Yeah, I think it's the latter.

If anything, I think he wants to raise his profile enough.

that maybe somebody might consider him to be their VP on the ticket because, you know, during the presidential campaign, a lot of time the VP candidate is used as an attack dog to go out and say all the tough things that the presidential candidate wants to stay above.

But I think if he does have enough of an ego that he thinks he's going to run for president, I think he should start reading about Teddy Kennedy.

because Teddy Kennedy thought that the whole Mary Jo Kopeckney death after the party he thought that was you know that had been taken care of that was in the past all of a sudden he wants to run for president and it's front page news again just like Laquan McDonald will be he's your right mark he's never getting away from it there's no way with that kind of

a story that albatross around his neck that he's going to get enough of the black democratic vote.

No, no way.

Pat Kreitlow

And

he's got to know that.

I hope.

Pat Kreitlow

You would think, but as we've learned in politics, a lot of people think that their rehab tour is ready when they are very mistaken about that.

Jim Santel, you've got Amicus Law Review coming up tomorrow morning at 9.

We've covered several legal topics in the news already.

Anything that we've missed that folks can be on the lookout for tomorrow?

Just reminding us that our president continues to go after his political adversaries in court.

And we've got Letitia James prosecution and her maintaining, of course, that, in fact, there's no there there, that there's a rider on her bank loan that basically says that she can, in fact, rent out this property, arguably completely destroys this prosecution.

James Comey also filing a motion saying this is incredibly confusing, no basis to go ahead here.

Those cases look for them sometime in early next year to be dismissed if not they fall away completely.

president's attempt to go after them.

Retribution, yes, but not criminal convictions, nowhere near.

Pat Kreitlow

And unfortunately, Mark, I mean, if somebody abuses the court system, brings up, you know, lawsuits and things, you know, a court can sanction them.

But what Trump is doing with Leticia James and James Comey and all of these others, I mean, there is no.

blowback for him.

There appears to be no penalty for dragging people through this.

Even if the charges are really weak, you still have to hire attorneys and go through all the expense and everything.

I mean, is the only recourse, you know, media and public opinion that expose what this guy is doing?

Yeah, I guess it is.

The only recourse is the public having more decency than the president has.

But, I mean, it is a real problem.

And to a large extent, Trump, I don't think he thinks he's going to win these cases against James in Comey.

I think he thinks that he will harass them enough that that will be the punishment.

And this is a pattern with him.

It should be remembered that when he was trying to get Ukraine to

Trump up an investigation of Biden, he didn't really want it to find anything.

He wanted the announcement of an investigation.

I don't think he even cared about the investigation.

He just wanted something he could use to tar up somebody.

And I think that he wants to...

just bury people in this kind of legal process as punishment for them opposing him politically.

And it's just a gigantic abuse of power.

Pat Kreitlow

Yeah, and again, it works unless enough people hear the reports about how, in like the Leticia Jane's case, how this is completely...

flimsy on thin ice at best because the evidence is there.

But again, it's a tree falling in the woods, if people only hear about the case being filed and not about the actual results of it.

So Jim Santel will have more tomorrow on Amicus Law Review.

You can look at Mark Jacobs' work at StopThePresses.News and Jonas Pizito, listen to her live, local and progressive on WCPT radio in Chicago, weekday afternoons from two to five.

Thank you all very much.

Have a good weekend.

All right.

Happy

Pat Kreitlow

Halloween.

Happy Halloween.

Good to see you all there.

And in our next hour, we will talk to Dr. Kristen Lyrely and state legislative candidate Emily Sampos.

I've got quite a lot of specific media.

Kathryn Lake

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