Amy McGrath
Appearances
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Today, we've got a devil's cut episode from Ukraine, where the Ukrainians have just pulled off a remarkable drone attack deep inside Russian territory. I'm Amy McGrath with my co-host, Denver Riggleman. This is Truth in the Barrel, a different kind of whiskey rebellion. Welcome to Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Yeah, I mean, people who are listening should really pull up a map and see. And we'll send one in the show link from the Institute of the Study of War as to where things stand as of June 1st in Ukraine. And you can see where Denver is and you can see where the front lines are. And just, you know, we talk about this being a drone war at times.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
the moment and that small drones are the most important weapon going on. And I'm going to have you assess that whether you agree or disagree. But one of the things that I've tried to when I teach
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
down at University of Kentucky and I teach defense policy and we talk about what's going on in the war, that I try to explain to my students from the reporting there, at least, and I want to get your take, is with this new technology and with drones being the way they are, there is no place to hide Okay.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
The ISR drones, which are their surveillance drones, the intelligence drones, they may not be armed folks, but they can see everything. And the armed drones, they're the ones that you have to really worry about, which you're talking about, the FPV ones, they're everywhere. And so gone are the days where you can just sort of hide. Now you're talking about nettings and things like that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
So maybe there is a way for them to hide. I don't know. But it sounds like you knew they were coming. These attacks were coming. So that's good.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
You're looking great, though. And we're so glad that you're okay. I mean, gosh. So a lot of news right in the last 48 hours. Ukraine has just pulled off this incredible attack deep into Russian territory, destroying what has been reported to be over 40 strategic bombers, a very large aircraft that are important to Russia, by using drones in this attack.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Well, so I know, look, when I was in Afghanistan, it was a long time ago. But I know that during the day, the enemy seemed to have more cover, shall we say. And we sort of ruled the night. What is it like there? Where is the most dangerous time? Is it during the day or is it during the night?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
So what are you hearing from folks over there?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
I'm reading reports that AI is being used in a significant way at the end, at the terminal phase of these drones. In other words, an operator can get the drone in the ballpark, but it's AI that's figuring out what part of the truck, what part of the tank, whatever to target and doing that completely autonomously. So can you talk a little bit about this AI technology and what you're seeing?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
And it sounds like both sides are getting their drones, at least the parts, from China, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Right. I mean, it's just it's a different way of attacking that we haven't seen before. And so we started out this conversation talking a little bit about the attack deep into Russia and what that did to what that has done to the morale of the people in Ukraine. But what...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
And we know where the United States is kind of right now because we have this president who hasn't really been supportive of Ukraine or Ukrainians. And I want to ask you, what do the Ukrainians need from the United States at the moment?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Right. Do the Ukrainians see Americans differently now because we elected this president and he's not super supportive?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Yeah. And, you know, Trump has said recently Putin's gone crazy in his remarks. And I, of course, I don't believe really anything Trump says. But the reality is Putin hasn't gone crazy. He's always been a cold blooded killer. He's always been somebody who tortured POWs and stealing children, killing civilians. And from my view here back in the United States, I don't see an end to this story.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
war anytime soon because the ukrainians care so much about their country and they know that vladimir putin cannot be trusted and so my question to you is do the ukrainians that you talk to out there do they feel like hey there's a ceasefire coming right around the corner or we're gonna we're gonna get to a sustainable peace soon i mean what are they saying what are they thinking
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Yeah. And you know, we don't have here in the United States a, any memory of being invaded, uh, by a neighbor the way... I mean, Pearl Harbor doesn't... That doesn't count, okay? We don't have that memory in... the same way. We don't have a memory of mass persecution or oppression or extermination the way that the Ukrainians have.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
And so it's fascinating to me to think about how they're living their lives every day and in the midst of this literal existential threat to their families, to their homes, to their way of life. I just don't know. How are they doing it?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Yeah, amen to that. So I want to ask you about this Dropkick Murphys. Tell us about what happened there.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
So there's a couple of things you threw out there that I want you to define for everybody. So what's a TTP?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Well, I'm glad that you can have a little bit of fun while you're out there. And we have a lot more to cover. So we're going to be talking to you throughout your trip as much as we can, given the connectivity issues that you have, because this is such an important issue. You know, it's just great to see you. I'm glad you're out there.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Yeah, because we're seeing reports, Denver, of these semi-trucks that have sort of opened up, and then the drones come out of there and attack. That's just incredible. It's like James Bond type of stuff, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Your experience out there and sharing it with us and sharing it with the world is so important. And if there's one thing that I could say to people listening is that we Americans cannot forget about what is happening in Ukraine. We cannot forget about our partners, the people who are fighting against oppression and fighting for their lives right now.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
So thank you for sharing and thanks for being with us.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Well, be safe out there, Denver. And we'll see you on the next episode.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
This is the Devil's Cut Edition, along with Denver Riggleman, who is broadcasting from somewhere in Ukraine right now. Denver, please tell us where you're at and how are you?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Well, I have deep respect for Max Boot. So I'm going to take that out and read that article. The other thing that you said earlier, though, that I want you to define is you talked about an FPV drone area. So what is that?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
So tell me a little bit more. What does that mean?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
And we're going to get into this, but people need to know, because we talk a lot about Ukrainian drones, but the Russians have drones too. I mean, this is both sides going at each other using drones, using AI and all this technology. But I want to take a step back just a little bit. Sure.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
I know, I know. hey i'm the one back here in in lovely kentucky um drinking by the way devil's cut okay the devil's cut and i'll tell you very quickly before we get into this um the reason i chose this jim beam devil's cut is because the jim beam brand and the brands that are associated with it like jack daniels they were one of the first to um
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
as a corporation, to say they were not going to ship anymore or sell anymore to Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now, I know there's a lot on the black market, and I'm sure if you're in Russia, you can still get Jim Beam. But kudos to the company for brown forming, I think, for saying, hey, you know. So that's my cheers.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
But I want to ask you, why did you decide to go to Ukraine in the first place? Like, why are you there?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
So I just read in the last couple of days, Denver, about the number of women who are on the front lines in Ukraine, 60,000 in the Ukrainian armed forces, 20,000 women on the front lines. And, you know, you're talking about girls, but what what what ages are we are we talking about here?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | On The Ground In Ukraine
Yeah, I think it's a really good reminder, Denver, that, you know, in all this talk of technology and AI and all of the things that we're going to talk about with drones, for example, you know, combat and war is human. There's such a human element to this that technology can't replace. It's not going to replace it. And it's actually getting more personal in Ukraine. Would you agree with that?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
But I'm going to push back on that a little bit because like, so we get an indication that they're launching something. So what? I mean, you still have to knock the thing out after it launches. It's not like you can, oh, we're going to bring our space-based satellites closer now because we think they're going to launch. It doesn't work like that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
So what does that mean, bottled and bond?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
So it's this kind of thing. I can see your logic there. However... We're talking – we rearrange our assets to look at one particular system somewhere. China has over 300 systems. You're not going to target all 300 and shoot all 300 down. Russia has thousands. Okay. North Korea, dozens. It's going to be – and we're talking just in the boost phase.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
If you look at, oh, well, let's shoot them down in the midcourse, you know it's very easy for these systems to have chaff, which is like a decoys that they put out. We know that we already have – Missile defense systems, we have 44 interceptors that are based in California and Alaska, at least in open source. And those are limited. meaning they are not perfect.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
And if we are overwhelmed with multiple missiles coming at us or multiple warheads, those missile defenses can be easily overwhelmed. So, I mean, there's just a lot of limitations to this, and I worry that this is a giant problem. as I said before, boondoggle, where we are going to sink a ton of money into this for not much to show for it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Now, we could also work on terminal phase, destroying something in the terminal phase, which we have some systems that can do that. But again, they are limited around small areas. We don't have anything that could cover the entire system. United States of America. And to create something like that would be just really technologically difficult. And also, and I'm interested in your opinion on this.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Number one, who profits from this? Because, you know, if lots of satellites have to be launched, who's the one that's going to profit from that? Well, Elon Musk. And then two, what does it do to the balance of our deterrence and world deterrence in terms of nuclear powers?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Well, we can see it, but what do you mean by going offensive?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Yeah, and I would actually not use the term going offensive because you're not saying strike them. You're just saying move assets to be in a more defensive position, okay, to be able to. Okay. I mean I hear you. I just think that it's harder than we make it out to be.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
And here's the other thing I hear about people that are kind of pushing this, hey, we need to buy this golden dome. We need to invest in this thing. This is Trump's big thing. And he's a – you know Denver. He's a master negotiator.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
And this all in his master plan, this Golden Dome, is like Reagan started Star Wars, and that's when the Soviet Union collapsed because they couldn't compete with Star Wars. And so now this is Trump's idea of bringing China and Russia to the table again. to talk nuclear nonproliferation or arms control, shall we say, because he's going to start this talk of starting this Iron Dome system.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
I don't know. I don't know what you think about that, but I don't think Trump even understands any of this stuff. Doesn't. No.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Look, we start to develop something like this. China and Russia are going to counter. They're going to build more nukes. They're going to start building more countermeasures. We do not do things in a vacuum. So that's number one. We can think about, oh, this is a great system. We should develop it. Guess what? Our enemies are going – and I know you said they're behind. I get that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
But they're going to look and they're going to see this as a threat to them, and they are going to try to counter. So that's number one. Number two, the domestic political pushback to this will be real, not only in terms of money because, as we've talked about, our budget is – It's limited. I know Pete Hegseth wants a trillion-dollar defense budget.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
The reality is there's a lot of other competing priorities in our national defense. Shipbuilding has been something that Donald Trump now cares about. That's going to cost money. Nuclear modernization itself is going to cost money. So this price tag of trillions for something like this is just – it's probably not feasible. And the second piece of this is the domestic politics behind it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Look, I've often thought, what's in a name? He named this thing Golden Dome. Well, what does that do, Dan? That makes all Democrats look at this project as this is Donald Trump's pet project. And we're not going to be for that. If you were serious about a weapons system that we really needed for our national security, why on earth, why on earth would you name it after yourself?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
If you're Donald Trump, if you really gave a shit, you would name it something that, you know, Democrats could get behind because that's what it's going to take in our country to do a long term national security major project. If it's just Republicans and Donald Trump behind this thing, it ain't going anywhere.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
That's what it is. If it was so good, he would have tried it in his first term. He didn't because he was surrounded by people who told him, this is dumb. Don't do this. It's going to be too expensive and not work. And now he's not surrounded by anybody that'll tell him that. So here we are. It's like tariffs.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Good stuff. And we need it because today we're talking about Trump's January 27th executive order in which he ordered the Pentagon to deliver a plan for a Golden Dome system to protect America. So let's just start, Denver. What... What is a missile defense system at all? Like, what is it?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Yeah, we're talking today about Trump's new shiny idea of a Golden Dome missile defense system, which he has decided we need. based on Israel's Iron Dome system. And so this is really important because it's a massive amount of money. And we need to talk about the potential for this system, why we might need it, and how kind of crazy it is.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Yeah. Basically, you're trying to... You're trying to shoot down something that is coming at you in the sky. So if a drone is coming at you, a missile is coming at you, a cruise missile or something, a nuclear-tipped missile, the idea behind missile defense in all of its broad categories is we're going to shoot that thing down so it doesn't go boom. That's what this is.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Now, Donald Trump has decided that he loves Israel's – Iron Dome system. The Iron Dome system is a system that Israel has developed. It's worked very well against rockets coming from Hamas. It's worked very well against regional missiles coming from Iran. And Donald Trump has basically said, I want that for America. I acknowledge the idea. We all want to be...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
safe from incoming potentially incoming missiles but um there's some real issues with this starting with the size of israel is about the size of new jersey and so protecting the entire united states makes makes it more difficult scientifically right i mean the iron dome as you know denver it's protects against regional missiles
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
It's a tactical system. So, folks, unless Canada is going to launch a missile at, I don't know, Cleveland, Ohio, this is not a system that we necessarily want to buy. But Donald Trump has bigger ideas, right? He wants to create one that would protect us against all missiles coming from all around the world, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
What can shoot me down? That's all I care about.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
I mean, give us some time with Donald Trump. That's right.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Hi, everyone. I'm Amy McGrath, and I'm here with Denver Riggleman, and this is Truth in the Barrel, The Devil's Cut.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
But first, I'm going to hand it back over to you, Denver, because this is Truth in the Barrel, and we got to talk whiskey.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
So we've been here before. Right. I mean, Ronald Reagan started what was called some people called it Star Wars. Some people called it the SDI or Strategic Defense Initiative. And the idea behind that was we'd have space lasers out there to be able to shoot down nuclear ballistic missiles coming at us. And here's the bottom line about what happened in that case. It was a super costly program.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
It cost us over $400 billion in the 1980s. It proved way too technologically difficult to do, and we abandoned it. We abandoned the program because it was not working. And when you think about today and think about all that's happening in government with this, hey, we're going to tackle fraud, waste, and abuse, the Dodge people going up there and trying to do that, think about –
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
spending trillions because that's what this golden dome would cost, $5 trillion to build this thing. And you can say, well, Amy, aren't we more technologically savvy than we were in the 1980s? Shouldn't we be able to do this now? Well, it's still really hard. Scientists liken this to trying to shoot a bullet out of the sky with another bullet. It's tough.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
I guess that's not a term that people But we use it in the military. It basically means it's a complete waste of money, that there is no feasible way to get to the mission to actually succeed. And people are just having a lot of fun. with the money. I mean, it's a boondoggle, right? It means we're all having a lot of fun with the money that's been thrown at us.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
When people say to me, why is this a problem? Shouldn't we be thinking big? Shouldn't we be tackling these technological challenges to protect our country? I break it down and try to remind people You know, there's three different phases for when a ballistic missile is shot and launched at us, okay? The boost phase, the midcourse phase, and the terminal phase. The most vulnerable phase
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
is the boost phase. So ideally, we would want to shoot down that missile that is launched at us in the boost phase. That's, as you know, the first three or four minutes of when it's launched up into the atmosphere, you know? And the idea behind this golden dome is that we would try to do that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Now you can do that by having ground-based interceptors, but those ground-based interceptors would have to be very, very close to, geographically close to the missile that is being launched at us. And if it's being launched in North Korea, we would have to be very close around North Korea with thousands of ground-based interceptor missiles.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
And the problem with that is China ain't going to want that. They're not going to want that. It's hard. And then you could place them and people say, well, let's place them in space. That sounds good.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
Let's place these interceptor missiles in space so that when the nuclear-launched missile goes up into outer space or even ideally before it gets into outer space, we've launched our interceptor missiles from space. The problem with that is you've got to put thousands of these interceptors in orbit around where we think the North Koreans, in this case, are launching from.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Donald Trump's Golden Dome
So the scientists that have looked at this have said, we need 1,000 interceptor missiles orbiting in space to counter just one North Korean nuclear ballistic missile. How feasible is this? Yeah.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I still think you were mad. No, that's fine. You're right to say that. He definitely prompted me to put my hat in the ring. Not necessarily to be anti-Trump. It was more like, this is the guy we have leading our country and he is a man of such poor character and honor. Where are we going? We need to have better leaders to counter him.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
We need to have better leaders that if people are voting for him, we have a problem. We need to have better leaders coming up. And so I wanted to be a part of that. And I still want to be a part of that. I think that's really important for our country, the United States of America, to have leaders with character and honor.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
It was something that was instilled in me at the United States Naval Academy when I went there, that this was a part of leadership. You know, you can muddle through with leaders who are sort of shitbags. But you're not going to be really successful unless you have leaders that have these things called, you know, this thing called integrity.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And so, while I had many policy disagreements with Bush II, for example, or Mitt Romney, or some of these other Republicans, I never... believed that they were not persons of character and honor. The way I fundamentally look at Donald Trump and say, this is a man who just is not an honorable man in my opinion.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
But that aside, when I ran, I had to kind of put that aside and say and I did say I would work with him on policy issues because he was the president. Right. At the time when I ran on this on the same note, I wanted to make sure that people knew that I was going to represent them and their interests as well. And so It was really interesting.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
The other thing that I think a lot of people don't know, and I kick it over to you, Denver, for your insight on this, is I think a lot of people think that the national parties kind of tell you what to say and how to say it. That is just not true at all. No. And I think a lot of people think that the national parties fund your campaign, and at least in my race in Kentucky...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
That didn't happen either. So all the fundraising we got was organic through our own campaign, what we went out and got, and that people were inspired around the country to contribute. It wasn't the party at all. And both in the Congressional and the Senate, not once did the party ever tell me what to say. I don't know how the Republican side works.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And if you listen to the podcast version of Truth in the Barrel, if you're going to listen to the live version, I would recommend going on YouTube to do that because then you can participate and be a part of the show through the chat option. So you don't want to miss out on any of these exciting things coming down the pike here.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
One of the things that people may not fully understand is money doesn't necessarily buy you a win. Correct. It doesn't mean that if you raise a lot of money and you don't win, you're a bad candidate. You have to go back to that PVI sort of... What do you call it? Scale. The calculation. That we talked about at the very beginning. Denver, you ran in an R plus 7 district.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
When I ran for Congress, I ran in like an R plus 12 district, I think, at the time. And that's a pretty big hump to get over. And so we raised, I think, 8 million or something around that. And that made us competitive. And we almost won that race. And I'm really proud of that race because it was my first race and I was running for all the right reasons, as I did the second one. But
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
In that race, the National Party on the other side saw that we were running a really good race and my opponent needed more money at the end. And the National Republican Party was able to pull out of other people's races around the country that they saw were really close, that they just couldn't fund anymore and consolidate into Kentucky 6th.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
und das erhielt meinem Gegner genug Geld, um bis zum Ende zu kommen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
um and i didn't win right i lost by two and a half points but all of these other candidates around the country who were democrats did win um because and i think that it's a bigger picture and so i was really proud of that and then in the senate race you know we we raised a lot of money um because i was going against uh mitch mcconnell who a lot of people didn't like some of it was because i knew how to do it i had a great team i had done it before
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Amen. Let's get to our Whiskey Minute. So today we have J.T.S. Brown, Kentucky's finest Kentucky Bourbon, established in 1855, coming at you from Bardstown, Kentucky. It is very good. That's what I'm drinking today. I know you're still in the Middle East and may not have the opportunity, Denver, to have some whiskey or bourbon, but I will do double. I will drink more. Ich liebe es. Jetzt Dubai.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Aber das bedeutet nicht unbedingt, dass du gewinnen wirst. Es macht dich einfach kompetitiv. Denn wenn du keine Ressourcen hast, um eine solide Kampagne zu führen, bist du nicht wirklich kompetitiv. Es ist sehr, sehr schwer in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, eine Kampagne zu gewinnen. Das ist das, was ich über Geld sage.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Ich glaube, es waren zwei und eine halbe oder drei, aber ich weiß es noch nicht.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
When you raise money, and we're certainly thankful, and I know you are, to everybody who has ever given to your campaign, because, you know, it's not just you, it's these generous people around the state and around the country. They give because they believe in you, they believe in your values, they believe in your leadership. But that money doesn't go into candidates' pockets.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Es wird auf digitale Ads gespendet, es wird auf TV gespendet, es wird auf Flyer gespendet, es wird auf die Struktur deines Kampagns gespendet, für die Leute, die Arbeitsplätze und Arbeitsplätze. Es ist alles Teil davon. Du kannst nicht, auch wenn du für den Kongress rannt, wie viele Leute in einem kongressuellen Bereich sind, 600.000, 700.000 pro kongressuellen Bereich.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Es gibt keine Weise, Leute, es gibt keine Weise, dass du 600.000 Türen knacken kannst. There's just no way. It's not possible. If you're running for maybe city council or something like that, you might be able to knock on every single door in your district, but not for a federal office, certainly not for Senate. So how do you get your message out? You get your message out by...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Und das ist nur unser System und das kostet Geld. Also die große Mehrheit von dem, was Sie zu Kampagnen zahlen, geht dazu. Und es geht nicht zu Kandidaten. Und ich denke, das ist wirklich wichtig. Aber ich möchte Sie fragen, bevor wir in Bigfoot kommen, weil ich weiß, das ist ein interessanter Teil Ihrer Kampagne. Aber was ist mit Ihrer Familie? Denn wir reden nicht genug von Familie.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Ich hatte drei kleine Kinder und eine Schwester. Aber wie, Denver, hat deine Familie es genommen, als du während der Kampagne gearbeitet hast und auch als du im Büro warst?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
You got to know that you're going to be, for lack of a better word, shit on. Okay. And you've got to know that there's going to be all these pundits, all these people who have never had the guts, shall we say, to run themselves, who will throw darts at you, who will tell you how you... They'll laugh at you. They'll say that, you know, you're a terrible candidate or they'll critique you.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I think the biggest thing... For listeners out there, ist, dass du, wenn du über das Runnen im Büro denkst, wirklich niemandem zuhören solltest, der nicht gerannt hat, weißt du, in Bezug auf das Kritizieren. Wenn du entscheidest, zu rennen, weißt du, es ist okay, Kritik zu nehmen, aber von Leuten, die es nicht selbst gemacht haben, wissen sie nicht wirklich, wie es ist.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Ich denke, ja, es gab negative Zeiten. There were really hard times, but overall, there was a lot of positive things that happened in my campaign that I will never forget, that I just inspired the hell out of me. And in terms of my family, my kids were really small when I ran for Congress. In fact, when I lost, the night that I lost... Es war eine wirklich schwierige Nacht.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Mein ältester Sohn war der Einzige, der noch wach war, weil die anderen schliefen. Sie waren Jüngere. He was on his computer. He was on his little iPad. He didn't have a computer. He had an iPad. He was like five or six. He was playing Minecraft or something. It was like the world came down. I lost. It was national news. I felt like the world was sort of caving in on me.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Yeah, let's do it. If you want to talk about running for office, you definitely got to drink some whiskey. All right, let's get to it. The goal of this show really is to sort of enlighten people about what it's like to run for office. You see a lot of politicians. You see them in sort of politician mode.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I remember Teddy looking up We were in a hotel room in Richmond, Kentucky, where I was going to go out and give my concession speech. And I remember Teddy looking at me saying, Mom, did you win? And I looked at him and I'm like about ready. I'm like crying. And I don't want to cry because I've got to go out and give the concession speech. So I don't want to be crying.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
But I'm like on the verge of tears. And I look at him and I said, Ted, No, your mom didn't win. I lost. Thinking that this was like the biggest thing on the planet. And you know what he said to me, Denver? Oh, okay. Well, better luck next time. You know, or something like that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I mean, I don't even remember what he said, but it was just like, it was kind of like, I'm going back to my Minecraft game, you know? And it brought me back down to earth. It brought me back down to like, I'm going to be okay. All right. No more tears. Let's get out there. Let's do the concession speech. It's all good. And that's kind of what it's like. It's hard.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
It's hard to go through $100 million of attack ads, which Mitch McConnell spent to smear my name in Kentucky. Yeah, that's hard. But if you know who you are, you know who you are on the inside, The people that know you the most also know who you are. And so those attack ads really, you know, we're still standing.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Neither one of us, I think, in Denver, you can tell your story here, but neither one of us sort of grew up thinking politics. I'm going to be a politician someday. I'm going to be an elected office. I mean, for me, my dream was to be a fighter pilot. My dream was to be in the military. And I followed that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Well... Hard to follow that. But I mean, I would say that it's really difficult, I think, for people who haven't run, because there are so many crazies in office who are just totally... Das ist nicht wahr. Wie du gesagt hast, sind wir nur normale Menschen. Ich erinnere mich an die Kampagnen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And it wasn't until later on when I sort of took stock at what my life was really about, which was protecting this country. and protecting our democracy. And that's when I decided, you know, I got to try to be the change that I want to see in our political leadership.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Just dealing with my children, just having to go up on stage, knowing that I had a kid that was crying in the background because he stubbed his foot or he just wanted to be near me. And it was just like I was a normal person. And it was hard for me at times to be the smiling, happy warrior candidate. aber auch nur eine normale Mutter und eine Person.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Ich denke, das war vielleicht der Anliegen zu einem gewissen Grad. Viele Leute haben gesagt, hey, du bist so authentisch. Ja, das ist, weil ich real bin. Das ist das echte Leben für mich. Aber wir brauchen gute Leute, die real sind. zu steppen, die vielleicht nicht einen politischen Nachnamen haben, die vielleicht nicht in einer politischen Partei aufgewachsen sind.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Ich war keine Demokratin, ich war ein Independent, mein ganzes adultes Leben im Militär. Ich habe einen Republikaner verheiratet. Für mich war das, was du an der Strecke geworfen hast, nicht das, was mich definierte. Was mich definierte, war, ein Amerikaner zu sein und die Werte, die ich im Militär und aus Kentucky gelernt habe und die Führung.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Und ich fühle mich, als ob du die Art von Person bist, die es in dir hat, dass du dünne Haut hast, dass du jemand bist mit moralischem Mut. You need to step forward for whatever that spot is, whether it's city council or congress, you name it. Because our country needs good leaders now more than ever.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
But I'm interested in what made you want to run for office because, you know, you have this background in the Air Force and then again in tech and AI and the national security world. What made you say, I think I want to run for Congress?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Ich weiß nicht über das, aber ich bin sehr überzeugt, anderen zu helfen, who want to jump in the arena for whatever role that speaks to them. I think that's really important. Denver, I actually have a PAC that I set up after I lost the Senate race to specifically help women who have served. Ja, genau.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
If you don't come from a political last name or a super large network or you're independently wealthy yourself, it's really hard to get started. And so I created this pack to help women around the country who have served start and get going. So check that out if you're listening and you care about getting good people. Maybe you can't run yourself. Hey, I love that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I mean, that's what you do, Amy, right? That's what you do. And, you know, the thing about good people running, as we were talking, and I want to tell people this.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
People need and want a fighter. So in my first race, in the congressional race, I ran all positive ads. I thought I could win by running all positive ads. Andy Barr ran all negative ads. He had one positive ad with him and his family. And then he had 24 negative ads. And the race became about me and not him. Und das ist das, was passiert ist.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Also taktisch, ich musste, ich musste, und ich hätte ein Ad runnen können, das im Grunde gesagt hat, er hat über seine Vote gesprochen, über das, was er gemacht hat, was ihm schmerzt. the constituents and I failed to do that and I learned my lesson. So when I ran for Senate against Mitch McConnell, my ads, what you would call negative ads against Mr. McConnell, there was no
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
falsehoods in those it was all true it was about his voting record it was about his actions and i ran against somebody that had you know books we had large lists of things that mitch mcconnell had done that we could have used against him um to try to show voters in kentucky why he needed to go it's just also very hard If you're running as a Democrat in a really red state to get over that hump.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
So many people, I always tell people, I wasn't just running against Mitch McConnell in 2020. I was running against years and years and decades of labeling Democrats, because I had that D behind my name, right? Labeling Democrats as something terrible. And that's what I was running against. Not just that one year. I was running against years of that labeling and that branding.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And so it's very hard to get over that. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't try. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't get in the ring and try. But That's the reality.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Oh, ja. Ich meine, schau, running for a congressional seat ist anders als running statewide. Aber die gleiche Struktur ist da, es ist einfach größer. It's just bigger. You have a bigger staff. You go from a staff of 15 to a staff of 200 in that race. It's big. The money, everything is just bigger. If you have the basic leadership skills, You can do it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And I sort of want to end our talk today on a note of inspiration, because I know we've talked a lot about some of the craziness of running, some of the really hard things that we had to deal with. The bottom line, though, is if you're an American that loves this country and you have it in you to run and be a leader, you need to do it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I have strapped on a 70 million dollar jet to my back and a lot of people think that that takes courage. You know what? What takes more courage is putting your name on the ballot. And getting people to either vote for you, taking the hits... Because you know it's the right thing to do, because you know that you can be the best representative for the people. That takes courage.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And that's the kind of thing that we need in this country. I believe that's what's going to really help us right now, help us get through this time, even more than podcasts, more than tweeting. If you're somebody that has the financial ability to put your name on the ballot, the leadership ability, Do it. We need you.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Well, and the last thing I'll say, not everybody can run. I understand that. But as an American, right now, do what you can. Some people can knock on doors. Some people can be a part of a campaign. Some people can write a check to campaigns. Some people can run themselves. Whatever you can do. We're not asked to storm the beaches of Normandy like the greatest generation.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
We're not asked to take up arms and fight in Gettysburg. But we are in a time in this country where we are asked to step up. And so I am asking everyone who is listening, what are you doing to step up? What are you doing right now? That's what you have to look at internally and be the American leader that we need today. So that's what this show is about.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I love doing this show with you, Denver, and I can't wait to see you on the next show. Let's get going.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Was there a specific moment that you decided, I'm going to run? Yeah.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Hallo, alle. Willkommen bei Truth in the Barrel, Devil's Cut. Ich bin Amy McGrath mit meinem Co-Host Denver Riggleman. Und heute haben wir ein wirklich lustiges Show. Heute werden wir über die Höhen und Löhne des Rundens für das Büro sprechen und warum es so wichtig ist, gute Leute voranzubringen. Schön, dich zu sehen, Denver.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I think for me, I was finishing up my tour at the U.S. Naval Academy. I was teaching there. And I was teaching national security courses, a course on constitutional development and U.S. government, a course on weapons of mass destruction. So it was all sort of national security, but it was also democracy-related, my work there. Right.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
You know, for me, I had had these former members of Congress that would come to my class to talk about what it was like to be in Congress. And I always signed up to have these guys as the guest speakers, because it's a free day for me as an instructor. And one of the speakers there was a man by the name of Ben Chandler, who had been a congressman in Kentucky in the 6th Congressional District.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And I'd seen a lot of members of Congress, but we talked because we're both from Kentucky. He gave me his business card, and I didn't think too much of it, other than, wow, this is a great guy, and we talked about bourbon, and we talked about horses. Of course.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Well, a year later, the election of 2016 happens, and we elect what I thought at the time was a very poor leader, and that was Donald Trump. He was sort of everything that I looked at, what a leader should be, he was sort of the opposite. Arrogant, wouldn't take responsibility for anything. lied about everything and had no character. And I felt like, wow, where is our country going?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
And I think I need to step in there and be the leader that I want to see in this country. Because a lot of people didn't like politicians. They didn't trust them. And I felt like, wow, I'm getting to the end of my 20-year career. I can do this. But I don't know how to do this because I don't know any politicians.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
So after Donald Trump won, I rooted through my desk in my office at the Naval Academy. I pulled out this guy's business card, wrote him an email and said, hey, do you remember me? I was that instructor that you came to my class. If I came back to Kentucky after I retired and jumped into politics, is that crazy? And he wrote me back right away and said, no, I don't think it's crazy at all.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
In fact, we need good candidates, new, fresh, exciting candidates like you. You have a lot to give to the state. And if you come back, I will help you. And he did. He linked me up with lots of different people, including the man who would become my campaign manager. And we went from there. And so it... It wasn't a specific moment where I said, yes, I'm going to do this.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
It was more of a gradual building to that point over the next six months at the end of 2016 at that point. And by the time 2017 rolled around, I think, yeah, I was going to retire. I was going to do this. So that's how it started.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Denver is still in the Middle East, but we're glad that you're with us today.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
It was almost like a, I can't believe this man is leading our country. I have to understand why people voted for him. And I have to not focus so much on him, but be the leader that I want to see in this country.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Somebody who is honest to the extent that they can be, who takes responsibility, who doesn't say there's a simple answer for everything, who's willing to compromise, who's willing to put in the work.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
who who who doesn't lie to people i mean that was one of the things i learned on on my congressional fellowship when i learned about the budget uh that year on the hill one of the biggest oprah zaha moments was the whole idea of debt and deficit which i know we've talked a lot about on this show so much of that stuff was just lies And I was tired of it. I'm kind of a teacher.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
I had that background. My dad was a teacher and I wanted to be a leader that people could believe in.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
So Denver, you ran, I think, in an R plus six or R plus seven. And before you answer that for listeners, every district has a rating. And I think a lot of people don't know this, whether it's if it's a red district or it's a blue district and how how much it's red or blue. So if you're R plus one, that means you lean Republican, but only by one point. If you're R plus 30.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Das bedeutet, dass du wirklich, wirklich rot bist. Du bist wie das Staat von Kentucky in einem Staatsrace. Wenn du blau plus fünf bist, bist du blau, aber nicht völlig solid. Also irgendwo in dieser 10-Range ist es immer noch gewinnbar auf der anderen Seite. Aber du hast Denver, glaube ich, in einem R plus 7 gewonnen. Ist das, was du gesagt hast?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
In Virginia, a convention selects the primary winners?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Yeah, and I think everybody that's listening also needs to realize that elections around our country in different states are all done differently. In Kentucky, we have a primary. It's a closed primary. It usually happens in the spring. The filing deadline is usually in January. But every state is different. And so if you're thinking about running for any state, Ja, genau.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | We Dare You To Run For Office!
Yeah. All right. We're so excited, of course, also to announce our weekly live show beginning June 10th. It's going to be the most distilled version of Truth in the Barrel. Just Denver and I talking about the news of the day and answering your questions live. Of course, drinking whiskey along the way. Join us Tuesday, June 10th, 7.30 to 8.30 p.m., Eastern Time. Can't wait for that to start.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Yeah, and we're going to get to that. But there was something you said that I want to just clarify a little bit. You were talking about what the Republicans are going to say and what others were going to say about the deficit. There are numbers out there. And they're real in terms of past numbers. Okay.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And there are quantifiable projections that we can see right now of the Senate Republican plan and the House Republican plan. And I took those numbers over 10 years, which is what most people look at. And I broke it down into one year because I think in one year terms. So the Senate Republican plan would add 580 billion people.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
to the deficit, 580 billion, and the House Republican Plan would add 280 billion. Now, you talked about Biden's infrastructure bill and some of the other bills. President Biden and Democrats passed three major pieces of legislation that dealt with money. The American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
It is absolute truth to say that the three of those combined How much they cost us, the three of those combined are actually less than what either the House or the Senate Republican budget this year would cost us.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Most people that run for office do love tax cuts.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Yeah, you can't run for office and say you want tax cuts. And that's part of the problem, right? There's only two ways to fix this. You either spend less. Or you get more revenue. There's no other way. The shit doesn't fall out of the sky. There's no other way to fix this. You either spend less or you get more revenue. And you can get more revenue with tweaking.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
You can get more revenue with having a better economy. Trump thinks he can get a lot of revenue with tariffs. I can talk about why that might be misguided. Or... But what most voters say, because most voters don't really want you to ever say, we need to get more revenue, right? Because that's tax stuff. We don't want to increase taxes.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And nobody ever runs for office and wins by saying they're going to do that. So most voters, most people think about, we got to cut spending. How many times did you hear on the campaign show? We got to cut spending. Or, you know, Senator Thune, who is now the majority leader. Oh, the problem with the debt is the Democrats' spending. Okay. The question then becomes, Denver, what do you want to cut?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
What do you want to cut from our budget? And that gets into, you talked about it earlier, I think people do need to understand the difference very quickly between mandatory and discretionary spending. Mandatory spending simply is spending that goes out no matter what. Every year, Congress would have to change the law, proactively change the law, in order to tweak that spending.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
If Congress does nothing, which happens a lot, if Congress does nothing, then that money gets doled out. That is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Benefits, Military Retirement Pension, that sort of thing. That goes out in the middle of the wealth.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Unemployment insurance, that all goes out no matter what. Then there's this piece of the pie called discretionary spending. And that's the piece that everybody, that Congress has to appropriate. You were talking about appropriates earlier, that's what that means.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Every year. So Congress has to actually proactively pass a bill that says, yes, this money will go out. And that is split into two main sections. One is your military. About 50% of that is military. And the other half is the rest of the federal government. Okay, so TSA, EPA, Department of Energy, FAA, CIA, everything else is in the other section. So that is your discretionary spending.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And that is right now about 26% of our overall budget. Only 26%. And then the other 12% is interest. Interest on the debt.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And how does it taste, Denver? How does it taste?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Remember, though, that is only 26% of what we spend. That is your discretionary budget. The mandatory stuff is already gone out. As we talk about this, I think it's important for people to understand, because I heard this a lot when I ran for office. We just cut fraud, waste and abuse. Here's the thing, folks.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Our entire federal budget, if you take the military out, the budget that you're talking about, the rest of the federal government, your TSA, your FAA, your Department of Energy, we could get rid of all of that. and we would still have a deficit. Yes, ma'am. It's only 13% of our overall spending.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And so what Denver, what you're talking about there is really finagling over, and some finagling over the military budget as well, but 26%. And so when you think about cutting spending, If you want to cut stuff, you have to understand that healthcare, Medicaid, Medicare is a big piece of the pie. Now, I'm center left.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
I actually believe our country, we are rich enough to be able to pay for our senior citizens. To have healthcare so that they don't have to, because we haven't figured out, we have this connection of healthcare and work in this country, which you can, we can debate about it in another day.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
But I, Amy McGrath just happens to think that you shouldn't have to be 85 years old and working at McDonald's to get healthcare. Okay. That you should be able, we should, as a, as a contract to our senior citizens in the United States of America, they should get healthcare. Healthcare coverage. That's just me. Okay, that's Amy. Call me a leftist. I look at Medicaid the same way.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And if you look at the numbers with Medicaid, the vast majority of people, human beings on Medicaid are elderly, disabled, or children. And so when you think about cutting that, a lot of people are like, ah, we gotta get rid of Medicaid. Really? Take a step back and look who's on that. So if you're going to cut stuff, we really have to look at that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And then there's Social Security, which, as you know, Denver is about a quarter of our budget. But the thing about it is, you know what? Everybody pays into Social Security. So why the hell would we cut that? That's stupid. We all pay into it and we're all going to get something out of it. So to me, and it's solvent, I don't think we should be cutting that at all.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
So it comes down to like, what are you going to cut? And that's the fundamental problem.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Well, the answer is you can look at the other bar graph, right? You can look at revenue, but we don't want to look at revenue. You know, we cut the corporate tax rates and that was, everybody loved that, right? Well, that cost us 500 billion a year. We can tweak certain things. Donald Trump thinks, you know, the tariffs are going to answer the problem. But if you look at the numbers on tariffs,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
That equals actually about 500 billion if they continue a year in revenues. That is not going to cut it. That's not going to be enough to fix our deficit. And as we talked about previous, what that does to our economy makes it even worse in my mind.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Let's start this thing. All right. Yeah. Oh, my God.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Ja, aber es braucht serious people in office, Denver, that want to fix this. We did this back around the Budget Control Act, around the time frame where I was a congressional fellow, where we had the Dominici, Rivlin, they were two economists that came together on different sides of the aisle to try to come up with a plan. We had the Simpson-Bowles, if you remember, that was another plan.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
We're going to need it today because we're tackling on this deep dive. This is the devil's cut episode of Truth in the Barrel, where we take one issue and we go into it so that you understand it a little bit better. And, you know, I started learning about the federal budget after my... Yes. We're really trying to get the budget under control. And we'll talk about why that happened.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Oh, yeah. Both of those plans would have put us on a fiscally sound path. But Congress did not have the courage to enact any of them. And it has to be done in a bipartisan way. It cannot be done just by one side, because there's too much sacrifice, political sacrifice, that's going to go into this. Do we blame the electorate? We do need to tweak what people call entitlements.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
I happen to lean a certain way on that. But you remember, Social Security was enacted in the 1930s when your life expectancy was much lower than it is today. Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in the 1960s. We do need to look at that. But that should not be the only thing we look at. We also need to look at the other side, the tax revenue side.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Because we can't keep doing, promising people tax cut after tax cut after tax cut and think that our deficit is going to be fixed. It is never going to be fixed. It is never going to be fixed. And the other thing that I just want people to understand, and maybe this is because I'm a Democrat and I just think there's so much misinformation out there.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Since Reagan, since President Reagan, every single person Republican President has made the deficit worse. And every single Democratic President has made the deficit better, meaning less. People can look at that data. I will. You gotta look at it, because yes, it fluctuates, but... That has been the reality.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
So when people say, you know, it's only the Republicans or the fiscal conservatives, that is just a bunch of bullshit. Because fiscal conservative doesn't just mean spending. It means, what are you doing on the other side? What are you doing on the revenue and spending side? And it's a tough problem. You absolutely have to. We are saddling our children and our grandchildren with debt.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Und das ist mein Wunsch, weil ich denke, es wird an einem Punkt auf dem Kliff fallen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
One trillion. One trillion, yeah. Yeah, 180. That's PK Seth, man. He's a strong man.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
It's going to tank. And that's the other thing that people don't understand is when the economy goes, when Trump slaps his tariff on and the economy starts tanking, that's less revenue. So all this money he thinks he's going to make on tariffs is basically going to be wiped out because he's not going to fix any spending. And here's the thing.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
When Republicans, politicians and Trump in particular say, you know, I'm not going to touch entitlements and I'm going to build back our military. Bigger military, bigger military budget and I'm going to cut taxes. Guys, the math doesn't work. Do you know what? You can do that. You can do all those things. But the deficit is going to balloon and the debt is going to get worse.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
So that in a no planet can you cut taxes, increase the military budget, don't touch entitlements and fix the national debt. Can't do it. Impossible. Not possible.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Let me tell you. My hope is that with this episode, people can understand the budget a little bit better. And so that we can elect eventually people who are serious on both sides of the aisle. Because I do think that there are ways to do it. We've asked economists, we can come up with a plan. You talked about tweaking the Social Security age.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
No, we can't tweak it for people who are like 60 years old. No, we can't do that because they're depending on that. But you know what we could do? Maybe if you're 15 or 20 years old, maybe we could tweak it way into the future so that people have, I don't know, 30 years to plan.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Well, I just think you're right. We need serious people in government. We don't have serious people in government right now. They're spewing out a bunch of lies. They're spewing out a bunch of falsehoods and numbers. And somehow magically we're going to fix our deficit and our debt when none of that stuff is true. So we got to have a serious conversation about this.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
But that's where I came to really understand this stuff. And so I've taught the federal budget at the U.S. Naval Academy. I taught it as well at the University of Kentucky. And it's one of these things that you hear so much about, but most people don't fully understand it. They don't understand necessarily how we got into this mess. And there's a lot of lies out there.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Because again, my worry is not only are we settling our kids and grandkids, but at some point... World Investors are going to look at our massive debt and we don't know when that's going to go off the cliff. It's kind of like climate change. We don't know when enough is enough. And when that happens, the value of the dollar tanks, our entire economy tanks...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
I don't know if that's ever going to happen. It may never happen. It could be a thousand years, but it might be right around the corner when the rest of the world looks and says, you know, our debt is so big that we don't trust the Americans anymore. That's what I worry about.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
No, Amy. Things like who is to blame and how do we fix the deficit and how do we fix the debt. These are the questions that we're going to tackle today.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
We need to do that occasionally. But let's let's just take it back initially and just talk very basics, you know, because I get this question. What what is a deficit anyway? And there's really people have to understand there's there's two parts to even thinking about the federal budget. It's actually very simple. The first part is spending how much we spend.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Hi everyone, welcome to Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Riggleman and it's budget time. You hear about this every year. And here are some of the things that you might hear throughout the years, okay? Things like, Democrats spend too much and that's why we have a national debt. Or we can balance the budget if we just get rid of fraud, waste and abuse.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
How much does the federal government spend every year? That's called outlays. And for the past few years, we spent, Denver, right around 6 trillion per year. 6.1 trillion in 2023, for example. And then there's the other side, right? The other side is how much you bring in. We call it revenues, taxes. It's basically how much the federal government is taking in.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And for the last few years, we've taken in right around 4.4 trillion. And so the difference there, right, the difference between how much you take in and how much you spend is the deficit, right? All right. That's the deficit. In the last few years, our deficit has been right about 1.6 trillion. That's a lot. And we have to borrow money to make up that difference.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Well, let's take a step back for everybody. We know what a deficit is. A deficit is, you're not taking in as much as you're spending. Alright, so every year, as Denver just said, that's happened for many, many, many years. And each year, that adds up. Deficit after deficit after deficit after deficit adds up. And what do you get when you add all that up? You get the national debt.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
That's what you get. So when you hear national debt, you need to know that that is the deficits added up year after year after year, because that goes on a credit card, folks. That goes on a credit card. We pay interest in that. And that's why the national debt goes up and up every single year. Now, as you mentioned, Denver, we've had deficits for a long time.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Or my favorite, this is from Trump 1.0, quote, I'll fix the debt, lower your taxes, increase the military budget all at once. Spoiler alert, that's really impossible. But why can't we fix this budget? And what's that all about? That's what we're going to talk about today on Truth in the Barrel. But first... I hand it over to Denver to talk about what's more important, whiskey.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
We didn't have deficits at the end of the Clinton administration. We had for four years what's called a surplus. A surplus is when you're taking in more money than you're spending. And that actually happened for four years. And that election in 2000 was a big campaign issue because the two candidates were asked about what to do with that surplus.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
One candidate said, we're going to give it back to you. That's the people's money. The other candidate said, famously, we're going to put it in a lockbox for when we need it. Now, which candidate do you think in America's political system won that particular debate? The one that said we're going to give the money back, right? George Bush won that and he gave that money back.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
But in Al Gore's defense, we kind of needed that money because right after Bush got into office and we went right back into deficit spending. Why? Because Bush cut taxes. Und er hat ein weiteres Entschließungsprogramm genannt, das Prescription Drug Medication für Junge genannt wurde, was ich glaube, ist großartig, aber nicht bezahlt wurde. Und dann, schau mal, was passiert ist. 9-11 ist passiert.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Und wir sind in den Krieg gegangen. Wir sind in den Krieg gegangen. Wir haben die DHS gebaut, die Department of Homeland Security, die TSA, die wir alle jetzt haben. Und rechtlich so, er hat diese Teil der Regierung gebaut. But he didn't pay for it. And he didn't ask the American people to pay for it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Because he not only didn't ask them to raise taxes to pay for it, but he actually cut taxes on top of that. So bam, we're right back into deficit spending. And we've been that way ever since. At the end, and there's a great chart that I know our producers will throw up there. But at the end of Bush's era as president, what happened? The economy tanked.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
And the single most important piece that determines how big the deficit is, besides tax policy, which you just talked about, is the economy. And if the economy tanks, guess what? There's less people employed. They're not making as much money. So the income tax goes down and we're not getting as much revenue. Und das ist genau das, was passiert ist. Obama kam rein.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Obama hat also ein bisschen Geld gespart, um auszubauen und uns in die richtige Trajectorie zu bringen. Und wir waren in der richtigen Trajectorie gegangen. In fact, Obama cut the deficit during his time frame. But then Donald Trump got in office and passed. I know you know this pretty well, the big fat tax cut.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil’s Cut | The Federal Budget Distilled
Yeah, darn it. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which added more to the deficit. And there, bam, we're back into major deficit spending again. Joe Biden gets in office and guess what happens? Starts going in the other direction. And now here we are with Donald Trump and the Republicans in the House and Senate. And as you mentioned, massive, massive adding to, potentially adding to our deficit yet again.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
During the Cold War, we had nuclear weapons flying at all times, nuclear bombs up in the air flying at all times. And we had a B-52 flying over Thule, the airbase up there. And one of the crew members stuffed a seat cushion in the heater of the B-52. It caught fire. Und so mussten sie auslaufen, weil es im Cockpit zu viel Schmuck gab. Sie konnten es nicht mehr sehen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Und dieser B-52 hatte vier thermonukleare Hydrogenbomben an Bord. Sie wurden alle verabschiedet. Sie lebten alle, außer für einen Crewmitglied, der nicht über die Verabschiedung gelebt hat. Aber die B-52 brach auf und alle vier nukleare Bomben, keine von ihnen enttäuschten, glücklicherweise, But their nuclear material was scattered all over the place.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
And Greenland at that time did not know that the United States was flying nuclear bombs above their territory. And so it was a An interesting time, because the United States, you know, it was revealed that we were doing this and the people there were not super happy about that. So we have a longstanding history with Greenland. It hasn't always been good.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
We did find most of the material and cleaned up most of the material, nuclear material from that accident. But, you know, it's not all of it. Some of it is still out there.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
I can't even believe we're even talking about this. This is insane. But you know, one of the things that gets lost in the conversation, because you and I, we're both Americans, right? We both traveled all around the world, but we see this from very much an American point of view. And you don't hear much from actual people living in Greenland.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Und so eine der Dinge, als wir über dieses Show nachgedacht haben, dachten wir uns, es wäre wirklich cool, jemanden dort zu sprechen, jemanden, der dort geboren wurde, jemanden, der Greenland kennt, weil wir alle darüber sprechen, hier in den Vereinigten Staaten, aber was wissen wir? Lass uns jemanden sprechen. Und wir, also wir haben heute einen wirklich guten Gast mitgebracht.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Seine Name ist Sari Paulson. Sie ist ein Sounddesigner, Experte in Musikalen, Opern und Plänen. Sie ist eine Schriftstellerin und Forscherin. Sie ist aus Griechenland und sie ist in Kopenhagen geboren, aber sie ist ein naturer Experte auf Griechenland. Sie ist überall in diesem Land gewesen und ich kann nicht warten, mit ihr zu sprechen. Hi. Hey. Da ist sie. Wie geht es dir?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Sarah, is it correct to say Greenlandic population? Is that the correct term for the people that live?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Und du hast erwähnt, dass es nicht so viele Leute gibt. Ich meine, es sind nur 56.000 bis 57.000 Leute in Greenland. Und um unseren Zuhörern ein bisschen Kontext zu geben, das ist die Größe von Charlottesville, Virginia, in Bezug auf die Bevölkerung. Also meine Frage ist, wo leben die meisten Menschen? Leben sie alle in einem eigenen Stadtteil? Oder wie sieht es aus?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Yeah. Yeah. Why... In your opinion, there are two questions. Why is it not independent at this point? And the second question is, what do you think Americans and or Europeans should know that they don't know about Greenland, about the Inuit? Did I say that right? Hopefully I did. The people that live there.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
We gotta get into it though, Den, because this is our deep dive, our devil's cut episode. And today we're talking about Greenland. Now, Donald Trump has proposed buying Greenland in his first term. But now he's sort of ratcheted it up, right? He's talked about, quote, we're going to have Greenland one way or another. We're going to get it. Das ist, was er gesagt hat.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Ich würde mir vorstellen, dass die südlichste Teil von Greenland das wärmste ist. Was ist das Wärmste, das es bekommen wird?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
So that's 19 degrees Celsius. Yeah, yes.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Er hat gesagt, wir bekommen Griechenland. Ja, hundert Prozent. Und er hat nicht ausgerufen, Griechenland mit Macht zu nehmen, durch den Einsatz von Macht. Also, du kannst dir denken, das ist nur noch einer von Trumps wilden Ideen, richtig? Nun, er hat viele wilde Ideen, die er tatsächlich durchgeführt hat. Und darum müssen wir darüber sprechen. Nun, wenn Trump sagt,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Das ist der perfekte Schlusspunkt, weil das ist der Ziel von uns, sogar dieses Show mit Denver und ich, ist, deine Stimme zu öffnen. Und ich weiß, du sprichst nicht für alle Menschen, die in Greenland leben, aber es ist so wichtig, dass Amerikaner von dir hören. Und ich bin wirklich begeistert, dass du heute Morgen auf unserem Show gekommen bist. Wie oft kommst du zurück nach Greenland?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
That's fantastic. Thank you so much for being on our show. Of course.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
that Greenland is very much vital to US national security interests. He's not wrong about that, right? And so what are some of the national security interests that we might have in that very large Arctic island?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Hi everyone, welcome to Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath with my co-host Denver Rigelman. And today we are talking about Greenland. Why? Why would we be talking about Greenland? Because our president has repeatedly signaled interest in taking over the largest island in the world. And so you might think that's wild and crazy, but we need to talk about this.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
And Thule is was the name of the U.S. Air Force Base. Then we're going to talk about that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Well, in Greenland... den markt und den markt ist ein langer alli aber strategisch für die amerikaner bist du absolut richtig wir haben wir hatten dort eine präsent für die letzten 80 jahre korrekt in thule was jetzt genannt wird Und das ist auch wichtig, weil wir frühere Warnradarsysteme haben, richtig?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Wenn du ein ICBM, ein interkontinentales Ballistikmissil aus Russland launchen willst, wird es über den arktischen Kreis kommen, richtig? Und das ist der Grund, warum wir das Flugzeug da haben, in erster Linie, als auch Logistik. Außerdem sitzt Greenland in der strategisch in dem, was die Grünland-Iskland-UK-Gap nennt. Von der NATO-Seite her
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
We have been able to, you know, it's a choke point for Russian naval activity coming out, right? And that is very important. We have had anti-submarine forces in that area. So that's super important. Also with the climate change, and I know there's a lot of people that, you know, don't believe in climate change, but gosh, go to the Arctic Circle and you'll see it
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
for real because what's happening is the ice is melting and so the waterways are there are waterways that are opening up from from the trade perspective so merchant ships not necessarily having to go through the panama canal and the suez canal in certain times of the year they could go right over durch die Wasserwege, die sich jetzt öffnen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Und wer diese Wasserwege kontrolliert, ist sehr, sehr wichtig strategisch. Die Vereinigten Staaten hat nur zwei. Die US-Kreisgarde hat nur zwei Eisbrecher. Das sind die Schiffe, die Schiffe durch diese Wasserwege entschleunigen. Guck dir das an. Russland hat 40 von ihnen. So there's a lot of people that feel like we are the United States is kind of falling behind in sort of a new race to control.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Some people would say militarize the Arctic Circle. And so that is even more of an influence in in getting people excited like Trump, I guess, on the importance of Greenland. But they also have and you know a lot about this. Rare Earth Minerals that we need in technologies, new technologies.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
But before we do, Den, share what you're drinking today.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Und das ist das Ding. Wir müssen es nicht übernehmen. Wir haben, wir haben Zugang zu den Bereichen, die wir brauchen. Und Patek Space Base und all die anderen Orte, die sie erlaubt haben. Und Dänemark ist unser Alli. Es ist unser Alli. Das ist dumm. Und wir müssen es nicht verkaufen, um mit den Leuten dort für Mineralien zu handeln.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Russia has its sights on certain islands in the Arctic that are controlled by Norway. It would give green light for them to do what they're doing, again in Ukraine, but also elsewhere in the Arctic. How about China? China is going to look at Taiwan and be like, well, the United States took over Greenland. Let's just take over Taiwan.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Hier ist noch eine Sache, die passiert ist, die ein bisschen News bekommen hat. Vizepräsident J.D. Vance, und ich werde nicht sagen, was ich wirklich über ihn denke, aber er ging nach Griechenland und gab, was ich für eine sehr offensivste Rede ist, He said, quote, Our message to Denmark is very simple. You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
You have underinvested in the people of Greenland and you have underinvested in the security of this incredible, beautiful landmass, which is totally not true. And the base commander, he gave the speech up at the space base, which is for people listening, is in the very northwest corner of Greenland. I mean, you cannot get more remote. It is America's most remote northernmost base in the world.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Very cold. Very isolated. He goes up there, he gives this offensive speech in front of American troops, airmen, Greenlanders. Dänische, Kanadische, alle diese Leute, die, oh, übrigens, zusammenarbeiten müssen, in diesem sehr berühmten Ort, in einem sehr scharfen Umfeld. Es ist im Grunde genommen, als ob sie auf einem Schiff leben, richtig? Sie sind einfach so isoliert.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
Er geht da hoch, gibt einen offensiven Spruch, geht weg und der Base-Kommandant, Sie muss all diese Leute für die nächsten paar Jahre beherrschen. Und so schreibt sie ein E-Mail, das grundsätzlich sagt, ich habe viel über das, was unser Vizepräsident gesagt hat, und ich glaube nicht, dass das, was er gesagt hat, reflektierend ist von den Leuten in dieser Basis. Und sie wurde getötet.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
And a lot of the right-wingers are laughing about this. I actually think she had a ton of courage.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Greenland Is Not For Sale!
There's two more things that I'd like to bring up in this discussion. One is... ein bisschen über die Geschichte der militärischen Präsenz der Vereinigten Staaten in Griechenland, die ich nicht wusste, bis ich angefangen habe, nukleare Waffen zu studieren. Aber 57 Jahre ago, 1968, hatten wir eine B-52 während einer Operation namens Chromedome, wo Sie wahrscheinlich mit diesem Denver bekannt sind.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
It's going to be very hard. And when people say, well, why haven't these countries gotten nukes on their own? Recognize that we gave them this deal and they've, frankly, developing nuclear weapons is pretty expensive.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
So if you're a Poland and you don't have to, you don't really want to, because you can now focus on growing your economy and other things that you want to put your resources into instead of nuclear weapons. But if you have lost that trust with the United States of America, which is the guarantor of these nuclear assurances, it's not Britain, it's not France. It's us because we have the amount.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
If you've lost that trust, you're now thinking about developing your own. And this is something new. This is not something that you saw under last Republican administrations. It's not something you saw under Democratic administrations. It's purely a function of this Trumpism, which in my belief is very, very dangerous for our world.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
And it only takes one country, whether it's Turkey or South Korea or Poland or Germany. It only takes one for the dam to break. And once it breaks, you're going to see all of these countries race to get a nuclear weapon because they cannot trust the United States. Look, France made this determination back in the 1960s when they developed their own weapon.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Ich meine, während der Koldauer gab es einen großen nuklearen Schreck, aber viele Leute denken nicht mehr wirklich über nukleare Waffen. Und ich denke, sie sollten.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Charles de Gaulle basically said, I don't trust that you're going to trade Paris for New York. And they developed their own. Since then, we've been able to institute some, like we talked about, carrots and sticks, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is another treaty that helps stop the proliferation of weapons. And in general, those efforts have been... Very successful.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Minus North Korea. Okay, they pulled out of the treaty. Iran is trying to get a weapon. But in general, having only nine countries have these weapons is really a victory of the post-World War II grand strategy that our greatest generation built for us. And that was a world where the United States had some real responsibilities. And I don't think Donald Trump understands that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
And this is, in my mind, the biggest one.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
I mean, they gotta be looking at Donald Trump's tweets. They gotta be looking at the signal chat from the national security leaders and thinking, we can't trust the United States. It does have some... historical background to this. Under the Nixon administration, Nixon pulled the United States out of the Asia-Pacific area more than our Asia-Pacific partners
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
wanted they became very uncomfortable when nixon of course pulled out of vietnam nixon pulled out of um using our navy as as a um a force that would go in between the taiwan straits you know to bolster up our our defenses on taiwan he pulled troops out of taiwan he pulled troops out of south korea And what happened? Well, South Korea wanted to get their own weapon then.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Taiwan wanted to get their own weapon then and actually created their own nuclear program. And what happened over the next decade? Plus, President Carter and then President Reagan had to basically walk them off back from the plank, right? They had to walk them off, had to provide carrots and sticks. um sie zu stoppen, ihr Programm. Was hat Reagan gemacht?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Er hat Truppen zurückgebracht nach Südkorea. Er hat einige unserer Verteidigungsspenden geholfen. Er hat ihnen die Versicherungen gegeben, dass wir mit ihnen sein würden. Was hat Carter gemacht? Er hat den Stick-Approach benutzt und gesagt, hey, wir werden dir eine Militärhilfe von dir nehmen, wenn du mit dieser Waffe weitergehst. Ich habe Angst, dass wenn wir zu dem Punkt kommen,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Where these countries are looking at Donald Trump and they are saying, we just can't trust the United States again. Because even if Donald Trump goes away, there could be another J.D. Vance out there. And it's best for us to just get our own weapon. And once that dam breaks, everybody's going to get them.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Es können unsere Alliierten sein. Alle sind auf Iran konzentriert. Es kann nicht Iran sein. Es kann einer unserer Partner sein. Die Grundlage ist für alle, die denken, dass Donald Trump uns in der Welt stärker macht. Du könntest nicht weiter von der Wahrheit sein. Ich glaube, in diesem Fall, wie in vielen anderen, ist Donald Trump uns tatsächlich weniger mächtig.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Er macht uns weniger beeindruckend. And more importantly, he's making the world less safe. Because if we get more countries that have nuclear weapons, that is absolutely making us less safe. You have more chance for a nuclear war. You have more chance for accidents. in diesem Bereich zu passieren.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Und nochmals, wenn wir einen Schritt zurückgehen, wissen wir, dass wir die Atomwaffen, die Atomwaffen auf Hiroshima und Nagasaki aufgenommen haben. Und seitdem haben neun Länder entwickelt oder nukleare Waffen gewonnen. Nur neun. Und wir werden darüber sprechen, warum. Aber ich denke, es ist wichtig zu erinnern, dass...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Und die Grundlage ist, Trump kann nicht vertraut sein, uns sicher zu halten oder einen Deal zu erheben. Und das kostet nicht nur die Vereinigten Staaten, sondern die ganze Welt.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Und lasst uns klar sein über die zerstörte Macht dieser Waffen. Sie zerstören Städte. Die zerstörte Kraft, sie verursacht Menschen, Melting Glass, Radioaktivität, die für Jahrzehnte und Jahrzehnte und Jahrzehnte Millionen von Jahren töten wird. Wir sprechen von zerstörten Städten, zerstörten gesamten Ländern, zerstörten China, zerstörten die Vereinigten Staaten, zerstörten Russland, weg.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Alle diese Plätze sind weg. Nuklearwahl ist kein Witz. The more weapons out there of this magnitude is no joke. And that's why this issue is so important and we need to talk about it more.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
The bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively small in terms of warheads compared to what we have today. And I know, Denver, you were in the Air Force, and so the Air Force dealt a lot with these types of weapons, as does the Navy. But we have today thermonuclear weapons. And when I talk about this to my students on national security, I remind them that...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Wenn man sich die zerstörte Macht von Hiroshima und Nagasaki anschaut, das ist vielleicht die Größe einer Tennisballe. Wenn man sich die Thermonukleareinheiten, die wir heute haben, anschaut, wären sie die Größe einer Busse in Bezug auf Explosionskraft.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
First of all, the destructive power of them is just incredible. We almost can't comprehend it. And one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this for one of our first episodes is there's really only one weapon of mass destruction. There's really only one way the sort of the earth as we know it right now could get wiped out other than like an asteroid coming. Right. But is is nuclear annihilation.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
That is why it is so important. This is no joke. We have nine countries that have them. We have many of those countries are our allies. Great Britain, France has these weapons. We have other countries that are not China.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
russia uh we have some countries that you call them tweeners in between right uh india pakistan they have these weapons but also north korea has iran is trying to gain them um israel has these nuclear weapons so that's important but i also think what's important for people to understand is that that number of nine only nine countries that have them has been relatively stable for a while we we decided in the 1960s
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Ja, genau. the United States and the Soviet Union and the very few countries at that time that had it. And you know what happened? We actually did it. With diplomacy, with carrots and sticks, with this thing that we're going to talk about next, which is called the nuclear umbrella, which you heard in those headlines that I talked about. We did it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
So welcome to Truth in the Barrel, where we discuss, or shall we say, distill down the important issues you need to understand. And we do this along with a little bit of whiskey. I'm Amy McGrath with my co-host Denver Riggleman, and this is our Devil's Cut episode.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
And now all of that is under threat because of Donald Trump.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Die Plattform, die wir vor Shopify verwendet haben, hat regelmäßig Updates gebraucht, die teilweise dazu geführt haben, dass der Shop nicht funktioniert hat.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Well, a lot of things. But the one thing that we should focus on here, just in terms of nuclear weapons, is this proliferation. Why? Well... One of the reasons we've been able to keep those numbers down to only nine countries having these weapons is because we have extended what we call the nuclear umbrella. Some people call it security assurances. to our friends, to our partners.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
We have 30 different countries right now where we have actual security assurances with. What does that mean? What is a security assurance? It is simply like a handshake deal where we go to these countries, say Germany, Poland, countries that could very well have the technical capability to create their own weapon at this point if they wanted to. We go to them and we say, look, Don't get a weapon.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Don't get nukes. We will protect you. We have lots of nukes. And by the way, we have like 5,000 of them, you know, over 1,000 ready to go at any time. We will protect you. Don't build more. And it's based on trust, Denver. That country has to trust that Washington, that the president... will actually protect them if they are attacked by a nuclear state with a nuclear weapon.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
They have to be able to say, okay, Seoul, South Korea has to trust that we will, you know, potentially trade New York for Seoul. And those countries are constantly... Worried about this. And so what do we do to sort of reassure them? Well, we position troops in their country. We position nuclear warheads in their country. They don't protect those nuclear warheads. They don't own them.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
They're protected by US troops, as you know. But they're positioned in their country and their air forces trained to be able to drop those bombs in the event that there's a nuclear conflict. We would hand over those weapons. That's a way for us to assure them. That's what's called nuclear assurances. And right now, that is very much the thing that is fraying.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
And so these countries, when Donald Trump says, you know, he rants about our allies, his unpredictability, his ignorance when it comes to our national security, his friendship with authoritarians, this, you know, recent signal chat thing that just came up where pretty much everybody on his national security team was bashing our allies.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
So, I want to start this by reading to you three headlines, okay, just from the last week. Here's the first one, from the Financial Times. From Berlin to Tokyo, the fears of a new nuclear arms race. From The Economist, Europe thinks the unthinkable on a nuclear bomb. And from the Wall Street Journal, Trump prompts European calls for a homegrown nuclear umbrella.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
If you're one of our allies who's under the nuclear umbrella at Denver, Do you really think the Trump administration is going to come to your rescue in a nuclear confrontation? No. You're going to want to get your own nuke, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Ja, und es ist wirklich interessant, dass du das erwähnst, weil unsere Allies und Partner, viele Leute denken, ja, sie sollten ihren eigenen Weg bezahlen. Leute, das ist nicht so, wie es funktioniert. Die Vereinigten Staaten haben diese Waffen. Wir wollten diese Waffen behalten. Wir wollen nicht den Rest des Welt.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Und in Wahrheit ist es generell auf beiden Seiten der Eile für etwa 80 Jahre bekannt. We wanted a policy of what we call non-proliferation. We don't want these countries to get... And while we're just talking about this, this isn't just Amy in Denver making this up. I want to give you a quote from the Polish Prime Minister. His name was Donald Tusk. This was a few weeks ago.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Quote, we would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal. Polen. Wie ist es in Südkorea, wo die Mehrheit der Bürger in Südkorea, das ist eine Demokratie, sie haben viele Male gepollt, die Mehrheit der südkoreanischen Bürger glaubt, dass sie ihre eigenen nukleare Waffen entwickeln sollten.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
What the real headline should be, Denver, is this. Trump will likely be responsible for more countries gaining nuclear weapons. Das ist es, worüber ich heute sprechen möchte. Bevor wir das tun, müssen wir ein wenig zurückgehen und erklären, wo wir mit diesen Waffen sind. Denn es ist nicht etwas, über das wir normalerweise sprechen, richtig?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
And by the way, the leaders there on both sides of the aisle, in their aisle in South Korea, both believe that they should have enough nuclear material to basically get a bomb within two weeks. So what that means is bring them to all the way up to what's called the nuclear threshold there. That is... Really striking.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
And by the way, in South Korea, they have the highest density of nuclear reactors in the world. So it's not like it would be really hard for that country to get a nuclear weapon. Just so you know, if you have nuclear power, you pretty much have the technology to be able to develop a nuclear weapon on your own. What countries can do that? Viele von ihnen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Nuclear Proliferation Under Donald Trump
Japan, Südkorea, Polen, Deutschland, du nennst es.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I really appreciate that. You know, Amy and I have talked a lot about this. Das ist ein Bereich, in dem ich mich sehr stark fühle. Für viele, viele Gründe, natürlich. But oh my goodness, oh my goodness.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Let me just start, Mom, because I get the benefit of talking to you every day. And so I hear things from you. Obviously, I know your story really well and I told a little bit of it to our listeners. But, you know, you not only... Sie haben die Lebenserfahrung, wie wichtig Vakzine sind. Aber Sie sind dann auch Doktorin und haben Ihr Leben mit den Menschen geholfen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Und mit Ihrem wissenschaftlichen Wissen und allem, was Sie gelernt haben. Ich würde zuerst fragen, When I was growing up, we didn't seem to have the pushback to vaccines, at least in my opinion, when I was younger. And now all of a sudden I feel like maybe it's not all of a sudden, but I feel like there's more of a pushback. And I'm wondering, why do you think that is?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Oh, gee, why don't you give me a tough question?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
They're very simple. I think that your memory is accurate, Amy. You know, in looking at what is, oh dear God, almost a century of... Life experience, but only some of it truly being able to integrate what I was seeing and experiencing. And really, I would say only the past half century being able to to understand it a little bit better.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And the reason I love it, and for those people who are sort of whiskey bourbon snobs, they may look at things like American Honey, which is basically... Ja, genau. Because it's one of these things where it's really sweet. They'll probably like it. They can sip on it and enjoy some whiskey with you. And so I loved it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
But we lived in such a very different time when I was a kid and when I became a mother and had my my children. It was simply a different world. You can't imagine, nor can anybody, I think, who's been born in the last 50 years, imagine a United States of America without any healthcare note. You know, when I was a kid, growing up,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Das ganze Konzept von Krankheit, das noch immer mit der Idee kämpft, dass Krankheiten, und übrigens, an diesem Punkt, in der Runde des Jahrhunderts und so weiter, der größte Mörder von Menschen in diesem Land und weltweit, war Infektionskrankheit. And yet, at that time, we were still trying to understand what was infecting things. So evolved what was at that time called a germ theory.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
But we really didn't understand anything about the germs. We didn't know that there were different kinds of germs, bacteria, viruses, and that they acted very differently. They were found in different places. They were of different virulencies. All those kinds of things were totally unknown. And at the time,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
When plagues, for example, killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, we knew that something was afoot or going around, but we really didn't understand it. And if you don't understand its beginnings and its cause, you certainly don't have any leverage to stop it. or treat it really in anything but the most superficial ways.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
So, you know, when we were... So I feel like we've gone backwards, though. Like, we're supposed to know more right now, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I think in many ways we have gone backwards. Think about when I got polio, for example. I was 10 years old. At that time, at the... 1950, okay. In those days, that was the dreaded disease of the time. Why? Because it struck people. Oh, dear God, it struck children, but it struck adults too. And when it did, you were, if you lived, you were still out of commission most of the time.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I mean, you really were. Männer, die Familien zu unterstützen hatten, Frauen, die Häuser zu kümmern hatten, konnten nicht zurückgehen. Sie mussten gekümmert werden. Und so, du weißt, es hat wirklich Schmerzen verursacht. Und We didn't know what caused it. And so people developed all kinds of phobias.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
For example, that year, my brother and I, who used to walk to a pool, you know, public pool, swimming pool, that was about a mile and a half, two miles away. We were, they closed the swimming pool because they didn't know That might not be the place that the polio germ resided.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
But in those days, you know, I mean, it was kind of like the closest thing we've had is the worst of cities during the coronavirus. Okay. And even at that, rural areas that didn't see as much
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
infection and didn't see the death did not develop the same kind of fear that for example New York City and residents around developed of this terrible virus during the AIDS epidemic cities in particular that had a high incidence of the development of AIDS people were very frightened of what caused it. And at that time we had knowledge of a virus.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
But we really didn't know what besides sex could transmit this virus. And people wouldn't go near individuals who had AIDS. I mean, it really was a commitment for nurses and doctors and other personnel to take care of AIDS patients. And they had all this garb on and so on. It was as frightening as the disease itself in some ways. But, you know...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
We know so much more now with technology and scientific discovery, but it's almost like so many people don't want to believe science now.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
You would like to have a simple answer as to why there's so much resistance now. I could give you a simple answer, but probably wouldn't be politically correct. This is the show. Could you believe not politically correctly? We're living in an area of disbelief. And we're living in a time when people resist. People don't know the truth because the truth is rarely spoken.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
This was for me a way to kind of get back into sipping and drinking whiskey again. So American Honey, check it out.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I think you all are an exception. And this is one of the reasons why I have so enjoyed your podcast. But the fact of the matter is people have had doubt sown about otherwise revered institutions, including science, including medicine. And as a result, fear again creeps in as in disguise, I think, and shows itself today often as the need to assert one's own opinion directly.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And to do what I darn well please, regardless, don't tell me what to do. And in this country, I think that that is the prevailing sentiment. I don't mean to be... Yeah, I guess I do. But it really has. And over the last decade, that certainly has been capitalized on by our current administration. I mean, please, drink bleach to cure COVID? Oh, come on, you know.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And, you know, we see it every day and we see it in the news. The reason why people push back. Why? Because we're kicking out all the people who really know anything. We are putting down the institutions and certainly every time we say something like that or every time it comes out of Trump's mouth that this is going to be defunded and this is going to be sued and this is going to be stopped.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Our appreciation of the value of things like education and things like science and things like the progress that we've made in so many areas that rely on those things. It just, you know, it throws our trust into chaos.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Well, I have to say, Denver, that it makes me cry. Literally, it makes me cry. For two reasons. One is the practical side. dass nichts, was heute passiert, als Breakthrough, heute passiert. Es ist über die letzten x-Nummer von Jahren passiert. Und ein Punkt des wissenschaftlichen Breakthroughs in jedem Bereich hat immer eine grundsätzliche Wissenschaft hinter sich.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Und es hat viele Leute in vielen Orten Jahre gedauert, um zu diesem Punkt zu kommen. And that was also true of the polio vaccine, but we didn't hear as much about it because people were so focused on the relief that they experienced when it came available to them. But today, those same things are taking years.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
We've stopped not just the today, but taking that money away from the primary source of funding of the research has stopped everything in the pipeline. So not only today's findings, which could be earthshaking, just as earthshaking as the polio vaccine, but in other areas, are not the only things that have been stopped. All of the research.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And to go back to it in the same way, even a year from now, if that funding is truly stopped, is going to be extremely difficult, because you have to make up the things that you've missed in this time, and you may not have the same people to do it. Which means a whole new group of people have to be available in order for us to get there. Where are they going where they're not going to stay here?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I mean, scientists are already being recruited, highly recruited by other countries. Because they've got the funding for the research. And make no mistake, they will have the today's findings. Nicht nur uns.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Aber ich muss sagen, dass die andere Sache, was mich an all dem schmerzt, ist, dass ich glaube, dass wir als ein Land, das in der Vergangenheit die Wichtigkeit der Wissenschaft und der Entwicklung der Dinge erkannt hat, die die Menschheit helfen können. Und wir wurden erkannt. Und wir haben diesen Platz, denke ich, in der Welt der Observation gehalten.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
gives us an obligation to do something about that. I think that we as human beings have an obligation to help other human beings wherever we can. How can we not? How can we look at poverty everywhere? How can we look at illness? How can we look at suffering and war and not want to intervene in a positive way to stop it? I think that's a moral stance, I guess.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
But I believe that that's what we do as human beings. And we have done exactly the opposite. And it has not just hurt us. I mean, it's hurt the world. Taking away USAID, the organization, which has been so significant in dealing with disease worldwide, Es ist kriminell, muss ich sagen. Es ist eine eigene Krieg. Und wir sind diejenigen, die es durch Trump gewählt haben. Es ist einfach erstaunlich.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Ich höre diesen Argument über die öffentliche Gesundheit und die Regierung. Der Argument ist, dass wir all diese Forschung durch den privaten Sektor machen können. Wir brauchen keine öffentlichen Zinsen, um das zu tun. Und Sie hören das. Und mein Rückzug darauf, und ich würde gerne Ihre Meinung darauf geben, ist, dass der private Sektor für Profit ist.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And so they are going to do research into things that are going to make money eventually. But a lot of tackling diseases and trying to get ahead of some of the diseases here in the United States and around the world doesn't always make profit.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
for for these companies and so they don't do the research and that's why public funding of these sorts of things is so important i mean just to be simplistic about it we didn't have public research back in the so much back in the 30s and 40s and 50s we had to raise a bunch of money as you said in order to tackle a very real epidemic at that time that was killing people why do we not just invest in long-term public health and research
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
so that we can kind of get ahead of things so that we don't get to the point where, you know, it's an epidemic.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I think you've looked at that very wisely. And I have to say that, yes, a private organization did basically was responsible for the funding of the polio research. But if you look at research and its impact on illness, for example, or wellness for that matter, the vast majority of the research necessary to achieve a today thing is what would be better
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
characterizes basic research okay it doesn't have an immediate uh cure impact but it's a necessary step and there were those steps necessary at the time of the development of polio vaccine by the way if anybody is interested in reading about an excellent book that categorizes all that happened
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
in order to develop the polio vaccine was the Pulitzer Prize winning book entitled Polio by David Oshinsky and it goes over all of this but it looks basically at the reality that most of the research that eventually creates, for example, a medicine or looks at the desired procedure that's going to be helpful or, for that matter, creates the perfect O-Ring for the rocket.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
You know, those kinds of things don't come in one step. They come in many steps that consist of basic research. And no for-profit company is going to spend 60 Prozent ihres Forschungsfonds und Zeit und Talent in der Basis-Recherche auf diese eine Sache, denn viele Male in der Basis-Recherche weißt du nicht einmal, was die praktischen Anwendungen davon sein werden. Das ist einer der Gründe.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Der andere Grund ist ganz ehrlich, dass wir the scientific research that's done to such an extent that it would be really wasted time and energy for many things that otherwise would develop out of a scientific and I have to say educational pursuit. Over the past 25, 30 Jahre in particular.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
It tastes really good. It tastes really good. For those people that don't love whiskey, just try it. Have your spouse try it. Trust me.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Research has gravitated to this lovely marriage of funding source, the National Institutes of Health and universities. And it makes a lot of sense for it to be there, because the universities not only develop a lot of the basic research, but develop the talent that does the basic research and is a pipeline for us to provide people to do this in the future.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
That piece of university base is going to be moving out of the United States faster than you can blink an eye if we don't do something about this. And I'm very concerned about that.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
All right. Let's get to it, Denver. Donald Trump and his administration has promised to make America healthy again. And they're doing so by appointing unqualified leaders. cutting the health and human services budget and embracing junk science. So let's just give a quick overview to our viewers as to what's going on.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
So I do think that it's at this point in time the scope of the research necessary to continue to keep the United States in a number one position scientifically is so great that it really could not be handled by even a small coalition of private companies, drug companies for example. Yeah, well
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Oh, thanks for the not hard question.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I have to say, I think your observation about stupidity was probably the best one I could think of.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I told you your mom had it. Well, I want to end on a little bit of a lighter question. I'm ready. I mean, because we've talked a lot of heavy stuff. And there's a lot to worry about right now. And you just talked about some of that Denver, you know, this conspiracy theories of people not believing in government, not believing in public health anymore. Mom,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
The first piece of this is putting unqualified people in these positions of leadership of public health in our country, starting first and foremost with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., As I know you're laughing, Secretary of Health and Human Services. And I know that lots of people may have read a lot about him. But you know what you all should do that are listening?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Of all of your many years, and I won't say how many, there's been many, many years. Of all of those, in your experience, what makes you hopeful right now?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
My greatest gift in life has been my three children. I am incredibly blessed with three wonderful children. They make me hopeful.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
und sie schreiben und sie sind immer noch tolerant genug von anderen Leuten, um mit ihren Glauben zu bleiben und zu erkennen, dass die Vorwärtsbewegung möglich ist.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
That's a great way to end. First of all, or lastly, I'm super honored that you have come on and be a part of this show. It's a lot of fun. And I love you.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I love you too. And I love you too, Denver.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
I appreciate both of you. I appreciate the truth that you tell. And your courage to do it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Thanks. Thanks, Mom. Bye-bye. Well, Denver, that was amazing. I absolutely love bringing my mom on to share with the American public because I've had the benefit of having her my whole life and having her knowledge and understanding of this stuff. It's just super important right now with all that is going on that we have people who are going to tell us the truth in terms of public health. So...
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Awesome. See you next time, Dan.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Go to Wikipedia and look at the Wikipedia article. Just to start. And Amy, you know how I am, right? We're both doing this show based on what we've seen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Are we in America intentionally breaking our public health institutions? We've confirmed an anti-vaxxer to head the Department of Health and Human Services. We're cutting funding for research and public health initiatives. I'm Amy McGrath. I'm here with my co-host and friend Denver Riggleman. And this is Truth in the Barrel, Devil's Cut Edition, where we do a deep dive into one important topic.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And he's not the only one, Denver. You might say, well, he's just an anomaly. I'm sure the leaders of all these other, the Center for Disease Control, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, these people are good, right? No! Dr. Mamet Oz ist jetzt in der Verantwortung des Zentrums für Medicare und Medicaid. Das ist ein Typ, der unbefugt und gefährliche Kuren für den Profit verwendet hat.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Der Abgeordnete des HHS, ein Typ namens Jim O'Neill, hat gesagt, dass er Healthcare als freier Markt runten will. Und mittlerweile hat die Trump-Administration die nationale Top-Vakzine-Regulierung ausgeschlossen. who was responsible for helping to develop the coronavirus vaccine very, very quickly, pushing out these people and putting in these really unqualified crazies, that's number one.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Well, two things. One, I want to talk briefly about measles because you just brought that up and that's super important. But then I want to get to the cuts that are going on right now to public health services. So the measles outbreak, people should know, you probably read about it in the news. We had right now 935 cases in 2025. We've had two deaths from measles.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
And to give you some context for this, last year we only had 280 cases total in the United States of America for all of 2024. And we already have a measles vaccine, by the way, Denver. We've had one since 1963. So you can be vaccinated against this disease. It was a very contagious disease and deadly before it killed thousands of children every year before 1963. And so what's happening?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
We have RFK Jr. as the HHS secretary. He has delayed communicating to people in America about the vaccine. He hasn't said much about it. His messages have been mixed. You know, he said at one point that the vaccine is effective and then turns around and says, well, it's not really all that tested very well. And that has an impact. It has an impact on the American population, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
When your HHS secretary isn't fully behind the vaccine, a lot of people don't want to get it. He hasn't enlisted the American Academy of Pediatrics in trying to fight this disease right now. Where is this disease breaking out? Guess what? In places that have the lowest vaccine rate. So that's what's going on with measles at the moment.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Die Menschen müssen wissen, dass es gerade massive Zähne zu unseren öffentlichen Gesundheitsinstitutionen gibt. Die Trump-Republikaner planen, die CDC zu zählen, das ist das Zentrum für Krankheitskontrolle, das Nationalen Institut für Gesundheit. Sie haben bereits Kanzlerwissenschaften aus Plätzen wie Johns Hopkins gezählt. 33 Billionen Dollar wird vom HHS-Budget gezahlt.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Und das wird große Bedeutungen haben. Und es ist nicht nur Geld, Leute. Sie schneiden Programme für junge Forscher, um zu arbeiten, um die PhDs zu werden, die wir für die Zukunft brauchen, um einige dieser Krankheiten zu behandeln. Trump hat einen Exekutivstermin ausgeschlossen, um von der World Health Organization auszuweichen.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
which has been, you know, it's not perfect, but it has been super important in fighting diseases around the world. We've decimated the Center for Disease Control's Worker Safety Center, the National Institute for Occupational Safety. I mean, all of these things are happening right now, and it's going to have long-term implications.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
But that's also why we're bringing in this important guest to talk about this.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Also, ich denke, mit der Verrücktheit, die vorhanden ist, habe ich den Vorteil gehabt, jemanden zu kennen, der seine Geschichte, glaube ich, eine Inspiration ist, aber einer, der uns eine Erinnerung an den Wert der Wissenschaft gibt. and the positive role that government can play in saving lives. And I think that's really important right now. In 1951, Marianne
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
was ten years old, living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the oldest of eight children. And she contracted polio. She spent a year in the hospital and in a children's home, a home, what they called for crippled children, where she was trying to recuperate. But she survived. She left with a paralyzed leg, but was happy to have survived.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
During her time in the hospital and in her time in that home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recovering, Marianne was part of the historic scientific research program that developed the polio vaccine at the University of Pittsburgh under Dr. Salk. And many years later, Marianne went on to become a doctor herself.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Being one of the first women to graduate from the University of Kentucky, Kentucky's medical school in the 1960s. And Denver, she happens to also be my mother.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Well, so I'm really super proud and excited to have join us to talk about her story today and its connection to public health. This is my mom, Dr. Marianne McGrath. Hi, Mom.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Well, thank you, Denver, for being in Dubai and being with us. Since you're there, I'm going to be the one to talk a little bit about whiskey today. And I'm bringing this one to everyone's attention. This is called American Honey. It's part of Wild Turkey Bourbon here in Kentucky.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Oh, bitte nenn mich Marianne.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | Mother's Day w. Dr. Marianne McGrath
Ja, Frau. Ja, Frau. Ich sage dir was, all das zu hören, erinnert mich darauf, wie alt ich bin.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
We have our allies and partners now thinking they might need to get nuclear weapons. And so we have to talk about all of this stuff. So joining us today is an amazing author of a book called Nuclear War, a Scenario. Her name is Annie Jacobson, and we're going to bring her in to talk about nuclear weapons and what Americans need to know right now.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And there she is. Welcome to our special guest, Annie Jacobson, author of Nuclear War, a Scenario. And I'll just start out. I'm not going to ask the first question, Annie. Denver is going to do that. But I just have to tell you, I've studied nuclear weapons for a long time. And your book was fantastic.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
I want to take us to what's happening right now, though, in current nuclear policy, because it is kind of wonky. We've touched on a few things like sole authority to launch and that sort of thing. But the debate right now, and Denver and I were just talking about it before you came on, Annie, is...
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
This idea that our current president has to build a Golden Dome missile defense system over America. And it's based on his idea that the Iron Dome system, which Israel has, could be expanded and we would be able to protect our country again. And I just wanted to get your take on that. My take is that it's a bit of what we call a boondoggle that is a lot of money wasted.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And it actually has the potential to destabilize the current nuclear sort of balance that we have in the world today. But I wanted to hear what you think.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
the best book I have ever read that could really portray the destructive power of these weapons to everyday Americans. So thank you for being on our show, Annie.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
From various... MIRVs are multiple warheads.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
So we don't and neither do the Chinese and neither do the Russians. And so they have their own thinking about this. And as soon as we start doing a new program that could potentially – make their missiles not work or not effective, they're going to try to counter as well.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And this is why I have a concern about it as well, because I feel like the other side is going to have a say and they're going to start building more nukes or having countermeasures to the ones that they have. So I feel like it could be another arms race in that respect.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
Yeah, that is so amazing. And I'm going to let Denver close, but I just want to say, you know, when I read your book, Annie, and this is what it looks like. This is a copy for those people who are watching on YouTube. It was that book that I called my friends and family and my husband, and I said, you got to read this book.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
You've got to read this book because it was so important that people understand this scenario that could happen. And the other thing is I felt very strongly that all members of Congress – needed to read this book because they have a role too in this national security apparatus.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And I felt like we have to have more, not only more serious people, but people that just have a basic understanding of what this looks like, because so many of us don't really know. So I just thank you for writing it. It matters. And again,
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
For people who are listening, please go out and buy this book, either on audio version or print, because if you care about our country and you care about the world, you've got to be informed.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
They could be launched from the ground or from the ocean. And we had massive arsenals of bigger and bigger bombs, okay? And over time, In the 1960s, we had serious leaders in this country and in the Soviet Union that decided, hey, this isn't smart. The destructive power of these weapons is so big that a war itself would destroy all of us. So let's try to limit some of these weapons.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
Yeah. In other words, the president, and one of the things that struck me also about the book and Denver's question is the president could be completely rational, right? And like the best president we've ever had. And, you know, look, listeners know that I do not believe that the current president fits that category, but we could have the best one ever. And this scenario could happen.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And it could happen with very rational thinking and the world could be destroyed basically or certainly our country destroyed, our democracy destroyed. And I just feel like one of the things that you said in your book about – Presidents, almost all presidents, are under-informed about how to wage nuclear war when it happens. Can you talk about that?
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
Because we think that the presidents should know more than we do, but they don't.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Truth in the Barrel, Devil's Cut. I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Riggleman. Today, we are talking more about nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Why? Because it is a super important issue that we need to understand a lot more about. If you take us back to the Cold War, we had two nations that built up massive arsenals of nuclear weapons that could be launched in the air.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And that was the start of arms control. and so you might think well the cold war is over and so we don't have to deal with this stuff anymore that is not true we have actually multiple threats and a very complex world with china and russia having nuclear weapons rogue states like north korea now having nuclear weapons the potential for iran and in the current age of donald trump
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
I'm just curious, and you may have already touched on it, but like when you were writing this and researching it, what was your aha moment? Like what was the thing that just kind of just...
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
blew you away i think for me i i studied weapons of mass destruction at the national defense university um i did it through the center of weapons of mass destruction and then again at johns hopkins so it's sort of my job at the later part of my career in the military i was a fighter pilot in the beginning of beginning to middle of my career but in the latter part of my career um
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
my job was thinking about all the bad things that could happen to our country. I mean, that was part of what I did. I was kind of a serious person that thought through these things. So I did a lot of research on this. And I don't think there was a moment that really was my aha moment. It was just mostly over the years, understanding the magnitude of these weapons and what they could do.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
And that's why your book is so amazing to me, because I think for the first time, Even after studying all of this stuff and all the technical stuff and going through courses and all that, that it really came home to me what this means. And those of us like Denver and I who have been in the military, we tend to talk about things like targets, for example. They're not humans. They're targets.
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
We sort of... whitewash it a little bit in our language and your book brought it to the human level and so my question to you is was there anything that you would like to relay to people that like this was the moment for me and my research that it really hit me two moments absolutely stand out and there's an a and a b moment a and b story which is kind of like you know author lingo um
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Yeah, it's huge. I have to say this. You know, I have three daughters and three granddaughters, Vicki, right? And they would be in that line if you were there. And I know that you wanted to take away, and if I may speak, you know, I think I can say some things that are, you know, maybe others can't, right? Here's the thing.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
First, when you look at Hegseth, I think his inferiority complex, his histrionics about DEI is exactly, I think what you and Amy were pointing out, is I don't think he has the requisite executive experience, but he was a guy who came up in Fox News. Let's be honest, right? And when you talk about disinformation and misinformation, and as you know, Nicole, this is something that's dear to me.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
When you talked about not removing that, but removing you from a website, it's... it's almost like a throat punch to anybody who's facts-based or sanity-based, but it's also a throat punch to those who really respect those who are trailblazers. And if you look at you and Amy, you're trailblazers. And I know it's, you want to throw away that, you know, first female, you know, Thunderbird, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
And things like that. But I think that's exactly why I would be in that line with my daughters and my granddaughters is because you're that. And because Amy's that. I want them to know about you. I want my granddaughters, you know, Bo, Aylan, Freya, to know about Amy and Nicole. I don't want them to know about Pete Hegseth. I couldn't care less.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
And I think that's what's so incredible about this conversation for me is, you know, when I look at my daughters and what they've accomplished, and now I have my little granddaughters, I want them to be like both of you. I, that is that I want them to say, Hey, you know, like my, my daughter, right. The youngest, you know, female distiller, right.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
You know, the young, but she wasn't just the youngest woman distiller in the country. She was the youngest distiller.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
right and you know so master distiller so those are the kind of things that you what you're doing you're a trailblazer you know it's every every time i'm on a show with amy i think the same way and i'm not just trying to flatter to flatter there is a point here and the point is this is i think when you're looking at them trying to erase the history of those who are trailblazers especially with those like you i think what you're looking at is this inferiority and this sort of this um
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I hate to say it, this male dominated way of looking at the military that really has nothing to do with the incredible things that you've accomplished. And I think that's what makes me angry is that as military brothers and sisters, we should be looking at what we accomplished based on merit base because that's what we were taught to do.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
So this bullshit, right, of just white males with their pictures hanging in a freaking hallway is a little bit odd. It's a little bit weird. It's very weird. And I think that's why I know you and Amy want to take that away. to say, look, look at Amy McGrath, but look at Nicole. Look at what they've done. And I think that's why I do sort of like the fact that you are trailblazers.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the country does just get more diverse, and I'll have to say this. I think – and I'd humbly submit this. It does seem like if we take away reasonable arguments, I think anti-DEI is anti-talent, but I do think it's also there's – listen, Nicole, you probably know I was in the Republican Party. I don't want to get too political here.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
It's really not political, but it seems like – there is a real underlying racism, misogyny, anti-intellectual pursuit here when you're talking about book banning, but you're also talking about getting rid of those trailblazers off of websites, which is a little ludicrous.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I mean, do you think that maybe some of the commanders, and Amy, if I had discussion, Amy's like, uh-oh, but do you think some of the commanders might have overreacted with the DEI when you're talking about not even those putting in for these spots, but do you think they overreacted by scrubbing so many things based on what their arbitrary definition of DEI was.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Oh, yeah, that's right. Absolutely.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Is that how you know that? I know you're a Colonel.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
That is awesome. Did you meet your husband when he was a WIZO, when you guys were in training or something like that?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
So, Nicole, I can call you when I want my AI company to be inspired because I would love that if you would come and talk to them for sure. I would love to have you. And also, as far as tick-borne illnesses, I mean, I have a pretty bad one myself right now. It's nothing like that. Sounds like, did you have encephalitis from the tick bite?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I'm so sorry. No, my tick bite, I have alpha-gal. I'm allergic to all mammal meats right now. But my wife and I got it because we live out in the woods. And if you were around D.C., my guess is you probably got it hiking somewhere. You were down in Rock Creek Park or something.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Hey, you know what? Hold on a second. Listen, golf courses have a lot of ticks.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
And come on now, because when I'm out there and you're on the golf course and say I'm in a bunker, I'm not worried about it. But if I go into the rough, we could get tick-borne illnesses, Amy. So I think you need to be a little bit easier on the Air Force here when you're talking that way. It's really hurtful.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Oh, well, I did. Actually, I lived in 10 cities. Well, the thing is, is that they had the air conditioning set down too low because it got really cold in the tents because we had the big air conditioners in the tents. And I had to complain that, listen, we want our air conditioning between 66 and 70, not 62 when we're in tents in the desert.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
So I was really not happy about too much Freon in the air conditioning units for the tents.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Well, not only were you a trailblazer in your career, Nicole, but you're a trailblazer making sure people are taken care of. And it seems like that's what you do in your life. It's an amazing honor just to meet you and talk to you and to have these type of discussions. I got to tell you, every day I'm happy to be with Amy, right? It's incredible that we have this chance to do this show together.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
And the fact that you would agree to come on here, share your stories, but no, I, I think, you know, once I'm back in Congress, Amy's laughing or once I'm governor, right. I'm going to make sure you come back. Right. And, and help me with legislation to help others because I tell you you're, you're an inspiration.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
So you need to think about, um,
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Awesome. What an honor. Thank you, Nicole.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Wow, you broke some air. Oh my gosh, I love it. I love it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
That's fantastic. I was going to say, Nicole, a buddy of mine got his call sign Rachel because he actually went supersonic over Rachel, you know, out there outside of Nellis. Absolutely. So he got his call sign because he broke that air reg. So did you get a call sign from that or where did you get your call sign from?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Good morning. We're so happy to see you.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I just wanted to tell you, and I won't call you Fifi, but you have Krusty and Chunk here. So my call sign's Chunk. We have Krusty. She's talking to you right now. So we have Fifi, Krusty, and Chunk coming to you right now. But I want to ask you really quick. Seymour Johnson, you were there in 2011.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
At that point, was it still an air expeditionary wing, or were you there as a commander there at the 333rd, correct? Yes.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Yeah, that's – and the reason that – I mean, I just think it's so great. Amy was talking about – and, you know, I'm always in awe of Amy, too. You know, I was just an intelligence officer, but we can talk about that incredible thing later there, ma'am.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
You were – Yeah, no, I had a hell of a fun time. I mean – Seymour Johnson was our sister wing. You know, Mountain Home was the Eric's Missionary Wing when 9-11 happened, and we went right when that happened, you know, back in the day. That's why I was saying, you know, looking at 2011, I'm like, man, gosh, this is great.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
But no, going from F-15E to F-16, I had a mentor of mine, I don't know, Lieutenant General Gene Santorelli. And he flew Vietnam era aircraft. And I remember him saying, going to the F-16 from sort of the more unwieldy, you know, two-seater aircraft. He's like, it was like just such an incredible evolution for him to jump in the F-16.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I don't remember if he flew the F-4s, but you know, or something like that, or it might've been the, I'm trying to remember, but he flew some other aircraft. He flew about five or six different aircraft. But when Amy asked that question, it got to me is that I know that the F-15E Strike Eagle, that's actually what my intelligence training was in just to let you know. Awesome. Was F-15Cs.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Then I got to take apart F-16CJs. I got to do the harm targeting shooters. Then I went to the B-1s. So I had this, you know, sort of incredible training around that. But I still I know you said F-15Es were your first love. And I get it. Right. I do. I love it.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
As a complete weapon system, and I get it. But, you know, talking to Amy, you know, going from, you know, backseater to frontseater and everything that she did, it had to be something the difference in the F-15E flight dynamics to F-16 and what you could do with the Thunderbirds. I got to think that was probably pretty cool, though.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I just want to let you know, I want to let you know, I actually got a stick time at an F-16D model in the backseat. So I just want to, you know, I'm pretty good at doing barrel rolls. You know, I just want to let you know.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
I think it's a max of six Gs because we were carrying that container on the bottom of the D model. Do you know what I'm saying?
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Never. Well, that's a lie. You know, they made me puke in a B1 after four hours of low level, but I had had eight pieces of French toast beforehand, hence where I got, you know, my call sign is chunk, by the way. So I just want to let you guys know.
Truth in the Barrel
Devil's Cut | In Conversation With Nicole Malachowski
Yeah. I can't wait to talk to you about Seymour Johnson, too. That was our sister wing from Mountain Home Air Force Base when we were the air expeditionary ring. But I'm I think I'm older. I'm much older, I think, Nicole.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Welcome to Truth in the Barrel, the unfiltered edition, where each week we run down the topics that you need to understand a little bit more because there is a lot of disinformation out there. I'm Amy McGrath. I'm with my co-host, Denver Riggleman, and we're happy to be with you today.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
What was the training guy we all had to do in the military where we had to go through the annual training? The annual security training? Yeah. Yeah, make sure you don't put the stick inside the computer on the side. Remember that from 10, 15 years ago? They need to get through that train. But in all honesty, though, it is really serious. Number one, this is not secure.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And that means that all these signal chat chains that they had in these 20 different regions, all that they were discussing, guess what? The Chinese can... easily read it. The Russians, our enemies can read it, you know? And so that's number one. And number two, as you pointed out, it's not preservable.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
So these chats, look, when you're talking national security and you're making decisions, you're supposed to be able to preserve those communications so that the American people know how those decisions were made. That's really important. And by the way, it's like that's the law.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
You can't. Well, two points that I think people have to understand who aren't in government and who haven't been in government and dealing and had to preserve classified information. The first point is that we make it cumbersome for a reason. to deal in classified circles. We make it hard. Why? Why do we make it hard?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
We make it hard so that if there's a spillage or a leak, we can figure out where it came from. And you brought up a really important point of the arrogance. I know this show is based on fact, but my theory on this is that if you look at the people on this chat chain, Most of them have not been in the executive branch in government. They've been in Congress. I'm sorry, but that's different.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
She was asked – this is a Republican member of Congress, okay? She was asked about the deportation of migrants from this country to prisons in El Salvador. And she basically said, hey, those people don't get due process. And here's the direct quote. If you violated the law, you are not entitled to due process. And – I can't tell you how many people actually believe that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And they have this arrogance of, oh, we are smarter than everybody who has had a career in this stuff. And so while they're telling us we have to go through these cumbersome measures of going through classified channels to talk about these things, we're smarter than them. We're just going to set up a signal chat chain.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And they probably had some civil servant who said, hey, Mr. Secretary, that's probably not a good idea. And he probably said, well, I'm smarter than you. I'm going to do it my way.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Yeah, that's... That's number one. I mean, we make it cumbersome for a reason so that our enemies cannot hear us and so that if there's a leak, we can figure out where it's coming from. And number two, just in January, you had a Department of Homeland Security official, longtime civil servant, who made a mistake.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And she went to her colleagues and said, I accidentally put in an unclassified government email, I accidentally added a journalist onto this email where I was talking about an ICE raid that was going to happen. And guess what happened to her? She was removed from her position and her security clearance was revoked.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Did anything happen to any of these guys that I would argue actually released more – worse information over Signal?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And don't get me started with Pete Hegseth and, you know, taking his wife to high-level meetings as well. That's kind of a breach of security. But now we have Laura Loomer apparently getting national security officials fired. So that makes me really nervous. Yeah.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It's very scary. But a lot of people don't understand what NSA is or does. So who is the head of NSA?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
That is like the most un-American thing you can possibly say. We have this constitution and in there it says, hey, the Fifth Amendment says no matter who you are, if you're in this country, you get due process. And so I wanted to start out just talking about this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It's worrisome because National Security Agency, they listen in and they get intelligence on foreign actors. They don't have the authority to do it here domestically. Okay. And so my concern with this firing is why there hasn't been any, I mean, they did it at 10 o'clock at night. Right. And there hasn't been any reasoning for that. I mean, was this general like too woke or,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
You know, maybe they were upset that he had a woman deputy because they don't like women in high positions in the national security arena, except for Tulsi, I guess. But, you know, I just I'm a little worried about this. This seems like a really big deal.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Yeah, and people need to know this is unprecedented. I mean, to come into office, fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fire all these, you know, the chief of naval operations, now fire the head of NSA for really no reason. We've got to watch this. It's a purge.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Something else happened last week that I think maybe was glossed over in the media, but I think it's really kind of scary and important as well. A Republican representative from Texas on the House floor quoted one of Hitler's best friends, Joseph Goebbels. Joseph Goebbels was the propaganda – the lead Nazi propagandist back in the 1930s and 1940s.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And the Republican member of Congress was having a back-and-forth – with Biden's chief disinformation officer. There was a hearing, and he was arguing with her. And he said, and I quote, and this is the quote from Joseph Goebbels, he said, "'It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.'" And I think that may be what we're discussing here.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And, of course, he said this. Another representative Democrat from Texas pointed out that, hey, that's like Hitler's best friend. Maybe you shouldn't be quoting Hitler's best friend. And he got very defensive, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And he came back and said, hey, and this is what he said, probably best not to throw stones when your party supported funneling millions of dollars through Biden's State Department to shape public opinion.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Yeah. oh it's ashley projection you know every action what is it every accusation is a confession right i really want the truth on this though so here when when he when his um team was uh uh the media reached out and to his team to his staff and said what what is this all about and the staff of course doubled down the communications director said in a statement what he was talking about is this
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It is, quote, indisputable that the Biden administration weaponized its State Department to censor and suppress American citizens from their right of free speech. What are they talking about, Denver? Because the State Department deals with foreign countries. Not here in the United States.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
The State Department doesn't do anything with free speech or any speech here in the United States unless you're like talking about your passport.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
So that's what's happening there. This is part of the State Department that was designed to go after disinformation that foreign actors are pumping into our country.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It was designed to try to tamp down on that disinformation, and that's what they're talking about here?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
This wasn't the first time that he quoted Hitler's best friend, by the way.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
I mean, here, look, I can, I have a few quotes that I've memorized over the years. I have a couple from Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, some people, even Alan Shepard. Um, I, I, I have not memorized any quotes from anyone that knows Hitler. I can just say that. I don't, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And here's the thing that a lot of people don't understand. And I taught the Constitution, right, to future military leaders of our country. The Constitution does not say if you are a citizen only, you get due process. The Constitution says persons here get due process, whether you are a citizen or not. And that is true for free speech, the First Amendment.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It's true for pretty much everything except for voting, right? And so these people that say they love the Constitution but then want to deport everybody without any due process, it's actually un-American, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
So send that to us, and in future shows, we're going to tackle it all.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Well, and we have to acknowledge what this is really all about, right? This is the issue of immigration, the issue that Donald Trump ran on, and actually you could argue won on, right, in 2016 and again in 2024. And Americans really want our border to be secure. Most Americans want to know who's coming across the border.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
But we do have this constitution here, and you can't just have the government nab people who are here in the United States and send them to a prison in El Salvador, which is not a very good place to be, without due process. Why? Because the problem is – and there may be many, Denver, who are criminals – who should be deported.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Like most Americans believe, as I do, if you're here illegally, certainly if you're a criminal, you need to be deported. The problem is with the government coming in and nabbing these people and just sending them without due process, we have the potential for what? For mistakes, right? Huge mistakes. And that is what we're seeing already happening, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
yeah it's a lot i mean i feel like every single week it's just a deluge of stuff we have to talk about um and really push back on i want to make sure that anyone following this uh follows us on all the social media channels that you follow so blue sky uh x uh what else is out there truth through social
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Yeah, and I hear from folks on the right exactly what you just said. Like, oh, well, of course there's going to be mistakes, but it's for the greater good. Well, no. We have this Constitution for a reason. You can't just do that because mistakes are made, right? There was one just in the past couple weeks, a man whose name is Andre Jose Hernandez Romero.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And he was a gay makeup artist who had a tattoo and his tattoo basically said mom and dad on it. And the feds ice nabbed him, said that his tattoo is evidence that he is a gang member and sent him to the El Salvador prison. So there's lots of problems with that. Number one, Evidence of being a gang member is your tattoo. Okay, but there's no – again, there's no due process there.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
There's no ability for him to say, hey, that's a tattoo that says mom and dad. There's no – and that's just wrong, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It's just the idea that the American, the federal government would just go in and nab somebody and then send them to a prison in El Salvador. I mean, we should be outraged about this. It's just wrong. It is just wrong. But the broader... topic here of immigration isn't going away. And we need serious people in government to actually tackle this problem, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And I know that the Trump administration has cracked down on border crossings, and a lot of Americans want that. And I think, you know, Most Americans want the border to be secure, but it is going to take more than just cracking down at the border to fix the problems that we have with immigration, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Yeah, and it's not just the Fifth Amendment of due process that these people who say they love the Constitution, who are the Trump mega following. It's now also the First Amendment because they're going after people who are in this country who are here as students. And saying that, you know, they can't write op-eds. We're going to deport you now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
So apparently if you're here as a student and you're not an American citizen, you don't have the right of free speech. Apparently that's not important either now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
You've got to follow us and tell all your friends and family about this show because we're going to be talking about all of the things that happen and we're going to be distilling them down to the actual truth. That's what this is about. All right, so let's get started.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
Well, And that leads us into the next topic that I think is really, really important. And it's something near and dear to my heart, which is our national security. And I know that the Trump administration would love to just gloss over this signal chat gate is what we're talking about. Many in the media are talking about right now. But it is important. It's a really big deal.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And I was an F-18 pilot. I did strike missions in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And I can tell you again that launch times and time over the target, those times are are classified.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
And in the case of what happened with Secretary of Defense Hegsath just tweeting out, or I'm sorry, not tweeting out, but chatting out, signaling out these times, and the very mission itself, the existence of the very mission itself, is classified because it was a mission that was secret. The Houthis did not know we were coming and that's by design. And so the incompetence continues.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
It's not just the signal gate, but we've learned just in the last week that the national security advisor, Mike Waltz, set up over 20 different signal chat chains to talk about different regional crises should they arise around the world. Now, when I heard that, I was like, are you kidding me? I mean, this is supposed to be the A-team.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
So last week, and here's the thing, this happens quite a bit where you're driving down the road and you see somebody's bumper sticker and it says, I love the Constitution or I follow the Constitution. And quite often you meet these people and they have actually never read the Constitution. And so we have a member of Congress last week at a town hall in Indianapolis, Indiana,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.06.25
These are supposed to be the people that are protecting our country. And the pushback already is, oh, well, these guys are smart because they're putting together a signal chat chain so they can all discuss these things. No, that's not smart.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
We'd scrub the mission because... Yeah, because you have just risked the entire mission. You've risked our lives. The signal chat thing is personal to me because the pilots that are out there, look, I trained many of them while they were midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, while I taught there. they're the ones now out doing these missions. And I used to do these types of missions, right?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
I had 89 combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, strike missions. The air tasking order, folks, for everybody that's listening, that is the order that has the flight times and the call signs and the strike packages, what aircraft are taking off and when. That order, I have never seen. I have never seen an air tasking order that is not
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
Those launch times, those time on targets, it is classified not only in combat, but in exercises as well. back home and overseas. Why?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
Yeah, Nellis and then exercises overseas. You do not want people to know when you are launching. That is the most vulnerable time for an aircraft. And also the most vulnerable time actually is over the target, right? And so to tell people or to tell folks over an unsecure network the type of package that is going in on a strike, when it's launching, when it's gonna be over the target,
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
That is just my head exploded. And I have I've gotten so many calls, emails, texts from former squadron mates of mine with the WTF on this, because anybody that's in the military knows this. You are basically telling the enemy when you're going to be there on a strike that, by the way, its own existence is classified.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
So when Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, says, oh, no classified sources or methods was released in this, that is total bullshit. The entire operation that they were chit-chatting about over the signal chat frame, that in and of itself is classified. Why? Because you're putting pilots at risk if the enemy would know about it.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
And both of those things are being talked about right now in different ways regarding this, in my opinion, incompetency that we're seeing from the national security team of our country right now.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
Well, we don't know. We don't know. And that's what I'm asking. The bottom line, though, is it's arrogance. Pete Hegseth has the deadly combination of being unqualified and arrogant at the same time. If you're unqualified, you can muddle through that job. You can ask for advice. You can be humble. You can listen.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
But if you are unqualified and arrogant as a secretary of defense, it is a recipe for disaster. And this is a perfect example of that. These guys thought, oh, you know, the bureaucracy is so hard in the military and everything.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
and on the national security establishment so we're just going to create our own signal chat because you know we're smarter than everyone else well there are reasons that we have these protocols and it's so that spillage doesn't happen we we don't even you know when you're when you're in a flight line you don't necessarily even tell the uh the the person that is is the ordinance man who's uploading your bomb he may know your launch time but he doesn't know your time on target
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
Why? Because he doesn't need to know. And the more people that know that stuff, the worse. You want to compartmentalize things and you don't want the whole picture to go out. What Pete Hegseth texted out to the whole world is the whole picture. We specifically don't allow that. And the only people that know that typically are our high officials who we think are smart.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
That's 100%. But to translate that to everyday people, look, Pete Hegseth is in charge of the military, and he just screwed over members of the military. He put lives at risk knowingly. And then on top of it, if that wasn't bad enough, and all those guys did too, Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, all those people should know better.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
But if that wasn't bad enough, Hegseth himself turns around and lies about it.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
He doesn't even have the guts to say, you know what? That was bad. We screwed up. Doesn't have the guts to do that. He has to lie about it. And I'm telling you what, those of us that served in the military, you may be left, you may be right. That's almost unforgivable, in my opinion.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | SignalGate
Welcome, everyone, to Truth in the Barrel Small Batch. I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Rigman, and we are going to talk about the Signal Chat debacle that you have seen in the last few days. And actually, I think this is really important, Denver, for us to talk about. talk about this because you have an intelligence background and I have an operator background.
Truth in the Barrel
Trailer | All You Fascists Bound To Lose
We'll show these fascists what a couple of hillbillies can do. We are living in a dangerous new era.
Truth in the Barrel
Trailer | All You Fascists Bound To Lose
The current state of our political discourse is a volatile cocktail, shaken with leadership that ranges from vindictive to ineffective.
Truth in the Barrel
Trailer | All You Fascists Bound To Lose
Both Denver and I have dedicated our lives to fighting for, not against, America.
Truth in the Barrel
Trailer | All You Fascists Bound To Lose
and remaking our country into something that serves only their self-interest. We will take the fight to the people who bootlegged our democracy. Welcome to Truth in the Barrel.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
So they're preemptively jacking up the prices on you. Is it because of the uncertainty?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
I think what a lot of people maybe don't realize, and I didn't even realize it until now, is we read about tariffs and oh, when they go in effect and this is who they're going to impact. But the reality is, it's already impacting. Because it's the uncertainty of this man in the White House who doesn't know what he's doing, who's just throwing everything into upheaval.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
And that has cascading effects. Even if tomorrow he waved his wand and said, I'm just kidding, I'm not going to do these tariffs. It's already having a damaging effect.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
Hi everyone, I'm Amy McGrath. I'm here with Denver Riggleman and this is Truth in the Barrel Small Batch. Today we are talking about tariffs and how they affect small businesses and it is no joke. And this is such an important topic. Denver, you run a small business. What is going on?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
This policy is so dumb. But here's something that we could actually drink on, okay? That I think is a positive. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. The other night, because I was thinking the same thing, because, you know, I taught the Constitution. I thought to myself, gee, nowhere do I ever remember the president in Article 2 having any of these powers. So I looked up Article 1, Section 8 in the U.S.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
Constitution. It actually says that Congress has the power to, quote, lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises and grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, And also that all relates to tariffs. In addition, Congress, Article 1, Section 9, that clause prohibits states from imposing tariffs on imports and exports without the consent of Congress.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | Tariffs Hit Home
So here's the thing. Nowhere does it say the president has this power. All of the powers reside within Congress. So in my mind, all of these lawsuits are going in the right direction. It's just a matter of one. Will the courts read the Constitution? And then two, will our president follow it?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Well, history speaks, doesn't it? We know that this man in this position is totally unqualified for the position. We knew that going in. We also know he has a long history as an anti-vaxxer. And we know that most people in confirmation hearings are going to say what the people who are going to confirm them want them to say. But actions speak louder than words.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
As far as we know, there is absolutely no scientific reason to have made this statement. And that's quite counter to the way that decisions about vaccinations, being warranted or not has been made in this country in the past.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Normally, when you go to make a change in any kind of recommendation, there's a panel invoked for the best scientific information and thinking about the change that's about to be considered. There has been no such panel invoked in this decision, which is very concerning because One has to ask is, is this the way things are going to be done in the future?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
At the whim of a person who chooses to swim in sewer water?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
And you're talking about RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services. And I should note that we do not have a CDC director at the moment. The NIH director, the National Institute of Health, has said this is, quote, saying that kids and pregnant women should not get this vaccine is, quote, common sense and good science.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
And it sounds like, mom, this is not good science and it's not based on any medical data.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Do you agree with that? It's absolutely. That's absolutely true. And, you know, common sense. No common sense. If it's enlightened with past experience and a bit of science says that where vaccines are present, disease is down. And that's still the case. And so where can we look for verification for this work?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Just within the past week, we've had statements from, for example, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, all issuing their concerns that, hey, wait a minute, this isn't so. There's no good reason to do this. And you're talking about vulnerable populations.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
You know, it's interesting because we have some idea, unfortunately, of what it's like when misinformation goes out about what to do about a pandemic or a particular illness, a virus, whatever. Because when COVID appeared, it appeared in a place where it had never been or never recognized. And it was devastating. And the misinformation
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
that came from the top in this country was the bane of many people's existence. And yet there were reality tests like, you know, cold freezers, trucks outside of hospitals because the death rate was increasing at such an alarming concern. Well, you know, we were able to vaccinate many people and over
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
the years since that appearance of the pandemic, some people have developed immunity, some because of the vaccinations, some good immunity because of vaccinations and boosters, and some immunity because they themselves had contracted the illness and survived. And we need to look at that because we're talking about an illness that has the potential to kill people, and it's still doing that.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
What was interesting to me, Mom, about this new advice from HHS is the fact that they said, hey, if your children are healthy, they don't need to get the shot. And I was thinking to myself, well, okay, so unhealthy kids should get the vaccine, but healthy kids shouldn't. And then pregnant women. Pregnant women shouldn't get the shot. Really?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
And the reason why I wanted to have mom on to talk about this, because when this headline came down, I had a lot of questions about, I have children like many of you, and, you know, I've I wanted to know, is this for real? Is this politics? Or what's the medical science behind it? So I'm really happy to welcome mom, Dr. McGrath. Thank you for coming on The Small Batch. You're welcome.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Like, to me, I'm like, is there something that pregnancy changes you that you can't get COVID? Like, I still understand the logic there.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Well, you know, that's interesting that you say that, because I think, you know, the current thinking and understanding is that actually pregnancy is a time of greater risk for illness, not only for the pregnant mother, but also for the fetus, of course.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
And so any significant illness, flu, let's look at another viral illness common in our society, is much more likely to cause problems for the woman and the fetus if contracted during the pregnancy. That's why we recommend flu shots for pregnant mothers. Not only that, but
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
when a when a baby is born in the first six months of life um it retains some of the antibodies that were passed to it from the mother so the mother becomes in effect a way of inoculating the baby that little one in the first six months against these illnesses um we don't recommend
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
COVID shots for infants in the first six months of life because we're hopeful that mother has protected both herself and her baby during her pregnancy. And children up until age two are really at greater risk for complications from a COVID infection.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Which include not only the immediate complications of the way the illness is expressing itself, for example, respiratory difficulties and so on, but also for the really serious complication of long COVID. Yeah. And, you know, vaccinations... help protects against long COVID.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Welcome to Truth in the Barrel, small batch edition. I'm Amy McGrath. Just yesterday, we learned that the COVID shot in America is not recommended for healthy kids and pregnant women. That was from the Department of Health and Human Services. And today we have a special guest to talk about this. my mom, Dr. Marianne McGrath, who's been a pediatrician, a medical doctor for over 50 years.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
We don't have tons of data because after all, we've been collecting data until it was stopped only for the past few years because of the occurrence of the pandemic. But there's definite evidence that tells us that vaccination will help to prevent the existence of long COVID in someone who becomes infected if they have had a vaccination.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Yeah, and the reason that I wanted to do this small batch episode, and people need to know that when the headline came out and it deals with a lot of medical stuff, the first person that I call
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
is my mom okay because look we're all sort of experts in different things right i mean i i know a lot about the military i know a lot about national security but when it comes to like vaccines and uh what's going on in public health you know mom i call you so the first thing i did on the drive home yesterday was call you and you
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
You gave the answers to my very basic questions and I felt like, wow, everybody needs to hear this. And one of the things that you brought up yesterday was that the consequences of this new official advice from the Department of Health and Human Services is that insurance companies can now change what they cover. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Yes, I guess, you know, that's another issue, okay? And we're not talking about a scientific basis for this decision. This is purely greed. But insurance companies generally allow insurance at no cost, those vaccinations which are recommended. Okay. And that has been the case with the COVID vaccination.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
But it's a perfect economic out for the insurance companies to not cover those things which are not recommended. A very common example that has occurred within the last five years, you know,
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
All right, let's get started. RFK Jr. said in his confirmation hearing that he didn't want to take vaccines away. But here we are. And this health and human services sort of dictation, I guess, that says that now in America, kids, healthy kids should not get the COVID shot. I want to start out by saying, or by asking you, like, what's this all about?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
The shingles vaccination, which is actually highly effective for people who take it, the new shingles vaccination, was not covered by insurance because it was not recommended for any group prior to a couple of years ago. Once it was recommended, then it's covered. But, you know, we're talking about two possibilities. that will there be enough COVID vaccination available if people want to get it?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Will the company stop making as much when they know it's not going to be covered by insurance? Of course, we don't know the answer to that. But assuming that the supply would remain the same, we still have the possibility that
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
insurance will not cover it if it is not recommended for that specific group and of course that specific group as i said before is a group that should be covered certainly oldies like me are going to be still be covered okay 60 if you're 65 and above you've got it made because hey your insurance will pay for your vaccination booster which we should get uh what about people who
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
are normally concerned and normally want to provide the best protection possible for, for example, their children, their healthy children. They want them to remain healthy, which is why they get them flu vaccinated every year. If this continues as it is, they would not be able to be reimbursed. How serious is it?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Well, there have been some estimates over the past couple of days that suggest that the COVID vaccination, a single booster dose would be as much as $200. Yeah. A dose. Well, hello, we're automatically counting out the most vulnerable group of people.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Well, I got three kids, so that's $600 right there. Finally, I just want to ask you, Mom, the very basic, what's going to happen if fewer kids get this vaccine and fewer pregnant women get this vaccine? What's going to happen?
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Well, we know what's going to happen because we have a model in many other illnesses. Less vaccine means more disease. Okay. Now, how serious will that be? Well, look at what we know so far about COVID. We know that most cases of COVID do not kill people. That, of course, depends on no underlying difficulties. All right. But for healthy people, Most infections with COVID do not kill people.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
That doesn't mean that they're innocuous because COVID can cause some serious difficulties over a long period of time. And more importantly, we know now that there is such a thing as the lingering effects of the virus over many years. And we call that long COVID. It's no small thing.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
The incidence of that, by the way, in children under two who have not been vaccinated but have contracted COVID is considerably higher than in any population of children that's compared. It's outrageous. Do we want to take that chance with our children? I would not. I mean, I really wouldn't. You know how I feel about vaccinations.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
And that is the bottom line here. This is not based on data. It's not common sense. It's political. And it's going to hurt people. And that's why I wanted to do this small batch with somebody who has credibility in this area. So thank you, Mom, for coming on the show. And we really appreciate it.
Truth in the Barrel
Small Batch | The Consequences Of RFK Jr.
Do you think this is just political because the guy doesn't like vaccines?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Okay, and so some of the things that they are talking about is giving a $5,000 check for every child birthed, for example, or a medal for women who give birth to six or more children. Where do we begin with this?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Did I use the word younglings? And here's the other thing. The $5,000 check, anybody that has children knows that a $5,000 check doesn't go very far. So I was actually thinking about this and I was looking up, do you know how much it costs to raise a child in the United States of America from birth to 18 years old?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, that's pretty good. It's $237,000 in 2023. I'm sure that's higher now. So a $5,000 check is sort of laughable. The other thing that's laughable and actually cringeworthy is Donald Trump dubbing himself last month the Fertilization President. I can't even get through that. No, I can't either. But it is true, and this is why I want to talk about this, it is true that the...
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Und hier ist, warum ich dazu eingetreten bin. Ich habe nicht viel, ich habe nicht viel internationales Whisky getrunken, aber mein Mann hat mir dieses Set gekauft. Es ist ein um die Welt Whisky-Tasting-Set und er hat es bei Costco gesehen. And it was like 300 or 400 bucks. But it was amazing. It was like 25 different whiskeys. And we got it for Christmas.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Fertility, the birth rate, has gone down. And it's been going down for the past 40 years. And some people feel like this is a really important thing to look at. The average woman in 2024 has one to two biological children, according to the CDC report, and compared with more than three in 1960. So I have three children, so I'm highly average, I suppose. But
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
This issue, if you're serious about this issue and you like really care about the fertility rates of women in this country, don't you think that you would get behind some like actual common sense practice? Okay, so like... Paid family leave? No, we don't want that. We want that $5,000 check. How about better medical care for pregnancy and birth? No, no, that's too far.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
How about affordable child care? No, no. The Republicans, of course, oppose women's health care rights. No free meals in school. We don't want that. You can have the kids, but we don't want that. And we're going to cut Head Start programs. All of these things... And yet they're talking about giving women a medal?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
But in all seriousness, though, these Republicans, these conservatives, apparently people are really upset about this. And this is apparently a real issue. But they don't want to do any common sense measures to tackle this issue. You know, if you talk about opposing paid family leave,
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Among high-income countries, the United States is the only country that does not provide paid maternity leave and also has the highest maternal mortality rate. What are we doing? Seriously, this is just stupid land.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And in the sort of dark ages of January and February, every other night or so, we'd take two or three of these whiskeys out and we'd do a tasting. And one of them was this Arbicci Rye. And I absolutely fell in love with it. I cannot...
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, I mean, I was looking online and I quite often go over what some of the, I think, sometimes more reasonable conservative viewpoints are. And one guy said, he said this, the reason for the birth rate decline is women entering the workforce, but no one is ready for that discussion. Well, then let's have that discussion. Because I kind of like that women are in the workforce.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
I actually think that's a good thing. But there's lots of reasons why, and multiple studies can back this up, there's lots of reasons why the birth rate has gone down. It's not just because women are in the workforce. Women have more access now to contraceptions. We're better educated. That makes a difference. And We are pursuing careers and that isn't bad. Like, why is that bad?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Because you're a woman, Amy. Yeah, I know. And here's another truth that we aren't talking about enough, I think. Half of the declining pregnancy rate in our country is due to the steep decline in teen births. Steep decline in teen births. I think that's a good thing. So there's a general downward trend in births to teenagers and there's an upward trend of births to older women. And you know what?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
It's not about the money. It's about creating a culture that is actually family friendly. Oh, stop. We can do practical things to do that. Here's the other thing, and this is also a bit controversial. We know that states that have no reproductive rights now for women, that have no access to abortion, have worse maternal and child health outcomes. One of the reasons why you might as a woman...
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Not consider having kids if you're in one of these states where, gosh, I'm looking at my finances, I'm looking at whether if something goes wrong, I won't have healthcare. I have to cross state lines to get the healthcare I might need if I have a pregnancy that is high risk. You know, this is where we're at in this country.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And so people that look at this and they're like, oh, women need to have more babies. And the answer is a medal or a $5,000 check. They're just not living in the real world. And the last thing I'll say about this, because I remember teaching this when I teach elements of national power. zu, back to midshipmen and to grad students, we talk about population as a mechanism of power.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And so when you think about this strategically, the reason why people are upset about this is we're going to have an aging population, right? And that's what Elon Musk is, everybody's talking about this, so we got to have more babies, okay? Well, That's demographics. And the demographics in our country is such that we are getting more older, right? We're not having as many babies as we used to.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
But we still have a better trajectory on demographics than Japan, than China, than the EU, certainly than Russia, pretty much every other country. developed nation in the world, we have a better trajectory on demographics than they do. Why?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Damn right. It is because of immigration. So we're shooting ourselves in the foot right now. If you want to tackle this issue by being sort of this anti-immigrant craziness that's going on. You know, when immigrants come into this country, you don't see a ton of like 95-jährige Immigranten, die in Amerika kommen. Sie sind typisch jünger. Und das hilft uns demografisch.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Und wir sollten das umsetzen. Wenn das das Problem ist, das du umsetzen willst, hey, lass uns das tun.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
I know. And call me a feminist, but I'm just so tired of this sort of patriarchal expectation that women's roles is just solely about having babies. I mean, J.D. Vance, I know, disagrees with me. True J.D. Vance. Literally.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
All right, it's time for rapid fire. So, Den. Ma'am. This week, Ron Johnson, who's a sitting senator from Wisconsin, said, and I quote, What actually happened on 9-11? What do we know? What is being covered up? My guess is there's an awful lot being covered up in terms of what the American government knows about 9-11. And now... Ron Johnson, Senator, sitting U.S.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Senator, wants to hold hearings on 9-11, whether it was an inside job or not. Do you think the Senate should be using taxpayer dollars to hold these hearings then?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
It's offensive. It's offensive that a sitting U.S. Senator would even bring it up.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, I said this right away when it came out. Remember the first time Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, sent out time on target, launch times, the strike package, a bunch of sensitive classified information. He sent it over Signal, which is an app on your phone, which is not secure. for classified information.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And he sent it out to an Atlantic reporter and all of these other members of Trump's national security team, right? The vice president and the director of national intelligence. Okay, so that was like Signalgate 1. And everybody went in and said that was wrong and stupid and I was part of that. Signalgate 2 is different. It is different. It is not the same thing. Here's why.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
This time, Pete Hegseth set up the chat himself and he sent that same information then not to other members of the cabinet, not to other members of the national security team, but to his wife and his friends and family, people he knew. Did not have a clearance. People he knew had no reason to know at all. The time on target, the launch times, the strike package and all of the sensitive details.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And he sent that over Signal Chat. And so to me, it's not just a mistake. It is willful misconduct. Because to me, that's not about the Signal Chat anymore. That's about classified information that he is pushing to people who are uncleared. Okay? And to me and you, you know, that's like a felony.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Ich habe nicht mal die Worte. Es ist absolut nicht. Keiner dieser Leute hatte irgendeine. Ich meine, ich weiß nicht, warum er es macht. Weißt du was? Weißt du was? Das ist mein Ansatz. Er hat es gemacht, weil er nie in einer Position war, die wichtig war. No. And he is bragging. And it's kind of like this is all new to him and fun.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And he wants to share with his friends and family all the cool shit that he does. And it is completely unprofessional. And also it's this mixture of like Ja. Ja. And that is who he is. But I want to move on. Because this week, the White House, as you know, in previous months, since the Trump administration took over, the White House won't allow the AP, the Associated Press, in the press room.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
But they welcome this guy named Tim Pool. He got the first question this past week on Wednesday. So who the heck is this guy, Tim Pool?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Well, you know, it's definitely spicy and I absolutely love it. And there's no, that's one of the things about whiskey is everybody's different. You know, my husband doesn't love this the way I love it. But I don't love some of the things that he loves. And so that's really cool. And that's why I love that little whiskey-tasting kit that he bought.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, well, Tim Pool, I know, I thought, and I don't know this, but wasn't he the guy that, like, the Russian TV...
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
station was funding his operation now here on truth in the barrel you know who's funding this uh we are and you are the listener so like there's no like vladimir putin or or anything but anyway well rt so that's why i was being very careful so the source funding they said came from rt right or it was a russia today sort of thing however there was a larger poll
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
You know, so for those people that are listening, our Secretary of Defense reportedly ordered a makeup room to be constructed or at least outfitted so that he could look good when he goes on TV. And, you know, I call it the powder room. I just think, you know, it's... For a Secretary of Defense who is consistently talking about making the military lethal again.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
By the way, the military was always lethal. I don't even know what to say. I'm just kind of like laughing my ass off about this guy. Here's the other thing that is interesting to me. Since this story came out then.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
He is like losing his mind. He is like posting, he's having his rapid response social media team post, this is a lie, this is a lie. I mean, he is like really triggered by this powder room. And the last thing I'll say about this, you just can't make this story up. You just can't make it up. Do you get it? That's a dad joke, man. You can't make it up. I don't know. I love it, baby.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
The last thing I'll say, though, I will say, because there are some more serious things going on in the DOD other than this crap. One of the things that the Secretary of Defense was super eager to do today in his annoying way was to come out and say that he was getting rid of all of the Department of Defense's climate initiatives, dealing with green energy and stuff like that.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Und er sitzt da und sagt, wir werden die Klimawandel-Warschaft und die Wok-Bullshit entfernen und laserfokussiert auf die Mission der Kriegsbewegung sein. Okay, jeder ist immer auf die Mission der Kriegsbewegung konzentriert. Und hier ist, was die Leute wissen müssen über Green Energy und die Departement of Defense. Weil ich in den Pentagon war, als viele dieser Dinge angeschaut wurden.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Because we got a chance to write down what we liked and what we didn't like. Anyway, I thought it was a great gift. One of the best gifts he's ever given.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Weißt du, wie viele unserer Verletzungen in Irak sind? for certain and then also in Afghanistan, the majority of them happened. They happened on convoys. Convoys going to outlying posts. Convoys taking fossil fuels. so that the outlying posts could have the energy that they needed. So the military actually looked at green energy as a way to be not reliant on those fossil fuels.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And you know what that would do? It would save lives on the battlefield. Literally save lives. But because we have a Secretary of Defense right now who is such a complete moron, who is more focused on culture wars,
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
than real wars he is like getting rid of this stuff and everybody's cheering him on you know because it's quote woke let me just tell you I've been in the pentagon there's not a whole lot of woke people in the pentagon they have these uh These offices, these programs because they care about the warfighter. And they care about saving lives. And they care about winning in battles.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And that's why they have him. And he's such a complete idiot. And the other thing, last thing I'll say, The Secretary of the Navy, current Secretary of the Navy and the current Secretary of Defense are now also throwing away all of the plans dealing with the Navy and the bases. And this affects you, Denver and Virginia, the bases on the East Coast dealing with climate change. So that's fine.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Let's look the other way as the sea rises and not plan at all. for the climate change that we know that is going to happen and is going to seriously affect our naval bases, including Annapolis, Maryland and Norfolk Naval Base. It's just it's stupid. They're stupid right now.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
All right. We we have a lot in store for you. And I want to start with what happened this week. Just recently, President Trump once again blaming the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, for the war that Russia started. And specifically saying that Zelensky is at fault for peace talks that were ongoing for those stalling right now.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Well, you know, Dan, I'm in a lot of chats, a lot of different text chains, shall we say, and I have a lot of friends who are women in the military. I'll just say that. And when this came out, I mean, The jokes that just got, just were around, I mean, constant. Like, I had to literally put my phone down because I was laughing my ass off so hard.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And to watch the Secretary of Defense, who clearly does not have thick skin, about this issue, it's just, to me, it's hilarious.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
I mean, whatever works for you. It's fine. I mean, it's fine.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
I think we have to end on a cheers because this is an important piece of our show. We don't want to just throw darts and make fun and laugh the entire time. Most of the time. Here's this week then to Pope Francis. Weil, ich meine, ich bin katholisch geboren. Ich denke, dass das ein Mann ist, der wirklich ein heiliger Mann war. Und ich habe keine gute Definition davon.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Aber ich habe gesehen, in meinem Leben, als ich in katholische Schulen ging und als ich katholisch geworden bin, war mein Vater im Seminar für ein Jahr. Das ist wundervoll. Ich erinnere mich, als wir Pope John Paul hatten und als er gestorben ist und wie groß das Deal war. und all of the tradition around the sort of changing of the guard, shall we say, and then Pope Benedict.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And we're here watching that again. But the man himself was a very humble man. He was somebody who was the first non-European pope Ich weiß nicht, von 1300 Jahren oder so etwas. Und ich möchte nur mit dem Ende von dem, was ich finde, das ist der beste Quote, den ich je gelesen habe, den er gesagt hat. Er hat gesagt, wir sind alle geboren, um einander zu helfen, egal wie schwierig es ist.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Das Leben ist gut, wenn du glücklich bist. but much better when others are happy because of you.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
I just love that. And here's cheers to Pope Francis.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Because Zelensky would not accept the terms that Donald Trump and his team put out there for you. Now, I just want to... Go over what those terms are, okay? And again, J.D. Vance, our wonderful Vice President, said, I think we've put together a very fair proposal. So, for everyone, what is that fair proposal? All right, here's what the terms were.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Russia would get all of the territory that it invaded and is currently occupying right now, which is 20% of Ukrainian territory, to include Crimea. And the US and the EU would lift all sanctions on Russia. There would be no security guarantees for Ukraine and Ukraine would have to promise never to join NATO. Wow. Does that sound like a very fair proposal to you?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Hi everyone, I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Riggleman and this is Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered. We have a tremendous show for you today. There's a lot going on this week. Den, you are not in your normal spot.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, I mean, here's the other thing people need to remember. Russia invaded Crimea. which is a part of Ukraine in 2014. They invaded the whole of Ukraine in 2022. Russia has broken almost every other previous agreement with Ukraine. And so if you're the president of Ukraine, you got to think, you know, they're going to violate it again. Meanwhile,
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
The Russians, the Ukrainians are going after the Russian army. They are attacking the Russian army. The Russians are attacking Ukrainian civilians every single day and every single night. They are committing war crimes. They are targeting apartments. They are targeting hospitals. They are targeting people and civilians. And it's just...
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
For us, for the United States to now take the side of Vladimir Putin, who is a war criminal, is just something that I don't think I would ever have seen in my lifetime. And, you know, on top of all of this, Marco Rubio, who we thought was going to be a decent secretary, well, some people thought he was going to be a decent secretary of state, has just... I think, uh,
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, and I don't want to just throw darts here because a lot of people that look at this issue from the outside are like, hey, well, you know, Donald Trump and his team, we want peace. We want the war to end. And so my question to you is like, What does that look like if this isn't it? And I clearly agree with you. This is not it. This is giving Vladimir Putin everything he wants, everything.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And that if he gets that, he's just going to turn around and do the exact same thing again, thinking, well, I got what I wanted last time. So so this isn't it. But what should it look like?
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Yeah, it's really hard to do. This isn't going to happen on day one, as Donald Trump simply lied about. But, you know, When you're talking peace deals, first of all, you should have diplomats that actually know what they're doing. Okay, that's number one. But I feel like you can't just focus on, let's just end the war now. Let's just end the war now, because stop the fighting.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
All right. Well, before we get into it, I am super excited to talk about my whiskey today. Okay, what I'm drinking. Because this is my current favorite. And it is called... Our Bicky Highland Rye 1794 Single Grain Scotch Whiskey. It's from the northeast coast of Scotland. And honestly, I don't know a whole lot about it. All I know is, I love it. Das ist alles, was ich weiß.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Everybody wants to stop the fighting. Because it's more than that. Ukraine has to have some kind of security guarantee in any kind of peace deal. They have to. Why? Their borders... Die Grenzen sind enorm, wenn es um unfreundliche Menschen oder unfreundliche Nationen geht. 1300 Meilen auf der Grenze.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
Um euch einen Sinn zu geben, wie groß ihre Grenze ist, gerade mit Russland, ist es viermal die Größe der Nordkorea- und Südkorea-DMZ-Border. So they need some equipment, as you said, some equipment and help aid to beef up those defenses on those borders. We need maybe some international surveillance to monitor any ceasefire so that the Russians can't get their troops close to the border again.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
All of these things should possibly be in a ceasefire or peace agreement so that you can give the Ukrainians some sense for, hey, they're not going to do this again. And we'll know that if they do, and if they do, we'll have the support of the United States and the West to be able to counter. And that means that they need to spend a lot of money and a lot of effort in those defenses.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
So it can't just be, we're going to give Russia what they want and then walk away with no guarantees. That's my two cents.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
And it's terrible. It is everything the greatest generation fought against and sacrificed for. And all the cold warriors out there that came before us, what they sacrificed for. And you know what? It's not that expensive to help Ukraine. It will cost us so much more in the long run if Ukraine falls. So here we go.
Truth in the Barrel
The Week Unfiltered 04.25.25
The fertility rate in the United States of America has been declining for the past 15 years, according to the CDC. Yes, we still have a CDC. Trump hasn't gotten rid of that completely just yet. So the White House is now discussing ways to incentivize American women to have more babies.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
We need FEMA. We need FEMA in this country. And what is happening right now is really bad. The Trump administration fired the acting FEMA director a day after he testified. in front of Congress. And when he was asked by Congress, hey, do you think that FEMA should be dismantled and sent to the States? He said, no, that's not a good idea for all the reasons you and I just talked about.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
And guess what? Trump fired him, replaced him with a guy by the name of David Richardson, who has no experience in disaster relief. Imagine that. He's a former Marine, okay, who... Er hat ein Buch geschrieben und in seinem Buch hat er einen ziemlich großen Streak darüber, dass er Frauen im Militär nicht mag. Da ist also auch ein Thema in der Trump-Administration.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Aber er hatte dieses All-Hands-Event, als er FEMA übernommen hat. Er hat alle zusammengebracht, die verletzt waren, glaube ich. und sagte, hey, bleib nicht vor mir. Ich werde tun, was Trump will, und ich werde dich direkt überlegen. Bleib nicht in meinem Weg. Am ersten Tag im Büro. Wie großartig ist das?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Nun, hier ist das Ding. Das größere Bild ist, Klimaschäden und Hurrikanen und Wildschweine und Tornaden, die gehen nicht weg. Sie scheinen schlimmer zu werden. Jemand, der ein halbes Gehirn hat, kann das sehen.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
What are you talking about? I'm telling you, Denver, we're going to have to do another segment on that someday.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
So this is ridiculous, Amy. The facts are, Denver, The three top recipients in terms of states of FEMA aid are Louisiana, Florida and Texas.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
We are actively right now trying to make government fail. And that is what is going on within the Trump administration at the moment. And people need to know all about that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
speaking of cryptocurrency um there's a bait going on right now about a certain type of cryptocurrency called stable coins and a bill just passed in the senate we're going to talk about that but before we do you can't just jump into this bill because so many people don't know what the heck cryptocurrency is Also müssen wir dort anfangen. Denver, ich weiß, du weißt viel über diese Scheiße.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Ein bisschen. Ein bisschen. Also fangen wir an. Was zur Hölle ist Kryptowährung überhaupt?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Nein, es gibt viel da. Aber die Grundlage, von der ich verstehe, ist erstens, dass das Geld ist. Und man könnte sich fragen, warum würden wir das überhaupt tun? Warum brauchen wir das überhaupt? Und ich denke, was die Leute verstehen müssen, ist, dass es Geld ist, das nicht von einem Staat oder einer Zentralbank basiert. Es ist also sehr dezentralisiert.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Es ist wie Wild Wild West und freie Marktkosten. Viele Leute investieren in diese Kryptowährungen und sie wollen einen schnellen Dollar davon machen, weil es sehr volatil ist. Der Wert geht hoch und runter, kann hoch und runter sehr schnell gehen. So that's kind of the background of it.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
And as Denver said, as you said, there's lots of different types of coins, some of which are connected to other assets and some of which aren't. But I was trying to explain this to my son, who's turning 13 this summer, as to what this currency was. And his response was, well, it sounds cool because you can make a lot of money.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Und meine Antwort war, ja, es gibt wahrscheinlich Möglichkeiten, Geld ziemlich schnell zu machen, aber es ist auch sehr riskant. There's no insurance or there's no recourse if you're hacked and you lose your digital wallet. There's no regulation of this, either internationally or nationally. And that gets me into this bill that was just passed this week in the Senate, which was a bipartisan bill.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
It had members of the Republican side and Democratic side voting for and against the bill. And it was in my opinion, und ich habe einiges darüber gelesen, und ich würde den Input von Denver hier mögen. Es scheint mir, als wäre es ein Schritt vorwärts, in dem ich die Person bin, die glaubt, dass wir einige Regulierung haben sollten, wir sollten einige Konsumverwaltung haben.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Und das tut das nicht alles, weil diese Kryptowährungen wirklich der Wild Wild West sind. But it does something around putting guardrails around one particular coin called stablecoin. And so I kind of feel like this is a good thing. What do you think?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Ja, das ist super interessant, weil, und anerkannt bin, ich weiß nicht genug über diese Kryptowährungen-Sachen im Moment. Nur... Nur die Wavetops. Aber ich sage das von dem, was ich lese und von dem, was ich beginne zu verstehen. Hier ist es, was mich wirklich über dieses ganze Ding auswirkt.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Wenn du einer dieser unbeschwerten Leute bist und du willst rausgehen und deine eigene Kryptowährung erschaffen und das tun. Und es ist super Whisky. Ich werde nicht in deinem Weg stehen. Für mich ist es Gambling. You want to go gamble? You do it. It's your money. Fine. Go. And by the way, Denver, I looked up, 27% of Americans have some form of cryptocurrency. I did not know that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
I thought it was much lower. For a lot of young people, they feel like this is the new form of currency in our country and in the world. So that was a little bit scary. But what bothers me is what Donald Trump
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
is doing right now with regards to his meme coin which is a type of sort of digital currency and he's making a a lot of money you're gonna say shitload i was i know you were it's okay he's making a shit ton of money on this and it and it's not so for example just this week he had a dinner at the white house and he invited the people that invested
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
400 Millionen Dollar in seine, er hat 400 Millionen Dollar von seinen Meme-Coin gekauft. Und Sie könnten sagen, na gut, Amy, they bought the coins. That's not money going to Donald Trump. No, no, it is. Every time there's a transaction that has his coin, guess what? He gets a cut. So he is making money off of whether they buy them or sell them every single time to the tune of billions of dollars.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
And that is the problem. And here's the other problem. That money is not going to his campaign. It's not going to the Republican Party. It is lining his pockets. It is going directly to him or to his family. And that is profiting. He is profiting off of his job as the President of the United States out of the office. He is inviting people to the White House, the People's House.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
und Geld davon zu verdienen. Das ist mein Problem.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
People have to understand, this dwarfs all of campaign finance, everything. I mean, this guy is literally profiting off of his position in such a way that we... I don't even think we've seen this in world history. Not just in American history. This is the most corrupt...
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
man leader in i think i actually think in world history and it's happening and the other thing people need to know is we're not talking about something that might happen he's making money on it now he's making money on it now in in the tune of millions and billions billions it's a real problem and i also think he could still win a 28 election
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Yeah, I was just going to say, every accusation is a confession, right, Amy? Das ist richtig. Und wir könnten ein ganzes Show über diese Korruption machen. Aber es passiert viel in unserem Land. Und es gab eine schmerzhafte Geschichte, gerade diese letzte Woche, über eine Frau in Georgia, die die Regierung basically forciert, die Familie zu halten, um sie lebendig zu bleiben. Sie ist krank.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Sie war 30 Jahre alt, hatte einen tragischen medizinischen Incident, der sie in diesem Staat verlassen hat. When she had the incident, she was nine weeks pregnant, Denver. Her name is Adriana Smith. And she's been on life support for three months now. The fetus is 22 weeks old. And... At this point, the family of this woman does not have a choice. They have to keep her on life support.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
And it's just a heartbreaking situation. The government and the hospital is basically saying we have to keep her on life support because the governor signed this bill in Georgia called the Life Act, which grants personhood status to an unborn fetus with a detectable heartbeat. And that's, I don't know, six or ten weeks or something. So now we have embryos and fetuses that have
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
legal rights and the woman who is, you know, literally in this state, yeah, is, has no, even if she had an advanced directive, she, that no longer applies. When a person is pregnant, you basically, you've lost those rights. I just, where do we start here?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Denver, you brought something up where you said, we don't know what the mother wanted. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter. Es ist egal, was sie wollte. Das ist der ganze Punkt. Wenn du in Amerika krank bist, in bestimmten Teilen dieses Landes, wie Georgia, hast du deine eigene Dignität verloren. Du hast deine eigene Fähigkeit verloren, um Entscheidungen zu machen.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Selbst wenn du tot bist, hast du deine Fähigkeit verloren, um Entscheidungen für dich selbst zu machen. Du bist gezwungen, das zu tun.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
What's the next step? Here's another thing, and people don't want to talk about it because it is such a... Horrific personal thing, right? And it creates a lot of emotions with a lot of people. But the government forcing this woman who is brain dead to be a human incubator for a fetus that may not be viable, may be viable, but have tremendous Problemen in der Leben.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Wegen der medizinischen Bedingung der Mutter. Okay, niemand, niemand, viele Leute wollen darüber nicht sprechen. Das ist wahr. Und dann die finanzielle Verantwortung der Familie, nicht nur für die, die die Frau auf Lebensmitteln hält, but also the responsibility of now caring for a child. I mean, I just... I'm not going to make a judgment on this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
I'm only going to say, it should not be government making that choice.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Just this week, Moody's downgraded the United States. Moody's is a credit reporting agency. There's three big ones. The other two, as you know, already downgraded the United States several years ago, but this is sort of the last one. This has never happened. And this credit agency downgraded the United States because of our fiscal situation, because this big
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
beautiful bill that the republicans are are pushing through right now is going to be worse for our deficit worse for our overall debt and it's basically telling creditors hey the united states is is less capable of getting their fiscal shit together and and and here's the thing denver the the treasury secretary when asked about this moody's downgrade you know what he said he said who cares
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Yeah, but here's what people need to know, though. Why does this matter? It matters because creditors think the United States is less capable and that means the interest rates will go up.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Okay, and that has enormous effects not only on our own federal debt, because we'll pay more, our children and grandchildren will pay more for that debt in the future, but also it affects us personally in auto loans, mortgage loans, all that stuff, thanks to what's happening right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Yeah, I mean, it reminds me of Elon Musk, who, you know, we have a president of the United States who's acting like he is, what, 11 years old. It's so stupid. But good on Bruce Springsteen for saying the truth.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
He may already have one. Did you know this week, Kristi Noem, who is our Secretary of Homeland Security, she was out on Capitol Hill today, or actually this week, and she was testifying about her agency. She was asked by a Senator about habeas corpus. What is habeas corpus? And this is what she said.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
I love it. I love the honey stuff. You know that. I mean, you got to be in the mood. You got to be in the mood. But I love that. I love the sweet stuff. Awesome. So welcome, everyone, to Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath with my co-host Denver Riggleman, who is a distiller and a great American, by the way. As we announced last week, our new live weekly show begins June 10th.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Oh my God. Can we just have some cabinet members who actually have read and understand the Constitution of the United States of America, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Doesn't know what habeas corpus is? I know that, look, hey, everyday Americans may not. You might be listening and be like, well, maybe I don't really know what habeas is. She is the Secretary of Homeland Security. Habeas, by the way, is basically...
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Anyone's ability to not be detained by the government without having their day in court, without presenting themselves in front of a judge to say, Government, why did you nab me? Why did you take me and detain me and imprison me? It is a fundamental right dating back to the Magna Carta. das in der Verfassung selbst, in Artikel 1 der Verfassung, eingeschränkt wurde, ist eine ziemlich große Sache.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Und jeder, der irgendeinen öffentlichen Dienst hat, besonders jemand, der sich um eine große, große Homeland Security-Agenzie kümmert, die möglicherweise Menschen in den Vereinigten Staaten beurteilt, muss das wissen. Ich habe mich einfach überrascht.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Well, and she may be like a lot of these mega people who think that, oh, well, habeas corpus has been suspended by President Trump because of what's going on. No. Congress is the one that suspends habeas corpus. It's only done four times in American history. During the Civil War and in the Philippines in 1905. We did it after the Civil War because of the KKK.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
And the President and Congress suspended it after Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. That's it. We don't do it. It's not a normal thing. This week we are saying a cheers to Christine Beachler. Hopefully I'm saying that right. Christine Beachler, she's a librarian in Lowell, Michigan, who's endured years of harassment from the free speech suffocating group Moms for Liberty. She has chosen...
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
To fight back in civil court. So, you know this group, Moms for Liberty. They have gone after librarians and teachers, labeling them pedophiles, labeling them pornographers, saying all kinds of nasty things about them. Und Christine hat entschieden, wieder zu kämpfen.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Wenn sie ihren Fall im Gericht gewinnt, wird es eine große Gewinnung für freie Sprache und einen schrecklichen Schlag für die Bullen von Moms for Liberty. Aber hier muss ich nur sagen, nicht nur Christine, sondern auch Librarien in allen Vereinigten Staaten. Gegrüße an Christine und alle Librarien in den Vereinigten Staaten.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
That was wonderful. We'll see you next time on Truth in the Barrel. It was a great show.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
So Denver and I are going to be taking it to the country, talking to you. and talking about what's going on in America, answering your questions, and of course having a lot of fun drinking whiskey. That is going to be June 10th. Please join us, 7.30 to 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time. That's Eastern United States Time. And that's important, Denver, because you are back in the United States. Welcome home.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
So that's... Ich denke, das wird ziemlich schnell passieren. You can't prevent these storms, Denver, from happening. We know that. But there are things that the federal government can do to help mitigate some of the damage and lives lost. And I'm thinking of two particular agencies right now that Trump and Musk and Doge and Republicans, frankly, want to cut.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
One is NOAA, which is the National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency, and the other is FEMA. Now, NOAA gives us the early warning, right? And FEMA is the agency that helps people and communities recover from Well, so it's interesting.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Heute nehmen wir einen unfilterten Blick auf das tenuierte Staat von FEMA, gerade jetzt, als die bereits sterbliche Storm-Saison vor uns ist. Auch Bitcoin, Meme-Coin, Trump-Coins. Wir nehmen einen Blick auf das Genius-Akt, das gerade im Senat verabschiedet wurde. Plus, in the United States, pregnancy means no choices, even in death. We're going to talk about the case of the woman in Georgia.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Yeah, there's a lot there. The conspiracy theorist thing is really important and I don't want to come back to that. The government right now is being run by these types of people, as you just said, and it's going to have real implications on Americans. So right now the truth is that FEMA is in the process of cutting 2,000 jobs, 2,000 FEMA workers. These are not just people that sit around Denver.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
These are people that clear debris, that rebuild homes, that understand how to dole out resources effectively and equitably when a disaster strikes. They are experts in this area. And so cutting 2,000 workers, that's 30%. 30% of FEMA. Das ist, was die Trump-Administration tun möchte und ist im Prozess.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Wie du erwähnt hast, gibt es viele Leute da draußen, vielleicht auch Amerikaner, nicht nur Republikaner, aber auch Amerikaner im Allgemeinen, die denken, dass in FEMA Billionen von Dollar verpasst werden. Und du hörst auch von Leuten, die wollen, dass FEMA mehr verantwortlich ist. Und für mich ist es wie, The opposite.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
You think that there's billions of dollars wasted and yet you want FEMA to be more responsive and yet you're backing a guy that's cutting FEMA altogether. It just doesn't make any sense. Look, this is what government does. And when people say to me, we should have FEMA go to the states, right? Because that's what Donald Trump has proposed.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
He thinks that FEMA should just go away and the states should pick up. What's the problem with that? I'll tell you a couple of things that come to mind for me. One, storms don't know any borders. So they ravage through multiple states. And also, states don't necessarily have the resources, the technical resources to do this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
This should be done at the federal level because it is more efficient to be done at the federal level, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Also, Moody's downgrades the United States. What's up with that? President Trump picks a fight with the boss, the real boss. And Kristi Noem supports, but really clearly doesn't understand the United States Constitution. This is truth in the barrel, a different kind of Whiskey Rebellion.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Und wiederum, die Konzerntheorie-Stuffe ist nicht nur passiert. Wenn Sie sich erinnern, während der Kampagne, während der Trump-Kampagne, als der Hurrikan und die zerstörten Teile West-Nordkoreas, Donald Trump war auf der Kampagnenstraße. Und J.D. Vance und all diese Leute. Und was sagten sie?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Sie sagten, dass Biden und Harris Geld von FEMA verdient haben und es zu unbefragten Immigranten gegeben haben. Und das ist der Grund, weshalb Sie diesen Rückkehrsaufwand in einer zeitlichen Weise nicht gehabt haben. Und lassen Sie mich einfach sagen, dass das völlig falsch ist. It is a conspiracy theory that is not true. And so people already don't believe in this institution of FEMA.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
But how does it work? And this is something I had to look up just for this conversation here, because I didn't really know when when a disaster strikes the governor of a state. has to request to the president for a disaster declaration. The president then acknowledges and says, okay, there's a disaster in that state.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
And that is what triggers the federal response, the FEMA going into that state and providing public assistance So, you know, clearing up debris, as I mentioned before, but also private assistance, assistance to homeowners and your personal assistance. You can get temporary housing, for example. And so there's things that, like, we want government to do.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
I mean, if there's one thing that government should be doing, in my mind, this is on the top. You know, other than protecting our country from foreign invasion, this is another big one in my mind. The other thing I hear sometimes is, what about, why is the government helping these individual people out? If there's a disaster that strikes... Dann sollten wir einfach Crowdfunding machen.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.22.25
Diese Leute sollten auf die Internetseite gehen und versuchen, Geld für ihre eigenen Reparaturen zu bekommen. Das ist, was wir tun sollten. Es sollte keine Regierungsfunktion sein. Sprechen Sie zu diesem Thema, Denver. Was sind die Probleme mit diesem Thema?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
We're in a new low because it comes down to, and it isn't just like, oh, Dems are supporting gang members. That's not what this is about, okay? This is about being an American. This is about the values that we have that the greatest generation fought for, okay? The fact that, hey, remember watching the Hill Street Blues and pop shows back when we were young?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
There's this thing called innocent until proven guilty. Das ist der amerikanische Weg. Das ist der due process. Und dieser Mann, er war nicht verantwortlich für etwas. Er wurde nicht von etwas verurteilt. Und für die Regierung, unsere Regierung ist wir die Menschen. nabbed this guy and threw him in a foreign torture prison camp with no due process. That is a fundamental problem, okay?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And if you can't see that as an American, you need to take that, you know, that American flag off the back of your car, okay? Because this is purely what our Constitution says and has been enshrined since 1789.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And this is called the Whiskey Without Regrets, which I love. The other reason I like it is not only for the taste, and it's really good whiskey, but it served as the official whiskey of the United States Marine Hospital back in the late 1800s. And that ended up becoming what we now know as the National Institute of Health. It was the official whiskey of the Public Health Service back then.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Well, in the Supreme Court 9 to 0 said that Donald Trump and his administration needs to facilitate the return of this guy. He was, you know, he was sent there illegally. And Donald Trump has basically said, no, we don't. Weil seine Ausgabe ist, Al Salvador will ihn nicht zurückgeben, also wollen wir ihn nicht zurückgeben. Wir tun nichts. Wir müssen nichts tun.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Ich meine, hier ist der Grund, warum dies auch für die täglichen Menschen wichtig ist. Wenn das zu diesem Mann passieren kann, kann es zu jedem passieren.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
anyone and donald trump is even talking about this hey i wanna i wanna send home groans to your prison in el salvador what what are you talking about you know in this country we have criminals right and when they get sentenced they go to jail and those jails are right here in the united states we don't we don't send them off to saudi arabia we don't send them off to el salvador that's just not what we do in america
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
It's in front of us. It's right here. It's here. And good on, you know, the Maryland senators, lawmakers who have gone down there and trying to make a difference in highlighting this. You know, it's, somebody's got to do it. Somebody's got to do it.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
This is where we're at. It's embarrassing and it's shameful. It is. As somebody who proudly served my country and wore the uniform for over 20 years, it is absolutely shameful.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
No, you're right. All right. So, another important event that's happening this week is Donald Trump, our president, is looking for another Iran deal. He really wants a new deal on this. And he sent his negotiator, his longtime business associate, out there to the Middle East to try to make a deal. But, you know, It's important right now because Iran is very, very close to a nuclear weapon.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
They're also very vulnerable, so now is a good time to make a deal. But Donald Trump's sort of ratcheting up the pressure here, saying, quote, if they don't make a deal, there will be bombing. All right. So, look. I just want to start out in saying we should have a deal.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
It would be in our interest, in the interest of the United States of America and the world, to make some sort of deal to make sure Iran does not get a nuclear weapon. I want to make sure that everybody understands that perfectly clear. So good on the Trump administration for trying. But, number one, Donald Trump should have never undermined
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
The 2015 Iran deal that Obama, along with the other members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, put together to make sure that Iran did not get a deal. That's number one. And you may disagree with me and I'm going to kick it back to you in a minute, but he never should have undermined that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Nummer zwei, der Trump-Team, den er da übernimmt, um dieses neue Deal zu negotieren, ist, wie die meisten seiner Kabinette, nicht genau der A-Team, Den. Der Ambassador, sein Name ist Ambassador Witkoff. Er hat nur studiert, er hat nur studiert, dieses Thema der Iran-Nuklearpower und nukleare Waffen in den letzten drei Wochen.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Trump hat auch diesen Mann als seinen Hauptverteidiger für den Ende der Krieg zwischen Russland und Ukraine designiert. Wie funktioniert das für Sie? Und er ist auch in Bezug auf die Frieden zwischen Israel und Hamas. Er ist also nicht so erfolgreich mit dem. Aber jetzt hat er diesen langjährigen Geschäftsführer, diesen Real-Estate-Mogul, getestet.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
that he knows to create this new deal with iran and just to start out in the last few days this ambassador goes on tv goes on fox news and he says iran does not need enrichment over 3.67 then 24 hours later then he goes back on the news and says that iran must stop its nuclear enrichment altogether
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Nun, das klingt ein bisschen wie viel Mumbo-Jumbo für viele Leute, aber für die Leute, die verstehen und wissen über nukleare Waffen und Negotiativen, das ist das ganze Herz, worüber du sprichst. Und es scheint mir, dass dieser Kerl keine Ahnung hat, was er tut.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Es könnte sein. Sie haben es in den 1800er Jahren gebraucht. Es ist medizinisch.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
So JCPOA, remind people what that is. That is Obama's deal from 2015. Stands for Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
By the way, that was a very high leader within Iran's military.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
We can debate over pulling out of the original Obama deal. It was never a perfect deal. But I will say this, when Donald Trump took us out of that deal in 2018, what happened? Well, the US put more sanctions on Iran, but guess what? These other countries that made that deal with us, Russia, China, they are now really close to Iran.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Because they look at the United States as, you know, hey, you guys made this deal, then you pulled out of it. And here's the other thing. Where does Iran get its revenue? Oil. Who's buying that oil now? China. So, you know, it hasn't been great in my estimation. And here's the other thing.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Wir sind jetzt, Iran ist jetzt viel weiter vor, als sie waren, als dieser Deal 2015 gemacht wurde, in Bezug auf die Erhöhung einer nuklearen Waffe. Und das ist, wo wir heute sind. Nun, Iran, ihre Ökonomie ist schmerzhaft. Dies ist ein guter Zeitpunkt, um sie für einen Deal zu beurteilen. Warum? Weil ihre Proxy-Fighter in der Region einige signifikante Schläge zu ihnen gehabt haben.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Wer spreche ich von? Hamas. Hezbollah, their guy, Bashar al-Assad, guess what, he's gone. And so they have lost some friends in their region, right? And so they're kind of vulnerable right now. So now is a good time to approach them for a new deal, shall we say. But you're right on the fact that who do we have out there and what are they doing? I hope that this works out.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
But my concern is that we're going to come away with this deal with the same types of things we've seen in the past for Donald Trump. And what do I mean by that? Vague pledges of a possible deal in the future, presidential summits where Iran gets to be out there on the same platform as the President of the United States. That's what I worry about.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And the other thing about Green River is this is like the westernmost distillery if you do the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. That's like the furthest west that you can go, at least officially. But it's really good. And here's the thing I'll also say to everybody out there. If you want us to highlight your whiskey or your bourbon
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
I just don't think these guys know what they're doing. Iran, they're very good negotiators. And we'll see.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Yeah, I mean, we have diplomats in this country who are very, very good. I do not understand why we send people, I mean, would you do surgery with somebody that hasn't gone through the training to become a surgeon? I mean, this is dumb.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
But the last thing I'll say on this, and this is something I know a little bit about, because I hear this a lot, and of course you also hear it from the President of the United States, well, if they don't do what we say, we'll just bomb them. We can just stop their nuclear program with bombing. And here's the thing about bombing that people need to understand.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Iran's nuclear program, the way they enrich through center futures, because that's how you get to highly enriched uranium. It's not so much the technical difficulties of making a bomb itself. It's getting the fuel for a bomb, which is the highly enriched uranium. And that you get that, you develop it, having these long sets of centrifuges. They have put these things underground, underground.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Maybe you know of one with a good story or has a great taste or even better yet both. Send it our way. We would be happy. Denver and I would be very happy to taste your.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And so it's harder to bomb them. Could we destroy them? Maybe, maybe, but maybe not.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
I just want people to understand when you bomb things, it doesn't, you know, if they're underground, it may not destroy it altogether. And the other thing is, it's going to be very hard. You cannot destroy the knowledge. Okay, that's what the Iranians have now, the knowledge to get a bomb. So even if you destroy the centrifuges, that may work for a limited amount of time.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Starte dein Testen heute für 1 Euro pro Monat auf shopify.de slash radio.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
They can just build that back up, learn from the last mistake or vulnerability and go again. And it's probably going to make them more likely to get a nuclear weapon. So I just caution us with this answer of, well, we'll just bomb them.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Shall we go into rapid fire? So I'm ready for rapid fire.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Oh yeah, okay. So here, now's the time in the show where we're going to do some rapid fire questions. You get 30 seconds, no more than a minute to give me your response here, okay? You got it. Denver, in the news, we all saw Governor Gretchen Whitmer in the Oval Office, right? Trying to not be in the Oval Office. And there's been a lot of backlash to what she did there.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Is that backlash for working with the Trump administration fair?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Oh, that is so good. Love Green River. Okay, let's get into unfiltered. Hier ist etwas, was ich überall auf der Internetseite gesehen habe. Und es ist eines dieser Dinge, Denver, die du siehst und du denkst, ist das wirklich ein großes Problem? Soll ich wirklich darüber wissen? Es heißt das SAVE-Akt.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Mistakes are made. I don't know. I kind of feel like people can bounce back off of stuff.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
I think it matters. Look, there's two things here. One... These signal chat messages, Denver, are now evidence in what should be an actual investigation into a massive breach of classified operational information. If we were living in any normal time, there would be an investigation on this. And, you know, that's evidence. So, one, he should never have been getting rid of that. Number two...
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Any comms, either classified or unclassified, dealing with national security decision making, needs to be retained under the National Records Act. I know that that sounds really kind of like wonky, but it's for good reason. We want to know how our leaders made important national security decisions so we can learn from them in the future.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
It is something that like, look, if you're going to get into this position and you're going to be a part of our government and lead the American people, that is something we expect from you. Okay. If you don't want to do that, go be the leader of the intelligence agency, I don't know, in Saudi Arabia or some other place that doesn't care about that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
So he's willfully being disobedient to the National Records Act in my mind.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
I don't know, Amy. Speaking of accountability, then, two, and I actually think it's three now, Office of the Secretary of Defense, quote, leakers were put on administrative leave and escorted, escorted, wow, that's tough, out of the building, out of the Pentagon. What is up with this, Denver? And is this a positive development?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Und ehrlich gesagt, ich wusste es nicht wirklich oder wusste es nicht, bis es tatsächlich über die Haustür ging. Okay. And then when it passed the House of Representatives, I was like, oh man, I should probably know about this. What is it all about? First of all, it was introduced by a guy named Chip Roy, who you probably know.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Yeah, well, in here they leaked a few things to a reporter. Meanwhile, the secretary himself leaked classified operational information to a reporter.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Well, two things. One, we of Denver are now on the side of war criminal Vladimir Putin. Okay, that's why. That's Donald Trump's bud. But two, what's interesting to me about all of what's happening right now in this issue is Trump is distancing himself from this war, which, you know, wow, surprise. Why is he doing that? Because He said he would end it on day one.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And surprise, surprise, that didn't happen. And then he went from I'm going to end the war on day one to I'm going to end the war in 100 days. And that doesn't appear to be happening. And now, of course, it's Biden's war, right? Every time he talks about this Ukraine-Russia conflict, it's now Biden's war. So we're seeing a shift. And, you know, he's clearly on the side of Vladimir Putin here.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And anything introduced by that man should be really carefully looked at. So that's what we're going to do today. The full name of it is called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. It's one of these things that the Republicans are trying to push under the political umbrella of Ja, genau.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
No, we cannot. There's always an abundance of bad news every week. There's always an abundance of crazy and we're going to talk about all that stuff. But there's still good news to celebrate. Oh, there is. Do you have something to toast? We still have our Green River. I do, right here. I got a little bit of the Christian Reserve right here.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
I would like to take a moment to raise a glass here to U.S. District Judge James Boesberg, okay, for opening the criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration. Trump, of course, ignored his court order to return Kilmer Abrego Garcia to the United States. And this judge opened up criminal contempt proceedings.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Hello and welcome to Truth in the Barrel. We've got a lot to get through today, like our government shipping people off to foreign prisons, the SAVE Act, what's that, a possibility of a nuclear Iran and some rapid fire at the end. This is Truth in the Barrel unfiltered. I'm Amy McGrath. I'm here with my co-host and international man of mystery, Denver Riggleman.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Let's though get into what does the act say? Because as you said before, a lot of people are going to be like, oh, well, yeah, this sounds good. Let's make sure that our elections, that undocumented immigrants can't vote in our elections. But let's get into the details, okay, about this act. So what it says is, anyone registering to vote or changing their registration must appear in person
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
At an election office with a valid U.S. passport, a birth certificate or naturalization papers that prove not only your identity, but also your citizenship. And get this, Denver, driver's licenses, military IDs, your new real ID, that's no longer accepted. That would no longer be accepted as proof of citizenship.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And the SAVE Act requires that the name on your passport matches the name on your birth certificate. Now, Den, how many married women do you know whose married name matches the name on their birth certificate?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Mine does not, by the way. I mean, when I was born, they didn't know I was going to marry. I mean, this is ridiculous. Sixty nine million other married women fall into this category. And it would make it just extraordinarily difficult for us every single time we move to go into an election office. Then what's an election office? Aren't we closing down all of our offices?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Your marriage certificate then is not accepted. Your marriage certificate. So get this. You would then not be able to register online. You can't register online anymore, anywhere in America. You have to go in person to an election office while they're closing down all these offices.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Every time you move into a new home or apartment, you change your party affiliation, you update your name, you're now required to go re-register to vote. What happens if you Ja, genau.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Look, how many election offices are around in the desert when I was living in a tent for two years? I mean, basically, here's the deal. If you are a woman military spouse who took her husband's last name, don't ever expect to vote again. I mean, it's just going to be so freaking hard for you to vote. You're just, you know... Ich sehe es nicht.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And I mean, it's just, it's insane. I mean, Speaker Johnson, the Speaker of the House, he says this is no big deal. Because, you know, Dan, we always card teenagers when they try to buy alcohol. So, you know, you should be able to prove your documentation to vote. That's his belief. So let's just consider this. You want to screw over married women voting in this country.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
How about we make anyone, I don't know, wanting to buy a gun, for example, have to show their passport and birth certificate. How would that fly?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
No, I mean, this is dumb. I don't understand. Four Democrats voted for this shit. It's unbelievable.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Where are they going to go? And married women. And married women.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
And we do have to move on because we can't talk about that. But I'm with you. I hope this dies in the Senate. It needs to die in the Senate.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.17.25
Yeah. And before we start talking about all the important topics, we need to talk about whiskey. That is super important. So what am I sipping today? Okay. This is Green River. Green River Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey. It's from Owensboro, Kentucky. Dates back Denver to 1885, which is really cool because that's the year that my great-grandparents were born. That's really cool.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Yeah, and the last thing I'll say on this, normally for pretty much every president before Donald Trump, the first trip, presidential trip, was made where our president would go to a country that was one of our closest allies in the world. A country that was another democracy, for example, or a country in NATO. Now he's taking his first trip to the Middle East.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And what does that say about our country? What does that say about its leadership? It says... Hey, we care more about business. I care more about personal wealth than I do about democracy, than I do about the values that America stands for. That's just my opinion.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
All right. So here is another issue that I think is even more appalling right now. We're taking in South African refugees while we're kicking out Afghans who fought alongside you and me in Afghanistan. We welcome the first group of white South African refugees, 59 of them, this week under an executive order that Donald Trump signed, mandating that they be prioritized for resettlement.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
They are Afrikaners, a South African minority group that has Dutch ancestry. Now Trump claims that these white South Africans are victims of genocide. Und das passt sehr gut mit dieser Art von rassistischen, naja, es ist rassistisch, großartigen Verwendungstheorie. Es ist eine Verschwörungstheorie, die von Tucker Carlson bemerkt wurde. Ich weiß, dass du viel über dieses Unternehmen kennst.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And welcome to Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath with my co-host Denver Riggleman in the Middle East. Denver, where are you?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Ja, also Donald Trump spielt gerade in diesem Bereich. Und mittlerweile, 9000, 9000 afghanische Flüchtlinge, die in unser Land gekommen sind, sind jetzt im Risiko, zurück in Afghanistan zu werden. Why? Because the Trump administration has ended what's called the temporary protected status program that allows them to stay in the United States legally.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
The White House, Pam Bondi, our friend, has said that, get this, she said that Afghanistan is no longer dangerous for them. Here's a quote. Afghanistan has had an improved security situation and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent them from returning to their home country. Seriously? That is just absolute ridiculous.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
The reason why Afghanistan has a security situation that is no longer in her mind dangerous is because it is ruled by the Taliban. The very people who will lop off their heads. If they go back there and their families heads, if they go back there, it is absolutely crazy. And let me just remind people. These are not. Aber diese afghanischen Flüchtlinge sind speziell.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Because they fought alongside us. They trusted us. We trusted them with our lives. They are our interpreters. They were people that helped us with intelligence and their families at great risk to themselves and their families. And They're going to be killed immediately if they go back to Afghanistan.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And so for our country, under Donald Trump, to do this is just an absolute, it's abhorrent in my mind.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
It's literally taking crazy. It is crazy. And the other interesting thing is Secretary of State Marco Rubio used to be a champion of these Afghans who helped us. He's silent now. Mike Waltz used to be a champion. Afghan veteran used to be a champion of these folks who helped us. Silent.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And the other thing that people ought to know about just refugees in general in our history, in American history. In 1980, we passed an act. And it was one of the things that sort of Reagan championed. It was an act called the Refugee Act.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And it used to offer up to 100,000 refugees from around the world, the most vulnerable people from around the world to come to the United States for safety, to build a new life. That was something we should be proud of, that we used to be proud of, that we could be a place where people could come and be safe. Guess what? Donald Trump stopped that program.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
We don't have any more refugees coming in, except for these 59 white Afrikaners. That's it. I mean, I'm sorry, there's no explanation for this other than 100% racism. None.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And it used to be bipartisan. It's 100% American. And here's the thing. We're not the only ones speaking out on this. The Episcopal Church has actually ended their partnership with the federal government. They used to help with the resettlement of refugees. They've ended that. And in protest to this sort of racist policy that is happening right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
So I just say cheers to the Episcopal Church for actually standing up against the Trump administration here.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Cheers. All right. Now, there's a lot of winning going on, apparently, at least according to Donald Trump and his followers. They love that word, win. Back in the 2016 campaign, if you remember Denver, Trump even promised that with him as president, there would be so much winning that we would all be tired of it. He always casts himself as a winner and everyone else is the loser.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
You know, we're going to talk a lot today about Donald Trump and the Middle East. So let's get started. But before we do, I want to announce again, our new weekly live show begins on June 10th. It's going to be the most distilled version of Truth in the Barrel, because it's just Denver and I live with you all, with all of our listeners and viewers out there. It's going to be great.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
It's their proudest achievement. But you know what? Most times on policy, they lose. And so now they know they've lost. So the tactic is, we don't really care if we won or lost. We're just going to claim it. We're just going to say that we won on pretty much everything. So let's take a look at some of the recent wins touted by Donald Trump and his followers. The first one is China.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And you hear this now among just sort of regular people. Just this past week, I heard this guy say to me, well, really, Trump took it to China, didn't he? Okay, let's think about that, Denver. So, number one, Trump escalates his trade war on China by inflicting 145% tariffs on that country. And he says to China, do not retaliate and you will be rewarded. What did China do?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
China retaliated with 125% tariffs on American goods. China ignored Donald Trump's warning and it was rewarded anyway. And then what happens? Donald Trump just declares victory. He reduces the tariffs down to 30%. China then reduces its tariffs down to 10%. And here's the kicker. There was no extraction of any concessions at all No manufacturing came back to the United States.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
No change in Chinese trade practices. The US still has a reliance on Chinese imports. That remains unchanged. There's no victory here. Nothing was won. There's no great strategic brilliance on the part of Donald Trump. But, you know, he just claims it a victory.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
We're going to answer your questions. We're going to be drinking a lot of whiskey and having a lot of fun. So please join us.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
I mean, if somebody says that to you, you need to say, what did we win? What exactly did we win here? Because we still have tariffs going on, which hurt Americans consumers. And we've got nothing out of this. It's ridiculous. How about this, Denver? How about Trump's win against the Houthis? All right.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Now, Trump this past week surprised a lot of people when he announced that the Houthis have, quote, capitulated. The Houthis have capitulated in the wake of US military actions. Actions, by the way, that was basically a month long bombing campaign, offensive bombing campaign, which cost about a billion dollars in terms of ammunition, bombs, missiles expended.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And Donald Trump has said, well, we won. The Houthis have capitulated and we're going to stop the bombing now. Okay. Hm. All right. What do you make of that then? They haven't capitulated. Okay.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
I want to give our listeners a little bit of background, though, because they might hear from their friends and neighbors, oh, we beat the Houthis. Donald Trump beat the Houthis, okay? Here's the thing. Recall why the United States... Things we found out during this bombing campaign.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
But the goal was to stop the Houthis from targeting merchant ships, thereby allowing merchant ships to go back through the Red Sea in a safe manner. What happened after we did this month-long $1 billion campaign? Did we reach those goals? No, you did not. The Houthis are still attacking Israel. Every single day almost. Google how many attacks are going on in the last 24 hours.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
They are still threatening to attack merchant ships in the Red Sea. Where's the win here? There is no win. And in fact, the Houthis, they just found out that they... There was a video released May 10th that shows an at sea interdiction of bomb making material going to the Houthis. So the Houthis are actually rearming right now. There has been no win here at all. It's ridiculous.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
The last thing I wanted to ask you, Denver, on this issue of big wins. Because you're over there in the Middle East. Donald Trump is touting and his administration is touting all of these great billion dollar wins in the Middle East. All of these business deals. There's a business deal between Qatar Airways and Boeing and all of this great stuff.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And it's almost like he's saying none of this would have happened without him. I wanted to get your take on this, because when you have a deal for a foreign country to buy a bunch of American-made aircraft, that doesn't happen overnight. This shit has been in the pipeline for months and years prior to Donald Trump. He's just coming in and cutting the tape on some of this stuff, right? Exactly.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Yeah, and the live show, it's best to watch it on YouTube, because that's where you can interact with us, where you can send in your questions, your comments in the chat. It's all going to be on YouTube, so don't miss out on any of the exciting things that we're going to be doing here this summer. Alright? Let's get into our Whiskey Minute.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
But even if it does, none of this stuff is just of his doing. And the claim that he is the victor here, the winner, is just kind of bullshit. People need to know that. We're back to Monty Python, right? Yeah. Bite your knee off.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Time for quick shots, Denver, because you've got a lot of work to do. I know it's still out there and we've got to wrap things up. There's been a few interesting things going on that we really do need to touch on from the last week. The first one is, and I honestly don't know a ton about this, except for the headlines. RFK Jr.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
on Mother's Day, he, by the way, is our Health and Human Services Secretary. He took his grandkids swimming and wading in Rock Creek. And this is a place where swimming and wading have been banned for 50 years due to consistently high levels of E. coli and widespread human and animal waste. Wow. What do you say to that, Dan?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
The other thing is, this past week he was testifying on the Hill. And I don't remember what the question was, but his answer had to do with, oh no, the question was about, I think, the measles vaccine. And his answer was, oh, well, you shouldn't take any health advice or medical advice from me. That's the HHS Secretary. Health and Human Services Secretary, we can't take health advice from you.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
All right. President Trump has appointed Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro. I really butcher her name every time.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Denver. President Trump has appointed Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. And this marks the 23rd Fox News former employee that Trump has hired in his second term. What do you say to that?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
So, since I'm over here, back in the United States, I'm going to be the one to drink here today. I have this amazing whiskey. It is called... Nearest Green. It's Tennessee Whiskey. The coolest thing about this whiskey, Denver, is the story behind it. I went with my husband and children down to Tennessee last summer to go fishing and go to a lake.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And here's the other thing. The 23 former Fox employees, these aren't just contributors, right? Dan, you and I have been on CNN, MSNBC. Do we get paid for those when we go on? No, we're not employees. The Trump administration is filled with former Fox employees. People have been paid to spew this propaganda for him for years.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And, you know, because it's an interim appointment, the judge, Janine, she will not have to face Senate confirmation hearing because of the interim appointment. But boy, wouldn't that be kind of fun entertainment if she were to go in front of a I mean, that would be entertaining.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Maybe what this is all about, but the sad part is, these are really important positions in our government and they're just being filled with, you know, buffoons.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Oh my God. C-SPAN would beat Netflix and viewership there. Oh my God.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
We've got to end this show on a cheers too. And I know that my cheers here is going to be somewhat controversial because I've already had a number of conversations about this just in the last 24 hours. Pete Rose said,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
former baseball player now deceased one of the best baseball players that ever lived is finally eligible for the hall of fame of course he was banned from baseball because he bet on baseball he bet on his own team uh bet on the reds to win when he was the manager uh and there should be consequences for that and he was banned for life But my feeling, this is Amy McGrath, is it's about time.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
The man was one of the best baseball players that ever lived. He should be in the Hall of Fame. He was not somebody who cheated with steroids. He had a gambling problem. He was punished pretty severely in my mind for that gambling problem. And now we're moving on. He has passed away, but I think that it's important for the sport and for the Hall of Fame.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And I'm glad as somebody who was a fan of Pete Rose, I was a fan of and still am a fan, big fan of the Cincinnati Reds, to see that he's eligible again. So I'm interested in what you think, but I would like to have a cheers to him.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And every time we do a trip, I make them do some kind of historical tour.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
I agree. It's a very sad story. I know that he's been punished for it. I feel like the punishment was really harsh. And I'm just glad that he's going to be in the Hall of Fame because he deserves it. I mean, the Hall of Fame to me is a place that looks at and judges you on your actions on the field. And there are lots of ballplayers, Denver, that were terrible, terrible people.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
I mean, Ty Cobb was a raging racist. He was. And lots of other ballplayers, you know, domestic abusers, that kind of stuff. People had a gambling problem, okay, but he was a great ballplayer. And I just think, cheers to him for finally being eligible for the Hall of Fame.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
trip i guess associated with that so guess where we took them we took them to the jack daniels distillery to do a you know historical cultural tour of that and it was in that distillery tour that we learned about jack daniels's first master distiller in the mid to late 1800s was a man by the name of uncle nearest or nearest green was his name and he was a black man
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Ja, und hier ist das andere. Mein Mann hat mir vor dem Show hier gesagt, dass jedes Team in Major League Baseball jetzt fast zu Gambling verbunden ist, weil der corporate Internet-Gambling, den wir in unserem Land jetzt haben. Ich wundere, was Janine Pyro sagen würde. We want to raise a glass in appreciation to everyone who has watched and listened to this show here at Truth and Carol.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
We're so thankful that you have taken the time to be with us and a chance to get to know us. And we hope we get better each week. And I'm just really thrilled, Denver, that you can still do this show on your travels. That's the beauty of this. We get a chance to listen to you and all your great stories as well.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
I know you're working hard and not hardly working. We know.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And what's so interesting about his story is, you know, in the South at that time, black men did not have the same rights and respect as white men. And this man was Jack Daniels' distiller. He was the guy that knew how to make the whiskey. And Jack Daniels treated him as a peer. And their relationship was a very strong one.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
This is a story that a lot of people in that area knew for many, many years, but has more recently been... told to the rest of the world. And there's a great book that I read about this story called Love and Whiskey, which sort of turned me on to this particular brand. And it is a distillery that was created in honor of of Nearest Green in Shelbyville, Tennessee, which is right near Lynchburg.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
And so we went there and it's fabulous. Everybody should try it. It's a really great story. And the master distiller for this distillery in Shelbyville is a woman by the name of Victoria Butler. And she is a fifth generation descendant
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
We got it to something historical. It's American history, Denver. It's American history. And they went, and now my nine-year-old daughter knows all about Jack Daniels. She can see the statue of him and be like, that's Jack Daniels. They were upset they couldn't do the tasting at the end, but you know.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
I don't know if we're going to do that. All right. Let's get on to the show, though. This is a really important show. There's a lot going on, as there always is. And it's particularly important because of where you're at right now, Denver, in the Middle East. I call this latest... Issue, shall we say, Trump Farce 1.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
This is Donald Trump's idea that he is going to get a free gift in the form of a massive Boeing 747-8 jet from Qatar, a gift to him personally. But it's a bigger sign, in my mind, of this pay-to-play presidency that we have going on.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Today we're taking an unfiltered flight in Donald Trump's new gold plane, welcoming refugees to America as long as they're white and learning how MAGA defines winning. Plus we'll dive into some sewage with RFK Jr. apparently and his family. We'll join Judge Jeanine at her new job. This is Truth in the Barrel, a different kind of Whiskey Rebellion.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Well, a couple of things, just to start off. So first of all, Donald Trump is celebrating this as a free gift. I should take this. It's free. They're giving it to us for free. It's not free, number one. The Attorney General, Pam Bondi, she thinks this is perfectly legal. She says, hey, it's perfectly legal because, you know, they didn't ask for anything in return. No, it's not legal at all.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
We have this thing called the Constitution, which basically says you cannot take a gift, a personal gift, greater than your own salary. And for good reason. It's right there in our Constitution. Bondi herself, by the way, Denver, was paid as a lobbyist $115,000 a month. from what country? What do you think?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Yeah, she was a paid lobbyist for this country. So she turns around and says, oh, this is totally legal. Give me a break. And then here's the other part. The cost of this. And it's not just a cost. Vielen Dank. for a long time. It's a Boeing plane, so it's made in America, but it's been sent to a foreign country and then turn around and say, oh, you can just make this Air Force One overnight.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
Doesn't happen that way. Why? Because there's potentially listening devices in it already, so it's going to take tens of millions of dollars to do a screen to make sure that those are not there. And then what a lot of people don't understand is Air Force One isn't just a normal Boeing 747. It's got communication equipment.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
It is used as the command center, the national command center in the event of a nuclear conflict. So you've got to have things on that plane to be able to communicate to our forces all around the world. You have to have systems on board that plane to be able to make it survivable. Denver, more survivable than the average 747. And I'm talking systems that are like
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
What we call in the aviation community chaff or flare. Flares would be things that come out of the aircraft in order to try to get maybe heat-seeking missiles that are being shot at it to go off to the flares and not to hit the aircraft. So these are all things, they're systems that would have to be put into a new plane. So that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, billions potentially.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
It's 100% corruption. There is no other excuse for this. Here's the other thing. The country of Qatar, we have a base there. We are partnered with them. But make no mistake, they are not a constitutional democracy. They're not a republic. This is a kingdom. They have... Lots of human rights abuses, problems with that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 05.15.25
They have a history of financing or allowing the financing of radical Islamic terrorist organizations there. So, I mean... This is not a place where we want to accept a major gift to our country from. Certainly not Air Force One.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And so that's why I'm drinking Buffalo Trace again, because they need some help right now. They do. And we love them. But Denver, tell us about these tariffs and how they affect the whiskey and bourbon industry.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Yeah, it's huge. And by the way, manufacturing construction soared to record levels under the last administration, but nobody talks about that. Let's move on to how these tariffs affect farmers. And this is really important to me, not only because it's here in Kentucky, but also I'm married into an amazing family with my husband and his family deals in the agriculture equipment industry.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
business. So I have learned so much, much more than I ever thought I would, about agriculture equipment. And these tariffs are really hurting farmers. And they also get sort of a double, triple whammy right now, because as their prices for their crops are going down and have gone down continually and will continue to go down under these tariffs, because a lot of what they do is exported,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
But also their equipment prices, their prices for seed, their prices for fertilizer have all gone up. And so they are really getting hurt right now or have the potential to get hurt tremendously from these tariffs. And during the last administration, Trump bailed them out with a $28 billion bailout. And there's talk of doing that again. I mean, at what point do we just say this is crazy?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
The only upside is... I mean, it's a joke, but here's the thing. Even if the Trump administration bails out farmers again, and I actually think... I don't know. I have mixed feelings about bailouts to begin with. But even if they do that again, farmers lose the market share when these things happen. So during the last tariff war, during the first administration, we lost a lot of the soybean share.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
A lot of the countries that bought soybeans from us went to Brazil, went to other countries. And guess what? We're not getting that market back. So we have corn, for example. A lot of our corn is shipped to Mexico. You go to Mexico, you get a lot of corn products, right? Corn tortillas, all that stuff. And what's going to happen when we slap a bunch of tariffs on there?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Mexico is going to turn to Brazil, to Argentina to get their corn. And even if this war goes away and Trump goes away in three and a half years or whatever, they won't necessarily get that market share back. That's a real problem.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And just on the ag equipment piece, here's the thing a lot of people don't know. You know, you can say, well, we should make our own agriculture equipment. Don't we have John Deere here? No. Look, folks, John Deere, like every other, like Ford, guess what? There's nothing that is made 100% here in the United States. There's parts that come from all around the world.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And a lot of people get their agriculture equipment from Europe, from Canada, and all of that stuff. We've had free trade for decades. And again, it comes back to like, Why are we even doing this? This is so dumb.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
I mean, look, farmers in rural America voted for Donald Trump by pretty large margins. I guess my question is, did they think this wasn't going to happen? Trump talked about it for a long time. We were all hoping he wouldn't do something stupid, but here we are.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Yeah, so... I'd like to just sort of take everybody back because you mentioned this is personal to you, and it is to me as well. I know Miles Taylor, and I think he is an amazing patriot, an amazing American, and I'm sure Chris Krebs is as well. But these two individuals worked in the Trump administration. They were Trump appointees.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Miles Taylor was the chief of staff to the secretary of homeland security. It's CISA. Now, that's the Cybersecurity Information Security Agency. I know it's a long acronym. But what they do is they protect our elections from foreign interference. It's a very important agency, by the way, one that Trump is gutting right now. But what happened to Chris was that after the 2020 election,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
He was in charge of that agency, and he basically came out and said, there's no evidence of any kind of fraud in this election. And of course, Trump fired him. And now he's trying to wreak retribution on him by basically opening and having the FBI open an investigation on him. And it's not only affecting Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
The president in his executive order basically said that I'm revoking the security clearances for everyone, for the entire company of Sentinel-1, which is a cybersecurity company that Chris Krebs now works for. And for everyone that works with him in that company. Like, how bad is that? That is like mob, boss, authoritarian stuff.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
You're not only going after the two individuals who you don't like because they told the truth about you, by the way. You're going after their companies that they work for and then everybody that works with them in those companies. I just think that is... Something we have never seen before in this country.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And that is why it is so important that people understand the overreach of Donald Trump right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
He's going after people who were honest, who had integrity, when so many others either were not honest or did not have the courage to come forward. These two individuals had the courage to come forward because they love their country. And Donald Trump is going after them. And he is using, it's not just him, Donald Trump going after him, folks. He is using the power of the federal government
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Think about that, the power of the federal government he is using against his enemies, his personal and political enemies and companies. That's why this is such a big deal, because he's now expanding into the companies that they work for. And that's just, it's just wrong. And we need to all be outraged.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
All right, well, I just want to take a moment here because Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, they are patriotic Americans with courage when so many Americans that were in the Trump administration the first time did not have courage. And I just want to take a drink for them and tell them we are behind you. You are amazing Americans. Thank you for what you've done.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
It's true. And, you know, I even brought Miles Taylor's book. I don't know if Chris Krebs has written it, but he wrote a book, Miles Taylor, called Blowback. It's amazing. Really gives you insight into the Trump administration, the first one, and then what he dealt with coming forward. These people are these guys have courage and we need to we need to be behind them right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
But we do have a ton to get through. And like all of our episodes, we're going to start talking about whiskey and bourbon a little bit. Why? Because it's fun and because we love it. That's why.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Yeah, it's terrible. And let's be real. The bourbon spirits industry is over 30,000 jobs in America. That's huge. it's huge and you know since when i graduated college in in 1997 the the spirits industry because of exports has exploded like 400 so they're booming and that's a that's great that's great for
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
It's great for the people overseas that are buying Kentucky bourbon, and it's great for the industry here. But these tariffs are just, the potential for them is really wreaking havoc and uncertainty. So that's where we're gonna start today, okay? Just a few days ago, Trump announced his liberation day, okay? And let's just bring it back to where we are. Trump announced his liberation day.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
It shocked the markets, created uncertainty among businesses, created a ton of uncertainty among consumers and the American public. And so almost hours after they went into effect, truly hours after they went into effect, Trump reversed course. And saying that some people got yippy, and that's why he reversed course. He announced that he was pausing these tariffs, Denver, for 90 days.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered. We have a lot to get through today. I'm Amy McGrath, and I'm here with my co-host, Denver Riggleman, a former Air Force vet, a former congressman from Virginia, and very successful AI business CEO and founder of a multimillion-dollar company. So just thought I would throw that out there. Wow. Happy to be with you today.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And although there are still 10% tariffs on everyone and 125% on China. So that's where we're at. you know what happened to the stock market. And my question to you is, how stupid is this entire thing?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And the first episode that we did, Denver, I brought out Buffalo Trace. Why? Because that distillery is right down the road from me. And normally, for our episodes, we're going to do a different whiskey or bourbon every episode. But for this one, we're going to bring in Buffalo Trace yet again. Why? because they are dealing with the double whammy right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
There's so many things here. Trump is saying all these countries are begging me to negotiate, so therefore it's a big win. The Treasury Secretary told reporters that the tariff move was a, quote, successful negotiating strategy and no one creates leverage for himself like President Trump. I mean, this is like just shit all stupid.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
It just doesn't... How are they... They're getting away with saying this is a win. It's almost like... Setting your house on fire, okay, and then bringing the hose and putting out the fire after it's burned a little bit, damaging your house, then taking a hose and spraying water all over it, okay, and then getting water damage from that and turning around and telling your neighbors, guess what?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
You played Division I. I don't know if I was amazing, but I did play.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And here's the thing. And I know we're all laughing, but I feel like... We do have to talk about the reasoning behind this because you get multiple different reasons from the Trump administration about why these tariffs were instituted. One was to bring back manufacturing jobs. Really? Why didn't he do this in his first term?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
The other thing was to punish China, which apparently now is the reason since we've instituted 125% tariffs on China. Now we're going to punish China for bad trade practices. Look, I'm all for that. China's been doing bad trade practices for decades. But here's the thing. Why didn't he do this in his first term? This is a stupid move, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
He didn't do it in his first term because he was surrounded by people who said, this is really dumb. And now he's surrounded by people who don't say that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
The Kentucky River has flooded to extreme levels in Frankfurt, right near where Buffalo Trace Distillery is. They're cresting at 48.2 feet. And what does that mean? It means that the entire distillery is basically underwater. So they're dealing with a lot of stuff right now. And they're also dealing with these tariffs that President Trump is instituting or enacting.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Yeah, and three things. One, this really hurts us long term because other countries do not trust us anymore. We used to be the leader economically that you could at least trust that we were going to be stable. And that just throws this up in the air. But two, something that everybody should watch is when Donald Trump says, hey, we had 75 countries come and want to negotiate. Guess what?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
When they were asked for a list of those 75 countries, what do you think happened, Denver? They said, oh, we're not going to provide that list of those 75. I guess that's top secret information. Here's why they won't provide the list, because they don't have 75 countries that came begging, kissing his butt. And the third thing that I think everybody needs to watch is this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
when we go forward here, because we're not out of the woods, we still have 10% tariffs on pretty much everybody, 125% on China, which is really going to hurt many, many industries. But Trump is thinking about exempting some companies from these tariffs. And that to me just reeks of corruption. It reeks of this is not something in America that we should be doing.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
Yeah, and the final thing I'll say on this before we move on is, and you hear this from a lot of people, well, at least Trump's trying. He's trying to fix the problems. Folks, No, he's not. I mean, even if you think he's trying, this approach is absolutely stupid.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered 04.10.25
And under the last administration, the Biden administration, Biden didn't fix all the problems, but we had some acts that worked, the Chips and Science Act, the Infrastructure Act. These acts were actually moving us in the right direction in a targeted, strategic way, not this like stupidity that is going on right now. I mean, would you agree with that?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Yeah, and Denver, there are 64 current House Republicans that represent districts that have a higher than average Medicaid enrollment number. So that's real. That may be why some of these guys are finally stepping up. You're scared. But here's some facts that people need to know about Medicaid. 40% of children in the United States- are covered with their health care coverage by Medicaid.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
80%, 80% of children below the poverty line are covered by Medicaid. One in four adults with disabilities, 70% of nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid. Special needs kids, kids with mental illness, And how is it funded? It's funded by the states and the federal government. The federal government funds about two-thirds of Medicaid. The states cover about one-third.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
But the states, as you know, Denver, administer it. And the states can decide who gets it and who's covered and who's not covered. And so that's why you see the different states have different variables in terms of coverage. You also see differences in the states because some states, frankly, have more people who are in need of that kind of coverage.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And that is also a function of what states expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. So not all states did that. And so when we're talking about cutting Medicaid, we're talking about cutting the very... Coverage for the most vulnerable people in our country. Children, people with mental illness, people with disabilities, seniors. That's who we're talking about.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And you just mentioned rural hospitals. We have hospitals in Kentucky. in counties where the hospital is the primary economic engine.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
So if you cut that, you're not only cutting health care to people that need it, you're cutting all of the jobs associated with providing that health care. People don't think about that enough.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Well, and here's another thing. It's not only just hospitals, but it's home health care. We've kind of made a push in this country to go away from institutions on some of this stuff to providing health care for mentally and disabled folks in the home. And this was helping that. The other thing that is interesting to me, the Republicans, we talked about this in a previous show.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Yeah, and if you want to participate in that live show, you're going to have to do it on YouTube because that's how it works, at least initially on the chat function there. So stay tuned. In June, we're coming at you live. Now, let's talk whiskey. That is very important, okay? It always is. So today, I am drinking one of my faves. This is Andean Black Corn Whiskey, Denver. It's from Lima, Peru.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
So go back and listen. is this idea of, oh, these Republicans want, Trump wants women to have more babies. Okay, so how do we incentivize women to have more babies? Let's give them a $5,000 check per baby. That's an incentive, right? Denver, 41% of births in America are paid for by Medicaid. So you're cutting Medicaid.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Do you know how much it costs for the average hospital stay for a birth of a child in this country?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
18,800. But still, that's 18,000. Can I have another guess? Let me have another guess. 18,000. My point is this. You're trying to hand women a $5,000 check to have a baby, and then you want to cut their health coverage. How much is that? That's not going to jive there. It doesn't make any sense.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Yeah. Exponential. And the other thing is most Americans do not want to cut Medicaid. Only 19% of Americans think that Medicaid should be cut. And I don't know how you feel. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, Denver. I'm somebody who actually thinks we ought to expand coverage. Because you know what Medicaid doesn't cover? It doesn't cover dentistry. It doesn't cover psychiatric care.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
No, and that's really well said. There's a lot of myths about Medicaid. There's one other that I wanted to touch on and get your thoughts on. And this is a quote from Representative Dan Crenshaw. a Republican, as you probably know from Texas, okay, on social media, quote, and he's talking about undocumented immigrants.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
It is Don Michael is the distillery. I love it. I love the taste of it. The water comes from 10,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains, and it's this purple black corn that they use to make the whiskey. And I just love it. That's why I wanted to highlight it. It's one of my favorites. Top five, I would say. Don Michael Andean Black Corn Whiskey. Cheers to that.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Medicaid is meant for American citizens who need it most, seniors, children, pregnant women, and the disabled, but liberal states are finding ways to game the system and make taxpayers cover healthcare for illegal immigrants. Okay, so I just want to break that down a little bit so that our listeners know. Under federal law,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Immigrants who lack legal status, they are not eligible for federal Medicaid benefits. In other words, no federal money can go to anyone who is an illegal immigrant, undocumented immigrant. There are 14 states that on their own, remember, states... fund Medicare, one third of Medicare. So states do have a role here.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
14 states have decided that they will expand coverage and they will pay for it to non-citizen immigrant children, okay? And seven states have said that they will expand coverage to some adults regardless of immigration status. So my point in bringing that up is The states have—y'all, everybody wants states' rights. Everybody wants the states to do their own thing.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
But then Rep Crenshaw is so upset that these states decide on their own to pay for children to get health coverage. I don't know. I think it's—they're perfectly within their purview to do that. They're paying for it, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Yeah, and we can't forget why they want to cut these things so bad. It's to pay for their tax cuts for the richest among us. You're literally taking healthcare away from children, people who are disabled, seniors, the most vulnerable in our country. The other myth that we may or may not have time to get into is this work myth.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
The people on Medicaid, they don't work, and it discourages people from working. I don't know if you have stories or background on that. It's not to say that that isn't a possibility for a very small portion of people, but the data shows that eight out of 10 Medicare recipients are in working families, eight out of 10. And the other two are mostly either students, ill, sick, or caregivers.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
So to me, that is not a good analysis of Medicaid as to why we should cut this program.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
So now it's time for quick shots. This week, air traffic controllers and the Newark region, Newark Airport, lost radio and radar contact with planes due to an equipment failure. They've had personnel shortages, so they basically shut things down. Denver, how did it get to this?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
The thing about Sean Duffy is he actually voted against more funding for the FAA in 2019. In addition, the infrastructure law that Biden and Democrats passed passed despite 200 Republicans voting against it. For years, they have voted against infrastructure and against funding the FAA, their equipment, their personnel.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
There's a Republican, in my opinion, sort of war on public servants and the federal government for many, many years. And to turn around and say, oh, this is the Democrats' fault after, and you said it, after Doge fired 400 people. workers at the FAA. These weren't just desk workers. These were the men and women who maintain the radar systems. These were the men and women who do aviation safety.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
They fired them only to have to rehire them back. Look, if you're an air traffic controller, and I'll never forget this when I was a pilot in A young flight student going and learning how to fly. They took us up to one of the ATC towers to see how it all works. It is a tough job, Denver. It is a tough, stressful job. And they're not paid enough.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
They continually get, frankly, shit on, in my opinion, by mostly Republican lawmakers who lump them into this sort of federal bureaucracy of people that somehow they disrespect. And to me, this is a system that we absolutely have to invest in. It should have been done years ago. And it was, frankly, held up by guys like Sean Duffy.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
All right. Let's get on to this week's news. And, you know, you need to stick around, everyone, to the end of the show because there's going to be more whiskey drinking, at least on my part, while we celebrate some bright spots throughout the week. And we'll do that at the end of each show. But first things first.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
We are going. Did you know we are going to bring back Alcatraz now? Donald Trump on a social media feed announced that he's directing the Bureau of Prisons together with the Department of Justice, DHS, the FBI to reopen and rebuild Alcatraz to house America's most ruthless and violent offenders. We're going to make America great again by doing this. What do you say to that, Dan? Dumb.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Well, and again, it's a solution without a problem, right? I mean, do our federal prison systems, are they in disrepair? We need a new one? I mean, it's dumb. I have been there. I just went there last summer, by the way. It's a national park. It was closed down as a prison in the early 1960s. My son loved going there. It was really cool. There's a lot of history there.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
But to refurbish that and make that a prison again is just, as you said, dumb. Okay, moving on. Trump doesn't know if he needs to uphold the Constitution, right? Even though he swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, he said in an interview this past week, he was asked if he agreed that every person in the United States is entitled to due process.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And this is what he said, quote, I don't know. I'm not a lawyer. I don't know.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Trump, of course, is Denver is constitutionally the commander in chief of our military. This is true. He's officially that. But, you know, he sees our military as as his toy. He sees our military as he's the owner of it. And I think what he's doing with the military right now shows you that. I mean, here's the first one, this military parade that he wants to have on his birthday.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Okay, India and Pakistan. This is a really dangerous situation going on right now on the other side of the world. Not the other side of the world for you, but the other side of the world for me. A few weeks ago, non-state actors that were potentially supported by the Pakistani government and had a terrorist attack on Indian civilians in the Kashmir. Killed 28 civilians. And India vowed to respond.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
They did respond. They lobbed missiles into Pakistan in areas of Pakistan that had not been previously ever attacked by India. It's a very... Scary situation right now. We don't even have ambassadors to these countries at the moment with our current administration. But these are two nuclear-armed countries going at it. What do you think, Dan?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Yeah, and you have two leaders, one of Pakistan and one of India, that are nationalistic, that do not want to back down. They do not want to back down. They do not want to be seen as weak. And that is a recipe for escalation. And we haven't really seen two nuclear powers go at it this way before. So I'm very worried.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Last thing here. The U.S. government has ordered the Swedish city of Stockholm to end its diversity, inclusivity, and equality programs within its DEI programs within 10 days. So U.S. government, U.S. embassy sent a letter to the city of Stockholm saying, end your programs. Seriously? Yes. So the city authorities there in Stockholm have said this is bizarre. They won't be complying.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
But when I looked into this, did you know this, Den, since February of this year, U.S. embassies around the world have been sending letters to foreign contractors making similar demands. So basically our government is now going around the world and saying, look, anyone that is purchasing goods from where the U.S. government is purchasing goods from you,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And even if you're a foreign country or a foreign city, you have to comply with our executive order. Like, seriously?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Okay, let me just kick it over to you to get your thoughts on this before I...
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Look, Republicans used to be this party of, like, let's not get involved in commerce. Let's not have government dictate economies. And that's, like, communist type of stuff. But now we're trying to, like, force other countries to go along with our own directives. I mean, this is just – it's crazy.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Let's move on to cheers because we want to end on a good note. And there have been some good notes this week. The first one is, and we're going to have a double shot today, double shot cheers. The first one is to Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney, right, for defending the integrity of his country and telling Donald Trump that Canada was not for sale. Cheers to him.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
All right, the second one is a cheers to North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Alison Riggs for not only finally legitimately winning re-election of her seat back in November, but also withstanding and beating back the absurd amount of baseless lawsuits from her opponent that alleged that the election was stolen. So finally, all the 2024 elections are settled.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Congratulations to that justice in North Carolina.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Awesome. Great to be with you. Thanks for being a part of this, Denver, all the way from Dubai. If you're a listener, we want to see you in the chat for all of our shows. And we can't wait to start our live show in June. Till next time. See you, Denver. See you, everyone.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Alcatraz is poised to return, and the president doesn't know if he has to follow the Constitution. This is Truth in the Barrel. I'm Amy McGrath, along with my co-host Denver Riggleman from Dubai. How's Dubai, Denver?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Well, right now it says, right now they're saying $45 million up to $117 million to roll these tanks down the streets of Washington, D.C., these 90 heavy vehicles, 6,500 troops to do this parade for Donald Trump's birthday. I don't know. You're right. It's un-American. It's not something we do. And here's the thing that other people need to know. Not only the cost of this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
People that think that you and I were in the military. When do we march in the military? When do we actually march in parades? You march when you're going through boot camp, right? Or you're at the academies, you march. Once you get into your job... We typically don't march as part of our jobs anymore.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And to have this parade with 6,000 troops, people need to know that's just an enormous amount of time. And, you know, you're taking people out of their jobs. You're having to pay for their temporary duty. It's kind of a pain in the ass, frankly, to march on one of these things.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Today, we're taking an unfiltered look at Donald Trump's plans for our military. Will having more parades and fewer generals keep us safe in the dangerous world we have? Also, can the administration truly make America healthy again by cutting $800 billion from Medicaid? Plus, there's trouble over the skies of Newark.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
It is ridiculous. Here's the good news. There's going to be a sort of counter protest during this parade. So that's that's kind of good. We just don't do this in America. That's the bottom line. Here's the other thing. Pete Hegseth, our wonderful secretary of defense, super qualified. Right. He wants now a 20 percent reduction in. in generals and admirals.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
He said, quote, we won World War II with seven four-star generals, and today we have 44 of them. So he said, let's have less generals and more GIs. I don't know. Before I get into that, what are your thoughts?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
The truth is, Denver, during World War II, we had nine five-star generals and 13 four-star generals and admirals. This doesn't make any sense. And the other thing about it is, if you want to go back to World War II, hey, you know the Air Force was a part of the Army? Are we going to go back to that? Okay. Here's the thing. A lot of people don't even care about this, but if you look at
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
What Hegseth is saying here, I don't understand the reasoning behind it. If he's thinking that it's going to save money, it's not going to save money. You're cutting, what, a dozen generals? That's like nothing in terms of money. Is it going to fix the bureaucracy of the Pentagon? You know, I worked in the Pentagon. I got to tell you, When you take generals away, the bureaucracy is still there.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
I actually think it's going to get worse. Why? Because people are used to having decisions made at a certain level. So if you take some of those generals away, now those decisions still need to be made. They just need to be made by other generals, which is going to slow things down. You're just giving more people more work to do. It doesn't make any sense.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And here's the last thing I'll say about this. The military, as you know, Denver, is an up or out system. And so you want to keep good people. How do you keep good people? You keep good people by promoting them. So to me, having 44 four stars is a good thing because you're able to keep people for 25, 30, 35, 40 years who know what they're doing. Okay? We don't want to just get rid of them.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Well, Denver, you are the international man of mystery, so you're pretty much all over the place, and it's great to do this show with you. We have an exciting announcement. We're so excited to announce our new weekly live show, which is happening starting on June 10th. It's called Cask Us Anything, and it's going to be the most distilled version of Truth in the Barrel.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
It's an up or out system that, frankly, Pete Hegsath couldn't be a part of because he couldn't get promoted.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Before we move on from this topic, though, there's something I want to touch on because I'm still hearing it a lot among conservative friends and circles that I am involved in, and I am involved in some. It's the recruitment piece. So this notion that Pete Hegsath and the Trump administration have said, look, the recruitment, the numbers are way up because of us.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
It's because of Donald Trump being strong and we're getting out all the woke stuff from the military. And that's why the recruiting is up. Here's the truth, guys. And this is what the show is all about. It's about the truth. The truth is recruiting is going up. it has been going up at the same rate for the last year. It's mostly a function of the economy. And that's the facts.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
It really doesn't have anything to do with Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth or woke or any of that stuff. All right. And the other thing that people need to know, and I think is really important is all of this stuff about recruiting could be meaningless if
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
if you look at the fact that a quarter of the United States Army's first-term enlistees right now, at least in the last two to three years, Denver, aren't making the cut, meaning they're leaving. They're not finishing their four-year enlistments. A quarter. And why is that? Well,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Maybe it's because we're lowering the standards for people going in in order to meet those recruiting numbers, to get those numbers up. We're allowing more folks with criminal records, for example, in. You know that a very small percentage of Americans even qualify or are eligible to serve because of health and weight restrictions and that sort of thing. So this is a real problem. And
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
I just, them taking credit for the higher recruiting numbers is just a bunch of bullshit.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
It's just Denver and I talking about the news of the day, answering your questions. and, of course, having a lot of fun with whiskey. So please join us on Tuesday, June 10th, from 7.30 to 8.30 Eastern Time. Can't wait.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
Well, the last thing I'll say, and I know I said that before, I just have to stand up a little bit for troops in the last 10 years who happen to be trans. Because they're getting kicked out right now. And they have been serving honorably, you know, and have been making the cut. And and so for for Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration to kick them out and and it's just to me, it's wrong.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.08.25
And it's not what our what our country should be doing. But we can move on. I agree. No, I agree. So the Republicans and Donald Trump want to slash Medicaid. $880 billion is what they want to cut from Medicaid. This is a really, really important issue that I think a lot of people are not focused on enough. But I want to turn it over to you and just say, hey, tell our listeners, what is Medicaid?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I am. We are going to make a mint julep because the Kentucky Derby is coming up soon. Before we do that, I want to remind everybody to make sure that you're following us on all of the social media platforms, right? X, Blue Sky. Is it Blue Sky? I don't even know. Ich weiß nicht, was es ist. Und Blue Sky, Instagram. Danke. YouTube, du nennst es. Folgt uns.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, we sort of knew this was coming with the executive orders. But, you know, the Republicans and Donald Trump have actually only signed five bills into law. And four of them were just funding bills. You know, you're actually funding Biden's old budget, you know, because they're stopgap funding bills. So four of them, you know, take those aside.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And they've only been one bill that they've actually signed, which is the Lake and Riley Act. We could have another segment on the Lake and Riley Act, but bottom line is it really doesn't do anything to make Americans safer at all, as we already detain and deport immigrants who commit serious crimes. So they really haven't done anything in law right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
It's all been executive order, but it's been extremely destructive, especially on the tariff front. Yeah.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, I think, you know, there's no doubt that the first 100 days of the Trump presidency with Republicans, by the way, in charge of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate has been a complete and utter disaster for the country. But something that gets asked of me a lot is. What should Democratic leaders be doing right now?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And has the Democratic Party been effective in responding to what Trump is doing? So I really want to get your take on that, because there's a lot of people out there who, you know, they're very critical of Democratic leaders, as if Democratic leaders are going to be able to stop this somehow. What are your thoughts?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Schreibt uns eine wertvolle Note oder eine Review. All that stuff matters for Truth in the Barrow. So on to our Whiskey Minute. Heute habe ich eine wirklich coole Edition von dem Woodford Reserve. Das ist der offizielle Bourbon des 151. Kentucky Derby. Es wird in Woodford County, Kentucky, Versailles, Kentucky,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, it's hard to do. I mean, the fact is that Democrats don't have power right now. So there's not a clear leader. You know, we can all peacefully protest. But this idea that Democrats are somehow going to be able to stop Donald Trump is... not true.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And it's one of the reasons, frankly, Mallory, that so many of us were out there saying, hey, you may be conservative, but Donald Trump is going to run over our Constitution if he gets back into office. He's going to surround himself with people who do not care about the Constitution. And that is exactly what is happening. And we, unfortunately, are all living through this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I think you are seeing different Democratic leaders have different tactics during this time. Governor Newsom starting his podcast and trying that way. Governor Whitmer is still sort of trying to work with Donald Trump and she needs to do that, right? Because she's the governor of Michigan. They need those jobs.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
So she's doing her job at the same time that she's having to try to resist to some degree Donald Trump. You have senators sticking up for due process. going to foreign countries to do that. I just think there's no perfect right way at the moment. And so that is frustrating for a lot of people.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Bevor nächstes Jahr. Und ich möchte uns auch nicht so sehr darauf konzentrieren, was der perfekte Botschaft ist. Ich habe immer wieder zurückgefunden, was die richtige Sache ist. Was ist die richtige Sache? Und dann wird die Botschaft folgen. Das ist die Art, wie ich es immer gefühlt habe. Aber es ist ein schwieriger Zeitpunkt. Ja.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
So, the second issue I really wanted to tackle today is a program that I was actually involved in earlier in my career in the United States Marine Corps while I was at the Pentagon over a decade ago. And it's called the Women, Peace and Security Program. And our... Super unqualified Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth bragged this past week about ending that program.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Und mit diesem Bourbon werden wir den klassischen Kentucky Derby-Trink nennen, den Mint-Julep. Und ein lustiger Faktum über den Mint-Julep, es war ein Trink, der originalerweise in den 1700er-Jahren gemacht wurde. Es wurde der offizielle Trink des Kentucky Derby in den 1930er-Jahren. Und es war originalerweise ein Trink, das am Morgen konsumiert werden musste.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Now, he incorrectly stated that the program was a product of the quote woke Biden administration. The program in its more recent form, Mallory, was actually signed into law by President Trump. In 2017. And then Pete Hegseth amended his words and said, well, the program was good at first, but then the Biden administration ruined it.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I mean, with no specifics as to the Biden administration doing anything different than the Trump administration. And people need to know that the Trump campaign actually touted the Women, Peace and Security Program as one of its proudest accomplishments of its first term. It was championed by Christine Noem, Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I mean, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Marco Rubio just a few weeks ago talked about how great the program is, and now Pete Hegsath is shit-canning it. So, I just... It's just unbelievable. Also because that program itself, it was low cost and did a lot of good things.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, so Mallory, if you were given a data point, that showed you that you could have longer lasting peace, longer lasting peace treaties, negotiations that would end in conflicts or conflicts would end in a more just way. And that data point was given to you and it was something that happens 30 percent of the time. If you do this one thing, you get more lasting peace. You would do it, right?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I mean, if it was pretty easy to do. You know what that one thing is? It's very simple. It's have more women. at the negotiating table and involved in the negotiations for these peace treaties and things that happen to end conflicts around the world. And so women, peace and security really has nothing to do with women in the military, by the way.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Pete Hegseth hat es, weil er Frauen im Militär hasst. Aber es hat nichts mit dem zu tun. Es hat mit der unterliegenden menschlichen Dimension von Kriegen und Sicherheit zu tun. Und ich mache das nicht nur so, dass
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Wir haben jetzt Daten, die wir in den letzten 15, 20 Jahren gehabt haben, die zeigen, dass, wenn man mehr Frauen an der Negotiationsstelle hat, man 30 bis 40 Prozent effektiver wird, wenn man eine langfristigere Reihe bekommt. Also wurde dieses Programm geplant, um das zu helfen. So what does it do? It helps with greater participation of women in negotiations and in their societies going forward.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
So when you empower women in a conflict zone or in a nation that is struggling, those women tend to get that education and that power. They're more invested in their society. And guess what they do? They stay there. Und sie helfen, diese Gesellschaft zu bauen. Und es hilft, nicht eine verbrannte Nation zu werden, die wir dann in unsere Truppen senden müssen.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Normalerweise, wenn man Männer berührt, werden diese Männer oft diese Bildung nehmen und sie gehen andersherum. Wobei wir wissen, dass Frauen in ihren Ländern bleiben. Und deshalb ist es wertvoll, Frauen zu ermöglichen, um sie zu beruhigen. Es ist wertvoll, sie an die Negotiationsstelle zu bringen. Und auch, wenn Frauen im Konflikt selbst involviert sind. Wir sprechen hier über gewinnende Kriege.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Mhm. Okay? Darüber kümmert sich Pete Hegseth sehr. Gewinnende Kriege. If you bring in all of that country's persons, people, into your side, not just 50%, not just 49%, but you bring in 100% of the people and society of that country, then you are more likely to succeed. And so think about Ukraine. We have over 60,000 women fighting in Ukraine. Imagine if those women weren't fighting.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
So, for all your morning bourbon needs, think of a mint julep. But basically, it's very easy to make. You take 10 to 12 mint leaves. You put about a quarter ounce of simple syrup in with... In a tall glass, right? With the mint leaves at the bottom, simple syrup. And then you fill it with ice. And from there, you press that together. It's crust ice, by the way.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
If you just said, well, we're not going to invest in those women. They have to. And that's going to make them more effective. So that's another piece of this.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Is it, you know... Well, when he says the troops hate it, it's total bullshit, number one. The troops don't really even know about the program. It's a very, very small program. And what does the program do? It does engagement activities. It does trainings, partnerships, workshops in other countries, information injects to try to get talk to the women in some of these other countries. Why?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
They're 50 percent of the population, Mallory. Why would you not want to engage them? Well, they don't want to engage us here, so... Right. We know that engaging them and empowering them creates lasting peace and makes conflicts go away. I mean, more quickly. And so Pete Hegseth is just dumb. He has a very immature understanding of real human security.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And so when you don't engage women, you're basically... You're allowing our adversaries to go into that space.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, Mallory, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
My belief is that Marco Rubio could care less. I mean, he is a guy who has, you know, he was a supporter of Ukraine until he became Secretary of State. But I mean, this business of also Pete Hegseth saying, well, the troops hate this. First of all, it's not true. The troops don't know anything about it. But second of all...
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Why on earth are you enacting policies based on what the troops like or dislike? You know, troops don't like 0530 runs either in the morning. We still do them, right? I mean, it's just, this is stupid. This is a program, by the way, that costs about 1 14th of the cost of that F-18 that just... We just sort of dumped into the Red Sea this past week.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
So, I mean, it's a very low cost program and it's just dumb to get rid of it. But when people said to me, putting Pete Hex at the Secretary of Defense, how is that going to hurt our national security? You know, people would ask me that. This is a perfect example. This is a low-cost program that gives us a lot of bang for our buck.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
We're able to engage 50% of the population in conflict areas in order to win wars and then create lasting peace. And he's just throwing it away because he doesn't like the word women. in the title.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And then you take your two and a half ounces of bourbon, your Woodford Reserve or whatever bourbon of choice that you have. You pour that in there, like so. And you stir it up. And then you garnish it with some mint on the top. Okay. And you must, absolutely must, drink it, Mallory, with a straw.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Ja, für mich ist es ein Programm, das über Sicherheit geht. Es geht um Daten. Und viele der Dinge, die wir in den letzten 20 Jahren des Krieges in Afghanistan und Irak gelernt haben, und sie in die Zukunft einbringen. Und es ist niedrigkostig und wir werden von Idioten geführt.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, I mean, it's being unqualified and being arrogant. I feel like you can muddle through that job being unqualified if you're humble, if you listen to people around, if you don't fire the four-star generals and admirals. Yeah. that have been in that position. But he's the opposite of that. He comes in, he thinks he knows everything.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Now he's trying to restructure the United States Army, which may need restructuring, frankly. But is he the guy to do it? Does anybody think that he's actually done any research into this and knows how to do it without taking a wrecking ball? That's the concern I have. Well, especially since before this job he had managed, what, 50 people?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah. Well, so I want to move into our quick shots, because we have a lot of them. There's a lot going on. We don't have time to do a segment on all these, but we should be just talking about them, because they happened in this past week. Some of them are kind of funny, but some of them are also... Not so funny. And people need to know about them. So, here we go.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
According to Trump, celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day is actually an attempt to smear Italians. He accused Democrats of denigrating the Explorers' legacy. So, your thoughts on that, Mallory?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, I mean, Joe Biden was the first president to acknowledge or have this Indigenous Peoples' Day to mark it. And frankly, we should have had an Indigenous Peoples' Day decades ago. Now, the fact that Joe Biden decided to make this day on the same day as Columbus Day, you know, that's a... Das ist ein ziemlich hartes Statement. Das ist eine Wahl.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Okay, also ich denke, wenn du dich über Christopher Columbus' Legitimität beschäftigst, aber wir müssen auch erinnern, dass seine Erfindung der neuen Welt zu dem Zeitpunkt auch viele Jahrhunderte und Jahrhunderte von Oppression gebracht hat. of forced assimilation, enslavement of the indigenous people who were here. And I think that's an important thing. And it's not, you know, you call me woke.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I don't care what you call me, but we should be acknowledging that. Woke just means aware.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I've always felt like, why can't we have two different days? If you really love Christopher Columbus, you can have Columbus Day. We can also have an Indigenous Peoples Day. We need to. Our country needs to. I mean, I've always felt like we should make Election Day and Veterans Day the same day. We could consolidate those two and then have another day for Indigenous Peoples. That's just my belief.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
You don't drink it with like a regular drink. Okay. That's very important. And if you, you know, if I know that the current administration hates the paper straws, frankly, it doesn't matter what straw you drink it in. It's really good. It's called a Mint Jule. Do you know why you have to drink it with a straw? It's just tradition, but it's also because a lot of the good stuff goes to the bottom.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Ja, das stimmt. Okay. Während einer Interview mit ABC News, hat Präsident Trump wieder einmal geäußert, dass der falsch verheiratete Kilmer Abrego Garcia ein Gang-Tattoo auf seiner Hand hatte und versucht hat, eine Photoshop-Bilderung als Beweis davon zu sein. Also, ich denke, mein Ansatz auf das ist, naja, keine Verständnis, weil Präsident Trump super alt ist und
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Und ich glaube nicht, dass er es vollständig versteht oder interessiert, dass man so einfach alles auf jeden kann.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And the bottom line with this, this whole issue, because I see it from the right wing all the time, is, you know, you guys, Democrats, are supporting... Illegal Criminals. Hey, here's the deal. I don't know if this guy is a criminal. I don't know. He needs, like every other person in the United States, the opportunity to have this thing called due process.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And that's why you don't know if he's a criminal. That's right. So it does not matter to me. What matters is the due process. And if he goes through that and it's determined that he is a criminal, then we go from there. That's just my belief. That's the American way.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Absolutely. And it's read the Constitution. I mean, that's where it is.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
All right. This is kind of a funny one, but it's also a little dark. Trump asked was asked by a reporter at the White House this week who he would like to succeed Pope Francis. And Trump said, quote, I'd like to be the pope. That would be my number one choice.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And then after that, Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, tweets out this, and I quote, »I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate. But I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility!« What?
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
It's not shaken, right? Yeah, it's stirred. And I like my mint julep, I will admit. I like it minty and I like it sweet. Okay, now I love the bourbon, but if you're going to drink it in the morning, you're going to drink it in the daytime. I just prefer it that way. But there's your mint julep.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
from the bible much less yeah i think it was corinthians i think mallory this shows us two things one how much kissassery that these republican senators senators senators have to do Do they have to? I don't know. Or feel like they have to do. Or maybe want to do. I don't understand how you can sleep at night being that much of a kiss-ass to somebody.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And number two, and this is the darker piece of this, I think, it's how little that these guys think of the Catholic Church. And how little they think of the Catholic faith to suggest that a man who holds the Bible upside down, who's clearly never read it, who has three wives that he's cheated on, every single one of them, could possibly be the Pope.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I just think it's just a slap in the face to anyone who is Catholic. It's really offensive. I think
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Ja, na gut, hier ist unser letzter kurzer Blick, aber das ist auch etwas, was ich glaube, für mich wichtig ist und nicht viel Presse coverage bekommen kann, aber ich denke, es sollte. Erinnerst du dich, als Donald Trump sagte, niemand hat mehr für die Militär als ich gemacht? Okay.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Well, just this week, Trump's VA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, has abruptly ended the mortgage rescue program that was helping 20,000 veterans avoid foreclosure to keep their homes. This is happening right now. And everybody should know that... Under the Biden administration, President Biden's VA started a program called the VA Servicing Purchase Program.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And what that did was for VA-backed home loans, if you were a veteran who was falling behind, perhaps you had to quit your job to get treatment for PTSD or traumatic brain injury or something like that, and you were falling behind financially, you could get some help. Okay.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Und es ist wirklich auch wichtig zu bemerken, dass diese Woche nicht nur der Kentucky Derby ist, sondern der Tag vor dem Derby, Mallory, ist der Kentucky Oaks. Und das ist, wenn alle Phyllis, die männlichen Pferde, ihre Rennstrecke machen. Und jeder, der das betreibt, trägt rot. Und deshalb trage ich heute rot in Ehren des Kentucky Oaks.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And with today's mortgage rates around 7%, ending that program basically ends the only affordable option for a lot of these veterans. And many of them, thousands of them are at risk now to lose their homes. And so I feel like this is a big deal. You know, we don't, in my mind, we don't give a ton away. to veterans in this country.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I know there are some people that think otherwise, but you sign the dotted line to Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam gets to send you anywhere and you might put your butt on the line in combat and in return there are some promises. And those promises really, there are three big ones. One is healthcare for the rest of your life. Okay. The other is the GI Bill.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
If you want to go and you want to go to college, Uncle Sam's going to pay for it. For the most part. At a state school. And number three, the VA Home Loan. The VA home loan is it doesn't it's not free, but it gives you a little bit better rate than the everyday person. And so these veterans had the VA home loan. And here here we are. I just feel like this is really important.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Republicans are saying these are, you know, bums who can't. Yeah, I think, uh,
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Well, and it happens all the time with these Republicans. I mean, here's the deal. Biden extended the lifeline to these veterans that were in need. Joe Biden, Democrats did that. Now Republicans are pulling the rope. And all these veterans are potentially going to lose their homes right now. And they're doing it because they want to cut spending.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
They're literally cutting spending on the backs of veterans. And those of us that watch this space, it's not surprising to us, but it's happening and people need to know about it.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Well, I don't want to end on a bad note. We've had a great episode and we always end with a cheers. Somebody or something that we really are excited about and want to drink to. So this week, I think we should have cheers, Mallory, to Mark Carney and to Canada.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
for electing a prime minister from the center left, the Liberal Party of Canada, and in the process sending a big fat message to Donald Trump, who was clearly for the other candidate, that at least Canadians are not going to be bullied by this bully.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
All right. Thank you for listening, everyone. Next week we will have another edition of Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered. We'll have another edition of Truth in the Barrel Devil's Cut. And we're so excited to continue this conversation every week where we distill down the issues of the week, the issues of the day. And if you have a topic that Thanks for having me.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
The pageantry, you know, the bourbon helps with that, Mallory.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Hi everyone, welcome to Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered. I'm Amy McGrath. Denver is out this week for this episode, but we have a special co-host guest, former Miss America, who also ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and the State House in Alabama. Und der Host eines anderen tollen Podcasts namens Pretty Furious, mein Freund Mallory Hagen, ist Co-Hostin.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Well, we'll be cheers. We'll be doing that all throughout this episode here. Very good. All right.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
You were like, and you poured this? I never thought I would be doing that. But honestly, during the campaign, I did one of these Instagram Lives with a chef. Actually, I did two. I did one in Versailles, in Woodford County, actually. And I did another one down in Paducah with a chef. And it was amazing. It got a ton of hits. And I learned how to bake.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
I think it was biscuits or something like that. It was really fun. Anyway, run for office and you can do fun things like that. Random things, but fun. Yes, very random. Alright, so here we are. 100 days of Trump 2.0. So, before we talk about the utter shitshow of the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second term, I wanted to just briefly tell our listeners why we even care about the 100-day mark.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
It really started under FDR. Als Franklin Roosevelt Präsident wurde, waren wir in den Schmerzen der Großen Depression. Und wir kamen aus der Präsidentschaft von Herbert Hoover, deren Polizisten waren komplette und unerhörliche Verletzungen für unser Land. And there was this sort of desire to quickly turn things around.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And so FDR instituted or ushered through 15 different pieces of legislation in the first 100 days. A lot of the New Deal was done in that first 100 days. And, you know, there were some tangible effects of these new pieces of legislation, but for the most part it was kind of a... psychological win for the country.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And so from that point on, we've always looked at the first 100 days as kind of a metric for what's going on. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that these first 100 days meet the mark, if you compare it to FTR. Donald Trump is claiming that the presidency, his past first 100 days have been the most successful of any presidency. What's your take on that? Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
This is why Donald Trump's approval rating is the lowest approval rating of any president in the first 100 days in 80 years. Only second to himself. That's right. Shockingly. You know, he has signed 142 executive orders. So he's done a lot of signing. That's the most ever, by the way, executive orders. But people need to know that executive orders are not laws. They're just executive orders.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
They pertain to the federal government. When Donald Trump is not in office, all those executive orders go away. You know, he rescinded a bunch of Biden's executive orders, but he hasn't really done that much except for tanking our economy, right? Yeah.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Danke, dass du heute mit uns bist, Mallory. Danke, dass du mich hast, Amy.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
The tariffs are a disaster. I'm just going to say it outright. And it's purely of his own making. But I'm not going to let Republicans off the hook because they have cheered him along. They have not. They've had opportunities to stop him and they haven't done it.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Goldman Sachs is now projecting that the United States will have the lowest economic growth and highest inflation rate of any developed economy in 2025, steering the economy to a recession. The stock market's first three months under Trump Republicans was the worst of any president since the Great Depression.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
And he's managed to piss off all of our allies and partners in the process, which does long-term damage.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Yeah, and that's such a great point, that leading with insecurity, because it's not just on the global stage where other countries have no idea what we're doing. We've gone from actively supporting Ukraine, a country that is fighting for its existence, a democracy against a brutal authoritarian regime that invaded it. We've gone from supporting them to like, Ja, genau.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Well, and listeners need to know that Mallory is a bit of a politico too. So she knows the ins and outs of politics. She's run for office herself. She keeps up to date with things that are going on. So I'm just super excited. And to have another woman be a co-host, it's going to be a fun show.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Business owners don't know what to expect. We have the lowest consumer price. Consumer confidence is the lowest, I think, in many, many years. All of that stuff adds up. And the other thing that has happened that we've talked a little bit about in the first 100 days, but I think
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
is important to bring back up, is this Department of Government Efficiency, the chaos, the firings, firing veterans, firing our workers that work on our nuclear weapons that fight diseases overseas like Ebola and all of that stuff. It's just complete chaos right now.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Ja, auf der nationalen Sicherheitsfront, es war eine komplette Unkompetenz in meiner Meinung. Donald Trump hat gesagt, dass er die Kriege am Tag 1 in Gaza und in der Ukraine beenden wird. Und das ist eine Lüge. Natürlich ist das nicht passiert. Hier sind wir am Tag 100 und es hat wirklich keinen bedeutenden Erfolg in either one of those areas.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Er hat einen Sekretär der Defense ausgewählt, der komplett unkompetent ist, der hat, weißt du, classified information over a text chain. There's been no repercussions for that. And they seem to be proud of these first 100 days. You know, they're going out and tweeting their achievements. And I want to read a couple of their achievements that they're like super proud of, Mallory. Please do.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
Declassifying the JFK files. Okay, super proud of that. All right. Their war on paper straws. That was super important to the American public right there. You know what? Those turtles be damned. I mean, they're proud of this. Ending production of the penny. Okay. Sure. Didn't know that was important. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. All right.
Truth in the Barrel
This Week Unfiltered | 05.01.25
But what they're most proud of is those tariffs, you know, that that are destroying our economy. We can't forget that they have kept America safe from the Web pages that mentioned Jackie Robinson and any women in the military. That's you know, we've got to keep America safe from that.