RFK, Jr. declares CDC "troubled" as top staffers resign en masse

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Save up to 50% site-wide plus a free measure. Rules and restrictions may apply. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown, Manhattan. It's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead.

And welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. I am Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmead on this gorgeous day. We have such a packed show today, it's crazy. Are you ready for this? Coming up in half an hour, it's Michael Watley.

He is running for the North in North Carolina for as a Senate candidate there, former chair of the RNC. Then in an hour, we have Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan joining us, and on and on and on.

So let's concentrate on this hour. Joining us right now, Cheryl Chumley. She is with the Washington Times. She is an opinion editor for them. And you can also find her bold and blunt podcast as well everywhere.

Cheryl, welcome to the Brian Kill Meet Show. Thank you for joining me. Hi, Mary. Happy Friday. Nice to chat with you.

Of course. Always great to speak with you.

Now, Cheryl and I were blessed with the opportunity to be part of a diplomatic mission of journalists to Israel. And I've only been back for a week, and I know Cheryl has been back for two weeks. My husband came over and joined me, and we stayed for an extra week. And we spent most of our time in Jerusalem. But we did go to the Gaza Strip, and Cheryl went up to the Syrian border.

I chose not to go because the heat index was like 112. And the. Helicopters were not air-conditioned. Anyway, but I did get to the West Bank when my husband and I were touring.

So we were all over the country. And Cheryl, just tell everybody a little bit about what we did. Yeah, it it was uh a flurry of activity, right? It was good. Really it it was.

You know, just the the couple of things that struck me w was when we had the um meeting. With the family members in the Drews community in Golan Heights, in one of the communities of Golan Heights, who were the children who were killed in that July 2024. uh missile strike on the soccer field. And hearing firsthand the stories, especially those two girls, you remember the two girls sitting there in that room with him. Oh, I'm sorry.

So there were two girls sitting there in the row, and they were recounting how they lost a family member. I think it was a sister. And very sad, here we are a year later. And You know, the emotion in the room, it was just, it was overwhelming, and it was a very powerful testimony, not just to the sadness that. the Jewish people face on a day-to-day pai basis from these you know, just missile strikes that come at them daily.

But also the that that word that gets thrown around so frequently when you when you talk about the Jewish people, their resilience, right? People die, they pick up and they go back to work the next day. That's just part of their life. And Looking from an outsider's point of view, it's just amazing, but You know, this is what they deal with. For decades and decades and decades, this is how the Jewish people have lived.

You know, and you said it's part of their lives. This is how they operate. I'm so glad you said that because it really is. If you look for it, and we were exposed to a lot of what's happening on October 7th and how that was really there 9-11. And we got to hear a woman who was at the Nova Music Festival.

We were at the site, and it's, you know, just all of these pictures of all of the people who were killed and trees being planted for those, for the hostages. And we were about a half mile from the Gaza border, and Israel had started bombing Gaza the day before. And when you're a half mile from a bomb being dropped, it's really loud. And so that was so jarring, but you hear, boom, and we're like, oh, you know, people in this country don't understand that it was there 9-11. And they have, as you said, they pick up and move on because the bombings, if you live near a border, you hear that.

And they just, they just don't really jar them. You know, it's just life for them. And it's kind of sad that it's just life for them, where we, because we heard, you know, you heard from the people. people up in Syria for with the Druze, which got no play in American um Media, pretty much. That was pretty much not even a story.

The Nova Music Festival obviously was a big story, but this woman's telling us how she had a play dead. They tried to kill her, they hit her in the back of the head, and they thought they smashed her head in and thought they killed her. And they picked her up to see if she was they could feel her breathing and she held her breath and put it she put her back down and and she's telling the story while bombs are going off in the background and I did uh I just don't think Americans truly understand, as you said, what their life is like from day to day. And I said this in just one thing, and I'll let you go because you're the guest. But I was on the trip with you, so I feel a need to jump in.

I apologize. You know, if we had a cartel come across the Mexican border and we had thousands of cartel members come across the Mexican border and just slaughter a whole bunch of people in Mexico, excuse me, in Texas and New Mexico and Arizona, and they take them hostages, and it's an attack on our country. Do Americans think that we wouldn't respond? That's what bothers me. Go ahead.

Yeah, the the whole politicization of the victim status of Israel is ridiculous, right? There is no two-state solution with a group of people, for instance, Hamas. That their ultimate end game is to eradicate you, right? You can't have a peaceful discussion with people who just want you to die. And let's talk about that woman a little bit more because you and I were both there in attendance listening to this woman.

She was a 35-year-old woman, mother. I forget how many kids she said she had, but she was a mother as well. And we were sitting there at the picnic tables of the the Nova Festival Music Field, the second time I had visited that. I had been there about a year before when they first erected it, and it's expanded a little bit, but it still has the atmosphere of a September 11th type. Visitation we do here in America.

And so she's sitting there at the foot of the picnic table telling us about. Pointing over there on a tree, a woman, a girl tied up naked, left there by Hamas Stuggs. Hamas just running amok across this whole field, gunning people down. And you mentioned that she hid under a dead body. And her friends, her friends, she talked about her friends dead next to her, and she was waiting.

for someone to come save her. And as she's telling this, we hear, we hear the rockets in the background, boom, right? And so she stops talking because she's got the PTSD thing going. And then she continues and then boom, she stops talking again. Very, very frightening for her, very brave of her, and very emotional and impactful for us.

Absolutely. It was, and she had tears. She was crying. She just kept wiping away tears because this, to your point, the PTSD, it was so fresh for her. And it was.

It was almost hard for me. I almost wanted to say to her, It's okay. We get your story. You don't have to continue anymore. But she wanted to tell it and she took time out of her day to come meet with us at that site, which was so brave of her.

I can't imagine what it took for her to do that. And then this is what Americans don't see because Hamas, with the help of Al Jazeera and a lot of our mainstream media, the usual suspects, are. Or our are be giving a megaphone to the to the Propaganda coming out about Hamas and oh, the children and this and that. And then they have to walk it back because it is propaganda. I want to talk to you also about one of the kibbutzes.

We went to the kibbutz right on the border. I mean, that's where we have pictures of us at, it's just a fence, by the way, with Gaza. And there's Gaza City in the background, and it's just a fence. And you can see the fields that these kibbutzim that they farm. And they make their money and they sell it and all this other stuff.

And we were there, and there were a couple of takeaways that I got after speaking with these people. They welcomed us in, and they were just. Totally overrun by Hamas, and they had pe members taken hostage and killed and everything. What were your takeaways from that meeting that we had at that kibbutz?

Well in In all the kibbutzes, actually, Cheryl, you know what? Hang on. I've got to take a quick break, and then I'll come back to you, and we'll continue with what your takeaway was from that kibbutz because there's so much to get to here. My guest is Cheryl Chumley. She's with the Washington Times.

You can follow her on X at CK Chumley. More coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. Coming to you on a need-to-know basis because, man, do you need to know? He's crying, kill me. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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My guest right now is Cheryl Chumley. She's an opinion editor for The Washington Times, and we were both on a diplomatic mission of journalists to Israel just a couple of weeks ago. And one of the places we stopped was a kibbutz kibbutz, Nahaz, and it is right on the border with Gaza in southern Israel. And they had a lot of Gazans who they invited onto their kibbutz to work because they can make more money there. And we got to hear their stories because they were overrun.

They literally I don't understand. There's just a fence between Gaza and Israel, which is and they just cut the fence. Super easy to do. And we heard their stories, and they were just absolutely overrun and just devastated. It was just absolute terror for all of these people.

They lost so many members, both kidnapped and killed. Cheryl, when we were there at this kibbutz, what were some of your big takeaways, especially after speaking to the people there?

So it's still largely deserted, right? And not just that kibbutz, but other kibbutzes that we visited and those that we didn't. Still largely deserted because many of the Israel Jewish people are afraid to go back. each of those areas because They're so close to the borders. And so, you know, the significance, though, is: think of it, your community has.

Fled. They've gone inland, right?

So now they're put up in hotels and family members' homes. Closer to Jerusalem.

So those areas are overpopulated and everybody's living, you know, six people to a two bedroom, right? But meanwhile, the agriculture that usually goes forth in those kibbutzes to provide for all of Israel, something like 80% of produce comes from these areas. there's no one working the field. And meanwhile, your children, your children's their schools, every their playgrounds, their friends, all abandoned.

So how are they getting an education?

So the impacts from october seventh twenty twenty three linger, right? This is something that they have to deal with every day. And the Jewish people, they rely on technology as a big sector to give them revenues. But as far as the agriculture and the school system, and just getting that sense of community back before. October 7th days.

that's still something that has to happen. Yeah, and what I didn't realize is a lot of people are born into these kibbutzes. This is their life, and they all know each other, and it's like a big family. That's exactly what it is. What struck me is when we were having the conversation with them exactly about what happened, the gentleman who was running the agriculture sector said, Well, you know, we welcome the Gazans on our neighbors onto our kibbutz to work here, to work the fields, because they can make three times the amount of money that they would make in Gaza.

And this is to me, I was like, What? You're living right next door to these people who want to kill you, and you invite them onto your kibbutz. And to me, that was just so telling about how almost normal this is a part of their life, like this constant state of war that maybe you let your guard down a little bit, but they're trying to be compassionate to their neighbors because they can make more money at the kibbutz and they can, you know, they'll have more food, etc. They'll have a better life. And they were trying to be compassionate.

And I give them so much credit for that compassion, but at the same time, you know, they, the, Somehow, the Hamas leaders knew where the head of security for that Kibbutz lip. They have a little security squad that would, you know, they're the ones that would raise the alarm. They have these men and women who are part of the security. And so when it happened at 6:29 in the morning, When the alarm was raised, a lot of these houses had already been infiltrated because they just came right across the border. And there just seemed to be, I think, because of the fact that they're so used to always being at war, that some of their guard was down.

And the fact that they don't have like the households, they're not armed in these households. You know, so I think there was almost your first point being that this is their life all the time. It struck me that, hmm, I wonder if because it's their life all the time, that maybe they let their guard down and unfortunately, you know, they were taken by surprise because they've gotten so used to this, the sounds of the bombing and there just being a wire fence between them and Gaza. And I wonder if those are things that have to change.

So To me, it's really a failure that we can learn in America from, right? It's the failure to recognize evil. It's the failure to acknowledge that evil sometimes exists just for evil's sake, right?

So what happened is a lot of these kibbutzes, a lot of these people on the border, they welcome in those from Gaza to work, to, you know, to do work in their communities, and they become friends with them, or they think they become friends with them. But those Palestinian people go back home to Gaza and they report back to Hamas. They report back where the security guy lives. They report back how many guns are in that community. And so when October 7th happened, it was well thought out and the strategy was in place because Those that the Israel people thought were their friends we're actually going behind their back and betraying them.

And look, that's sort of what we have going on in America when we have Democrats in charge, right? They think, oh, well, let's just talk to Hamas, let's bring him to the table and have a peace deal, or let's just deal with these leftist forces. Or these evil forces. And if we give them economic opportunity, they will be our friends. That's something that not only should the Jewish people never again forget, But it's also a lesson for all of us in America who think that you can ever strike a deal with evil.

Absolutely, I have like a minute here. But Hamas officials said they accepted a ceasefire proposal that includes a pause in military operations for 60 days. And the release of twenty-eight Israeli hostages, eighteen of whom are believed to be dead.

So eighteen of the twenty-eight are believed to be dead. Egypt and Qatar presented this proposal to Hamas leaders early in the week. Israel has not officially accepted the proposal, and I haven't heard anything. Based on what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told us when we saw him: Do you think that they're going to accept this deal, the Israelis? No, and they shouldn't, because how many times has Hamas agreed to a deal in the last year and a half now, right?

But it starts with Israel stopping Israel coming to the table and stopping any type of strikes in Gaza. This this is what Hamas does. They they put out that they want a peace deal. They get the international community uh pretending as if Hamas wants a peace deal. And then Hamas it never ever agrees To any concessions for the Jewish people.

You have to remember, Hamas's end game is to destroy Israel and destroy the Israeli people. That's it, that's what they want. Yeah, from the river to the sea. And when we went to this museum about they're opening a museum about October uh about that day in October, October 7th, they're opening a whole digital museum. And we got to see some of the notes that were found in the pockets of these terrorists and and pictures that are on walls in classrooms in Hamas that show no Israel.

Right, that are in Gaza. They show no Israel at all on the map, it doesn't exist, and so they are indoctrinating their kids to hate and want to destroy Israel. And I don't know how that's going to be a huge problem to overcome because you have an entire generation, you have to somehow get it out of the kids to not hate. And that was really what we learned: is that you know, how do you how do you combat hate like that? I don't know if you can.

Cheryl Chumley, thank you for joining me. She's with the Washington Times. Go check her out, and also CK Chumley, C-H-U-M-L-E-Y on X. Thank you so much for joining me. Great to be with you, Mary.

Thank you. Thank you. Coming up. All right, Michael Watley. He is the former chair of the RNC.

He is now the Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina. He'll be facing former Governor Roy Cooper. In the November 2026 midterms, we'll be talking to him next on the Brian Kill Me Show. This is Jason Chaffetz from the Jason in the House podcast. Join me every Monday to dive deeper into the latest political headlines and chat with remarkable guests.

Listen and follow now at FoxnewsPodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. And I'm Mary Walters sitting in for Brian Killmead on this beautiful day. Hope everyone's having a great day.

You can follow me on X at MaryWalter Radio. There's no S in that. And you're always welcome to join me at 866-40-87669. But first, let's get to our guest, Michael Watley. You know the name.

He's the former chair of the RNC, and he is also the GOP candidate for the North Carolina Senate seat. Michael Watley, welcome to the Brian Kilmey Show. Thanks for joining me. It's great to be on with you, Mary.

Now, I have a lot of questions for you because the North Carolina race is going to be the first one in a Trump midterm. And we know that it's always the opposite of the party. It's usually Congress switches, and if it's the president's Republican, you're going to get more Democrat candidates who are going to be coming in.

Now, you're going to be facing off against Governor. former Governor Roy Cooper. Does the name recognition hurt you?

Well, I don't think it's going to hurt me because we're going to go out and talk to every single community and every single family across this great state. and be able to go out and tell them that this race is going to be a contrast between Harvard professor Roy Cooper and his values, which match up identically with all of the Democratic leaders that we hear so much about. you know, from Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Bernie Sanders and Chuck Sanders to where I'm going to go out and talk about North Carolina values. We're going to talk about things that really matter to the voters of North Carolina.

So we have plenty of time in this race to be able to go out there and talk about the issues. But this race fundamentally is going to be all about contrast. Because I am going to fight for North Carolina values, and Roy Cooper is going to fight for New York and Chicago and San Francisco values.

Now, he does have the name recognition. And I think, you know, we all know that you can't really discard that. And you're going to have to work super hard, as you said, in order to really get your name out there. You're going to have to do twice as much. And I think you know that, obviously.

But. Cooper. has won statewide elections, six of them. But he's never run in a federal race before. Being that you are the former chair of the RNC, does that give you the edge, and in what way?

Come on, thank you. And I think the fact is that at the end of the day, this is about a vote in the Senate. This is about a vote for President Trump's agenda as we're going forward, or whether you want a rubber stamp protest vote. That's going to follow Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders on every single vote. We need to get this agenda done for the American people.

We need a strong economy. We need strong borders. We need America to be respected around the world again. That is what this election is going to come down to. North Carolina voted for President Trump three straight times.

In 2016, 2020, and 2024. And I ran the state for him in all three of those races. We know how to win in North Carolina, and we know that the people of this state are. going to fundamentally care about their communities, they're going to care about their kids. They're going to care about the economy and America's standing in the world, and we have a fundamentally different view on all of those issues than Harvard professor Roy Cooper.

Yeah, now In in federal races, people are less likely to split a ticket. They're much more likely to go with the party that's in office. And to your point, President Trump won, right? President so so he and by a lot. I mean, this is a great election for Republicans, a great presidential election.

And so do you see that vote working in your favor because you have the R after your name?

Well, I do. You know, and at the end of the day, in North Carolina, when Republicans cross every T and dot every I, we tend to get to 50%. We have not lost the Senate seat in this You know, state since 2008. We won the last four presidential election cycles. In this state, and there is very, very strong support for President Trump and his agenda.

People want a strong economy, they want us to have security. They want us to have a strong standing in the world. That's what I represent. And that when we get that message out to every voter in every community, I fully expect structurally we're going to be in a great place to win this race and also on the values. You know, when you think about Roy Cooper, this is a conversation we're going to have about his vetoes.

We're going to have a conversation about his votes. as a state legislator. By the fact that he said he would have voted against the one big beautiful bill. You know what? Let's have a conversation.

Why would you oppose tax cuts for the middle class? Why would you oppose no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security? Why would you oppose structural? Strengthening our military and our border security. If he's going to go brag about those types of positions, we'll let him.

You know, there's also a competency issue. You know, this is a guy who led the most cash. Catastrophic response to a major storm ever. Following Hurricane Helene, he and Joe Biden's FEMA. completely failed the people of North Carolina.

And President Trump has tapped me to be on the FEMA Review Council and to help make sure that we're getting relief into this state, which we're doing every single day right now. Yeah, and I do believe, and I was going to ask you, you know, what do you think will come up in the debates as topics, but you pretty much just laid them out as to what you would like to see in the debates, because these are all winning points for you and for the Republicans in general. I do think that North Carolina is kind of a purple state. You've got New Yorkers and New Jerseyans and some Pennsylvanians coming down and fleeing the states that they've just turned into just liberal hellholes. And they're going south because they don't want to go as far as Florida, because if they go to North Carolina, even South Carolina, they can still get back north to see the grandkids in a day trip.

You know what I mean? Like they drive four hours, five hours, and they're back home. How do you fight that when you're being infiltrated by Democrat voters who don't understand that their vote affects the outcome of how they live? How do you fight them? Yeah, when I became the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, Republicans had a 450,000 vote deficit.

in terms of voter registration. Today it's about 15,000.

So we have seen very significant gains Over the last five, six years in terms of Republican registration in North Carolina. It's because the people here want this country to go in a better direction. They want it to go in a rightward direction. They have seen that the Democrats are continuing to move further and further and further to the left. In North Carolina, Roy Cooper is the one who led that march.

He's a guy who marched with Antifa back in twenty twenty. He's a guy who vetoed legislation to keep men out of girls' sports and locker rooms. He's a guy who has vetoed tax cuts and balanced budgets and teacher pay raises. You know, so so there is in North Carolina a very strong push Away from the Democratic Party that Roy Cooper represents. And how much.

How much of an impact do you think the flooding that happened with that were just totally unchecked? There was no help. It had to be done locally. You had other people coming in, and this was a big criticism of the Biden administration and Democrats in general, that they just totally ignored this. How many Republicans do you think are new Republicans because of that?

How many people switched over? Do you think that had a big impact? That has an absolutely huge. huge issue in Western North Carolina. There's no question about it.

You know, I brought President Trump to North Carolina in October, right in the aftermath of the storm. And he vowed that when I am president, we will not forget North Carolina. The first trip that he took as the President following his inauguration in January, we brought him right back. Western North Carolina. I just want to know.

And he asked me at that point in time to help with the hurricane relief and make sure that the relief was getting into North Carolina.

Now, I was just yesterday at a FEMA Review Council meeting where we announced That the Department of Homeland Security has released an additional $150 million plus into North Carolina just in the last week. on top of six hundred fifty million dollars that they have already put into this state. President Trump. You know, became president. But I can tell you this: FEMA is still a four-letter word up there because of what happened under Joe Biden and the fact that Governor Cooper was absolutely AWOL.

Uh he was not there. To help people across the state.

So I fully expect. that we're going to have a massive Turnout and a massive repudiation of Roy Cooper in this election. If you can hang on with me, I just had a couple of questions about the state of the Democrats and how it could affect the midterm elections and some of maybe some bellwethers of some early warning signs for the GOP. Do you have time to stay? Absolutely.

Great, fantastic. We'll have more coming up with Michael Watley on the Brian Kilmeat Show. It's Brian Killmead. I'm Janistine. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world.

Listen and follow now at Foxnewspodcast.com. Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. Mary Walter sitting in the seat for Brian Kilmead with you today. Joining us right now is Michael Watley.

He is the Republicans candidate for Senate in North Carolina, also the former chair of the RNC. You can follow him on X at Chairman Watley. Thank you so much for joining me. We're talking about your run and what you're up against in North Carolina because you will be running against former Governor Roy Cooper, so he's a well-known name there. One of the things that I think plays into all of this to a certain degree is the current state of the Democrats.

They are in disarray, but I do think that they are going to come out of it. They really don't have Nancy Pelosi leading them right now, so I think it's going to be a little bit harder for them because she really knew how to. I don't like her politics, but I give her a lot of credit because she was a great politician.

Well, she still is. I guess she hasn't left yet. But I. Do you see the Democrats coming out of this? And in which direction do they go?

Does the super far left wing of their party win? Or are they going to write the ship and become more moderate? But they're going to continue to go left. I mean, what we've seen with Roy Cooper, who basically introduced Kamala Harris at their convention. And the rest of the team from Jasmine Crockett, AOC, Zorn Mondani.

The whole rest of that team, basically, they are marching further and further to the left every single day. They are getting further away from mainstream. They have learned absolutely nothing. from their losses in twenty twenty four. They have doubled down on stupid.

They really truly on every single issue that President Trump campaigned on, they are doubling down on it. And those are going to be the issue sets that we're going to be dealing with here in 2026. just like we did in twenty twenty four.

Now, in Iowa, there's been three seats that have gone to Democrats. And is this kind of and this is Iowa, you know, Cornfields, Chuck Gresley, Iowa. Is that a bellwether? Why is that happening? Let me ask you, what is your take on why that is happening in Iowa?

It's a true red state.

Well, look, I think Iowa has always been historically purple, and I think that it has definitely tilted to the right because the Democratic Party has walked away from it. And you're going to have individuals, whether they're running for state legislator or whatever other positions, That they're for that are going to get it. But when we look at the Democratic Party as a whole, Right now, they are continuing to slip further and further to the left, and that is going to not really take hold. And I think what we're seeing here in North Carolina Is that under Roy Cooper and the Democrats? The fact is voter registration in North Carolina is absolutely.

Total. Right? It is 30% Republican. 30% Democrat and 38.6% unaffiliated, right? And the rest are other.

So it is an absolutely true purple state. in terms of voter registration. Republicans win. Because we listen to the voters. We put issues on the table for the issues that they care about, and we really truly represent the interest of every community and family, right?

Why the Democrats keep losing in this state? We've got 10 out of 10. 14 seats are Republican. Both senators are Republican. Donald Trump carried the state three times in a row, partially because I was running the state for him, but mostly.

Because We represent the values of the voters. And Roy Cooper and the Democrats are an open border inflationary spending weak America party. That is not what North Carolina wants to see.

So, wow, there's so many questions I want to ask you. We don't have a lot of time. But based on what you just said about the, it's a very, very purple state. Pretty much Democrat and Republican registration is even. The greater number are independents.

You see that growing. I think more and more people are saying, you know, I'm not joining a party. I'm going to be an independent. Given President Trump's softening numbers among independents, softening in the polls, among independents, especially, do you feel that you're going to have to run a little bit more like Cooper does? Because he appeals to a lot of people.

Like he tries to run more moderately. Are you going to have to maybe soften your allegiance to Trump a little bit, run a little bit more moderately in order to bring those independents on board? Look, my allegiance is The people of North Carolina. And I'm going to fight every single day. To make sure that we have economic policies that are going to create jobs and raise wages.

I'm going to fight for trade policies that are going to help our manufacturers and our farmers. I'm going to fight every day to make sure that our men and women of uniform, and North Carolina is the leader. when it comes to men and women in uniform and and being the tip of the spear, Nationally, but we got to make sure that they have everything that they need to protect our interests and our allies around the world. That's President Trump's agenda, and I am a proud proponent. of that agenda.

We're going to fight for America first. I'm going to fight for North Carolina first. every single day. What what Roy Cooper is going to do is is Take his training as a Harvard professor. He's going to take his training as a far less left radical woke.

you know, governor here in North Carolina. And he is going to continue to talk about those values from San Francisco, New York and Chicago. Yeah, this is a guy who vetoed bills. to keep boys and men out of girl sports. Vetoed bills to tell sheriffs that they have to honor ICE detainers and get violent.

criminal illegal aliens. out of the state. Any vetoed bills that would have given us tax Cause across this state. you know, you have a candidate who's going to fight harder for tax increases. Men and women's sports, woke ideology.

And You know, illegal aliens than he does the people of North Carolina. The wrong side of the 80-20 issues. Last question in the remaining time we have: you have some pretty strong national candidates on a local level in Winsom Sears and Jack Chitterelli, as far as governor, not just yourself.

So, there's three really strong candidates here that we're talking about. Last time around, being a prisoner in the People's Socialist Republic of New Jersey, I can tell you that, because I had some dealings with the Chitterelli campaign and worked with them a little bit, not a lot of support from the national GOP. How do we get the National to play the way the Democrats do and recognize that winning on a local level is a huge deal and give more support to some of these people who are running for governor?

Well, before I stepped down as the RNC chair, I actually had done a couple of different events with Jack up in New Jersey, and the RNC is definitely going to be very supportive. We are up there right now with our election integrity programs that are already on the ground. We've had a number of different events up there, including a couple of them that I led personally. We also are going to be making sure that we get out the vote.

So you will see the RNC with a national presence up there. Jack Chinterelli is a great candidate. New Jersey, just like North Carolina, does not want to march further and further to the left. New Jersey is very ready for a change. And Jack is a change agent.

He's a fantastic candidate. I think he's in a very good position to be able to win that race up there.

Well, I'll tell you: if we do not see the national up here, I'm calling you. I'm going to give you a call and say, hey, what's going on? But, you know, you're right. I think, I honestly believe that Jack Chittarelli could have won last time around, and it's a darn shame that he did not win. And it was a very, very close race.

But unfortunately, the Democrats are super strong. They know how to funnel the money. And that's a game that I think Republicans have to catch up with. And hopefully, Winsome Sears will do very well in Virginia. I have high hopes for her.

She is an incredible woman, but she's everything that the Democrats hate. She's a woman, she's black, and she's an immigrant, so they can't stand that. We got to run Michael Watley. Best of luck in your race. We'll be watching that.

And thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate it. Great. Thanks, Mary. Have a great weekend.

Thank you, you two. I'm Mary Walter and you're listening to The Brian Kilmead Show. From High Atom, Fox News Headquarters. in New York York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division.

It's Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the Brian Kill Meat Show. I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian. Welcome to the show. You can find me on X at Mary Walter Radio, and don't forget you can find my podcast live on Tuesday, 7:15 p.m.

Eastern Time. It's a live cast. You can join in, make comments, ask questions. It is live on Rumble, YouTube, and Getter. And then you can get the audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Spreaker.

Just look for Mary Walter Radio with no S. Coming up in half an hour, Chris Sununo will be joining us. You know that name. He's the governor of New Hampshire. He has a new job that he will be coming up in about two weeks for him.

We'll find out all about that. Joining us now is Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan. She's a consultant neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist. She's the author of The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels is Making Us Sicker.

Super interesting topic, Doctor. Thank you for joining me here. Thanks so much for having me. This to me is so interesting. My husband is a physician, and you know, they always say, like, you know, what is it, the cobbler's children have no shoes.

So, whenever I'm sick, I'm always like, Oh, I think I got this, I think I got that. He's like, Yeah, you're fine, take some Tylenol.

So, Do we need to go back a little bit to that? That's my first question. Do we need to go back a little bit to the, yeah, you're fine type thing as opposed to everybody has an illness that they wear on their sleeve? It's got to be chronic. And we live in a society where they have to wear it and they have to tell you all about it and make a video about, well, I'm neurodivergent and I'm depressed and I have anxiety and ADHD and all of these things.

Have we gone too far? Um I possibly wouldn't put it quite as strongly as you just have, but I certainly think we could perhaps go back a little bit, not back to how things were in the past. I think we've come from a period of neglect.

So, you know, I qualified as a doctor in 1991.

So let's say around that time or before that time. You know, we we neglected people who had special learning needs or even you know physical diseases like diabetes, you know, people went to the doctor too late.

So we kind of had a period of underdiagnosis. And we needed to correct that. and we've worked very hard to correct that. But I think it would be reasonable to say that for some disorders now we may have gone too far. we're picking up in order to kind of correct our past mistakes.

We have started to detect disorders in milder and milder and milder forms. But unfortunately, when you detect things in very, very mild forms, you can actually harm people by medicalizing them. potentially turning someone who is essentially healthy into a patient if their symptoms are quite minimal.

So I do agree that we've gone a little too far. And I certainly agree that there is a kind of modern tendency sometimes to take illness as identity And I think when an illness is identity, that you know that's really a problem. Because if your illness is identity, that will reinforce your symptoms and how do you get better if if if your identity is so integrally linked to the illness that you have. Exactly. And that's what I see, especially in younger people.

My husband will tell you that he doesn't believe. It's very rare when he has a patient who's under the age of about 40, who doesn't come in with a list of allergies and also diagnoses, you know, anxiety, depression, all of the, you know, fatigue, chronic fatigue, these things that are very, very hard to get an official diagnosis for. And he'll ask them, well, you know, have you been diagnosed? They're like, oh, oh, no, but I know I have them. They all have to have them.

That's certainly and I share that concern. I've been a doctor for thirty five years, and I think doctors of my vintage are really seeing a change in how things are, and that's What's peaking a lot of doctors' concerns is, you know, now I care for a lot of people in their twenties or thirties as a neurologist. I see people who, you know, in their thirties have ten different diagnoses and are in ten different medications. I don't object to it. medications and labels and diagnoses if they're making people better.

But unfortunately these labels very often seem to be describing a difficulty a person has, but not actually making their life better. And I think that's when medicalizing problems is harmful. If it's not making you better, then what is the purpose of it? Right. You know, you suggest that sometimes we overdiagnose.

We go too far to try to diagnose, and it's very costly, which is part of why some of our medical care is very, very costly. And you say that sometimes it's actually counterproductive. And you mentioned breast cancer treatments. About a third of them are unnecessary. Certain prostate cancer screening programs have saved relatively few lives.

Pre-diabetes can sometimes resolve itself without any intervention.

So let's talk about that. Why is there so much testing? Yeah.

So around the 1970s we began doing things like screening for illnesses, so screening for cancers.

Now you've got to remember immediately that The kind of tests we have now, they weren't even available in the 1970s.

So we've got all these kind of Really high-tech tests that can detect. diseases at earlier and earlier stages. And we've we've also got steaming programs that are really active about Proactively trying to find people with abnormal cancer cells at the earliest stage possible. But what we didn't really realize when we started those programs of looking for Cancer at a pre-symptomatic stage. I should make the clear distinction between.

A symptomatic cancer is one where you feel a lump or you have a symptom that has to be treated urgently. A screen cancer is one where you're perfectly well and somebody finds an abnormality on a scan.

Now, what we didn't realize until we started really actively screening for cancers. is that a huge number of people have abnormal cells in their body that look cancerous but never ever grow to threaten life or cause any serious problems. we are as different on the inside as we are on the outside. And because we didn't have the capability, the technical capability to find these cells before, we didn't know they existed.

Now we can find them and we don't always know what to do about them.

So what happens with screening programs is they're too good in a sense. You know, they find things We feel compelled to treat them, and a large number of the people who we treat with these super, super early cancer cells. would never have needed to be treated if we hadn't found those cells. And that's sort of an integral part of all screening programmes. You have to treat a certain number of people.

to say one person. And the number of people you have to treat can be very large. For example, in prostate screening and with with prostate specific antigen, which is a blood test. you potentially have to screen one thousand men to save one life. But in that thousand men, you'll probably get two hundred, three hundred other men who have elevated.

abnormal blood test and they're going to need lots of tests.

So you have to do loads and loads of tests on loads and loads of people to benefit one person. And I think these sort of way of practicing medicine survives because we're very focused on the person Yeah. What I'd like to do is have a conversation about all those other people. who now are going down the road of lots of tests or scans or serial blood tests and perhaps.

Some of them will will be treated for cancer and some of them will have very unpleasant Investigations and perhaps they didn't all need that. It's not something we think about enough, I don't think.

So let me ask you a question.

So in this country, though, I think that the legal profession plays a huge role in this over-testing because of the unfettered lawsuits. Every doctor gets sued at some point in time and several times during his or her career. And because the threshold is so low for suing. And if you sue someone and they wind up getting dropped from the case because you really didn't have a lawsuit, because they'll sue even the file clerk, people don't understand. Like even the file clerk gets sued.

Any single person who touched the file gets sued that doctors cover their butts. And so they just order a test. You have an abnormal cell, we're getting a test, and we're going to test and test and test because the last thing they need is in front of a jury, a lawyer getting up and going, this person had abnormal cells at the first test and scan or whatever, and you didn't do your due diligence in further testing them.

So the default then is to just test everyone for everything. What do you think? I mean Well, I think it's more of a collusion between doctors and patients, if I'm being honest. I mean, I agree with what you're saying. Doctors can.

Practice defensively, you know, we are worried about being sued, but you know what? We're more worried about being wrong, and we're more worried about harming somebody's health. When we could have done something to help them.

So I think we will err on the side of doing tests if. um if we are worried about sort of missing things.

However, I don't think It is just a sort of that doctors are kind of doing this to patients. We all think Live in a world where, and I speak as a patient and as a doctor, you know, where we're desperate for answers. You know, we people want to. people are frightened and they are desperate for answers and they're trying to stay healthy as long as possible. And they are aware that all of this new technology is available.

So we are also very often as doctors under pressure from patients who ask us for tests and we don't necessarily want to do those tests. It can be a really difficult consultation for a doctor. You know, I'm a neurologist and headache is the bread and butter of a neurologist. And who doesn't have a headache at some point in their lives? It's so common.

A lot of people worry about having a brain tumor. It's it's very ill advised to have an unnecessary MRI brain scan because the scanners are so good now that they can pick up all these little is incidental abnormalities that don't mean anything, but to be really worrying once you know they're there. But the consultation with a person with headache who's worried they have a brain tumor But in which I'm saying you don't need a scan. That is a really long and difficult consultation and then I'm taking a lot of responsibility if I turn out to be wrong in the long run. That's yeah.

It's so much easier to do the scan.

So you know this, when you're under pressure from patients to do tests, you do tests that you don't necessarily feel that you would want to. There was an interesting study in Canada. where seventy three percent of doctors said they did unnecessary tests, But they That they didn't want to do. Yeah.

We've got more coming up with you because I want to talk to you about autism. It's in the news with RFK, and he's going to be making an announcement next month about that.

So we'll talk about that coming up and the rise in diagnosis of ADD and ADHD and autism.

So that's coming up. Our guest is Dr. Suzanne O'Sullivan. She's a neurologist and clinical neurophysiologist, and we're talking about her book, The Age of Diagnosis. More coming up on the Brian Kilmeat Show.

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The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. I'm Mary Walters sitting in for Brian Killmead today. and coming up in less than half an hour. Up.

15 minutes. Chris Sununu will be joining us. He has a new job that he's going to be starting. We'll find out what he's going to be doing. But right now, we're speaking with Dr.

Suzanne O'Sullivan. She's a consultant neurologist and also clinical neurophysiologist and the author of a new book, The Age of Diagnosis. And we're talking about diagnostic inflation, diagnostic creep, whatever you want to call it. But we have the ability to test more and more and more at earlier and earlier stages. And there comes a point where maybe it's diminishing returns, you know, and maybe, you know, why.

If you have some cells or some things that are a little abnormal, that's kind of normal in us as humans. We do have some stuff that's abnormal. But, Doctor, I want to talk about autism. The growth of autism since the 1990s has been crazy, 60-fold since the 1990s. To what do we account?

attribute this. Is this just the the ability to diagnose it better? I think that it it's too I mean, the first thing to be clear is that there's not an increase in the number of people who have autism per se.

So it's not that there suddenly are a great deal more people who have autism than there were fifty or sixty years ago. What has changed is twofold. One is there has been a gradual change in the diagnostic criteria that allow us to diagnose autism.

So they have been relaxed and relaxed and relaxed. in order to allow the diagnosis in milder and milder and milder forms.

So if we say fifty years ago to have autism, you had to have a very severe level of disability. And it had to be evident in infancy. But they gradually adjust the age upwards so the diagnosis can be made in older and older people with milder symptoms.

So that's it's not that there are actually more people with autism, it's that what autism is has changed completely from what it was fifty years ago. combine that with all of the kind of autism awareness that's happening now.

So we have a combination of much more relaxed diagnostic criteria with a lot of people being aware of this diagnosis as a potential explanation for the difficulties and therefore presenting for diagnosis.

So it's not that people have changed. It's that we have made a societal decision to diagnose more of this condition in milder forms in more people. Why would we want to do that?

So again, it's really very similar to the what we were previously talking about with cancer screening.

So if I think about I went to school in the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties, No children in my class of 120 were recognized as having any special learning needs. In a class that size, there must have been some.

So we kind of realized that we were probably missing children at school level who, if They had just been recognized as having some extra needs and had got a bit of support, that their lives would have been much easier.

So it's a really well-intentioned change. We assume that if we find milder forms of any disease or behavioral or learning problem and we give people help. that we will improve their lives.

So it's It's just an assumption really that the the help that you give to someone with a severe disorder will be equally helpful to somebody with a mild disorder. But unfortunately, it doesn't take into account something really important. which is when you give somebody a medical label who's difficulties are in the really borderline zone.

So they don't have a really obvious medical problem and you're diagnosing them on quite mild symptoms, you can disable them through the labeling effect, through the kind of nocebo effect. Meaning, the opposite of the placebo effect. If you believe you're sick, then you behave like you're sick. you believe you're not able to do something and you and that belief is given strength through a medical diagnosis. then you might stop trying to do that thing.

So at this mild end of the spectrum, a medical diagnosis can be quite harmful. Right. No, that's very true.

So in the time we have left, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said earlier in the week that he is on track to identify, quote, interventions that are certainly causing autism and possible ways of addressing them. And he's going to make that That no one is going to give that speech. He's going to come back to us in September, sometime.

He's going to make this announcement. And what? What do you think about it? I just want your take on that, what's causing autism and possible ways to address them. Do we know what causes autism?

We don't know what causes autism. I would basically wouldn't hold my breath that any announcement that's about to be made will be helpful at all to the Autchester community. First of all, we don't know what causes autism, and I'd like to make it clear that there's zero evidence that autism is a increasing in actual numbers. It's just increasing in milder cases for reasons explained. And B, it's absolutely definitely not due to vaccinations.

We don't know what's causing autism, but we do have a scientific Problem on our hands now as the diagnostic criteria are relaxed more and more and more.

So that people are kind of So heterogeneous or so different, and people with autism are so different now than they used to be. It's going to get harder and harder to provide that answer and it certainly won't come about in September. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. I found this so interesting because just I have so many friends who have kids who have this and that and they wear it as a badge of parenting on their sleeve. And so I think we have to, as you said, strike that balance and kind of find a middle ground here with all of this.

We can't go back to the way it was of just take Tylenol, you'll be fine. Or back then it was take an aspirin.

So we have to strike that balance. Dr. Susanna O'Sullivan, thank you so much for joining me here on the Brian Kilmead Show. Coming up, Chris Sununu, that's next. The talk show that's getting you talking.

You're with Brian Kilmead. Well, welcome to the Brian Killmead Show. I am Mary Walter in for Brian Killmead. You can find me on X at Mary Walter Radio.

Next guest here, you know this guy. You know this name, Chris Sununu. He was the 82nd governor of New Hampshire. And he has a new job coming up. You can follow him on exit at govChris Sununu.

Welcome to the show, Chris Sununu. How are you? Hey, Mary, how are you? Do I have to change the at gov Chris Sununu? Do I have to get rid of the gov now?

I don't know.

Well, I would assume well, I don't think so. I think I get to keep that one. Do you get to be called governor for life? Like, will you always be addressed as governor? I think so.

My dad is, if that means anything. And I call former governors governor out of respect and all that.

So I guess I'm still kind of crisp. But yeah, so I guess I can keep. What you're saying is I can keep the at gov account on X. I have to say that it's kind of a personal decision, and you're not going to get, and you have thousands and thousands and thousands of followers. You'll lose them if you change it, right?

Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose so. But yeah, I have a new gig, which is kind of exciting, running Airlines for America, representing the airline industry, which is pretty terrific. And we'll see what happens. Is it terrific?

Have you seen the Americans Air American Airlines lately? Is it terrific? It is terrific. The airlines of America are absolutely phenomenal. You know, the hardest part about airlines, I wasn't sure if we were going to talk about this, but the hardest part about airlines is all you ever see are, you know, the negatives.

There's a skirmish or a fight or something on Spirit Airlines or whatever it is, or the tragedy that has occurred. Unfortunately, a couple of those a couple of years ago. And now my big mission is, and I think the industry's mission is rebuilding air traffic control. That's the big one. And everyone's like, all right, let's get this done.

Can the federal government actually have a mission and fulfill on it without the bureaucracy and all the things that typically slow down? I think this administration is up for it. I think Secretary Duffy is absolutely in. I think the new head of the FAA wants nothing more than to get the bureaucracy out of the way and turn this thing around.

So it's pretty exciting. And I'm very happy for you. I just flew internationally, and I don't know anyone who loves flying. It's a soul-sucking experience because you have to deal with other humans, and Americans have become very rude. And lazy and slottenly.

Well, to your point, we all have a responsibility when we travel en masse, right? Whether it's on an airline or on a bus or whatever it is. But I love traveling by air. I love it. I love it.

I think there's been some huge airport upgrades made across the country. I think this whole pre-check thing and clear, I mean, getting through the TSA lines now is nothing like it used to be. It's terrific. I mean, you can fly through a security line in five or ten minutes. Never easy with kids, by the way, right?

I'm a dad, and I used to have to travel with young kids. That's never going to be easy, unfortunately. But again, I think the challenge is really making sure that this stuff is affordable. You can get from point A to point B without seven different stops. And most importantly, the air traffic control systems are actually working.

The technology is there, and we're not relying on cobalt and floppy disks like the system. I mean, it's really scary. I mean, literally, they got floppy disks and this ancient coding language as opposed to using new technologies that can streamline and integrate all this stuff.

So it's an exciting time. And so that's, I never thought I was going back to DC, but to go back on more of the private sector side with an industry I love is pretty exciting.

Well, God bless you for that one.

Well, listen, maybe you could have a new, you know, like a new motto for Airlines for America, which is whom you'll be the CEO and president of. Don't be a jackass. How about that? Let's keep it simple. It's easy.

Words don't, four words, don't be a jackass. Because that's what I find. Like, if you're flying with people who are, you know, surrounding you who aren't punching each other and throwing drinks and all that other kind of stuff, it can actually be a nice experience.

So, okay, so let's talk about that.

So, I just saw a report, I think it was on Fox, that was talking about 13,000 unruly passenger reports in the past four or five years, right? There are over, there are almost 50,000 flights a day in this country. 50,000 flights.

So I'm not minimizing those 13,000 unruly reports, but understand, that's like one in four, one in 5,000 flights. There's someone that's quote unquote unruly.

So it's not nothing, but let's understand. We see one or two of those that hit Instagram, and there's this fascination with it. But by and large, 99.99% of the time that you're traveling, you don't have incidences like that. The worst thing you have, you have maybe a delayed flight here or a canceled flight, and most of the time that's because of air traffic control. That's why this thing is so big in terms of turning that around.

You don't see that. You want to blame your airline or whatever it is. But when you don't have, they stopped recruiting folks into these jobs for years. These are high-paying, these aren't jobs. These are careers, high-paying technical jobs that so many people can do with lots of opportunities.

So we're just trying to raise the profile of the industry because it's an awesome industry and remind folks that, yes, you do see a few things on Instagram here and there, but 99.99% of the time it works. works really, really well.

Well, I expect big things from you, and I expect it to stop being a soul-sucking experience. It will not be. Where are you going, by the way? I don't think you're flying. What airlines are you flying?

I was in the Middle East. I've had a flying story. I flew over on an American-based airline direct from Newark. That's just part of the problem. Newark, you got me at Newark.

Yeah, well I will say the new terminal, terminal A is beautiful. Oh, the terminals are beautiful. It's just the systems. The thing, there's a new thing. It's a brand new technology.

It's called a computer, a hard drive that we're trying to make sure the air traffic control system is actually. I mean, it's such a patchwork of ancient technologies. It's really crazy. And that's it. I mean, to your point, Newark can be a great airport.

The airlines know what they're doing. They're there. It's just having that infrastructure kind of behind the scenes to make sure you're getting point A to point B when it says you're going to get there. I expect good big things from you. And if I'm stuck in an airport again, I'm calling you.

The cell number's online. I'm sure someone has posted the governor's cell number online somewhere. Speaking of travel, the Trump administration is taking over Union Station in Washington, D.C. And there was a local reporter who actually said local in D.C., which is totally, totally Democrat and liberal, said, This is the nicest I've seen it in recent memory. That it's actually nice now.

And you see locals who are posting videos saying, I'm not afraid to walk around Union Station. There's no homeless inside anymore. Does this is Donald Trump's vision actually going to succeed in Washington, D.C.? In the short term, what he's doing is making sense. People are supporting.

There's no doubt. I was in D.C. yesterday. I saw the National Guard pushing mulch. I got to be honest, I think that's temporary.

I don't think the National Guard is really designed to spread mulch and beautify. But it's all part of the plan. And again, it's short term, right? I mean, we're not going to have National Guard controlling the safety of our cities in the long term. What he's doing is saying, let's take some pride in our communities.

Let's not accept the status quo. He's showing that when you put effort behind it and you prioritize law enforcement and safety and security, that you can get great results. And that these Democrat-driven cities and mayors for too long have just gotten away with, well, that's just the way it is. Or, you know, Pritzker and others standing up and saying, no, no, it's fine. We don't need any help.

As a former governor, I can tell you, if you're in a leadership position and someone offers to help with something like violence. in crime, you don't say no. Like, that's crazy. That's not leadership. Why would you say, I don't need any help, the same week that six people were murdered in Chicago?

It's just crazy to me.

So it's just an aspect of leadership.

Now, are we going to have National Guard in all of our cities for the long term? No, it's probably a short-term piece. But what he's showing is, I think he's saying, take pride in your communities. Don't accept the status quo. Things can be better, and go make that change.

And what I was telling, I was on CNN earlier, and I was saying, look, guys, we're only a few years away from, you know, This defund the police nonsense, this anti law enforcement movement of the Democrat Party and all of this, that isn't like history. That is like right in our rearview mirror.

So let's not forget that those types of policies have led us to where we are. And so he's going to implement this stuff. I think it's for the short term, but it's going to actually, I think, really change that paradigm of discussion of the expectations that all these folks living in these cities now have. And that's a really positive thing. Yeah, absolutely.

So uh coming up I want to ask you about Gavin Newsome. Speaking of the money. Nobody Gavin. I figured we could have some fun with him.

So that's coming up more with Chris Senunu here on the oh, excuse me, governor, Chris Senunu here on the Mona Governor Gilman Shaw. Illuminating, intriguing, inculcating. I know some of these words. It's Brian Kilmead. It's Will Kane Country.

Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday at FoxNews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Kilmead.

A Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. We are speaking with Governor Chris Nunu. He was the 82nd governor of New Hampshire, and he has a new job coming up in Washington, D.C., working for Airlines for America.

So, governor to governor, Governor Gavin Newsome, you know, loves to troll Donald Trump and he thinks he's being super, super slick about it. And he really went after Trump when Trump put the National Guard in Washington, D.C., is we to clean it up, like we were just talking about. But Gavin Newsom announced yesterday now that he's sending new teams of state police into Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, some other areas to clean up things like carjackings and other crime in those cities. He said, well, it's different that he's doing it because it's not the National Guard. Does he really think everyone's this dumb?

Yeah.

Look, I think he realizes there's a couple things happening here. I think he's watching J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker's standing in Chicago saying, all is well. All is well.

It's clearly not well. And I think Gavin's like, I don't want to be, you know, and J.B.'s in a really tough position now, and he's put himself in there because, you know, he's saying, I'm a leader, and I don't want help with crime and murder and car theft and assault. And that sounds ridiculous.

So Gavin realizes that's not a place to be. He doesn't want to be in the same position.

So he's like, okay, I better do something.

So, you know, the National Guard doesn't have a reason to come in here.

So I'll use the state police.

So, look, you know what? He's doing something. From a leadership perspective, I just think the fact that somebody is doing something for the state of California, finally, I mean, every time you hear Gavin Newsom's name out there, it's about him running for president or trying to get involved in a national story. At least he's actually doing something for his own state as a governor. I mean, I'm going to give him some credit and say, well, good, he's finally looking at California and realizing that they have a problem.

Whether it was the president that had to shine a light on it or not, I'm sure the people of California are thrilled that somebody is finally taking notice of their cities and saying we're going to do something about it.

Now, what's the result? How long does it last? How do they pay for it, by the way? Because that state is incredibly broke. That's a whole different story.

But look, I will do my best to be bipartisan and say let's focus on results and not on politics. And let's thank the president for inspiring even the leftist of left Democrats for doing the right thing for their own cities. Do you think that was Donald Trump's plan all along? Just keep threatening to come to Chicago or to this city or to that city, and then it would spur them to do the right thing on their own? Yes, I do.

Look, I think, because as we said before, I think what, and maybe I'd say it a different way, I think he's just trying to show. That when you take action, you can get results and stop accepting the status quo. And he's showing the independents or the liberals, and he's saying, look, this isn't political, right? Protecting people and the safety of our communities, that's actually the foremost responsibility of government. I'm a big anti-government person, right?

I like thinner government and less government. But the one thing that they are charged to do with is keeping communities safe and to not accept the status quo. And if you can show that in the short term and say, hey, you know, no more excuses, guys. We've shown that it can be done.

Now you got to go do it.

So whether you want to call it inspiring them, leading by example, shaming them into it, for me, I don't care as long as something starts changing. Look, I think California is this beautiful, amazing state. That's just had really terrible leadership. I used to live in San Francisco for a few years, a great city that has just been forgotten for the last 20, 25 years and ignored, and their problems have just gotten exacerbated.

So I think it's great that however the motive, whatever motives are there, whatever has spurred the action, I'm a huge believer. Government has to be results driven.

So let's get better results in those cities.

So that's all. I mean, I'm obviously a strong Republican, but at the end of the day, it's just about getting results. And if Trump can shame them or guilt them into it, God bless it. At least something's getting done. No, he's always playing 3D chess.

He's always several steps ahead. And I saw this, and I'm like. This is exactly what Trump wanted.

Now he doesn't have to send the National Guard in. He got Gavin Newsom to do it on his own. One last thing I want to talk to you about: Wired is reporting, and we had heard this during the last campaign: that Democrats are reportedly paying influencers, Democrat left-leaning influencers on X and on Instagram, etc. They're paying them $8,000 a month. To push the liberal, push the Democratic agenda, Democrat influencers.

In June, Influencers with a combined following of at least 13 million were contacted about this chorus creator incubator program that was found out about. It's funded by the 1630 Fund, which is a Democrat-aligned dark money group. I have to tell you, I actually think this is a really, really, really good idea. And I don't know why Republicans don't follow suit because they do get their message out there. And you're paying, it's almost $100,000 a year for each influencer.

Sign me up. Tell me to do it. I'll do it. Why don't Republicans do the same thing? No, they have to.

And maybe, I don't know if they're not doing it, but clearly they're not doing it enough. Look, social media in all of its different forms and all the pros and cons is the new information age. And that's what this is. It's about promoting a message, investing in a message, getting people to not just, you're not paying people to just pawn something that they don't ultimately believe in. You use influencers that have.

Understand what you're about and have sway into other coalitions. And that's the game. That's the absolute process of whether you want to sell a bar of soap or sell a political idea or campaign. That's all what it is.

So, of course, I think the Democrats are doing it. I obviously think Republicans should do it. I think you're going to see a lot more of it, frankly. You know, I got to take, I'd be remiss if I didn't take the moment and say, look, I hate all the money in politics. I really do.

I think McCain feingold is a disaster. I think there's way too much national dark money packs that make campaigns go on for years and years and years and flood our airways to the point of being ad nauseum in September, October, November.

So I think some campaign finance reform is definitely in order if we want to get some sanity back into this country.

So, you know, what form that the future of this, what this future of this actually looks like, I don't know. I don't mind people actively paying for this kind of stuff. This is what scares me, and I think most people would agree when AI starts. Getting involved. And it's going to get harder and harder and harder to detect when AI is involved and when it's not involved, what's paid for, what isn't.

I mean, people can literally not just pay millions or thousands of millions of dollars. They literally may spend 20 bucks building an AI large language code that can actually do this for virtually no money and have huge influence across streams, and it's not detected because it's not really humanly driven.

So that's the kind of stuff that I get really worried about. And pretty soon, our whole lives are completely drowning in politics and political messaging and all that. And look, as Wonks, we love it. You know, you and me, you know, we're in the mix. But for the average person, I mean, you know, there's.

Anytime people look at this country and say, and start talking about politics first, I got to be honest, I get nervous because we're not defined by our politics. Our communities, our spirit, what this country is all about is not defined by politics.

Now, lately, it has been. How do you feel about the United States of America? People get that polled all the time. And they're voting based on what they think of the President or what they based on their political affiliation in the moment.

So, I think the more money that goes into the social media aspects of this, where all of this goes, I get nervous that we're getting further and further down a path where it's just all politics all the time. And at some point, it just is too much, right? It's just absolutely too much. And I'm in it. I love it.

So, I feel for everybody that isn't in it, that is just trying to go to work, you know, be the best they can be for their families and all that sort of thing.

So, that's where I get a little nervous about how out of control this is going to get. Nope, totally agree with you, and that's why I watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey again and 90-Day Fiancé because I don't have to pay attention. I love it. Governor Chris Sununu, thank you so much, and best of luck in your new job. Thank you for joining me here on the Brian Killmead Show.

Listen to the all-new Brett Baer podcast, featuring common ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Baer favorites like his all-star panel and much more. Available now at FoxnewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown, Manchester. Manhattan. this growing radio talk show.

Brian Kilmead. I am Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. Ryan and taking a day off. Coming up in half an hour, Tommy Laren will be here to join us. But first, let's talk about get some legal questions to answer because I have a lot of them.

And who doesn't love some good, free legal advice, right? Shannon Bream is with us. She's the anchor of Fox News Sunday, and she's a Fox News chief legal correspondent and also the author of a great book, The Love Stories of the Bible Speak, and having been in. Israel just Less than a month ago. Wow, that is such a great book.

So much of the Bible comes alive once you go to Jerusalem. You can follow her on exit Shannon Bream. Shannon, thank you for joining me on the show. Mary, it's always great to be with you, but I would remind you for free legal advice, you get what you pay for. With every non-petty, so Darn it.

Darn it.

Okay, so there's a lot of things that we have to talk about. First of all, Janine Pirro. Judge Janine is having a really hard time in Washington, DC, getting any kind of indictments. Grand jurors in Washington, D.C. are refusing to indict anyone, and so justice is not being done.

What happens here? Yeah, it's super interesting because, listen, she says the onus is on us. As prosecutors, we have to go in there and make the case. But DC Judge. Juries are notoriously tough because I've served, when I lived in DC, I got called for jury duty all the time because there's really a small jury pool relative to the amount of crime that the city is dealing with.

Um so you know what that's like here in DC.

So I it'll be very interesting. I've got her on exclusively on Sunday on Fox News Sunday, and we'll talk to her about that. I mean, there's only so much you can do when you promise the officers on the street, listen, if you make these arrests, we're gonna you know fully back these prosecutions. But the weak link in this chain may be grand jurors. If they say like, nope, we don't like this crackdown.

We don't like what President Trump is doing. It feels authoritarian.

So we're just not going to give you any indictments for these cases.

So I've never been chosen for a jury.

So when you are chosen for a jury and you're put you're you sit there, don't you have to raise your right hand and say that you're going to be impartial and uphold the law? Yeah, you do. But DC is such a, you know, such a funky place in that it's not a regular city, it's a federal district.

So there's always this tension with the locals feeling like. The feds have a lot of authority, the White House has a lot of authority, Congress has a lot of authority over what happens in this district. And people kind of hate that. Our license plates here say taxation without representation. And there's a real pushback against anything that's seen as a federal crackdown.

And I think that that's going to be a problem in trying to get past these grand juries. Yeah, it's really sad. The sandwich guy, the guy who hit the which I thought was so ridiculous, he had a perfectly good wrapped sandwich like Justice Millette. And he too used his sandwich for ill and not good. He just whacked a federal officer with a wrapped sandwich and things like that.

And apparently that's being downgraded to a misdemeanor instead of a felony. And I listen, I gotta say, across party lines, I think most people would say, like, you know, you shouldn't ever, listen, I'm the daughter of a late law enforcement officer. You don't ever throw anything at a cop. You just don't, that's not done. You don't do it.

But I think a felony charge over sandwich for these grand jurors in D.C. was going to be really hard to convince them. I got to tell you, it's a little hard for me too. But the law's the law. And I thought no one was above the law.

That's what they kept telling me when they were rating. That's oversold. Yeah, I know, I know. Let's talk about Lisa Cook. Speaking of no one being above the law, they just now have a third, a new criminal referral filed against her for a third mortgage in Massachusetts.

And damn, I should have worked for the federal government because she's got a house in Michigan, a house in Georgia, and a house in Massachusetts.

So now this is the third federal referral filed against her.

So she's facing. Criminal charges, two separate criminal referrals on three mortgages, yet she refuses to leave her post. How does that work?

Well, they're in court right now. In fact, I'm watching the notes coming out from our producers who are there tracking this, and that whole issue comes down to for-cause what is for cause? What does that mean? If the president says, Hey, I have these allegations of mortgage fraud by her, but she hasn't been charged, she hasn't been before a jury, she hasn't been convicted, there's been no trial. I think this judge is going to, and many of these judges are not big fans of President Trump, these federal judges, especially here in DC and the surrounding area.

I think she may say, listen, Lisa Cook can stay on the job, and you guys can continue to litigate this on the merits, but until there's been some sort of finding of actual mortgage fraud, this Is a country in where you are innocent unless you are proven guilty. I'm guessing that's where this federal judge would go. But I think that this Trump administration is going to fight this as far as they have to, all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, where they've had a lot of disputes about letting people go who are federal employees or appointees at federal boards. And quasi executive agencies and those kinds of things.

So it's a very litigated question at this point. But I think given what we know about the situation, Lisa Cook's probably going to have an initial win. Yeah, well, because this case just happens to be going to Judge Gia Cobb, randomly assigned to her, who blocked the Trump administration's attempt to deport a whole bunch of illegal immigrants who had fled violence or oppression in their home countries, and they're still there. They're still here.

So she's already ruled against Trump.

So, and I think it's going to be really hard to find a judge in Washington, D.C., who's actually going to follow the law. And that's really sad because this robed resistance, there seems to be no cure for this disease. The only cure, it seems, if you feel like it needs to be cured, is the appeals process. And listen, the Supreme Court is very differential in most cases to executive power. This separation that the executive, the president being the chief executive, that he should have the power to say who works for him, who doesn't work for him, especially in his agencies.

They've given a lot of deference on that point.

Now, with these boards like the NLRB, the Fed, I mean, they do see some of these things differently, and they'll be litigated a little bit differently versus just letting federal employees go.

So she's in a special position as a federal governor of the Fed Reserve. But these are questions that need to be answered by the Supreme Court.

So there are a lot of good test cases right now, and we'll see if they get there and what they ultimately decide. Yeah, and along these lines, the White House fired Robert Primus, who is a Democrat appointee on a federal board for railroad mergers, whatever. But he got fired, and he refuses to leave his post as well. Whatever happened to handing somebody a box and they take their framed picture of their family and their fern off their desk and they walk out into the street in shame? Why is it so different for federal employees?

Is it unions? Yes, they do have a lot of different protections. And I think part of it is just that they want to say some of these questions have not been answered or fully litigated, and so I'm going to be the test case. I'm going to refuse to go. It's part of the resistance, as you said, to President Trump.

And their attorneys are lining up to handle these cases. Abby Lowell is one of the most prominent ones. He's handling Lisa Cook. He's done a lot of this stuff for a lot of federal employees where there have been attempts to let them go. Back to the courts.

And again, I think a lot of these employees or people who are appointeed to appointees to these federal boards, they're going to have a lot of wins at the district court level. On appeal, I think it gets tougher for them and most certainly by the time it gets to the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's hard.

So, what is going on with President Trump and actually removing some of these illegals from our country? We have, the Trump administration has been absolutely forbidden by U.S. District Judge Paula Zinnis from deporting the Maryland dad, the father who just is only here for a better life, to Uganda. And this whole thing just seems to be just such a mess. And he gets far more.

Due process and breaks than any American citizen would ever get for any crime. This is just insane.

So, what is happening here now? What's going on with this?

So everything is on hold as far as the DOJ has had to agree under this judge's order that for now there's not going to be a deportation. I think though on the merits eventually, the administration is feeling really good about winning. The problem is this judge does not want to let him get kicked out of the country, then lose custody or jurisdiction over him while all these things are being litigated.

So While they're feeling pretty good about winning the end game, this judge doesn't want him going anywhere. I mean, you remember he went to El Salvador, remember this whole fight about getting him back here. But ICE has said: listen, he's facing all kinds of charges on potential human trafficking. Those are the accusations out of Tennessee. Um So it's possible that he is ultimately deported, but I think in the meantime, the judge is saying pause everything until we figure this out on the merits.

But again, Trump administration feeling really good at the end of the day when this is decided on the merits. that this guy's going to be deported for good. Yeah, it it doesn't make any sense to me because apparently we run a travel agency, United States Air, I guess. Um he he he didn't want he didn't want to go be repatriated to his home country because of fear of rival gangs, which said to me, So you are a gang member then? Right?

Yeah, I mean, there were so many questions. If you dig back through the earlier hearings from him over the last few years about what law enforcement said, about what local police said, police who were part of the local gang enforcement you know, parts of the police force to say, listen, this is what we were told about him, this is what made us understand that we believe he had gang affiliations, and they they go through all of these things that They were indicators of that. And we found out so much more about him through this whole process, and now the trafficking allegations. The allegations of domestic abuse and all kinds of things. He's not the guy that he was originally kind of sold as he was in the mainstream media.

And even some of his supporters have had to say: okay, it's not about him. You think about Senator Chris Van Hollen, it's about the principle underlying it, it's not this guy.

So amazing how they spin on a dime. And lastly, we now know that his defense team. And by the way, who's paying for his defense team? That's a good question. I don't know.

I would imagine that there are all kinds of GoFundMes and that kind of stuff that's going on to protect him. All right.

So the gullible are paying. But now the lawyers are asking for a judge for a gag order against Trump officials because they call him a monster, etc. And they actually talk about his crimes and things like that. And they don't want him portrayed as a criminal, apparently. I do think that's so interesting.

And it will depend on the judge that it lands with. I mean, we've talked about this. When you're looking for a judge to line up with what you want to see done, you're going to do a little forum shopping. And it's not that hard in the DC area to find a judge who's probably opposed to a lot of what the Trump administration or the White House wants to do. I think a gag order is a very interesting request to tell officials that they can't talk about him.

There's already so much out there. Um, man, I can't wait to see what the judge does with that particular request. Yeah, it's going to be interesting, and you know where it's going to go. If it's a judge in D.C., you know, he's going to get what he wants in the surprise. Won't be surprised.

Exactly. Alligator Alcatraz, a judge ordered that shut down that says they have to wind down operations, and now the Department of Homeland Security has actually begun moving det detainees out of Alligator Alcatraz and sending them to other immigration detention centers. Is this about the environment? Is that what the allegation is here? Yeah, that's what I think is so interesting in this case.

It's not that a judge is saying your immigration policy is no good, we're shutting this thing down. It was about the environmentalist who sued over the Everglades and the protected species and those kinds of things there that you can't Build out this particular facility because it is going to hurt the environment.

So the win there is on the environment, not on immigration policy. These people aren't going to get a you know get out of jail free card. They're just going to be sent somewhere else to be detained. And the Feds are going to keep looking for more beds and more bed space for this. You know, they've got the place in Nebraska, the place in Indiana.

So they say they're going to continue to open these facilities. And Governor DeSantis says this legal fight over Alcatraz is far from over. They've already appealed the decision to the next level in federal court.

So they may ultimately win on that. But in the meantime, they were making some moves to keep those people in custody just somewhere else. But what's so interesting about this to me is the facility already existed. Right. Plot over the swamp, you know, paved paradise instead of a parking lot.

It already existed, and nobody had a problem with it when it already existed. It wasn't until they started putting people in the country who are being deported, they put them there.

Now, all of a sudden, the environmentalists are concerned about it. That more tents and more generators and more things were being added to the site.

So that was their argument in court. Like, you can't expand this thing. And that's what the judge essentially said. Like, you can keep operating it, but you have to shut down these extra things that you added on.

So Governor DeSantis, again, still thinks that they're going to win on that point. And, you know, it'll take a little while in the appeals court to get a decision. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting. Shannon and Bream, thank you so much for your time today. And see, I got some free legal advice a little bit: like, don't ever be charged with a crime in Washington, D.C.

Or if you want to commit a crime and you think the grand jury will let you off here, you maybe want to get charged in DC versus somewhere else. But no sandwich throwing. Let's respect our officers and keep that. To ourselves. Yeah, don't throw away a good sandwich.

There's your legal advice for today: don't hit an officer with a sandwich. With anything, including your sandwich. Shannon Bream, you can catch her on Sunday, Anchor of Fox News Sunday, and you can follow her on X at Shannon Bream. Super easy. You have a wonderful day.

Thank you so much. Have a great weekend. Thank you. You too. More coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show.

Increasing your intelligence quotients. What the hell did you just say? It's Brian Kilmead. Hey, I'm Trey Gaddy, host of the Trey Gaddy Podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side.

Listen and follow now at FoxnewsPodcast.com. Information you want, truth you demand. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. If you're just joining us, welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. I am Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead.

You can follow me on X at Mary Walter Radio. There's no S in that, and my podcast is live. It's a live cast on Tuesdays at 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time. You can participate, ask questions, leave comments on YouTube, Getter, and Rumble.

Just look for Mary Walter Radio. Audio is available on Apple Podcasts and Spreaker. And Spotify. All three of those. And again, just look for Mary Walter radio.

So, Claudia Scheinbaum, the president of Mexico. uh is going to ask the United States to share uh What what the United States is expecting to get from El Mayo. The Mexican drug lord, Ismael Zambada, known goes by El Mayo. Or mayo, if you really want, if you want to say it the American way, he pleaded guilty in New York court on Monday to murder and to drug trafficking. And as part of the deal, he had origin uh he had originally pleaded not guilty, but as part of the deal, He pleads guilty and agrees to forfeit fifteen billion dollars.

Man, that drug cartel game is rough. I bet he's 77 years old. I mean, he made it that far. But. 15 billion with a B dollars.

Yeah.

So Scheinbaum said. If the United States government were to recover resources, then we would be asking for them to be given to the Mexico to Mexico for the forest people, for the poorest people, excuse me.

So she wants the money, even though we got him. And he ran around in her country forever, you know, as a drug, as a cartel member. We're supposed to give them the $15 billion for their poor people. The cartel, which Washington has declared a terrorist group, is considered the biggest drug trafficking organization in the world. And it did operate on both sides of the border.

It operated in this country as well.

Now, I think she's pulling a Trump. She asked for the whole thing. I want the whole $15 billion. And Trump's likely to say, all right, we'll give you some of it. Because their people were harmed by the drug trafficking as well.

There's no doubt about that, just as Americans have been harmed by the um trafficking of what he primarily dealt in. Which is fentanyl.

So he d he drugged. Trafficked other drugs, but really got in on the fentanyl game. And millions of people have died because of that.

So there has to be some kind of punishment. Obviously, I don't know how much of this they're going to collect because I'm sure it's been handed out to friends and family. I'm sure his family's living well and they're probably in Mexico or they're in other countries. And I don't know how you get that from them. But anyway, uh so she wants the fifteen billion, but I think, as I said, I think it can do a lot of good here.

Uh some good news. A glimmer of hope. For those of you who follow the royal family, Prince Harry is expected to meet with King Charles. They have not spoken, have not seen each other in almost two years. He's going to be going to the UK in just a couple of weeks for the Well Child Awards, and they're going to meet up.

Prince William said, uh-uh, not doing it. But it's a step in the right direction. Prince Harry's team and the palace have opened a line of communication. Megan Markle will not be going. She's gonna stay home with the two kids.

And part of apparently, according to Palace Insiders, Prince Charles is very upset that he hasn't seen those two grandchildren. In quite a long time, almost since Lilibet was born. All right, Tommy Laren, coming up next. on the Brian Kilmead Show. It's the Will Kane Show.

Watch it live at noon Eastern, Monday through Thursday on FoxNews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss a show. Get the podcast five days a week at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Killmead. I'm Mary Walter sitting in the seat for Brian Killmee.

Brian taking a well-deserved day off. Joining us now, you know her. Tommy Laren is with us. She's a Fox News contributor and the host of Tommy Laren is Fearless on Outkick. Follow her on X at Tommy Laren, T-O-M-I.

Laren, Tommy, thank you so much for joining me. It's great to have you. Oh, it's great to be here. And I'm holding down the fort in Brian's studio. I'm not sitting in his chair, but I'm looking at it, so I feel like he's here in spirit.

You should absolutely sit in it and like spin in it and spin around, maybe take it across the floor, you know, that kind of thing. He'll notice if it's been moved. Yes.

So there's so much I want to talk to you about. This Cracker Barrel thing, all of this that's going on with Cracker Barrel, obviously they pulled a Bud Light here. It didn't work for them. They get these young CEOs into these companies and they decide that we're going to fix this problem by going totally opposite of what your brand is. And it didn't work.

And Cracker Barrel took Donald Trump's advice, it looks like. First, they went back to the old logo, which Donald Trump said, you just change the logo back, you know, and tell. Say we're p We're sorry, get the free advertising.

Now, they confirmed that they removed the Pride section from their website and they claim they made changes to their business resource groups. And indeed, the Pride page, which listed the Nashville Pride Parade, which Cracker Barrel sponsored, which is insane, that's all gone. And so, what do you think? Are they really in on this or are they just appearing to be in, you know, appearing to make the changes?

Well, I'll tell you this: because a company based in Tennessee, actually pretty close to where I live, I can tell you that there have been some folks in the Nashville area that have been keeping up on this for a few years now. Of course, back in 2020, when everybody was doing this, everyone wanted to be DEI, everybody wanted to be a social justice warrior. Cracker Barrel seemingly was one of those companies that jumped on board with that. And I think it flew under the radar because we were distracted by so many things like Bud Light and them removing, you know, Uncle Ben from the rice and Aunt Jemima from the pancakes and the syrup and all that.

So I think people didn't notice it. But there were. A lot of folks in Nashville that had noticed it, it just became very evident and apparent when they changed the logo. And then all the other stuff started to come out: like, hey, this isn't just about the logo here. This is about the company ethos that, you know, companies are allowed to do whatever they want.

And if they want to sponsor pride parades and all that, I mean, go for it.

However, if you're going to betray kind of your core customer base, which is this old-timey traditional family space to go eat old-timey food in a country store, again, just like Bud Light, you're betraying your customer base and you're going to hear about it.

So I am hopeful that now that it's all been brought to light, I don't think they can put that genie back in the bottle. And can I tell you, I've never been to a Cracker Barrel. It's weird. And I kind of feel like I'm missing out now because I live in New Jersey, the land of diners.

So I think there's one in North Jersey and I think there's one in South Jersey. People have told me, no, no, no, they exist in New Jersey. But it's not like in other parts of the country.

So now I feel I have FOMO.

So I'm going to have to go track one down and I'm going to have to go and just experience it, experience what everyone is talking about with Cracker Barrel.

So I'm I'm looking forward to that. They also lost $143 million in market value, and this woman has not been fired yet, which I don't quite understand. I don't know how that happens. Um let's move on to this school shooting because The first thing I want to talk about adjacent to this Catholic school shooting at Annunciation School, where those two young kids, those children, innocent children, were just. Slaughtered sitting in their sitting in a pew inside a church praying.

Adjacent to that, if you've noticed before this happened, there were nearly a dozen schools shooting hoaxes at universities. And Villanova, being a Catholic school, had two of the hoaxes, but they started as kids are going back to school, these swatting things. And they're tracing them back. They think they come from a group called Purgatory. And they said they likely made the false emergency reports targeting at least 10 universities between August 21st and August 25th.

Does do things like that Lower our guard because we think, oh, it's just a swatting thing. And so we lower our guard and we don't think that these things are real. And then you get a tragedy of what happened earlier this week at the Annunciation School. Trevor Burrus: Well, I would say, first of all, anybody that's doing a hoax, something as serious as a violent threat, that's utterly disgusting. They need to get.

Really down to the bottom of who is behind it. And those people need to face stiff consequences. You don't mess with things like that. But I would also say you can't lower your guard even if it's a hoax because you still have a real potential to have not only chaos, but you could have stampeding. You could have people that get hurt in the process, you know, people that are traumatized.

So none of this is victimless, even if it does turn out to be a fake threat.

So they need to get to the bottom of who's doing this. And I would say also, this is to me, a part of the problem is so many people want to be social media famous or they want to see the actions that they do end up on the news. And even if it's a hoax or if, you know, God forbid, it's something that's truly in a horrible incident like you saw in Minneapolis. It's a lot of these people that they just want to be known for something and they want to cause something and they want to be validated positively or negatively. And I think that's why you're seeing an uptick in this.

It's a social media generation. And I think we're going to have a lot more of these issues as AI becomes more sophisticated. That is my concern. Yeah, I agree. I think we have a big problem with AI, and I think we need to get a handle of how we're going to control this or if we're just going to let it be, hey, free speech, and we wind up with maybe some horrible, horrible side effects of results from that.

This trans shooter, Robin Westman, I would call him Robert, but he is legally Robin, or was legally Robin. We now know as the manifesto is being translated because he wrote it in Cyrillic, Russian Cyrillic script.

So this guy was no dummy, right? Like he was a very, very smart kid. But we know that he said now, according to the New York Post, I only keep the long hair because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I'm tired of being trans. I wish I never brainwashed myself.

I can't cut my hair now as it would be an embarrassing defeat and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack. He also said, I regret being changed. Trans.

I wish I was a girl. I just don't. I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have. I can't afford it.

So he goes on, and so he regrets being trans. And this seems to me to be the first trans shooting that we've had in America where that issue is actually being discussed. Prior to this, it's been it disappears, there's no further discussion, or we just focus on the guns, right? That's where that's where the focus is. Why is this different now?

It seems to be different to me anyway.

Well, I'll tell you why, because we have a different administration and FBI in charge because I, of course, live in Nashville.

So when we had the Christian Covenant School shooting in Nashville, also perpetrated by a transgender back in 2023, the media would not be fully honest and forthright about this person's ideology or identification. You know, they would say mention perhaps they changed their name, but they wouldn't really dive into it. They wouldn't give us the manifesto. That was years in the making with leaks that gave us some look into this person's demented mind. But I think that's what the difference is, is you have an FBI and an administration that wants people to know the truth.

So I'm happy for that. I'm happy for transparency. And I hope that the reason that, by the way, I would say that people want to know this information, it's not just because people are obsessed with true crime and they want to know motivations. There are some that are that way. But broader picture is people want to understand the minds of these people so that they can see the red flags moving forward and perhaps stop it from happening to somebody else.

Now, people don't feel a lot of sympathy for a school shooter, but when you look into the shooter, To their mind, and you look into these manifestos, and you see someone who's deeply troubled and crying out for help, that as a society should be concerning to us. We need to flag this a little sooner. And I'm not just talking about red flag laws when it comes to gun control, I'm just talking about red flags in general. And the first line of defense is the parents. And that's why I think it's really kind of concerning that the mom isn't fully cooperating.

She got in a criminal defense attorney, but she's not being super forthright.

So, again, we're going to find out more because we have a transparent FBI this time, and I think that'll serve us for the better. Yeah, and we're I know we're out of time here, but my husband said this, and I have to give him full credit because if I don't, he's going to yell at me later. But he said, You know, 20 years ago, this kid would have been flagged and wouldn't have been able to get a gun as easily because he would have been flagged with a mental illness. We have normalized the trans thing. And I'm not saying they're all mentally ill, but I do think the young people who have a need to do this probably do have an element of mental illness and would do very well with some counseling instead of just automatically pumping them full of these chemicals.

But if we hadn't normalized this behavior in young people, Then he would have been flagged and he wouldn't have been able to purchase those guns. And there's a lot of irony in all of that. Tommy Laren, thank you so much for joining me. I know you got to run. You're going to go be on TV.

So thank you for taking the time. You can find her at Tommy Laren on X. And also don't forget to check out her podcast. Tommy Laren is Fearless over on Outkick. Thank you so much.

Have a great day. Thank you so much. All right.

I think we can take a little bit of a break here. And then I've got a little bit more coming up. I've got a piggyback on the shooting with news coming out of Australia, famously known for getting rid of all of their guns. And uh you might be surprised at this. That's coming up on the Brian Kill Me Chow.

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So we were just speaking with Tommy Laron and we were talking about that horrific shooting at the Annunciation Church. And this kid had so much wrong with him. This kid had, I mean, clearly mentally ill. Yeah.

100% mentally ill and very, very angry. And when I say mentally, very, very evil, just evil. And we talk, you know, the left is all about gun ownership and all about guns, and they're so easily available in America. It's the guns, it's the guns, it's the guns. But this seems to be the first time that we actually talk about mental illness because this kid was really, really, really mentally ill.

And he provided us, they didn't hide the manifesto this time around like they did with other school shootings with trans, of course. And she hit the nail on the head. It's because we have a different administration and a different FBI. And so they're not hiding and be they're not as political. As the ones in the past.

But Australia, the left loves to point out to Australia. Australia, look at that. They got rid of all their guns. They collected them all, and that was after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. And they confiscated all the guns.

No guns in Australia.

Well, Guess what? That was nineteen ninety six. That wasn't that long ago. And I did not realize it totally shocked me to find out that there are more guns in Australia now than there were before the massacre in 1996. Yeah.

You know, like I said, they had significant restrictions on gun ownership. All these people, they confiscated all these guns, and they love to show the video of all these guns being burned, whatever they did with them, melted them down, and these big, big truckloads and everything, confiscating, getting rid of all the guns.

Now more they know more now than previously. From data from that time suggest there were about three million firearms owned before the massacre in 96. The number now exceeds more than four million. And they say it's not just gun numbers that are on the rise, but the number of people who are licensed to own them has also increased dramatically. Gun ownership is more common in rural parts of the country, and they show that most Available statistics, though, show most gun owners live in urban areas.

Of course, and that's because the concentration. You've got to look at it. Fewer people live in rural areas. They're more dispersed, where you're more concentrated in an urban area.

So that makes sense. But where there are more people, there are more guns. That's what it boils down to. Firearms homicides started falling in the early eighties. They continue to fall at the same rate after nineteen ninety six.

They remain stable and low. And firearms suicides have followed the same general pattern. Armed robbery with firearms started falling in the early 90s.

So, what they're saying is. What they're finding out is there is little relationship between levels of gun legal, gun ownership, legal. in Australia and levels of firearm violence and misuse. And that's something in this country we don't look at very often. Were the guns legally owned?

Now in this case, in the in the ascension School shooting, excuse me, annunciation school shooting. Those guns were legally owned because that kid had no history of mental health disorders. He wasn't had, you know, no record or anything like that. And I do argue, I think my husband's right. Don't ever tell him I said that.

But. I I do think that There is a correlation that twenty years ago, that kid would have been treated far differently. And probably would have been flagged for having some kind of mental illness, and had gone to counseling, etc., instead of mom going down and changing his name to Robin from Robert. And pumping, you know, I don't know if he got any drugs. I have no idea.

But those are the things we need to look at.

So so we've normalized certain behaviors now that Maybe allowed this guy to get firearms when normally he would not have been able to get those firearms.

So, to me, it's very interesting. And I think if you look at the overall shootings and the numbers, and you look at we don't get the statistics on how many of the firearms used in the commission of those crimes, for instance, that are handguns, most of them are handguns in Chicago and these other cities. or anywhere where there's gun violence, robberies, fatalities, shootings. Are the firearms legally owned or not? Because I argue that the ones that are used in those types of activities are illegally owned.

They're stolen, they've been purchased, you know, given by a friend, that type of thing. It's not legal, going on earth.

So I think we need to start keeping records the way they do in Australia. Lastly, Nantucket. Oh, Nantucket, New England's exclusive resort.

Well, during COVID A lot of communities decided that it was important for them to start testing wastewater to see if there were any spikes in COVID in the region. And then Nantucket decided at the beginning of the summer to start testing for other types of substances in the water, like drugs and nicotine and other things, because you know, liberals are really big on surveilling every action you take and everything you do. And you know what they found out? Nantucket has a really high level of cocaine in their wastewater. Like a really high level of cocaine in their wastewater.

Now you know what the rich and famous are doing on their little exclusive island. Mm-hmm. probably key parties and all sorts of debauchery going on there. The testing conducted at the Surfside Wastewater Treatment Facility on Nantucket found cocaine levels about fifty percent higher than the national average. But they did find below average levels of fentanyl.

So, yay, Nantucket, there you go. And you know why that is? They're. I think fentanyl is one of those things that's super easy to get. 'Cause it's it's low cost because there's so much of it.

Whereas at least they're elitist about their drug used as well, right? They're doing cocaine. Like that that's more, I to me, that just seems to be more old school and more um I don't know, hoity-toity? The treatment plant serves about three quarters of the local homes, and authorities said that would give them access to island wide trends without identifying individuals or neighborhood and protecting privacy. Of course, 'cause we have to protect the privacy of the people.

But I just thought it was hilarious. That at the start of summer, most recent findings showed just under 1,500 nanograms per liter of cocaine compared with the national average of about 1,000.

So, um, I just thought the whole thing was funny. Thank you so much for letting me sit in the seat. Thank you to Brian, to Eric, to Pete, to Allison, and of course, you. For letting me sit in this seat with you. on the Brian Kilmey Show.

This is Jimmy Phala, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding, it's only a three-hour show. Listen live at Noon Eastern or get the podcast at foxacrossamerica.com. Mm.