Viral video exposes extent of Minnesota fraud

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From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon.

Good evening, wherever you have to be. In your day, I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmead. Hello. Yeah, it's great to be with you again. It's been a hot second since I've been with you.

And Allison and Pete Nerica put together a great show here. Joining us in less than half an hour, John Ionarelli, he is a retired FBI officer, is a member of SWAT, and he did a lot of investigations, including the Oklahoma bombing.

So we will talk to him about what's going on in Minnesota. Excuse me, and the wonderful journalism being done by Nick Shirley, citizen journalist. Hmm, hmm. Suddenly I'm choking.

Alright. We also will be joined by Jessica Jackson. She is a human rights attorney. Griff Jenkins will be joining us. Tommy Lehren will be joining us.

So we've got a lot going on. And of course, you're always free to jump in at 866-408-7669-866-408-7669. Or if you can't do that, just. Write a post on X, just put out a tweet, tag me in it, and I will do my best to get to your tweets, well, in a timely manner, you know.

So, I can try to multitask here.

So, you think, well, it's the holidays, things kind of slowed down. You know, we had Hanukkah there, and then Hanukkah and Christmas didn't coincide. Then we had Christmas and New Year's. And boy, there is a big, big, big, big, big, big story that everyone is talking about. And it has to do.

With this guy. named Nick Surely. 23 years old. And he considers himself a citizen journalist. And he goes out there, he's got a YouTube channel.

And he decided that he was going to start to investigate rumblings of what he heard was going on in Minneapolis.

Now, we're gonna go to cut one, and this is what started it. This is just part. This is the whole video, it's 45 minutes long, but this is just a snippet of. What started? All of this.

So this is Quality Learning Center. I meant to say Quality Learning Center. And we've arrived at ABC Learning Center. All the windows are blacked out. I would like to check a child in a daycare.

Why? Can I speak to a manager? I would like to see if I can bring little Joey here, my son little Joey, here. Is there a paperwork if I can check out the daycare? You got $2.66 million this year in funding and $2.5 million last year.

We're just wondering where the kids are. Hello, we'd like to ask where the money's going. You're right. By the way, Fox Digital reached out to that learning center to try and get a statement from them. And apparently the number doesn't even work.

So we did not get a response there. Yeah, that was from Fox and Friends Weekend. You heard a little bit of Griff there and Charlie there as well.

So, this is what started.

So, he went out.

So, now he's got a partner named Dave. I don't know what Dave's he just goes by Dave. Everybody knows him online. He's just Dave. He's an older gentleman.

And this guy talks about how he got involved with this. All right.

So, he's going to give a description of what he saw and how he just decided to check it out. Here's Nick Shirley's partner, Dave. How I got involved is that where my office is here in Minneapolis, I'm sort of in the heart of all of this fraud. And I would see these childcare centers. I said, well, there aren't any kids there.

It's the middle of the day, and all I see are a couple of guys standing out front smoking. And then I'd go by another daycare and I'd see the same thing. I said, well, Where do these kids play? And so I started to go online and look, and I said, This place is licensed for 80 children. They had zero children every time I went by there.

They never had a single child there. Then I started to see all these transportation companies going around. And it was always a Somali driver. And I said, well, that's great. They're out there transportation, contributing, but they never had a passenger, never, ever, once.

And I said, well, what is all this transportation? What are they doing?

So then I found out that in Minnesota They have something called non-emergency medical transportation.

So, this is going to the dentist's office, therapy, whatever it might be. And I said, well, how many of these companies are there? And the research came back that there are 1,020 of them. and more than 800 of them are Somali-owned. Yeah.

Nobody from the state of Minnesota Ever cross-checks to see if any rides were ever actually provided. All they did was write the check. Yeah, I just write the check. And I didn't even realize. I guess a lot of states provide these transportation services for maybe seniors, people who can't drive, maybe people who are disabled in some way and can't get a ride and don't have the money for an Uber or a cab, etc.

And so they provide transportation service. But this guy's super observant to notice. that nobody was ever in the vans. And you see all these people driving around, there's nobody in the vans.

Alright, so now he goes honors a little bit more with the infamous Dave Nick Shirley's partner.

So we have a thing called CCAP. It's a blend of federal and state money. The bottom line is it's taxpayer money, so it's state money and it's federal money. And the problem is the people at the state of Minnesota are the ones writing the checks. This is kind of the maddening thing: you have daycare, so you have adult daycare.

And then you have child care. And then you have health care. And a lot of these same names keep coming up on all of these different types of businesses. And then, of course, we have the transportation, and a lot of those same names appear, a lot of the same addresses. There's one building that has 14 Somali healthcare companies at the same address.

There's another building. in St. Paul that has 22 Somali health care businesses at the same address. Yeah. 22.

At the same business. And here's the thing: I don't know about you, but I would never even think of this because I'd be sure that I would get caught. I'm naive enough, like I think most taxpayers are, like most Americans are, who are law-abiding citizens. We had no idea that the government doesn't enforce the law. Who knew?

I mean, the government came after me for $11 on my income taxes when I was first out of college, and my father did my taxes and did the math wrong, which is interesting because he's like a math nerd, and he did the math wrong. And I owed $11. And they were sending collection notices. I was living in Fort Worth, Texas at the time, my first job. My father's like, you better write a check to the IRS and make it for more than $11 because they're going to come and they'll take the gold out of your grandmother's teeth.

So I assume that the laws are going to be enforced.

Well, what idiots are we? Apparently The laws are not enforced. Yeah. And you know, this involves so many things. First, we heard it was about the federal child nutrition program, and they've already got that.

They've already got something like 75 people that they've already arrested, and there's indictments, and people are going to jail, and that's great. But that went on for a long time. The autism that was funded by Medicaid, we heard about. You add it all up. They're saying investigators believe that over $9 billion, we've heard that number and I bet you it's much higher, was stolen by more than ninety people through 14 Medicaid funded programs.

And we know that Medicaid and Medicare has always been subject to fraud. We know that. We know that if you're, especially doctors know this, that they will audit you to make sure that all your T's are crossed and your I's are dotted and everything's great just to make sure that you're not scamming the system or billing for patients that don't exist, et cetera. In the meantime, There's apparently fraud going on all over the country. We're hearing it now out of Maine, out of Massachusetts, out of California.

And I guarantee you, as this goes on, We're going to hear more and more. And I think it's because there were whistleblowers who came forward in the past and got shut down, as is alleged in Minnesota. Minnesota is the poster child for this. And it was alleged that Tim Walls and Keith Ellison Keith Ellison's not getting any blowback. He should were both told by whistleblowers about this.

and did absolutely nothing.

So, I'm willing to bet that there are whistleblowers who are coming forward, who are going to come forward all across this country to say, hey, I blew the whistle in my state because this is going on. Because if you're a taxpayer and you see what's happening, you're like, wait a minute, this is my money. It's not just Wisconsin taxpayer money, there's also federal money that was being misused here. I just don't have any hope that anyone's going to jail. Do you?

866408-7669, 866-408-7669, or Tag me in a tweet on X at MaryWalter Radio. No S, there's only one of me, Mary Walter Radio, and I'll try to get to your comments in a timely manner.

So we're going to go through this. We're going to go through just how this was. And actually, the Biden administration made this easy, made it easier to commit fraud. Not a surprise there. And I just think this is a big Democrat money laundering scheme.

Follow the money. But the question is, will the Republicans do so? And I don't have high hopes. I really don't. You can tell me if I'm wrong.

Mary Walter, more coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. Where big stories meet bigger conversations. Stay informed and energized with the Brian Kilmead Show. With the holidays coming, that means more gift buying and more deliveries to the front door. It made me think about how I should upgrade my security to keep away the porch pirates and keep my deliveries safe.

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Go to simplysafe.com/slash Brian. Again, that's simplysafe.com/slash Brian. There's no safe like SimplySafe. Uh A radio show like no other is Brian Killmead. I have to give props to the man by the name of David who helped me in this investigation.

He's been doing research for years, years, trying to expose this fraud, and nobody has given him the time of day to even talk about this.

So, with his help and my own investigation, I've known about the fraud taking place for a long time. Minnesotans have been telling me for a long time about the Somali fraud that is taking place. And with his help, we were able to crack over $110 million in fraud in one day. And that's just the tip. When people say it's a tip of iceberg, it really is because.

There's billions. of fraud inside the state of Minnesota right now. Yeah, the infamous Dave. But he is the one who did the research. I somehow got in touch with Nick, or Nick knows him somehow.

And they teamed up, and what a team they are of citizen journalists. And I think you're going to see more of this with the advent, obviously, of the internet. But so many young people coming up have grown up with that phone in their hand and they photograph and record everything they do. And so to them, this is just like the natural next step. This kid's 23 years old.

And J.D. Vance retweeted him and said, This guy deserves the Pulitzer. And he does. Pulitzer, excuse me, Pulitzer. The Pulitzer.

He does. He deserves this. I mean, good for him. What would we not know? And I think this will spur people in other states to also investigate their state.

Let's go to Trey in Wilmington, North Carolina. Wants to jump in here. Trey, you're on the Brian Killmee show. Hi. Hi, Mary.

How are you? I'm doing just great.

So, you think anybody goes to jail? You think anybody faces justice other than a bunch of Somalis who are going to get deported? No, they won't get deported because they're just uh one liberal judge away from freedom and total exoneration. I appreciate all the work that Shirley and others have done, but I'm kind of jaded because after seeing Jim Comey, Letitia James and the Maryland Dad go free, I just don't think there's going to be any justice.

So get a slap on the hand and walk free and laugh in our faces. Yeah, you know, although I have to tell you, I do think since Tim Wallace is the poster child for this, he's not as high up in the pyramid of victimhood. Do you know what you know what I mean?

So I wonder if he will be sacrificed for this. And Keith Ellison, also, we have to look at Keith Ellison in this. You know, he he's the A G there.

So we got to look at Keith Ellison because he also, there are people who have come forward who said that he knew about this and he was told about this and he did nothing. He turned a blind eye as well.

So it's not just Tim Walls. Honestly, I think Keith Ellison is probably more protected than Tim Walls because Tim's a white guy. And on the Democrat side, in the pyramid of victimhood, he goes to the bottom, white male, straight, right to the bottom of the pyramid.

So we may see him. Pay a price. But I do think that the people there are some people in Minnesota, especially Democrats, who will pull the lever for him anyway, just because they hate Trump so much, they'll put up with the fraud. It's incredible. Trey, thank you so much for joining me.

Happy New Year. Have a wonderful, wonderful day. All right, coming up, don't forget we have John Ionarelli. He is a former FBI agent, did a lot of investigations, including the Oklahoma bombing.

So, we're going to talk to him about this coming up.

So, I just want to get a little bit into this.

So, the Washington Examiner had a great piece on this, and it's titled Minnesota Fraud Factory Shows Republicans Did Not Cut Medicaid Enough. Remember, the left screamed: if you want to know who's got their hands in the pot, Just notice who screams the loudest when you say you know what? We should probably take the pot away. That's how you know. And they the writer points out that there's something called social determinants of health.

I never heard of these before. They're called SDOH because Government loves a good acronym. And proponents believe that health outcomes are primarily driven by social and economic conditions.

So it's not genetics, it's not what mom and dad gave you.

Social and economic conditions.

So you have to have adequate housing. You have to have food. You have to have an education. Even income is part of a social determinant of health. When Obamacare, the Medicaid expansion came in, all right, when they when the Obamacare Medicaid expansion came in during COVID, remember, we have to give people more money.

Because you know, they're not working, some people aren't getting paid. We got to give them more money to pay for their health care. When that happened, a lot of states began using a waiver that allowed them to use federal Medicaid dollars to fund and expand Existing welfare programs, or even create new ones because we don't have enough welfare programs in this country, we don't have enough. And they all they were all this money was channeled through non NGOs, non governmental organizations, which of course is all run by the Democrats. They're all run by Democrats.

And we all know if you follow that money, Some of that money goes overseas, some of that money goes to these NGOs, and these NGOs then funnel it to groups that make big contributions to Democrat. Re-election campaigns, et cetera, but Democrat pockets. In 2023, the Biden administration released something called its Playbook to Address Social Determinants of Health, those SDOH. And it made it easier for states to use their Medicaid dollars for what they call non-standard benefits like housing, Medicaid. We all think that Medicaid goes to housing, right?

I thought it just went to health care. I'm a big dummy. It goes to housing, pay you their utilities, food, and even remodeling homes. This is on top of SNAP and WIC and all those other programs that we have, you know, with all these NGSOs to feed people and feed kids and free school lunches and school breakfasts and snacks after school, in addition to all of that, all on top. The additional advantage of this.

Of using Medicaid funds for social welfare spending was that Medicaid is an entitlement program that is not subject to annual appropriations, so the money keeps coming. And even through a government shutdown, the SDOH money. to Democrat nonprofit groups keeps flowing. This is why they're screaming so loudly.

Now you understand why they're screaming so loudly about those enhanced benefits ending in je the end of the year. They don't want that to happen. because they got to keep the money flowing. And Democrats are much smarter than Republicans. They know that when you make a program quote unquote temporary, that it's never temporary.

That benefit never goes away and it never gets smaller. It just keeps flowing. Because people scream, how can you not feed people? You've seen it all over social media. You've seen it from the left.

Republicans are taking health care away from people who need it. They're starving children. No, you're draining money. From being funneled into Democrat coffers. And that's why they're screaming so loudly.

Alright, coming up. John Yannarelli will be joining us to talk about investigations and what needs to be done here on the Brian Kilmey Show. This is Ainslie Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52-episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told.

Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. The more you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Kilmead. And I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmie, taking some well-deserved time off. Joining us now is Johnny Onarelli.

He is a retired FBI agent, put in more than 20 years, and he was a member of the FBI SWAT team, but he also a Participated in the investigations of the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9-11 attack. You can follow him on X at FBI John. He's also the author of Disorderly Conduct and How to Spot. A terrorist. John, great to talk to you again.

Welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. How are you? I'm doing great. Merry Christmas and thanks for having me, Mary. Absolutely.

You too. And here's to a good 2026. I want to say that first because 2025 was just okay.

So this investigation is huge. And this was started by some guy named Dave. We don't even know his last name. Nick Shirley just refers to him as Dave in his videos. And this guy said, you know, I started seeing all these daycare centers because this is where I live.

And there were these daycare centers and I never seen any kids. And I noticed all these vans being driven around, Somali drivers, and there's never anybody in them.

So I started to do some research. And he's the one who did the research and found out that, you know what, all of these daycare centers, there's supposed to be 99 kids there. There's not a kid there even in the spring, the summer, good weather, nobody. And the same thing with these vans, realize they're transports that are taxpayer funded, but there's never anybody in them.

So, I guess my question is: should the FBI hire this guy, Dave? Absolutely. I will tell you, what Dave is reporting, we in the FBI like to call a clue. And this is the problem you have when you have government agencies giving out money without any sort of verification or checking. If I want to borrow money from my bank, my bank wants all these references and they want to make sure that I'm actually using the money for the purpose it was intended.

Here in Minnesota, apparently you can just get a check and nobody cares what happens after the fact. But you know, here's the thing, and I'm sure you saw this over and over and over again: is that whistleblowers come forward. And they are duly ignored. I don't even think it made it to the FBI. It got made it no farther than Keith Ellison in Minnesota and Tim Walsh.

And that was it. And it was left to just die on the vine.

So now Cash Patel has said that this is the tip of the iceberg, and he already had a team there because of the feeding our children fraud that was going on there. They already had them, and they got up, you know, I think they're up on upwards of 70 people now that are being indicted and tried, et cetera, and being sent to jail.

So, do you think that this is something that the FBI will continue to investigate?

Okay. Absolutely. The fact that they already have agents on the ground, I'm hearing that they're surging resources. And generally, what that means is they have what they call a TDY, temporary duty assignment, where they pull agents from other offices and send them to Minnesota.

Some can even work remotely in other offices, but looking at documents, looking at everything that's happening. But on the ground, they're going to be going out to locations, verifying what's actually going on there, interviewing the people involved, and most importantly, talking to the government officials that were responsible for the overwatch of all this. Where is the corruption all the way to the government offices and who's going to be held accountable for it? Yeah, and I don't have any hope that anyone's going to be held accountable for any of this. And I don't know if I even hope that any of these Somalis are going to be deported because it's racist to even suggest such.

This is how I think they got away with it: they just said, Well, if you, especially a white man, Dave, points a finger at this and says, Hey, you know, look at this, he's racist, and that's how they try to shut it down. And that's how they get away with this. I don't have any high hope for anybody being really punished.

Well, I only look at one color and it's green. Where is the money going and who is spending it? I don't care who you are, where you're from, white, black, anything else in between. The fact of the matter, corruption and greed and stealing from the people, the taxpayers. These are our dollars, Mary, that is going to this, and that needs to be stopped.

People need to be held accountable. You know, and flying under the radar, all of this is the California State Auditors 2025 report came out, of course, at the end of the year, nobody's paying attention to it, and this whole thing from Minnesota is sucking all the air out of the room. And the California, their own state auditor, pointed to over $70. billion in taxpayer money lost. Across all their various countries, excuse me, programs, countries, across their various programs.

And this is a separate audience. They say $2.5 billion from CalFrush, which is SNAP, due to payment errors due to federal changes. $24 billion spent on homelessness. In the meantime, they have the highest homeless population in the country. $18 billion wasted on high-speed rail.

And it goes on and on and on. It's only a 92-page report. That's almost $1 billion a page. for what they found. And it's what happens, Mary, when government officials are more worried about getting their paycheck, getting whatever potential kickback that I assure you government officials are receiving when you have this level of fraud.

And you turn a blind eye because you're more worried about getting votes in the end than anything else.

Somebody has to be the watchkeeper for what's happening. Thank God for people like Gabe who bring this information forward and provide it to the FBI. And frankly, with the FBI, there is a new sheriff in town. You can see that Cash Patel is directing the resources because something is going to happen in this case. Yeah.

So Ah, dude. I think the other problem that I see is how many programs do we need to feed people? Like, how many do we need? We have SNAP, we have WIC, right, on a federal level. But then those programs send money to states, which I initially thought was a good idea.

I thought that that was great. Let the states control it. It's much better done locally. Until I have now realized that these non-governmental organizations that the money is sent to are just fraud factories.

So, how do we shut down all of these programs? Because once you give a benefit, it's very hard to shut it down. Food alone, again, WIC and SNAP. If you get SNAP and you're not feeding your kid and your kids come to school hungry, we then have to feed them breakfast, lunch, and a snack after school because mom and dad aren't doing their job.

So, why do we not take their SNAP benefits away? Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me. The duplication of money spent to solve the exact same problem seems to be enormous. And that's a collection. You'd have to overhaul the entire government system, would you not?

You would. And the fact that it seems like an insurmountable problem doesn't mean we need we don't need to try and do something about it. Because at the end of the day, when you look at all the money that's being fraudulently taken from the taxpayer, we have enough debt out there already in our deficit that needs to be paid off, and now we're just giving billions of dollars away. It all starts with the first step. First step is holding people accountable, which discourages future fraud.

later on down the road. That's the big thing. And that's the problem: there seems to be zero accountability. And a lot of this has to do with the judges that, to his credit, Harry Reid pushed through by getting rid of the filibuster. And they stacked the deck in a lot of these cities and states, including Minnesota, where there was a guy who was on the hook for $7 million in fraud, him and his wife, and they proved it, and the jury found them guilty, and the judge overturned the verdict.

Well, in the federal case now that you have the feds involved, the United States attorney, there may be different outcomes. And I guarantee, you start putting a few people in jail who are guilty of committing these types of frauds, other people will think twice of engaging in such behavior. I also think, and I may be wrong and people can yell at me, that's fine. But I think it may be cultural. When you bring people in from foreign countries and you put them in one area and they never get out of that area, in the past, it's been that you had like little Italy and Chinatown, and you had these sections of a big city where those people, where recent immigrants lived.

But the next generation got out. And what's happening now, you're seeing in, especially in the Midwest with like Dearborn and in Minnesota with the Somalis. You see the people coming in and they never leave. Like the next generation doesn't leave. They take it over and their culture permeates as opposed to the American culture.

And I think, for instance, in Somali, Somalia, maybe the only life they know, the only way they know to get by is through theft, stealing, you know, and cheating. And that's their way of life. That's what they come from. That's what they know. And since they don't assimilate, they just do that here.

I had no idea there was so much money for the taking. I had no clue as an American citizen that all All I had to do was slap a misspelled sign on the side of a building, and the government would give me millions of dollars. I had no idea.

Well, greed is universal, and you find it all over the world. You and I and most people in this country, we do the right thing because that is how we are raised. That is what our values are in the United States. But you do have cases of people who don't share those values. And if there's free money to be had, why work for it is the thought.

Again, Accountability is the answer, holding people, not just the people on the street, the common criminal, but the people in government that turned a blind eye and let this happen, or worse, profited from it. Keith Ellison and Tim Walsh, especially, have got to be held accountable. Last question, I'll let you go. How long, given the scope of this and what we're seeing, for instance, in California, where the $24 million spent on homeless, the state admits they just lost track of it. They don't know where it went.

And now you're hearing rumblings out of Boston, out of Maine, other states, and shockingly, all blue states. What kind of effort is this going to take? I mean, this is monumental. It's huge. Do you see this being able to be done and wrapped up and cleaned up by the end of the Trump presidency?

Yeah. White collar cases and fraud investigations like this take time. Think about the minutiae, the reams of paper with the documents and the numbers that have to be gone through that have to be looked at by a human being. I don't know if it can be finished in such a short period of time, but the more important question is, is it going to start now? And the answer is yes.

They're launching the resources. The FBI is surging, and they're looking at it. One by one, they're going to start tackling this problem. Yeah. I don't know.

It d I I get that they're going to tackle it. I just. I don't know. I just don't have a lot of faith in the Republicans. They managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory every single time.

So, hopefully, Cash Patel is a different animal, and hopefully, the FBI can really get in there and get this done. John Yannarelli, thank you so much for joining me. You can follow him on X at FBI John. That's super easy. And check out his books: Disorderly Conduct and How to Spot a Terrorist.

Thank you so much, John. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Mary. All the best. Thank you.

More coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. From breaking news to big name guests, Brian brings you insight you won't hear anywhere else. You're listening to the Brian Kill Meat Show. you If you're interested in it, Brian's Talking About It. You're with Brian Kilmead.

A major hit to Barack Obama's legacy, Obamacare. Congress's watchdog, the GAO, found massive systemic fraud in Obamacare. $21 billion potentially in fraud in just 2023 alone. 58,000 dead people got $94 million, but Obamacare was why Democrats shut down the government last month for 43 days. They want $400 billion more in subsidies.

The Senate votes next week on a Democrat plan to try to get that spending. That was Liz McDonald on Fox Business Channel. This is why.

Now it all makes sense why they're screaming so loudly about these extended. Health care, Obamacare benefits that they want. And do you know that right if we If we give them these extended benefits, they're only paying, recipients are only paying seven percent. of their Premiums. That's it.

We pay the rest of it.

So it went from, I think, 35% when Obamacare was first initiated, and we keep giving them more and more and more and more and more until it's now 7% is all they have to pay for.

So of course, they're screaming that healthcare is unaffordable. If the subsidy is end, healthcare is unaffordable. I'm like, well, yes, if someone else is paying the bulk of the bill. Things become unaffordable when you have to pay for it, right? When someone else is paying, it's very affordable.

But this is why all of our premiums are going up and up and up because Obamacare was designed to fail. And you know that from the very beginning. Our president, Barack Obama, was a constitutional lawyer, remember? Yet he didn't know that constitutionally he could not force people to buy a product, purchase a product, health care. Insurance.

He could not force Americans to do that.

So they knew that that part of the plan was going to fail.

So they knew that if they couldn't force people who are healthy and young to buy insurance, or people who just didn't feel like buying insurance, 'cause they knew they could go to the hospital and get taken care you know, their bumps and bruises and aches and pains taken care of for free. then they're not going to purchase it. And so they also knew that without that provision in Obamacare, it never would have passed a CBO analysis, never would have passed. It would have been, they would have said it's unsustainable. This is unsustainable.

So they put that in there knowing darn well that it was unconstitutional. And that it would be challenged and that it would be struck down, but it would already be in place, and that's all that mattered to them. They want single-payer health care. And think about this.

So we have a government program where people pay only 7% of the premiums. We have Medicaid, we have Medicare, three nationwide health care plans run by the government and funded through taxes. Why do we need three? That's what I don't understand. Why do we need three?

I get Medicaid is for one group. Medicare is for when you hit 65. And you know, there it's great. Not everybody's got to go on it when you hit 65. If you have private health insurance, that's fantastic.

And then Obamacare and Obamacare, ACA. And this is the problem, and this is why there's so much fraud because we keep creating more and more programs. And then the states have Medi-Cal in California, the states all have their individual programs for state-run health care to fill the gap. But a lot of it, those programs get federal money as well. The government is just writing the money is just it's like a it's like a money cannon and it just keeps coming and coming and coming and coming.

And when that happens, it's I it's kind of easy to see how they lose track of the money. Minnesota has 14 Medicaid programs. According to authorities, the fourteen services funded by Medicaid dollars that have been identified as high risk for billing irregularities include early intensive developmental and behavioral intervention services for autism boom, we know there's fraud there, integrated community supports, nonrent housing assistance and counseling, Yeah. Non-emergency medical transportation. Boom, we know there's fraud there.

Peer recovery services. I don't even know what that is. Adult rehabilitative mental health services, adult day services, personal care assistance, non-medical bathing, eating assistance, recuperative care, individualized home supports. How is individualized home support different than personal care assistance? Adult companion services, night supervision, assertive community treatment, intensive residential treatment services, and housing stabilization services.

Mm-hmm. The tax was somewhere along the line, we decided that the taxpayer was going to meet every single one of your needs. If you have a problem, you need somebody to watch Grandma at night, don't worry, we got you. It's And a lot of these programs, again, are rife with fraud. And a lot of the people involved in it providing the services, some of them are wonderful, but some of them really aren't.

None of those services involve a doctor or a nurse with medical training. They don't require any training at all.

Now, I would think that, you know, I don't know if you're. Doing Read rehabilitative mental health services, you probably should have someone with some kind of medical degree. The elimination of all non-health Medicaid spending should be part of the discussion as we go into this negotiation with the Obamacare. enhanced subsidies. Those programs do not necessarily improve health outcomes, and they are a magnet for fraud and abuse, and that's 100%.

We're going to be talking, I'm sure, as the days go on, more and more and more about this, as more and more fraud is discovered. Mary Walter on the Brian Kilmead Show. From Hyatt. Top Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division.

It's Brian Killmead. And now Mary Walter is sitting in for Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. Anywhere along the line, if you'd like to join me, 866-408-7669. Or you can reach out to me on X at Mary Walter Radio.

There's no S, just Mary Walter Radio. And just tag me in a tweet and I'll try to get to it and mute it on the air as we go through the show. Let's talk about the Safer Supervision Act, which is probably something you haven't heard about yet. And it goes along with President Trump's First STEP Act, which he introduced and passed in 2018. And we're talking about our incarcerated population and making their transition, getting them out of jail, first of all, rehabilitating them, getting them out, and helping them get back into society, which I think is a huge, huge problem in this country.

Joining us is Jessica Jackson. Jessica is a human rights attorney and the CEO at Reform Alliance. You can follow her on X at Jessica Jackson. Super easy. Jessica, thank you for joining me here on the Brian Killmead Show.

How are you? I'm good. Thank you for having me on this morning. Absolutely. So, the First Step Act, we all probably remember that name from 2018.

And that was to make changes in criminal law to reform our federal prisons and sentencing laws because so many of these men and women who leave prison wind up coming back due to reoffending. And this is something that I'm somewhat interested in. There used to be a show on television called 60 Days In. I don't know if you ever saw it. Yeah.

Yeah, okay. And I had no idea that prison was such a hellhole, that it was, you know, fights and just horrific and the bullying. It's just insane. And I understand how it can really damage a person who's maybe. Could be very easily rehabilitated.

So, the first question I have for you is the goal of our Our I guess, reincars rein um incarcer incarceration program in the United States, our jails, our prisons, is it to rehabilitate them? to get them back out or is it to punish? Is it punishment a rehabilitation?

Well, listen, I think when President Trump came in the first time, he inherited a mess inside of our prisons. You had people going into prison, some of them for very petty crimes or for white-collar crimes or for low-level drug offenses, and they would spend decades in there and they would come out worse. Oftentimes you saw recidivism. You saw people going in and about 49% of them ending up committing new crimes. And President Trump is a businessman.

He took a look at this and he said, never in my life would I invest in a system where there was 49% failure. And so we got to work and a huge coalition of folks from the right, folks from the left, faith leaders, business leaders all came together, law enforcement all came together, looked at what could be done to turn the situation around. And by the time they were done, there was a little bill called the First Step Act that now we know seven years later has both drastically reduced that recidivism, made it where only about 9.5% of the people who come out end up going back in, so down about 40%. And of those, about 5% of them are going back in not for committing a new crime, but for what's called a technical violation.

So they might be late to a meeting with their probation officer. They might miss paying one of their fines or fees. There's lots of fines and fees. They might not be able to find a job in time. And they get sent back into prison, which only makes the problem worse.

That's why we decided to work with Congress and create the Safer Supervision Act.

So tell us about this the Safer Supervision Act, because you look at different and let me ask you before you tell us about, did you look at different systems across the world to see which ones have the best success rate? And how maybe we could make changes in our system to imitate some of what's already been done instead of recreating the wheel? Yeah, it's interesting you ask that. I've actually not been asked that before, but I'm excited to share with you that not only did we look at systems around the world, we actually compiled them into a white paper and brought that with us to the United Nations, where we were able to pass a resolution that adopted creation of a framework for all the countries.

So we spoke to over 92 different NGOs in different countries, different organizations in different countries who told us, this is what's working here. This is what's not working here. And then we took the best practices from those. We looked at the evidence. We also looked at the evidence here in America because we have worked across the country.

In fact, we passed 22 bills in 12 different states across the country.

So we looked at places where the system is working better, where those bills that we had passed are actually making safer communities, saving resources, and helping America. Americans get back into jobs even if they are under supervision.

So, Florida, Virginia, we looked at Pennsylvania, where we had done a whole bunch of reforms, and we were able to find the ones that were working the best and put it together for this bill. Let's talk about some of the changes. And which system did you find to be the most effective? I'm curious as to which country's system. Yeah, Norway actually interestingly enough, so they went through sort of the same crisis that we went through with the prisons, where in the 1970s, they took a look at their prisons and they said, listen, people are going in there and they're getting worse when they come home.

And not only that, but when they come home, they can't work, so we have to support them for the rest of their lives, or they commit new crimes. And they said, we've got to change this.

So they actually underwent a huge process and have turned around their prison systems to where they're now considered the best in the world. In fact, I've seen several of our state facilities have taken their correctional guards and wardens over there to look at the prisons and see what they're doing and see how they can model their facilities after them because they do have such incredible rates of people returning and getting into work and getting their lives back together. And yes, there was a blip somewhere in their life and they do. Deviated from the path, but they're back on that path and they are paying their taxes and they are supporting their families and they're going to church and they're doing great things, right?

So, um, That's one of the countries I would say is a model for us because they've just been able to go from where we were to turning their prisons around. I had seen a documentary, I guess it was, on the Swedish system, which I would assume the Nordic countries are very much the same. Sweden, you know how we are, Sweden, Norway, whatever. That's how Americans are. And the difference is how and we're going to take a quick break, and I'm going to come back on the other side to definitely delve into the Safer Supervision Act.

But what percentage of American prisoners get reoffend just to get back into prison because the life is structured and they're guaranteed a roof over their head, they're guaranteed some sort of health care, and they're guaranteed food. Because when they walk out the door, we hand them a bag with the stuff they brought into prison and hope somebody picks them up and sends them on their way.

So how many reoffend just so they can get back into the life that they know? I don't have a number for you on that, but I will tell you that there is a huge crisis of people coming out who are unable, not just because they don't have the resources, but also because of the laws we have in place to get into employment, to get into housing, to be able to provide for themselves. And what we found is that oftentimes people really do want to be able to provide for themselves. It's just not set up for them to succeed. All right, we've got more coming up with Jessica Jackson.

We'll find out more about the Safer Supervision Act and how these changes will hopefully help get a lot of these men and women out of prison and back into life for good. That's next on the Brian Kilmead Show. Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead. Uh Um Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show.

Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. I am joined by Jessica Jackson. She's a human rights attorney and CEO at Reform Alliance. You can follow her on X at Jessica Jackson. We're talking about the Safer Supervision Act, which is a new public safety bill, and it is Aimed at reforming federal supervised release of prisoners to make it more tailored to individual needs.

So, in other words, not one size fits all. Jessica, so tell me about this. How is this? What are the problems it's addressing? Which problems, and how?

Yes.

So let me tell you a little bit from the human perspective of when you're put on supervision, because this is something that I don't think a lot of people know about, although we did just do some polling with the President's own pollster, Tony Fabrizio, and we found out that Of the voters who voted for President Trump, about Eight out of ten of them actually knew somebody who had been in the criminal justice or had been impacted themselves.

So either were close to somebody who had been in the criminal justice system or had been impacted by it itself.

So it's really, really grown over the last few decades. But what we're seeing is when a person comes home from prison, so we're talking about Americans who have served their time in the federal system coming home from prison, these are not undocumented folks, these are Americans, otherwise you would have been deported. They are put on something called supervision. And it used to be that only a few people would be put on it. But over the years, it was expanded to where it's almost everybody.

And now you've got the probation officers saying, listen, we have hundreds of cases. We can't possibly help all of these people get their lives back on track. You've got all these conditions being placed on people that make it really hard for them to succeed.

So things like you can't leave the jurisdiction, the county that you're in, right?

So I go across the bridge every day into New York to work. I could not go from New Jersey to New York to work. I would be at risk of going back to prison. Or they have things like you can't open a financial account. We had a guy who came home and needed a car to go back and forth to work.

He went and took out a line of credit because he didn't have any money saved up since he'd been in prison, took out a line of credit and was violated for doing that, put in prison just for getting a car so he could go back and forth to work. That's crazy. You can't be around people who also have a criminal conviction. We just shared a story on our social reform program. about a guy named Duke Tanner who actually got a commutation from the president and came home, wanted to spread his mother's ashes with his brother.

Unfortunately, his brother also had a criminal record. And so his probation officer said, no, you guys can't come together and spread your mother's ashes. Just heartbreaking stuff that is really keeping Americans from being able to work and being able to get back on their feet.

So I kind of understand the not hanging out with other people with a record because that tends to it's like drug addicts not hanging out with other drug addicts, right? Because between the two of you, The stupidity usually grows, right? And so somebody's going to suggest something stupid, and the next thing you know, off, they're back in.

So I kind of understand that, but I think for something like spreading your mother's ashes, why can't there be like a waiver for that? Like, why not? Exactly. Exactly. Well, so what we're saying is: look, let's think about this rationally and let's give the judges a little bit more discretion, right?

They can say, in this case, this condition applies to you because this condition is related to what crime you actually committed, right?

So maybe if you had a fraud case, you shouldn't work at a bank, right? That makes sense. Maybe if you had a DUI, you shouldn't be a school bus driver, right?

So looking at the different factors that came into that crime and actually imposing the conditions based on that. But we feel like, you know, this is going to really help get people back to work because it's such a hard thing to go back to work. You then. Let's say you're lucky enough to find a job inside your county, right?

So you don't have to worry about being violated for leaving the county. And then you either will get a random call saying, hey, you have to come to the probation office right now and report or do a drug test and then you have to miss a bunch of work, right? Or you have a probation officer coming to your place of employment and employers don't like that. It makes them not want to hire people who are on supervision.

So we're looking at things like that and saying, look, how can we bring some smart into this system? How can we actually set people up for success? And most importantly, how can we actually return this to its original intent where probation officers have a manageable caseload and then they can actually focus their resources on the people who are the biggest risk, right? Whose cases were the most serious cases. We want them to be focused on them, not the guy who's back on his feet, got a job, taking care of his family, committed some low-level drug crime, and now is getting tripped up by the system and kept for.

Working or kept from being with his family. Yeah, and I would think that there are a lot of creative programs around the country. You know, you see where they train dogs, for instance. And it's amazing how, when caring for something else, because you got to look, you don't wind up in prison with these low-level crimes over and over and over again because you had a great upbringing, right? That's just not how it works.

Just having an animal to care for that is dependent on you, and that if you screw up, this animal is now going to wind up with somebody else, that type of thing. They have some stake in something and they're given responsibility. And how much it changes their outlook. And I just think there are so many creative programs that could be expanded to other prisons and jails across the country. I think the, before we run out of time, I think the other problem that I've learned from watching 60 Days In, by the way, is the overcrowding.

It's the overcrowding because, again, the documentary I saw in the Swedish system showed how much they have individual dorm rooms, right? And they have to keep it clean, and they have to do this and they have to do that. In American prisons, the gang problem, I think, makes guys who normally just want to get away from gang life, forces them to now join a gang. And the next thing you know, that's what runs the prisons. Listen, and 42% of our jails and prisons nationally are filled with people who are there because of supervision violations.

So they have not necessarily committed a new crime. They might have missed a meeting with their probation officer or been out, you know, past curfew. Maybe they couldn't make it home in time or they might have, you know, been, again, around somebody else. Maybe they went to mom's house for Thanksgiving and there was Uncle Teddy who had a criminal conviction. I saw the craziest example of it when I brought Judith Negron to the White House last administration.

To meet with President Trump and thank him for a clemency. She was then threatened by her probation officer to be sent back to prison because she had been there with somebody else who had a criminal conviction, and that was Alice Murray Johnson.

So, you know, we got to insert some SMART into the system. We're hoping to pass the Safer Supervision Act and be able to save some valuable resources and make our communities safer. Yeah, I love this.

Well, from what I've heard of it, I really like it. I don't know why I'm so interested in this, just because I think it's a broken system and it just seems so dumb to me. And, you know, that, so I'm really interested in that. And I want you to bring back judges who, like, if a kid steals a car and then takes it for a joy ride and crashes it, he has to pay a dollar a day or a dollar a year or a dollar a month for the rest of his life to make restitution to that drive. Like, we need more common sense to help them put them in the position of the victim.

And I think that that would help a lot more. But I realize that's asking a lot.

So you should make me a judge. I would do things like that. I love it. I love it. That's wonderful.

Jessica Jackson, thank you so much for joining me. Super interesting. Follow her on X at Jessica Jackson and follow the Safer Supervision Act, and we'll see what happens. Thank you for the good work that you're doing. I really appreciate it.

And thank you for joining me on the Brian Kill Me show. Yes.

All right, coming up on the show, we're going to talk about something, a total change of pace, all right? Change of pace is something that I posted on X. Last week, I think it was, and it blew up. And I'm going to get your opinion on it coming up right here. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead.

Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. Yes, you are listening to the Brian Kilmead Show, and I'm Mary Walter, sitting in for Brian Kilmead. You can reach out to me on X at Mary Walter Radio. No S.

And don't forget, my podcast is on Tuesday nights. It is live. It's actually a live cast. It's 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time.

It is live on Rumble, YouTube, and Getter. And you get the audio on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Spreaker. Just look for Mary Walter Radio. Again, no S, I will admit. This past Tuesday's podcast, livecast, which we're coming up on a week, has, I just finally got it posted up on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Spreaker.

It was a crazy, crazy week.

So I just did not have the time, but it's up there now. And this coming Tuesday, tomorrow, as a matter of fact, this coming Tuesday, it will be the, if you join me, it's the IT department will be joining me, and it's just us.

So your comments, your questions, and it's a lot of fun.

So feel free to join us.

So, all right.

So on X last week, this guy posts from the finance news. I have no idea what it is. He reposts someone else who says, housing has become increasingly out of reach for younger generations, and many households are now abandoning the goal of home ownership altogether. And he reposts it and says, only a few decades ago in the United States, our parents were able to buy homes, cars, raise children, take multiple vacations, afford health care, college, and groceries, and then retire all on one middle-class salary. What happened?

So I've seen these posts everywhere about, you know, boomers and Gen X, you know, had no problem financially. We just got out of college, us Gen Xers, we just got out of college and we just walked into a house when we were 25 years old, bought a nice house, had two cars, didn't have student loans, we could afford healthcare, we could afford everything, and we were traveling all over the world.

So I responded and said, The problem is that that is just not true. We took one vacation down the Jersey Shore for a week and we stayed in one motel room with a small kitchenette. Honest to God, true. My parents had a bedroom, and then in that bedroom was a rollaway bed that you rolled up against the wall, like would fold up against the wall, and then you would, it was like a cot that one of us would sleep in in my parents' room. And then two others would sleep on the folding couch, the high-to-bed couch, in what was the one living room that had a little table with two chairs for the dining room, had a little kitchenette that had one burner.

An oven and a sink. That was it. And that was our vacation. We also went camping every now and then. And my parents called that vacation.

Health care was affordable because the government wasn't involved. My parents' home had three bedrooms, one bathroom, a small kitchen, one car garage, no A C, and was tiny compared to today's homes. Granted, later in life, my parents moved out of there and bought a bigger home. But their starter home that everybody's screaming about, that nobody can buy anymore, that was it. It was a small, tiny little house.

College was affordable because the government wasn't involved. My parents never had food delivered to the house. My mother didn't get manicures. My mother sewed a lot of our clothes, or else we got hammy-downs from the older neighborhood kids. There was a family that lived diagonally across the street from us.

Still remember, their house was red, and I thought it was so different because their house was red with white shutters. And they had five girls, the McGrath girls. And they were all older than I.

So, guess who wore those clothes for the sixth time? Me. I did. And I used to call them hand-me-downs 'cause I like wanted new clothes and I wanted to, you know, like all this stuff. And I just wore the McGrath Girls hand-me-down clothes.

Except for like Christmas and things like that, where I would get a special dress. But my parents were big on hand-me-downs. They're like, You're going to grow out of these so fast. Why should we buy you new stuff when somebody else is getting rid of it that their kids grew out of?

So that's what we had. We received presents for birthdays and Christmas only. There was one T V in the house and we got seven channels because we were in the New York metro area. And I said, You're not comparing apples to apples. And I took a lot of blowback, but a lot of people agreed with me.

So 866-408-7669 is my number. 866-408-7669 or Mary Walter Radio on X with no S. Just tag me in a post. D does Gen Z just have this warped view of what life was like for those who went before them? And even a little to a a certain extent m the millennials?

Have a different view of a very skewed view of what life was like if you were growing up in Gen X, right? Like the homes that our parents owned that we grew up in. And yes, we moved. We were very blessed. We moved.

And my parents got a much bigger house, and everybody had their own bedroom. It was four bedrooms instead of three. And we had one bathroom for the kids to use. My parents had their own bathroom, and then there was a little half-bath downstairs, but it was a big improvement over one bathroom with a half-bath in the basement. We did have air conditioning, but my father refused to turn it on.

You know, my parents still never had food delivered to the house ever. To this day, I don't have food delivered to the home. My mother did start to get manicures for special occasions when she got older. That was her thing. She did.

And we did get to buy clothes. There were no malls because I lived in rural New Jersey, but you would drive to the mall. It was like an hour away in order to buy clothes. But we still only got presents for birthday and Christmas. I look at people now, like I've worked with a lot of younger people, and they're complaining.

And this was this, gosh, these are millennials, I would assume. And they would complain, and I'd listen to it. I kept my mouth shut about how they can't afford to buy a house. We're trying to buy a house, but it's so expensive. And I'm like, you don't cook.

Every single meal is delivered to your home. Every single one, because I hear you talk about it. You all have Amazon Prime because you can't wait two days to get something on Amazon. You know, you get the eyelashes being done. She told me where to get my eyelashes done with one of the women.

I was like, oh, okay. And I know how expensive that was. And the manicures and all that stuff. And I'm like, there's so many ways you could cut costs and afford something, but you've got to save money.

So, I just think that there's a skewed vision of what life was like before they graced the planet. 866-408-7669. And I don't want to bash younger people. I just think that they weren't really. Maybe they just don't know history, but they're, and I think the media has a lot to do with this: that they're victimized because they can't afford a house as soon as they walk out of college.

Christopher in Florida, you're going to kick it off for us here on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hello, Christopher.

Well, hello and happy new year. And I completely agree with everything you're saying. Um these young people today don't understand That it must A first home was never easily attainable. It it required work, sacrifice, savings. I think the other big issue you have right now Is a lot of these people who are complaining the most are living in these very large.

Urban sidings which have never, ever, ever been inexpensive to live in. They're extremely inefficient. You eat out every night in New York. You spend a lot of money on cabs and this and that. There I think that this is all a function of this whole Um Generation that really is envious and quite frankly, not willing to put in the hard work to get what you need to get in life.

And you know what? I blame our generation for raising them. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday who said You know, his son dropped out of college. And I was like, Well, your son wasn't really college ready, in my humble opinion, but his parents really wanted him to go. And I said, Well, so what's he doing?

And he's in his early twenties.

Well, you know, he plays on he's on his computer a lot. I'm like, Okay, does he have a job?

Well, no. You know, he doesn't want to work. I'm like, okay. And they're like, Well, you know, it's really hard to get kids to do things today. I'm like, because you never set expectations for 'em.

So I kind of blame the parents. For the way the children are. And every generation blames the generation after them, right? I understand that that's at work, and I understand that I sound like I'm 800 years old and I'm going to keep the ball if it comes in my yard. I get it.

But there is something generational about this view of what life was like before and how they should be aggrieved because we have somehow made it so hard for them. I get that things are more expensive, but it was more expensive for my generation than it was for my parents. Both of us are working. My mom did not work outside of the home. She made her clothes, though.

So, you know, there's give and take. Anyway, so I'll get more of your calls coming up 866-408-7669 on the Brian Kilmey Show. Real talk, real guests, real insight. Where curiosity meets conversation is the Brian Killmeat Show. Yeah.

The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. I don't forget everything else. Hey, I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead, and we're talking about the generational divide. And I think it happens with every generation.

But I find that Gen Z is always like, oh, we can't get ahead, we can't get ahead. And college is more expensive, but college is more expensive because everybody begged for free college.

So when the government starts giving out money to anybody who wants to go, you know, study underwater. Carpet looming, you know, they get it. Sure, that sounds like a great degree.

So they come out of college with gender studies degrees and they can't understand why they're a barista.

Well, because you got a degree in a major in which you're never going to be able to be gainfully employed. And if you are, those jobs are few and far between. If you had asked a bank for that loan, they would have looked at you and laughed and told you, Thanks again. You know, try again. We're not going to pay for this.

But when the government's handing out the money, everybody gets it.

Now they have this huge debt, this huge loan, and they have all of this. Interest that is accruing. But yet, when they were given a pause on the loans, when they were given a During COVID, it wasn't forgiveness, but they were given a pause. You didn't have to pay it back. It was like a holiday that they got.

How many of them put still made the payments, but put it in a bank account? Put it in a savings account, even a savings account, you're still gonna get like a little tiny bit of interest on it. How many of them did that?

So that when it was time to pay the bill again, They had this huge chunk of money that they could just throw at their debt. and make a big dent in it probably very few of them. And they complain that they can't afford a house. And they seem to think that boomers and you know, boomers moved into homes complete with maids, and that Gen X moved into their first home, and it was like this beautiful four-bedroom with a pool in the back, and you know, it was this great home. And that's just not reality.

And I talked about my parents' first home. Three bedrooms, one bath, a half bath in the basement. No air conditioning. Tiny one car garage. It was a very small little house.

I was probably half the size of the average house today.

So they want more, they get more, but but they're looking for more and then complaining they can't afford it.

So, is it true? Are there complaints true to some extent? I think it is, but I also think part of it is because. They have a total disillusioned view of what life was like before them. Let's go to Virginia.

Hank, welcome. You're on the Brian Kilmead show. Hi. Hey, how you doing? Good, good.

Go ahead. What I wanted to say, I I was born in New York City in in the early sixties and we had two my two brothers. We had an apartment in New York City, two bedrooms, and when they finally saved enough money, we moved to T Neck and then we moved to Duma and then finally we My mother had enough money to move us to beautiful Hillsdale. But we had to have jobs. I mean, we had chores, and then we'd have to go out there and rake leaves, shovel snow.

We had to have a paper out, and when we were done with all that, then she'd say, well, go out there and play. We weren't allowed to sit around and watch TV and do Facebook. I just think all that social media and the iPhone has really damaged kids today. Absolutely. You can look at the numbers over the past twenty years.

Kids have gotten more lazy and they've gotten Put on tight. And I think part of it is because parents have been so inundated with the 24-hour news cycle, which didn't exist for the most part, right, when we were kids. There was no, yeah, CNN, yes, was a thing, but it was much late. You know, I was older when CNN was a thing. But our, so if a kid was kidnapped in Idaho, my parents didn't know anything about it in New Jersey.

Like, nobody knew. But now, with the 24-hour news cycle, every single kid who's kidnapped or assaulted or whatever, every parent knows about it.

So now we have this perception that there is a predator behind every tree, right, that's going to steal your kid. And we didn't have cell phones. My mother used to tell me to stick a dime in my shoe when I was walking into town because there was one payphone at the gas station.

So I was like, well, if I'm being abducted, let's hope it's near the gas station, you know? But I think that that's part of it, is this fear of my kids going to be abducted?

So we insulated them and we coddled them, and it was a play date that we didn't just send them out there and they had to have an activity. And I think that that, you know, it's a great point, Robert. Thank you so much for joining me. Let's move on. I want to take some of these somewhat quickly because.

I want to get you all in before we run out of time. Let's head to Kelly out on Long Island. Kelly, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Welcome.

Well, thank you for having me. Great show. All right.

With all due respect, I'm about your age. I don't mean that's why I'm saying with all due respect, but the two callers and yourself, I think you're mischaracterizing the viewpoint of the younger people.

Okay, good. Because and then you just throw in these straw man arguments and the cell phones that has nothing to do with the economics of the true basic thing, which is housing, whether you're renting or whether you're getting a house one day. And uh transportation. And both of those things have gone up astronomically. There's so many videos that show this.

I'm like you, my father had, and my father had a blue-collar job, and he was able to support three kids. We didn't have to hand-me-down, but we didn't get the latest and the greatest either, right? And I'm with you on the Christmas and birthday. That was it. Younger people today, yes, maybe they're more coddled, but if you.

Use an example of someone, like, let's say I had a kid that was 25 or 30 or something. That kid's chance for doing as well as me Well, they do better because I never got married, so my financial situation was limited as it was. But as doing as well as his grandfather, even if he had a college degree or no college degree, forget about college. Just use an example of an 18-year-old who does not go to college. He goes right to work and he gets the blue-collar job.

That young man is never going to be able to do as well as the young man growing up in the 80s or the 60s, just based on housing and everything else.

Now, if he's going to order avocado toast, and that's going to be the argument that they get too many things, possibly, but they don't all do that. And what do we say to those people? And you can also understand why people give up. I get it. Now, social media plays into that.

I won't say it doesn't. But. You know, for a long time a lot of people have struggled and felt it was them. And that wasn't a great feeling either.

So I don't know what the answer is, but we have to have a more nuanced beauty. Older people like to think that they just work so hard and that's how they made a success of their lives. It's not that life. It's not like that at all.

Now, to be fair, I'm going to just push back a little bit here. I have seen video after video after video after video of young people crying. The latest one I saw was a girl crying, literally in tears, sitting at a table with her manicure. beautiful manicure, which I haven't had in I can't tell you how many decades. Beautiful manicure.

And she's complaining. And her eyelashes, you know, not overdone. They were actually nice. And she's crying about how she can't afford the rent on her apartment, on my two-bedroom apartment. And I'm thinking to myself, sweetheart, get a roommate like I did.

Get a roommate. My first apartment, I had a roommate. The only person I knew, I got transferred to Texas. The only person I knew was the bank teller who was about my age, and I was in there all the time, every week.

So she and I became friends.

So she and I got an apartment together, and I had no furniture. I didn't even own a bed because it had a car loan, a student loan, and my rent. I didn't even have a bed. My floor, my bed, was my mattress cover. and a bunch of um and um sheets and some blankets on the floor.

My clothes were folded along the wall. I didn't have a dresser, I didn't have anything. Get a roommate if you can't afford your two bedroom apartment. I don't know. Get get an efficiency if you have to.

But that to me is where I draw, like, I get it, life is hard. Uh, and it's each generation, it's things are more expensive, right? Things are more expensive for each generation. I understand that. Is rent more expensive now?

Yeah, but you can thank your government for that because, with the importation of all these illegals, and they're putting their rent subsidies that they're not giving our kids.

So there's a lot that does come into play with this. Kelly, I'm so glad you called. Thank you. Have a wonderful new year. And thank you so much for listening to the Brian Kilmead Show.

From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead. And welcome to the Brian Kill Me Show. I'm Mary Walter sitting for Brian. I hope everyone is doing well, having a great day.

Thank you so much for joining me. Coming up later this hour, Tommy Laren will be joining us. She's the co-host of the big weekend show Saturdays and Sundays on Fox from 5 to 8 p.m. Eastern time. But joining us right now, Griff Jenkins, Fox and Friends weekend co-host.

You can find him on X at Griff Jenkins. Griff, what an honor to have you joining me this morning. Thank you so much. Hey, Mary Walter. It is always an honor and a privilege to join you.

Happy New Year. Hope you had an amazing Christmas. And boy, I'll tell you, there's no shortage of news. You know, this is usually the time of year where we're past Christmas. It's not yet New Year's.

We don't really know what to do with ourselves.

Some people don't even get out of their pajamas. But yet, the president leaning into a whole slew of things, and the news cycle is on fire. It truly is. Of course, the biggest story, believe it or not, comes from a citizen journalist who I know you spoke with, Nick Shirley, and some guy named Dave. Do we know Dave's last name or is he just Dave?

We don't know Dave. Dave is a fantastic citizen who leaned in to help Nick Shirley and expose. You know, listen, I've been a reporter for more than. Than two decades. And to see a citizen journalist out there literally pulling back the curtain in ways that visually drive home just how really ridiculously the fraud was is a refreshing thing to see.

It is, but at the same time, it's scary and sad because we kind of all knew that this was happening, like there was fraud going on. But the scope of the fraud that is alleged in Minnesota is more than all Somalia's entire GDP. Yeah, I mean, listen, you know, for our listeners who are just sort of learning about this story, and we've been talking about it here on Brian's show and, of course, on Fox News for quite a number of days. It really, it was a tweet yesterday afternoon from FBI Director Cash Patel that said, listen, it's $9 billion, and that's on the low end. We think this is just the tip of the iceberg.

And, you know, over the weekend on Fox and Friends, Mary, we had Indiana Governor Mike Braun on, a Republican governor, and we had really told the tale of two states of how they handled it. Mike Braun is expected to recover. To save, rather, $466 million over the next two years in Medicaid reform, alone, just Medicaid, because what they did is they started a year ago to implement real eligibility checks to stop exactly the sort of things that have been widespread running in. Minnesota. And now, when you see Nick Shirley's video and you see just how easy it was to steal millions upon millions of dollars, that we now know from convictions of more than 50 people so far that this money went back overseas.

We know that it bought luxury vehicles, villas in the Maldives, and a whole slew of really egregious uses of just stealing this money. And now you also have Washington getting involved, right? You have Congresswoman Marionette Miller-Mee. Who introduced just before Congress left the Walls Act to literally try and stop this widespread fraud? And it came about because, remember, back during COVID in 2020, at least in the state of Minnesota, they ran wild with this.

Elon O'Marr drops the Meals Act, which basically was going to fast-track the ability to just run money out the door. And so the saddest part of this is that these programs were intended to originally make sure that no poor child didn't have a meal, a lunch during COVID when schools were closed. And, you know, that was a valiant, perhaps, intention, but look at how it's been abused to a level really never seen. But so here's my thing: I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit with you. We, and I've been saying this throughout the day, why do we have so many programs that do exactly the same thing?

Because these kids, you know, aren't getting their meals in school. Where's the snap money that their parents are collecting that's supposed to feed them? Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, listen, it's what strikes me most interesting. Mary, is that why wasn't that question asked?

So long ago. And it's not just SNAP, it's TAMP, it's all of these programs. There are a number of these programs which are redundant and overlap. And ultimately, I think the answer, and I'm just sort of making an observation here, is it just became more and more attractive for Democrat-led states, in this case, like Minnesota, to go for government handouts rather than trying to set up your state and run it more like a corporation where there are financial accountability checks put in place that are stringent and actually work.

So, you mentioned Mike Braun, and I guess my question to you is: if we know, and I'll tell you about. I'm sure you know about the state audit of California that found up to $70 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse, of $24 billion that they just lost track of on housing for the homeless. And again, why when we have HUD, why are we giving out even more money for that? How does it benefit red states to be fiscally responsible when blue states are wildly fiscally irresponsible? Obviously, not all, but in general.

And the taxpayer money from the red states that's fiscally responsible gets sent to the blue states to put in to rinse through, launder through to NGOs that go to Democrat pockets that go to their coffers. Right. Follow the money, right? Follow the money. That's why you're seeing people like Congresswoman Miller Meeks trying to get something going at the congressional level.

And it's pretty clear that the Trump administration has said, this party's over. We're stopping this. And, you know, you raised California. That's a great point. I interviewed this past week.

On Will Kane's show, a New York assemblyman named Jake Blumencranz, and he was saying, listen, we are looking hard at possible Medicaid fraud here in New York at the hands of Governor Hochul for doing exactly the same thing. And he said, you know, when you talk at the budgets of the state of New York dwarfs that of Minnesota, suggesting that there would be an even larger pool of money to be subject to fraud, waste, and abuse in here.

So it'll be interesting to see that if, even though, by the way, it's rich to point out that there's little traction of this in the mainstream media of other news networks actually following this. But just like the border, when Bill Meluzhan and I stood there with thousands coming across and no other network would do it, guess what? Eventually other networks had to come down: NBC, CBS, ABC. All of a sudden, I would see some of my fellow journalists. Because it was undeniable.

In the case of Minnesota, this is becoming undeniable, egregious waste of taxpayer money, in this case, Minnesotans money up to the tune of $1,500 per person, according to one of the 100 mayors that wrote the governor. And you're going to see California, New York, and Ohio. Mahec Cook, the attorney there, saying that she is starting to uncover some fraud in Ohio, actually tied, she says, to some of the Somali community. Smaller, but they have a significant Somali community in Ohio as well. You're going to see, once all these states, particularly the Blue Run states, the Democrats that have allowed this to happen on their watch, you're going to see it grow.

And the more that it grows, it'll become undeniable that other news organizations will have to report on it.

Okay, so let me ask you, we know that Keith Ellison is involved. He's got to be involved in this, right? Like, because we know that witnesses, whistleblowers, had said that they complained. To Keith Ellison's office. They complained to Tim Walls' office that they blew the whistle and nothing was done.

So I find it hard to believe that Tim Wals and Keith Ellison knew nothing about this. But my question is: are they too big to jail? They're part of the ruling class, so they're above the law, and they're Democrats, so they're above the law. Do we see big names held accountable, at least for Minnesota?

Well, the residents of Minnesota will certainly say that they hope so. And remember, Chairman James Comer of the House Oversight Committee has said that Walls and Ellison are likely going to be subpoenaed to come and face grilling and really uncover all of this. And at that point, Governor Walls can make his case that he has tried to prosecute and he has, you know, been for years in his statement. He says he's been chasing fraud. But ultimately, you know, House committees do not have the power to prosecute.

However, they can recommend it for prosecution. And what comes of the Oversight Committee's investigation will obviously lead to whether or not there will be some sort of federal prosecution or otherwise. You know, the saddest part of this, by the way, just to add, is in the letter that the 100 mayors wrote to Governor Walls, they talk about how the fraud that. Walls allowed and Ellison allowed to happen there hurt ultimately all of the cities in the state because they look to the state to figure out how they plan their budgets. And they have to be a year ahead, right?

They have to plan for things. And so they have slowly had to figure ways around shortfalls because what trickled down from the widespread fraud was financial hardship for state cities in the state. And that's the part where you talk about, you know, will anyone be held accountable?

Well, I mean, you don't just have a few upset whistleblowers. And by the way, it's also rich that Walls and Ellison seem to not go after those committing the actual fraud, but rather went after and tried to discredit some of those whistleblowers. But ultimately, when you have 100 mayors lining up saying, we want.

Something done because we can't run our cities, that's a whole different level of pressure. Yeah, and they went from something from like an $18 million or billion dollar money in the bank, right? To a $3 million or billion dollar, I forget which one it is, deficit. How sad is it that we like confuse millions with billions, right? Because I don't know if it's a million dollars that they got or a billion dollars.

We're so skewed with money when it comes to operating states and cities. But the bottom line is, these governors also, these mayors also said in that letter, we're going from a surplus to a deficit in just a couple of years. How is that happening with all of this money being funneled through this state? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

So big problems there. And I, Griff, I think you're right. We're going to see this. We're already seeing it in California. I think we're seeing it in Boston.

Boston's being investigated for some fraud up there when it comes to cashing in SNAP and for cash. And we're seeing it in Maine.

Now there's rumblings there. I think you're going to see probably New Jersey and Illinois. And you're going to start to see this pop up in a lot of these states. And people are going to be floored by the amount of money, the billions and billions of dollars that are being sent either overseas or funneled into Democrat coffers. And unfortunately, I think it's going to take years to get the answer.

Griff Jenkins, thank you so much for joining me. I do appreciate you. Have a wonderful new year. I wish you all the best in the new year. Thank you, Mary Walter.

Have a happy new year. And to all our listeners, stay tuned to this story. It's going to get bigger. It is. You can follow him on X at Griff Jenkins.

More coming up on the Brian Kill Me Show. Coming to you on a need-to-know basis, because man, do you need to know? It's Brian Kilmead. The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead.

Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmy. Coming up, Tommy Laren will be joining us. She's the co-host of the big weekend show. 5 to 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturdays and Sundays.

Follow her on exit, Tommy Laurentio M.I. Very quickly. Can I get Ann from Brooklyn in here? We were talking about Gen Z, and are there expectations out of whack? With when they get out of college and what they think they should be able to accomplish by the time they're 30.

My husband and I didn't buy our first and only home until I was almost 40. Let's go to Ann. Hi, Ann. Welcome to the Brian Kill Me Show. Terrific.

I really appreciate the topic. I'm a mom and a grandmother. And the topic comes up very, very clearly in our community. My take on it though Yeah.

Somehow it appears That the current I hate using the current generation, but the youth that is growing in their twenties. Have Um a level or a feeling of victimization. That if they don't get exactly what the guy next door did or what their best friend did, they feel. That that that they're nobody. And this and and and what we what we were Raised to I mean right once.

to strive and to achieve, to work to Yeah. Um, a a feeling of accomplishment. They don't have that. To much of this.

So they're feeling very sorry for themselves. Comfortable. And I think when I'm looking around, we have connections in a couple of. You know, areas, not just in this country, in other parts, where people's struggles are very, very profound. Yeah, listen, first world problems, and I hear that.

And thank you so much. We're up against the clock, but thank you so much. You know, and I do think that they have been taught to feel victimized. I do believe that. But.

Again, has the cost of homes gone up more, become more a larger percentage of your income than it was when other generations bought it? Probably.

Now, let's see what do we have here on next reaching out to me. The home life you describe is a mirror of mine, except I only had one sister, and our first home was a three-bedroom, one-bath row house. For vacation, we drove to relatives in Cleveland and Ontario. Dad worked overtime, mom had a small sewing business in our home, and we ate out at most once a month. Yeah, we did not eat out much at all.

That was it. Like, that was special occasions, eating out from the house. Let's see. This person says to me, and I don't know if this is true, in the 80s and 90s, when baby boomers were buying homes in their 20s and 30s, no. Eighties and nineties?

Baby boomers already had their home right, did they already have their homes by the eighties and nine? Maybe not. The median home price was about three point five to four times the median household income. By the twenties to twenty twenty five, this ratio has risen to five to six times or higher nationally, driven by faster home price growth than income. That may very well be true.

But then I also look at I think what comes into play is you know the major you chose when you went to college, and a lot of people were not made for college. And I think Mike Rowe has been so instrumental in pointing this out. I I have a cousin didn't go to college. Uh he s he went into H V A C. He did his apprenticeship and he learned and all that.

And he eventually broke off and started his own business. And he has an amazing business now, and he makes a lot of money. He does really, really well. And he lives in a very expensive town.

Now, he doesn't live in the riskiest house in that town, obviously, but he still has done super well for himself.

So um I think that there's a lot to be said for this push to go to college, and maybe they were sold that as a generation. But I think it's also incumbent upon you to look when you're making an investment and you're buying something, is this going to pay off? And I think a lot of young people got degrees because they wanted to follow their passion. And not something that would necessarily make them money. Coming up, we'll talk about this a little bit more with Tommy Lehron, co-host of the big weekend show that is coming up next on the Brian Kilweed Show.

He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Killmead. Oh, it's so obvious. If you're living in Minnesota, you have to raise your eyebrows and think what's going on. Literally, if you drive around Minnesota, around Minneapolis, you will see daycare centers, autism centers.

You will then see transportation companies that have snow piled up as if they haven't moved in months. And then you also go into buildings where there'll be 20 healthcare companies, 14 and 22. The video that I published on X and YouTube.

So it is. Like a a kindergartner could figure out that there was fraud going on. Yeah. Ah yes, that was Nick Shirley on The Big Weekend Show. And Tommy Laren is co-host of the Big Weekend Show, 5 to 8 p.m.

Eastern Time on Saturdays and Sundays. Follow her on exit, Tommy Laren, T-O-M-I. Laren, L-A-H-R-E-N. Tommy, thank you for joining me here on the Brian Killmeat Show.

Well, thank you for having me, and thank you for playing that clip from Nick Shirley on Big Weekend Show yesterday. We were so delighted to have him. You know, a 23-year-old out there doing the journalism of what should be a lot of the legacy media networks and journalists out there. He's on the ground, he's working hard. This isn't the only story that he's following, by the way, but this one obviously got national, international attention for obvious reasons.

But as Nick said on the big weekend show, a kindergartner could have found out that there was fraud going on. When you have a learning center that can't spell learning, I think that's a pretty big red flag. Absolutely. Okay, so World was saying, oh, but citizen journalists, this is great. And you've got the vice president calling for him to receive the Pulitzer.

But. Why did no actual journalist in Minnesota Figure this out.

Well, you're looking at the, you know, Minnesota Star Tribune and you're kind of looking at some of the people that run it. And, you know, if you dig into it, you might find that they might not be so sympathetic to what they would consider a conservative cause, which shouldn't be, right? Rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse shouldn't be conservative. But for some, it is, especially when you're friendly with the governor Tim Walls. And there's been a lot of whistleblowing going on in the last several months about folks that might not even be on the right saying, hey, we've got a problem here.

You need to do something about it. Whether he decided to heed those warnings or not, I think we're going to uncover more and more. But now that the American public is invested in this, now that they've watched that YouTube video from Nick Shirley and the X video a hundred million times, right, now people are invested and they want to see heads roll and they want to see accountability. And I love all of our government officials on the right tweeting about this and congratulating Nick Shirley for his journalism, but that's not enough. And a strongly worded letter in this situation is not enough either.

If that quality, alluring Center is still operational in one month. I think it's safe to say that that's going to be a giant frustration and a giant missed opportunity for those in the DOJ and Oversight and other places where this should be definitely sussed out and brought to a close. But that has been a long-standing problem for people who are conservative with the Republican Party because they seem to enjoy the status quo, even if something like this, which we suspect, I think if you follow it back, the bulk of the money is being sent to Somalia. The amount stolen, allegedly stolen, is greater than the GDP of the entire country of Somalia.

So not all of it's going there, but some of it is also being funneled, probably, if you follow the money, back into Democrat pockets. And Republicans seem to be okay, even if taxpayer dollars are funding their political opponents. They're not big on doing anything. Like, where is Pam Bondi with so many of these issues? I think there's just huge frustration.

To your point, with Republican supporters, that they're backing a team that doesn't play to fight, to win. Yeah, exactly. That's the big part of the problem here. And you know what? I have a lot of confidence in the DOJ.

I have a lot of confidence in Pam Bondi and Cash Patel. And I know that they're going to be on this, but we need more than just investigation after investigation. Or in Congress, we have hearing after hearing. And, you know, you get those great sound bites that are great for fundraising for some Republicans. But we want to see people in handcuffs that deserve to be in handcuffs.

We want to see them perp walked. Yes.

And we want to see some of these individuals who shouldn't be in our country. We want to see them deported. And we want to see, again, a lot of this in Minnesota, people forget this is not illegal immigration. This is legal immigration.

So there also needs to be a conversation about that because there are a lot of Republicans, Congressman Tom Emmer being one of them, who were more than happy to welcome in Somali refugees through legal processes.

So again, this is not just a left problem. This is a right problem. And I think some of these folks that are getting mighty chirpy over there on X, they ought to look at their own record and exactly what they did to stop this before it started. And a lot of them did nothing.

So, you know, obviously a lot of this went on for so long, perpetuated itself. Because if you pointed out that they were Somalian, well, you were racist. But there seems to be a theme with some of this in other states as well among the Somali community. And I just think that pointing out the obvious is not necessarily racist. I think you would agree with me on that.

Is this a cultural thing that in Somalia, the only way to get by is by cheating and stealing? And it's hunger games.

So when they come over here and they establish themselves in a community that is not assimilating to American culture and values, that it's going to continue. We shouldn't be surprised. You nailed it right there. Perfectly. Yeah, that's the big problem here.

Listen, when you take people from the third world and you plop them, In the United States of America, and you plop them in Minnesota, no less. All right, I grew up in South Dakota, so I can't imagine how different Minnesota is from Somalia, right? Like it's night and day, and I think probably even more. I don't even know what kind of comparison you could make because there is none. You can't drop people from the third world into these communities, whether it be Minnesota, Ohio, you name it.

You can't plop them there and then expect them to understand the values and the customs or to abide by them. First of all, there's no pressure for them to assimilate. And in fact, in many cases, they're encouraged not to. And you can't expect them to adopt our culture and our norms and our ideals because they weren't born and raised with them. Their families weren't.

So when you have people that are coming from these countries, you know, you import the third world, you're going to get the third world. And that's why there needs to be an honest and serious conversation about legal immigration, asylum, refugee status. We want to help the world, but at some point, when you're being robbed and pillaged, the compassion tends to To dry up among the American people. Yeah, and assimilating. You know, Germans did it, Italians did it.

Irish did it when there were signs up that said Irish need not apply. You know, my German grandparents coming over here on the cusp of World War II, like that was easy for them. I'm not saying, you know, assimilation sometimes isn't easy in this country, and sometimes you are targeted. You know, again, Irish need not apply and how my grandparents were treated when they came here as Germans on the cusp of World War II. But they all managed to do so.

A lot of Asian cultures come here and they assimilate and they do fine. But there are some that just don't seem to assimilate and don't seem to want to assimilate. And I think we need to tackle that. I know we don't have a lot of time with you, but very, very quickly, I know you're a young millennial, and we were talking about Gen Z and how they seem to think that they should be able to come out of college and buy a home by the time they're 30 and they should have this and they should have that and they should all this stuff. Do they have a skewed view of what life is like when you graduate from college or what it should be?

Yeah. They definitely do.

So this is really frustrating to me. And I understand it's hard out there. I don't want to take that away from Gen Z because it is. And things are expensive. And I totally get that.

And I, you know, millennials, a lot of us are in the same boat, right? But when you look at the spending habits of Gen Z, I don't know about you, but my parents got married when they were very young. And neither one of them went to college. They worked and they worked and they worked and they saved and they saved and they saved and then they were able to buy a home eventually. But they worked hard and they didn't have a lot of extra frills and a lot of extra luxuries.

They weren't going out to dinner. They weren't buying expensive tech items. They weren't buying devices and new cars. They were saving money to be able to afford that home. I think that concept is completely lost on Gen Z.

They don't understand it. They think they should be able to have the latest iPhone, the AirPods, the Golden Goose sneakers, and be able to afford a home and take three vacations a year and have unlimited paid time off.

So they're living in a reality that doesn't exist. And that's why they need to come back to Earth. And understand you got to prioritize what you want to spend your money on. You can't have it all. And I understand that things are tough out there, but you got to save a little bit and you're not a victim.

I get really frustrated with that same narrative coming out of Gen Z. And I understand that it takes a greater portion of your income to buy your first home now than it did for generations before you, but it costs more for each generation. You know what I'm saying? Like it costs more for Gen X than it did for baby boomers, right? It costs more for millennials than it did for Gen X.

That's just the way it is. My husband and I, Gen X, we bought our first home when I was almost, we were almost 40, the only home we ever owned. But yet our friend's kids in their late 20s, she's a teacher, he's a cop, they're in their late 20s. They just bought a home. They bought their first home 10 years before my husband and I bought ours.

It's a fixer-upper. They were smart. They got a lot of house, but it needs a lot of work. And they're going to put the sweat equity in and they're going to do it.

So I think it's possible. But very interesting. Tommy Laron, we got to run. I'm so sorry we're up against the clock because I could talk to you for longer, but I know you're very busy today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Follow her on exit, Tommy Laron, and also catch her on the big weekend show, Saturdays and Sundays, 5 to 8 p.m. Have a blessed new year. Thank you so much. God bless. Thank you.

Your chance. I want to hear from you. 866-408-7669. Or reach out to me on exit, Mary Walter Radio. I'm Mary Walter, you're listening to The Brian Kill Me Show.

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There wasn't much else being done in this Congress. And so, as we go into the new year, if Republicans want to work with us to bring down costs, reduce what we spend at the grocery store, what we spend at Home Depot, they're going to find partners in us. But if not, the midterm message will be this. It costs too much. It costs too much in what we pay at the grocery store.

And And figuratively, it costs too much in the rights that we're losing under this administration. Yeah. That was your favorite congressman, Eric Swalwell. Ugh, that guy. We all know a guy like Eric Swalwell.

You're like, dude, you are just not pulling it off at all. You think you are, but you really aren't. No sense of shame or how he's perceived or anything along those lines.

So, yeah, it's too much. It's too much. And that's why I think that Gen Z thinks that the. deck is stacked against them and m in some ways it may be, but e I think every generation comes out and has the deck stacked against them in a cer in in certain ways. You could be nineteen years old and being put on on a military transport to go storm the beaches of Normandy.

So your world could be way worse than what it is right now.

So, listen, every generation, I think, complains about the generation before them, and every generation complains about the generation after them, right? It's just the way of the world. It's just how we operate.

So, asking you if you want to jump in, 800-406-7669, about. The How The younger generation views the world in which they're being born into and whether their expectations are unrealistic. And when you've got the messaging constantly being, oh, it costs too much, it costs too much. Yeah. But I look at some people that I know who are Gen Z coming up and graduating out of college and stuff, and some of them have great jobs because they picked really great majors.

Some of them are in the trades doing really well. But I also see, you know, the engagement has to be like a big, huge deal, and the family's got to be there, and it's got to be at a destination, and we have to have a videographer, and we have to have this, and there's got to be a party afterwards. And then, you know, the wedding's a big deal, and everything's a big deal. And they have to go on a bachelorette party to Vegas.

So now we've got to pay for that. And then they take weekends. We're just going to Paris for the weekend. They're going to just take a trip somewhere, but it's just for the weekend. It's like we never did any of that stuff.

My bridal shower was fi my college roommates having brunch at a restaurant. That was it. There was no bachelorette party. There was none of that.

So I think that the expectations are slightly skewed. And so, because you spend on other things that we didn't. then you have less money for other things that we had money for. 866-408-7669. John in Michigan.

You're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi. Yes, hi. Oh, this Gen Z and uh not being able to avo afford anything. You know, I grew up the same as you did.

You know, I uh was a graduated in ninety four from high school and you know, I left my parents' house early, but they they grew me like that. They uh made me work. They drove me. I had to buy my own things. If I wanted a new pair of tennis shoes, I had to work.

and I had to pay for those myself. I have three daughters. My brother had three boys. I have a daughter that's thirty, a daughter that's twenty five and a daughter that's twenty. They are all so much different, you know, and that's because I raised them different.

You know, as they got older, the technology became more and more. I didn't think I would ever have a child at fifteen years old that had a phone.

Well, my youngest did, you know, and she is the least ambitious of the other two. Technology has a huge, huge role in that. And everybody thinks they need all of these subscriptions, all of these. T V things and just everything Costs money when you get involved in the technology. And everybody's so addicted to it, they spend so much money.

on that type of stuff. You know, I uh I think that the work ethic is there for the ones that We're taught it. And I have nephews that are twenty five years old that they have their own houses. They spend big money on it. But when I first started working, I got paid six dollars an hour.

At twenty, they're getting paid thirty dollars an hour. And I built a house at twenty on six bucks an hour. Yeah, so it's all relevant. But it's not. Right.

No, I understand exactly what you're saying. And I love, and thank you so much for joining us. Have a wonderful new year, John. I do like that states like New York of all states, of all places, got rid of the, got rid of cell phones, bell to bell in school. And they find that the kids are learning more, that they're learning how to write things down.

They're communicating with each other. They're forming clubs to do things at lunch and free periods and stuff like that. I think there's a lot to be said for that. And I do think that you see a lot on social media that makes you think that you're leading this terribly, horribly boring life while your friends are, you know, jetting off to Aruba. And that's a problem.

I think there's a fear of missing out. Whereas, you know, we used to call it keeping up with the Joneses. You know, look at somebody's home and you're, oh, they have a pool. We have to put a pool in. You know, keeping up with the Joneses.

And I don't think that that's their generation's view of that. But my parents didn't go out and put a pool in. We didn't go out and put a pool in just because our neighbors, everybody around us has a pool. Like, seriously, true. Everybody's got a pool.

But I don't feel this need to go out and put a pool in just because everybody around us has one. And people are like, oh, you put it in for resale. Like, okay, great, but that's not for a couple of years down the road. And let the next owners do it if they really want to pull. They can make the backyard what they want.

There is a lot of that, and I think it plays in a lot with social media. Very quickly, I've got one minute here. Braxton in Minnesota, you're on the Brian Kilmead show. Very quickly, Braxton, hi. Yes, ma'am.

Say I just got just a little note that kind of stuck with me here. You guys say that everything's supposed everything's going up, all the prices are going up. And you're saying that that is what it is. Why is that? Why is that okay?

And like Why should we just normalize that as a society? I agree with you. I think a lot of it has to do with the cost of fuel because then it makes products more difficult, more expensive to get to market, right? I think you have to look at the purging of farms as we build on them for more and more and more and more housing. That has to do with bringing into the more immigrants into this country.

We know that healthcare got more expensive because the government got involved. Why did education get more expensive? Because the government got involved.

So when the government gets involved to make things cheaper, it eventually costs you more. And people haven't caught on to that yet. But with every generation, things are more expensive. I agree with you. You can't if you want to change that, that's fine, but we can't wave a magic wand and change that.

But you're no different, you know. Gen Z is no different than the generations before them. But yeah, I would love to change that. I would love to change it. But you got to get the government out of a lot of those things, and people who are getting the freebies don't want to lose them.

Braxton, we got to run. Thank you so much for joining me. And you have a wonderful new year. I'm Mary Walter, and you're listening to the Brian Kilmead Show.