The Brian Kilmeade Show

From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Killmead. Everyone, so glad you're there. We're having a big day here on this Wednesday. There's going to be some hearings a little bit later on.

We're going to hear more about the fraud scandal as envisioned and as experienced by people that have been blowing the whistle, but no one's been paying attention. Christian Robbins, a Minnesota House of Representatives, we have, and she is running for governor too. Marion Rarick, a Minnesota, also from the House, and Walter Hudson, has been speaking out and talking about what could be $9 billion worth of fraud. And they're saying that Minnesota is small compared to what California is. This is so widespread in terms of the fraud and abuse of our social welfare system, whether it's autistic kids or people who are feeding the homeless, or you have Feed America programs, just horrible situations.

Daycare centers, probably the most abusive. And yes, a lot of it revolves around the Somali community. And no, it's not racist. It's called faxist.

Meanwhile, when you talk about Ohio, they're in the middle of this too. When this all started, they Started doing some, they started getting some investigations of their own. And in Ohio, finds out that they've shuttered a bunch of businesses big time since coming out. For example, They have found out that, by the way, a Republican governor. The Department of Children and Youth Services shut 38 health care centers when they realized they were fraudulent.

They shut down 12 programs that were fraudulent in 61 separate centers. And a lot of this evolves around the 30,000-member Somali community. And in our country, 54% of Somalis are on food stamps. You know, I know we have refugees. We've always had refugees that come here, but early on, it was they had to fend for themselves.

That was the American dream.

Now they come here because we have our social welfare programs. And now we find out a lot of them send the money back to the countries they left so they can destroy ours like they destroyed theirs or play a part in it. This hour we're going to be hearing from Mike Pompeo shortly and Todd Lyons. Todd Lyons is important because in Minnesota too, they are, and especially in Minneapolis, they have made. Over a thousand arrests, many of which are hardened criminals, illegal immigrants, scooped up by Border Patrol and ICE.

No cooperation because of the Sanctuary City status, the horribly run city of Minneapolis. That is true. And guess what? When some of these guys decide or women they want to go to a hotel on the Hampton Inn in certain sections, they were told, Wait, we did a background check. Your reservation is now rejected.

You can't stay here. Hilton runs the place. And the Hilton intern they run the place. They decided when they wouldn't change, Hilton now has revoked their sponsorship or their franchise rights. They're no longer Hilton franchises.

This is how bad it is, and how what they're trying to do is say blame Trump. blame racism. Tim Waltz will not resign. My sense is he's going to be forced to resign. But right now he's says, I'm not going to run for reelection.

But in a frantic press conference yesterday, here's what he said, cut to. And we'll make sure that in this state, there's full accountability for everybody. Because I, I, Buck stops with me, I'm accountable for this. And because of that accountability, I'm not running for office again. But I have a year to continue to improve on a record that I think will stand up against anybody's, a record that has made Minnesota better, a record that makes people want to come here, and a record that has respected not only the dignity of people, but the idea of rule of law and camaraderie.

You incompetent clown. And by the way. No excuse. Uh, for letting this for betting this guy, Eric Holder, and saying he'd be a good running mate for anyone. I'm not saying you had to go convict him, but you knew this was on the books since 2022.

You knew there's been whistleblowers speaking up, and you're supposed to see through that.

Now, some people say, Well, you know, Trump should have come up with it on opposition research, fine, but opposition research isn't a requirement, it's a tactic. Waltz doing this, having this in his background, showing what a terrible governor he is, and then pretending he was a great coach and a great leader of men as a National Guard officer. All three an epic fail. Think about this guy's life. He went from vice presidential nominee with a chance of winning, he was winning in some of the polls in September, to an epic fail, collapsing his chance at reelection, and I sense he's not going to last his term.

Meanwhile, the other big story is Venezuela. We have a situation where Democrats don't really know how to attack the president because the military operation was flawless. They're all on record pointing to Maduro as a problem. The question is, what happens next? We have decided that there's $50 million worth of oil that we are going to take control over, get it to the Venezuelan people.

Also, being put to American, to America, to put it in our oil markets. Look how much money we spent trying to bring that country under control. I talked to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about that. And Iran, here's my interview from Fox and Friends. I just wanted you to hear.

Today, the rest of Congress will be briefed on the strikes in Venezuela after ranking leaders met with cabinet officials behind closed doors on Monday. President Trump announced interim authorities in Venezuela will turn over between 30 and 50 million barrels of sanctioned oil to the U.S.

Meanwhile, a new report says that Russia has sent a submarine to escort a tanker the U.S. tried to seize off Venezuela. Let's bring in former Secretary of State, Fox News contributor Mike Pompeo. Mr. Secretary, your thoughts, the operation, I think everybody agrees was awesome.

They shut the lights, they did what they had to do, no casualties, killed about 40 of them. Your thoughts today about what the Vice President, now the President, has shown you now that she's in charge. Brian, good morning. Yes, A ⁇ operation.

Well, very well done.

Now the very hard part, to convince the Chavistas that they've got to turn over a new leaf. And that will be precisely what Secretary Rubio and the President have been talking about. Continued pressure on the oil, that is an embargo of oil exiting the country. putting real pressure on the leadership to kick the Cubans, the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese out, all the spies that have been protecting the Chavistas for all these years. When they don't, actually demonstrating we're ready to go at this in a serious way again.

If we do those things, there's a shot. I think the key figure is a guy named Diostato Cavelo. He's the head of the Interior Ministry. I know him pretty well. He is a committed Chavista.

He's not likely to change his stripes. It's not about economics for him. It's about ideology. And we need to put pressure on him. In some sense, Del Codriguez is kind of a figurehead.

We need to put pressure on him and make sure we're watching everything he does and know that his capacity to stay in the country. It depends on him changing his stripes quickly, fundamentally, and in a way that protects American citizens. And he's never done that before. He was thrown in jail when a coup failed with Chavez for two years.

Now he's out, and he's the one walking around with a spiked baseball bat. And now we have a marauding gang of motorcycle thugs who are out there looking for Trump supporters and looking to enforce, I guess, what Maduro would be doing.

So, how do you rein in? The unrest, which is so minor compared to what we've had in the past when we saw Libya. as well as Iraq. Yeah, in the end, the Venezuelan people have got to do that, and that means we have to convince their leadership not to come after them in a serious way. A very difficult task, but achievable with American use of all of its tools of power.

But then you have to convince the Venezuelan people that they've got to go grab a hold of this opportunity. You know, Brian, what we did was give them that chance, give them this opportunity, create a window for them and an opportunity to rebuild their economy. That's what this discussion about oil is about: how do you actually structure the Venezuelan economy to be what it was just a couple of decades ago? If you can do those things, you can begin to reshape it, and then you've got to stop the drug trafficking, too. Those narco-terrorists are in control of so many lovers of power inside of Venezuela today.

And this president addresses his issues. And one was the nuclear program with Iran, and the other was Venezuela. Let's talk about Iran and the protests. This feels different. 27 of 31 provinces have serious protests.

36 killed, 60 injured, 2,000 arrested. But there's a sense that there's an exit plan for the Ayatollah and his 80-plus billion dollars over to Moscow. Do you feel like this corrupt Ayatollah-led government? Feels legitimate threats like they have not felt since 1979. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

These protests have gone on for years, but there's been nothing like this. This is widespread. It began in Tehran in the bazaar with Azeris. There's different ethnicities inside of the 80 million people in Iran. I moved to Balochistan.

It's now all across the country. It's students, it's business people, it's seniors who have said, I don't want my children and grandchildren to live under these thugs, this theocracy. This is fundamentally different. The Iranians won't change their response. They've killed several dozen people.

They've got a thousand plus now added to their jail population of political prisoners. They're going to try to repress this. The United States should use all of the things it can do to help them communicate, to help them feel like they can get in and out of the country to get the weapon systems that they might need to push back against the regime. The police in Iran are going to have to make some really hard decisions about whether they're going to go after their own people when they know the leadership is corrupt. Those are the kind of things that we can influence and shape.

And perhaps this will be the moment that the Iranian people Will get their shot just like the Venezuelan people are getting today as well. Don't blame us, blame yourselves. You don't give these people water. Inflation is through the roof. Their quality of life has suffered, and now they're standing up and speaking out.

Let's hope they're gone soon. The Iranian people deserve better. Mr. Secretary, always great. Thanks so much.

So back to Minnesota. I want to bring you to Todd Lyons. He's outraged, like you're outraged, and I'm outraged about what's happening with this. He's Hampton Inn, owned by Hilton, who are rejecting. The opportunity for our Border Patrol agents, men and women, to stay there.

On top of that, what they're doing on the ground and how it's being characterized as racist by that incompetent mayor and the incompetent governor. Here's my interview with the ICE Director, Todd Lyons. We are under assault. Like no other time in our state's history, Because of a petty Vile administration that doesn't care about the well-being of Minnesotans. If you want us to fix fraud, come and help us do that.

They're not interested in that. They're the only ones doing anything to fix fraud in your state, and you know it. That is Governor Waltz lashing out at the Trump administration, saying Minnesota under attack as ICE ramps up his federal crackdown on a widening fraud scandal and having great success doing it. Waltz later doubling down, posting, quote, nobody is fooled into thinking this buffoonery is a reasonable use. Of taxpayer dollars.

Really? Buffoonery? ICE Director Todd Lyons joins us now, who wants to take this on. Tom, I think you guys have arrested over a thousand people, mostly all criminals wanted. Is that buffoonery?

Yeah, Brian, you know, if you look at what we've done, we've undertaken the largest, not only is it the largest immigration enforcement action ever, but we've in ISIS history, but it's also the largest criminal enforcement action we've ever taken. You know, just look at what we arrested yesterday, right? You hear you have somebody from Ecuador who went to Minnesota to hide in plain sight. He was let in under the last administration's policy in 2022 when he entered, even though he was convicted of extortion, kidnapping, and strangulation, served 10 years in prison, was wanted for murder, here he is hiding in plain sight. In Minnesota.

So it's not buffoonery. We're out there doing what we're supposed to do, and we're out there making sure that we're taking these criminally legal aliens off the street. Really? So he's supposed to be looking out for people, the people of Minnesota? Here's the mayor, Jacob Fry, who's always been an embarrassment, especially during the George Floyd riots.

He's still at it. Listen. What the Trump administration is doing here is they are playing race games. They are explicitly racist in a number of occasions here, and that's what they're trying to do on our streets. And again, if they were actually looking to do work in these areas, there is work to do.

What they care about is stoking fear and stoking chaos on our streets, and we've seen it time and again. Yeah, this is a guy who gave up the police station, remember that, and threw him and took a knee. Your reaction to it, if you really wanted to help, what you'd be doing.

Well, Brian, one thing is not only is obviously we're focused on the fraud, right? But the mayor's right, there is a lot of work for us to do, and it's the fraud of immigration enforcement.

So we have so many people that are in Minnesota right now that have violated immigration law by falsely claiming asylum. Lying on their refugee status, there are so many individuals, not only Minnesota across the United States, but we're focused on Minnesota because there's such a draw because these individuals can go to these sanctuary jurisdictions. And just hide in plain sight and get the support they need from elected officials.

So we are going to focus on that. We are focusing on the people of Minnesota. We're going to make sure that the people who aren't supposed to be in Minnesota are no longer in Minnesota.

So, what about when your ICE agents, your Border Patrol, to try to get a hotel room? They're not able to. And a certain Hampton Inn owned by Hilton.

So they were returned. Nick Sorter, an independent journalist, was able to go in there, pretend to be a Border Patrol guy, and got rejected flat out. And now the Hiltonists responded by saying that they are no longer these hotels allowed to be associated with them. They go on to say we can confirm that the hotel has been removed from our systems and are taking further action to fully enforce our rights. your thoughts about them taking this stand and Hilton's reaction.

You know, I'm happy they took action right away, but it shouldn't have taken us to go ahead and kind of put out all those emails that our men and women received. Even the head of the enforced removal operations, so a most senior member of ICE, was trying to get a hotel. And you get an email back saying they've researched your name on the internet and found that you may be associated with immigration enforcement, and please let your coworkers know you're no longer welcome here. That's ridiculous. We see this all across the country, not to the point of Being barred from hotels and not getting reservations.

But we have protesters on the private property of these hotels, keeping ICE agents' offices at night, filming in the lobby. We really hope these. Hotels like Hilton will take it serious and keep the safety of the men and women of ICE. But, you know, it's ridiculous to the fact that they're going to borrow a federal law enforcement officer from a reservation for just being up there doing a law enforcement mission. Yeah, I hope Hilton followed through like they said they did.

Thanks, Todd Lyons. Appreciate it. You got it, me. Stay safe. Thank you very much, Todd Lyons.

All right. When we come back, we'll have a few minutes to go through some of your emails, BrianKilmead.com. Just go there and click on comments and I'll get them. And then after that, we go to National Reviews, Rich Lowry. You're listening to the Brian Kilmead Show.

Coming to you on a need-to-know basis because, man, do you need to know? It's Brian Kilmead. 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. Yeah. A radio show like no other. It's Brian Kilmeade. Unlike the President of the United States, who's not done a damn thing, hasn't lifted a finger.

So you talk about the attributes for a president of the United States, take a look at what you've got and consider the opposite. And that's what the American people deserve. Do you want to be president of the United States? It's not the focus, not my interest. I literally have no idea what fate will hold.

The only thing that matters is 2026. Taking back the House of Representatives. Do I believe? that Donald Trump We'll promote fair and free elections. If Speaker Johnson remains Speaker in 2027, no, I do not.

So that is the ridiculous Gavin Newsom, and they're going to come down hard on him and the fraud speculation that we think is running rampant with his social media services, with his social services going to the people that need it most and maybe not to the, they're not maybe getting it. Like we saw what was happening in Minnesota.

So the president has cut off $10 billion of social services, $7.3 million in temporary assistance for needy families, $69 million for social services. Why? Because he's not convinced it's going to the right people.

So Gavin Newsom came back a little bit later in that interview and said, but the president's going to crack down on fraud. I'm for that. I'm all in because I hate fraud and I'm great at cutting down on it. Just like with the. Fires, remember?

And he said, Yeah, I'm outraged there was no water in those reservoirs. You're the governor. Give an example. Four buyers. Gets hit with a hurricane, I think it was.

They hit with a hurricane. You think Governor DeSantis says, I'm outraged the mayor let that happen. That mayor better fix up Fort Myers. No, the governor gets there. He makes sure that bridge is rebuilt and he makes sure that city gets redone.

By the way, this update: the US has now intercepted an oil tanker. even though Russia told us not to, that defied the blockade of Venezuela. We've been following it for days. The Russian sent a submarine and said we're going to escort that out. The US military took it anyway.

Love it. Brian killed me, Cho. I'm gonna ask Rich Lowry that, and I'll follow this story. Don't move. The more you listen, the more you'll know.

It's Brian Killmead. So, the way we're treating them is really demeaning and it has no upside. All it does is making our NATO. Allies angry, it's creating distrust. And there is no upside to it, and we're not going to acquire Greenland.

I know most people in Greenland want to remain independent Greenland with Denmark providing some protection. And they tru count on us. We're NATO allies.

So that's the other story. Just when you think, okay, I got my list of things we should discuss.

Okay, Greenland's back, big time, where it looks like Marco Rubio came out and said the goal is not to take it by force, but to buy it. And what should we do about it? It turns out that's the perfect topic for our next guest, Rich Lowry. He wrote his column in the National Review where he's an editor about it. And that was Don Bacon, the former officer, now who's going to be retiring over in Nebraska.

And he's saying, you know, we're not going to take it by force. They are friendly. Denmark says we just take it as the end of NATO. That's a little severe. But Richbury, you bring up a good point.

They're a friendly nation. There's no sense in having everyone in Denmark hate us for this. But there could be a deal to be done, right? Yeah. Now, look, militarily, we could take it over, as I say, in that column, with a lightly armed contingent of crossing guards, right?

This is a war we could win, but it would be a diplomatic. Disaster. There's some chance it would blow up NATO. I think at the end of the day, everyone in NATO would just realize they need us more than they need Greenland. Of course.

So it would work itself out. But still, I just think this is unnecessary. I don't know why we can't get a guarantee if we don't already have it from the Danes that they're not going to do anything with the Chinese and the Russians. And we have all the basing rights we possibly could want or need there. And then if we want to go in and try to get these critical minerals, I don't know how practical that is or how difficult it is given the geography that we can do it.

That should be in our interest and in NATO's interest because we need the rare earth.

So I don't know why that can't be worked out. Maybe some pressure helps. Oftentimes it does. That's how Trump operates. But I just think just even talking about annexing it is not helpful and kind of self-destructive.

So Carla Sands, who was the former ambassador to Denmark, talked about Greenland. And here's what she said: Cut 44. It's just off our northeast coast, and it's the world's largest island that could easily fall into adversarial hands if you think about sixty thousand people with a very little economy And a lot of ocean around it, the GIUK gap. Greenland is the G in the GIUK gap. And we actually occupied Greenland from World War II till after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So the United States built most of the infrastructure. There's very little in Greenland because Denmark can't afford or doesn't have the interest in developing Greenland.

So that is, there's nothing she said that was inaccurate.

So you think a deal can get done? Go to My-a-Lago, you say, and cut a deal. And I think so, too. I mean, they have rare earth that can't be mined with the equipment that they have there.

So we got to go in there. We have to expand our base. We have space command down there too.

So we got to make sure the Russians and Chinese aren't there. And that could be something that Denmark guarantees, the territory status, perhaps. Yeah, yeah, I would think so. And look, she's absolutely right about the importance of it. She's absolutely right about the relationship we've had with Greenland, how important it was in World War II and during the Cold War.

And there's a reason that various U.S. statesmen over the decades have said, oh, we'd really like to have Greenland. And at one point, I forget exactly when, it was on offer, and foolishly we didn't take it.

So now the problem is it's not on offer, but I still think, as I say, that we can get everything we would want with some persuasion and maybe some pressure. Yeah, and for Secretary Rubio, he said for money. He said we're going to look to buy it, not just take it. And I guess we could do that. You know, you still like the president of John.

I mean, most of our territorial expansion throughout all of our history has involved buying stuff. And buying stuff is totally legit. Uh yeah, uh I think about Alaska. And I think about the Louisiana Purchase, which, by the way, I'm glad we did. Yeah, or where you are right now, Manhattan.

Yes, that was a good deal. I think we got it for a million dollars. There's none of these territorial deals that turn out being bad.

So that's why whenever someone offers to sell territory to you, you really should take it. And we should have taken Greenland when it was on offer the first time around.

So, Rich Lowry, our guest, Rich, I got the sense, and I talked to Mike Pompeo about this 15 minutes ago, that there's something feels different about these Iranian protests. 27 of 31 provinces have civil unrest. There's been 2,000 arrests, 60 injured, 36 killed. And there's a sense that the government is teetering. They have an exit plan, rumored to be to Moscow.

Evidently, one of the richest people in the world is the Grand Diato. That vow of poverty never really reached his office, it looks like. Their so-called reformist president is ordering the government's investigation into one incident involving the protests and a televised speech. He said, We should not expect the government to handle all of this alone. The government simply does not have the capacity trying to explain to people that the reason why inflation is up over 100% is that food.

Food costs up over 72%, and that they now have $1 for every 1.46 reals. is that they're basically blaming us for that. But they do say no water in the capital city. And billions going to Hezbollah and millions going to Hamas. These people are fed up.

Yeah, so it's hard to know. We've seen big protests before, but these regimes, no matter how enduring and strong they seem, they're on a knife's edge. And you just never know when it's all going to fall apart.

So I'm hoping that that happens here. I just don't I have no idea, though. I guess. But what it means, this is really coming from the inside. I mean, the ripple effects was phenomenal.

Think about it. When Assad goes, suddenly the Russians and the Iranians are out of luck. No thoroughfare to get weapons to the Houthis that easily. And then suddenly you have a government in Syria that at least Israel can deal with as opposed to looked at as an adversary. And now all of a sudden, if Iran has to look inward, maybe those militias are not going to get supplied.

Maybe the Houthi rebels are not going to get armed. I mean, Iran has got this tentacles in so much bad stuff, it's hard to even encompass it all. They were bragging about being in our backyard in Venezuela. Yeah, so they lose Assad, they lose Maduro, if they lose the mullahs, whoa, what a run that would be for the West over the last several months. And then you got to wonder whether Cuba could be next on the list.

So again, I don't want to count our chickens before they hatch, but it could be huge.

So let's talk about Cuba for a second. It's the worst economy, according to the New York Times in their 67-year communist history. Electricity is out 15 hours a day.

Now they get, evidently, they get ration cards, all the people, where they go down to the store with their food who look like food stamps and get rations. The problem is, there are no rations. They actually have no trash being picked up, causing mosquitoes to carry mosquito-borne viruses.

So people are getting sick just walking in the streets. Inflation is skyrocketing. Their pensions, communists, get pensions. Wow, isn't that great? $7.

They get $7 a month. Eggs are $8.

So obviously they can't live in that. They've lost 2.75 million Cubans just pick up and left. I mean If this is it, and that is with Venezuela giving you oil, the oil is not coming in anymore. Yeah, so you wonder if that will tip it over the edge. And this regime has just been a catastrophe for decades, despite all the left-wing propaganda trying to prop it up.

One of the most irritating things, not the most important thing, but the irritating thing, you'll hear people say how charming it is, all the well-preserved 1950s-era cars they have in Cuba and what car aficionados they are. No, it's just they can't afford to have a decent, somewhat modern car.

So, this country, like Venezuela, has been wrecked, and it would be a very good thing if this regime goes away. No question.

So, let's talk about Minnesota for a second. Tim Walsh, yesterday, cut one. It ain't happening. I'm not going anywhere. And you can make all your requests for me to resign over my dead body.

Will that happen? I will fight this thing till the very end to make this state better. And the question that I think they need to decide is, is when did the guy in the White House resign? When does he take accountability for what he did? Because it isn't going to happen here in terms of us shying away from making this state better.

Okay, let me just check the wires. Trump is not going to resign.

So Governor Waltz, who decides not to run for a third term, is covered in fraud and scandal. He's just his epic fall from Grace, being the number two on the ticket, maybe leading in September.

Now he can't even hold on to the job that he was doing so poorly that's been exposed.

So I believe not only is fraud a big deal, I think it's going to be something Republicans should run on in the midterms because it's in Maine, Washington state, and they say the mother load is California. Yeah, so this is, I think, the biggest fall from Grace we've ever seen for a vice presidential nominee in the modern era. I can't think of anything like it. A year ago on the cusp of the vice president, they had a 50% chance or less, a little less, of being the next vice president. And now he's going to be totally gone in a year.

No one's ever going to think about him because he's not talented. He's not compelling. That was all a fabrication. And he has this humongous. Scandal on his record.

And the amazing thing, Brian, just attention is so important because this scandal was ongoing when he was picked. There were indictments going on as he was picked, but just no one focused on it. And we've had these viral pieces that have now put the ISR on it, and it's just not sustainable, right? It's an embarrassment, a gut punch to the state of Minnesota, and he presided over it all. There's going to be hearings today.

One of the people appearing there is a woman on the Republican side running for governor. She's a Minnesota state rep cut three. I think the pressure just got too much. The pressure from my committee, the pressure from the federal partners who are helping us, the pressure from the public. People are so fed up with the fraud that has just been staggering under Tim Wall's watch.

He says he can't protect the state, but what he's been doing for many years is protecting his political base. And now the pressure got too great. We are just at the tip of the iceberg of our investigations, and I know the U.S. Attorney has said the same thing. We have many veins of fraud that we haven't really had the time to dive into yet.

So it is an ongoing investigation, and I'm sure there's more to come.

So, and here we go, right? Here we go. And I noticed Aro Khanna is one of the first to say, I want to do a bipartisan investigation in California. He's eyeing the run for the presidency. And he wants to start running on cleaning up the fraud.

Isn't that an interesting tactic? Mm-hmm.

Well, that's the public-spirited tact, right? If someone exposes fraud, what you do is thank them, right? They should have thanked Nick Shirley. Thanks for bringing more attention to this. We'll actually find out if you made some mistakes, and if you did, that's too bad.

But we really appreciate you highlighting the problem. But that's never been the attitude out there. And one reason my understanding is that the daycare facilities haven't been prosecuted, the ones that are fraudulent, is that they're small beer compared to the other stuff that's going on. And we're talking billions and billions of dollars. The U.S.

Attorney's Office out there, they've been heroes, but they have about five people.

So I'd like to see the administration, rather than doing the showy raids, which are fine, send a couple more really top-notch prosecutors out there and try to nail everyone to the wall. I would think that's great. Also, we're going to look into over the weekend in Maine. And by the way, it's revolving around a lot of the Somali community. In Ohio, they found a whole bunch of fraud.

They got 30,000 Somalis there. They're in the middle of it. They're in the middle of the fraud in Maine. I think in Washington state, you can say the same thing.

So what do they want to do, Rich, when you bring that up? They want to call you a racist. And they want to say it's Donald Trump. All right. I love the fact that people are demanding more now.

And you're not going to get people to shut up by calling them a racist anymore because 99.9% of the time, it is not true. It's there to intimidate you because you don't want to be canceled. Absolutely. And they used it to keep the scandal going and the fraud going in Minnesota to warn off the bureaucrats that thought something was up and something was wrong to get them to be less aggressive. And it worked.

And look, there's a huge cultural clash in Minnesota. Minnesota is a state kind of based on a Scandinavian political culture, which means you're friendly to welfare programs and spending, and you have a really clean political culture, right? You can trust everyone. The system's based on social trust. And then you have Somalis that they don't have that attitude.

And there's a reason 90% of these fraudsters have been Somali. And most Somali Americans have not denounced it, prominent Somali Americans. As of a couple weeks ago, there's one guy that I was aware of.

So the clannishness plays a role here, and it's not racist to notice it. Lastly, the real clear average right now, generic ballot, Dems have a 46-42 advantage for Republicans. Right now, I guess the tradition would say you give Democrats the edge. Do you think there's a game plan out there that could give the Republicans? Republicans is a game plan that has them hold the House and Senate.

You know, there's a game plan. I just think it's unlikely to work just based on the history, especially when you only have a two or three seat majority.

So I think it's going to be hard. And we have to remember that no matter how much we're focused on all the other stuff, you know, Venezuela now, these are hugely important stories. But the voting issue in November is overwhelmingly going to be the economy and prices. That's the most important thing. Can the favorable economic indicators make people feel better about their pocketbooks by November?

I'm a little skeptical. Maybe it will, but I think that's the name of the game. Hey, listen, Rich. We tape all these shows. I think you're very traditional.

I understand where you're coming from. I don't think I'm taking a page from Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking. I actually believe that there's a game plan out there for Republicans. One of this is fraud. Number two is I think a lot what they did, the big, beautiful bill, and the economy is beginning to revitalize on many different fronts.

Yeah, nothing very simple.

So I really think that it's going to be pretty apparent, even though there's a big dicey area of AI, there's going to be pretty apparent that the economy is on track by September and we're going to see some signs, more signs of it here in January 1st. I've seen the recordings, Brian, you're always asking me every week whether I thought we'd go into Venezuela, and most of the time I was like, I don't know. But towards the end, the last couple of times, I was like, yeah, I think he's going to do it.

So we need to resurface those if my opinion is. Hey, Eric, do you think this is true? I don't know, because Richie, you know, I know a guy who's editor of National Review doesn't usually make things up. But the answer is yes. We will go into Venezuela.

How about that? Rich, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Brian. Back in a moment.

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. Uh If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead. Yeah, we worked with FGS Global, which did a massive polling exercise of 20,000 people across Europe, Canada, Japan, and the U.S., and then also talked to 175 basically C-suite level people person to person.

What was striking is in every single country, it's the exact same dynamic that we see here. We tend to think that we're special or everything's kind of weird because of Trump. In all of those countries, everyone is way more pessimistic than ever before. Everyone's more confused and more distrustful than ever before. The number one topic in every single country is affordability.

It's not a topic in a different country. And what that is, is we tend to think like, well, everything's being disrupted now. In fact, everything's already been disrupted because of AI, because of populism, because of immigration and migration. You're now living with the consequences of that. And so in each of those countries, you're dealing with a lot of new politics.

You're dealing with a lot of fear about AI. You're dealing with a lot of distrust of media. That's not just a U.S. phenomenon. People don't trust the media in any of these countries.

So that is Jim Vandehei and What is he? He's with Axios now? Correct. Yeah, he's been with Axios for he's helped found it. Oh, yeah.

So you start on Politico playbook.

So, and he had a TV show on HBO. I'm not sure what happened to that, but it's a good point. And the thing is, he went on to say, and we'll play it at a different hour today. That things are pretty good in our country and in our economy. I mean, you can look around and find something wrong all the time.

And if politicians come up to you and say, I can fix it, things are so bad, I can fix it. You begin to understand that I have a complaint, and they better fix it. They better fix my life, politicians, because they broke it. And I just love to see someone start running on Hey, I'm here to enhance things generally, but for the most part, you're going to have to take responsibility for your own life. Overall.

I'm here to make things better. It is my service. You know, what can you do for your town, your county, your country? I would love to see that mindset. I'm not sure.

I would like to see an established candidate with a legitimate shot run on something like that. I'm going to make these things better, but I can't fix everything.

Now, you actually got to do things yourself in this country. Not like what the mayor of New York City says. Brian Joe Michelle. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Killmead.

Hi everyone, Brian Kilmet here. Thanks so much for listening. We have a lot going on today. We just found out, first update you on something that's really developing. Do you remember, it seems like a lifetime ago, but last week we were going for the third tanker that was heading to Venezuela.

These are ghost ships unregistered. And the tanker was giving us a problem. They were not slowing down.

So we just kept tracking it.

Well, the Russians buy it midstream. You know, I don't know, what that term. While on the water, they buy it. And they ask us to back off. As I walked up from T V to here, We have picked on the p we've taken the pan the tanker.

Word was this morning that the Russians sent a submarine to escort it. We took it anyway. I mean, I love this boldness.

Now people are like, what are you doing international? No, no, it's called asserting yourself. We put all this money into our military and we're trying to stop these ghost ships from circumventing sanctions on bad countries making money off the black market. Iran? Venezuela Hopefully not for long, Venezuela.

China Gets eighty per eighty percent of Venezuelan oil, maybe more, goes to China. They got to find somewhere else to get that much, which I think is 20% of all the oil they get. What do the Russians do? They circumvent the sanctions. And they circumvent the sanctions and give The China, the discount.

for agreeing to circumvent the sanctions. like they did with Iran. Circumventing sanctions.

So China Can pay money Basically half the market rate. and get their cheap oil. Big three. Number three. The only thing that matters is 2026 taking back the House of Representatives.

Newsom just said that the only thing that matters is 2026 and the House taking back the Congress. But I would say, why? They don't pass legislation. No one's passing legislation. Unless your goal is to just impeach President Trump again.

Yeah, which would be to the detriment of the Democratic Party, but I don't give them advice. Midterm mania. Trump has a plan. As Republicans make a margin for error sh margin for error shrinks and Denver's divide grows. Number 10.

It turns out Americans like what they deem to be successful foreign policy operations. And in this case, they view the ousting of Maduro, at least up to this point, as a successful one, and therefore the support way up. Yep, Venezuela first, Greenland next. We discussed the Trump agenda and what it means for America. Number one.

Answer these tough questions. Quit hiding behind this and expect for the next 11 months for me to ride you like you've never been ridden. To make sure that you're doing your job, I'm not going anywhere. And you can make all your requests for me to resign over my dead body. Will that happen?

That is Governor Tim Waltz. What a clown show. The mayor, major Minnesota fraud, KOs Waltz, and is about to descend on Newsome. Fraud is front and center, and I think it should be front and center for Republicans when it comes to the midterm elections. I mean, think about it: Washington State, Democratic State.

When you talk about California, they say it's worse than Minnesota. Then you got Minnesota, a Democratic state. Then you have Maine, a Democratic state. This is where fraud went rampant. And if you accuse them of abusing the system, you're a racist.

Sadly, most of the people abusing the system was very organized and they're from Somalia. They're supposed to be enjoying becoming part of America. They come here and make mini Somalia, where 54% of all Somalis are on food stamps. That's not the way it's supposed to work. I'm pretty sure.

So I'll talk about this too. They're now asking for.

Okay. Uh money back. From the ringleader of this whole thing, this woman, Amy Bach, who's going to prison, she was the infamous founder of the nonprofit convicted of hatching a $250 million welfare scheme.

Meanwhile, she's got a Porsche, she's got designer handbags, multi-million dollar mansions, a lot of ill-gotten gains. They want it all back from the 44-year-old mastermind. And of course, the Bach who, with dozens of Somalis co-conspirators, are finding themselves in jail. Between 70 of the 80 people that have been indicted and convicted are from Somalia.

So if you bring that up That's called being accurate, not being racist.

Meanwhile, a law-abiding business owner said this, all the legitimate providers who have been providing long-standing ethical responsible service with thin margins to children in Minnesota for decades are at the risk of being shut down because the policy is a blanket freeze. Yes, the President has frozen funds that were going to flow to Minnesota because he doesn't trust that they're not going to end up in Somalia or someplace else. And that's why he's frozen all the funds to maybe in some case situations, childcare organizations are on up and up, autistic situations are an up and up. They're going to say to child care companies, get this, instead of just getting money from us and then advertising for childcare, you have to show them a roster of kids that are coming consistently in order to get your license and get your funding. That to me is real accountability.

It should have been a place to begin with. You shouldn't be able to open up your doors if you have no clients. Who opens up a business like that?

So yesterday, Governor Waltz had a press conference and said, yeah, I'll take questions. And Donald Trump's the problem, and racism is the reason. Congressman Tom Emmer, who I think might run for the open Senate seat if Amy Klobucher moves to the governor slot, and if she runs, she'll likely win, said this, cut five. Tim Walls is a buffoon and he needs to stop being a coward and start taking accountability. Sean, $9 billion is the estimate from the U.S.

Attorney's Office that has been built out of the Walls administration over the last seven years. $9 billion right under his nose. Tim Walls was there the entire time. You ask why?

Well, whistleblowers have come forward and whistleblowers are saying that they not only told Tim Walls about the fraud while it was happening, Sean, and he ignored them, he retaliated against them. Listen, if that's true, he should not only resign, he should leave the office in handcuffs. I think so too. More from him or cut six. You don't let $9 billion go out without you knowing, without somebody knowing.

This isn't just gross incompetence, even though he, our president, would call him a man of low IQ, Tim Walls. He had to know. This thing went on. Look, it went on for seven years, and we've been trying to blow the whistle on this for the last several years. Nobody would report it in the Minnesota media until Donald J.

Trump literally drew these people in because they don't like him. He put out a post on a Friday night. This became a national story, and then God bless Nick Shirley, the young journalist, who found more fraud in one day than they found in seven years. Pretty impressive. On the side notes, with that, and the scrutiny of Minnesota, and this is why the governor is claiming he's being where the You know, President Trump is making a personal going after Minnesota because he's the governor.

It's nothing to do with that. It has a lot to do with the fact that you suck at being governor, but that's one thing. Here's the other thing: you're a sanctuary state.

So he has to put in 2,000 ICE agents. Border Patrol, FBI, the whole crew. In there to go ahead and hunt down illegal immigrants, most of which are criminals. And he's got over a thousand arrests.

So when some of them decide, okay, you know, being here for a week, I'm going to go to my hotel room in the Hampton Inn. It turns out in the Hampton Inn, they were doing a background check. And if you turned out to be part of ICE or the Border Patrol, you were told your reservation was canceled. Do you believe that? Your reservation is canceled.

Here you are in 10-degree weather in Minnesota, and you, after a long day of probably 16 hours and putting up with all this abuse, you find out that they've been canceled.

So now Hilton, who owns Hampton Inn, told them to allow people, apologize, and allow people to go in. They didn't. And because of that, they've taken off the Hilton franchise endorsement. I don't know what that means for franchise owners, but they're no longer a Hilton, according to management there. Nick Sorter is an independent journalist, and he went back to see if there was still a Hilton.

Cut 13. Tonight, Laura, I came back here, and right before I went on the show. I walked in there and I tried to buy another room again, and they asked me what my Hilton honors number was.

So they haven't been cut off from the system, right? You can't book it online right now, but at the same time, they still have access to Hilton's computer system. This is what I'm saying: we cannot take this stuff at face value.

So, and that's who they're finding out, and now they apologize. Look, they don't want to be budlighted, but I'll tell you, you want half the country saying no longer stay in Hilton. I think they're handled it correctly if they went ahead and followed it through. But there's huge fraud here.

So, when we talk about a $37 trillion debt, this is a major part of it. It's hard enough with all these social services programs.

So many automatic payments go out of the budget before anyone's elected or debate, any type of shutdown, lockdown, or any money is spent. All this money goes to social programs. We know there's got to be fraud built in in a country like this. There's things that are going to go wrong, unsavory people in positions they don't belong in. Just look it to rip you off.

But this widespread without ramifications over the course of decades, it's gotta stop. Dr. Oz hopped on yesterday, Cut 15. It's billions of dollars without question in Minnesota, we believe, if you pull all the different programs together. But you're right.

California is the varsity team. Minnesota was JV at this game, we believe. And we already know just looking at one specific little minor seeming issue, which is the number of illegal immigrants getting covered by state Medicaid programs.

Now, these are theoretically programs that only state taxpayers have to come up with. In California alone, we already have $1.3 billion that they're actually paying us back on because they know they're ripping off the federal taxpayer. This is sickening because we're trying to figure out how to best spend money, how to health care, get health care meet. It's not bad enough that health care companies are taking the money from the government and upping their rates, giving you huge deductibles.

Now we find out people don't have any interest in using that money towards child care, to health care. They're just looking to get that money, scam that money, and keep that money, which is all your money. I mean, take a look at your paycheck. If you're making over $50,000, you're not going to believe how much money is coming out of your check. I know people are into their take-home pay, but it's worth it flipping to the other side and seeing where it's going and seeing how it's directly related to what's happening here.

So I want to be able to take calls. We've got the bottom of the hour, Mike LaRosa, former chief of staff. For Mike Rose, former chief of staff for Jill Biden, is going to be joining us. But this is also the anniversary of the January 7th fires in California that just knocked out so many homes, destroyed so many lives. And you wonder a year later what's being done?

I happen to know for sure what you should know. Almost nothing has been rebuilt, and almost no responsibility has been thrown at the mayor or the governor. And you just know that Governor News, if it was a Governor DeSantis, for example, you know he'd be all over this every step of the way. He'd be ripping his mayors that were ineffective. How dare you go to Ghana when you knew there was an emergency, Republican or Democrat?

But instead, you got Mayor Karen Bass, says everything's going great. But it's not. Shirin Ad Adegar was on Fox News at night. And that's done out of Los Angeles and talked about how Newsom is responsible, Cut 19. He is the governor of the fourth largest economy in the world.

And if you drive through the Palisades right now, like I do weekly, there are no homes being built. He should be ashamed of himself. I mean, my daughter's school, Pally High, burnt down. They are still in the Sears building. They went online for a semester.

He did nothing to help them. The people, our friends, dozens of them are still trying to get money to rebuild their homes and they can't. And why is this happening? Because he has the developers in his pocketbooks and he wants people not to rebuild so he can build affordable housing and so he can put that money in his pocket. It is so embarrassing.

It is so sad to see. Go talk to the residents and see how they feel. You do. And this is the elite, most to the left in Pacific Palisades. I've been there.

I know the Topanga Canyon is very rural. I'm not sure how expensive those homes are. It doesn't matter. But just so you know, usually when you have money in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, entertainment, number two market, you have influence. With all the influence and all the money, and a lot of celebrities, they're not getting anything done because of the permitting process.

Construction companies coming in, insurance companies slow to pay out. I mean, if you lose a $20 million home, you hope you have $20 million worth of insurance at least. When the insurance doesn't come across, just because you have a lot of money doesn't mean it's all liquid, ready to go. You can write a check and hope you get the insurance back. It's not like that.

Even if you are wealthy and successful, when you lose those wealthy, those big houses, it doesn't mean you can automatically build another with the money in your checking count. And that's what people are finding out. I don't know why. You know, maybe because we're 3,000 miles away, we haven't heard more about it. But when the California Post, New York Post is going to get a California Post, they're going to get a division out there, they're going to finally get a real newspaper that wants to get to the bottom of things, not going to apologize for the Democratic thing.

So when we come back, your thoughts on that also. We're on WABC here in New York. Big Giant fan. Yesterday, best coach in the NFL, perhaps top three, got fired from the Baltimore Ravens, John Harbaugh, which means the Giants fired their coach during the season. He's got to be the guy.

Go get him. Don't let him slip through your fingers. Bring him from Baltimore to a market that really will respect him. John Harbaum, be a giant. Back in a moment.

Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. John Harbart of the Giants makes a whole lot of sense from the Giants standpoint. They have a team that is four Lombardi trophies in the cases, in the hallways.

They have a franchise quarterback. They have a number one wide receiver. They have two running backs and they have a stable of pass rushers to go. And I think Giants fans would be doing flips for that. He's 100% right.

And a team that had four wins, two of which were basically preseason games, you wouldn't think that. But if you watch the team play, You understand how good they are, could be, for example. I mean, you bring the Broncos, the number one seed in the West. You blew a 19-point lead in the fourth quarter. It really was their killer.

They already beat the Eagles defending Super Bowl champions. Almost the second game after the big revenge game in Philadelphia, they actually stayed with them into the fourth quarter. They beat the San Diego Chargers. I think they're like the three seed, one of the best teams in the AFC. And then they blow a game to the Lions and they blow another game to the Bears.

They actually, Dallas hit a 63-yard field goal to force overtime. Then Russell Wilson threw the ball in the street. They switched quarterbacks after that.

So I'm telling you, you are with your record on. I subscribe to that. But I watched bad teams, the Giants, and the Giants were bad my entire youth from the time I watched football. From the 60s to the 70s, born in 1964, the time I watched football, I was probably six or seven years old. The Giants had one winning season, which was 1972.

They were eight and six, and that's when Dallas, and they were going for 500. That's when Dallas played their backups because they were going on the soup. I had no idea what the playoffs were like until 1981.

So if I know bad football. This team actually has talent, and I know great coaches. You don't last 20 years with one team win a Super Bowl in the playoffs almost every year. in contention if you're not a great coach. With a great attitude, got to know John Harbaugh.

Ladies and gentlemen, you could revitalize your franchise. He's like the Bill Walsh type player, Bill Barcelles, wherever they go, Jimmy Johnson, they win. And he's only had one head coaching job. He was so good at it, he kept it for two decades.

So he's got to keep it. He's got to be the number one choice. I don't mean to be, I know this is all these teams in the NFL. Who cares about the Giants? I care.

Here's Mike Florio, Cup 55. When you think about it. That missed field goal. That changed everything. We don't know what would have happened after the playoff run.

Maybe they would have decided to stay together for another year, but. If that fuel gold is good, The Ravens are currently getting ready to host the Texans. On Monday night. They're not thinking about who their next coach is going to be, and John Harbaugh is not in a position where he now will consider. What his options are.

So he was talking about what happened to the Steelers. They came back. The Ravens went all the way down after the Steelers had this stunning comeback. They had a great run back off a kickoff. They've gained about twenty yards, lineup for a forty two yard field goal.

They should have ran it to the side, which was preferable to the kicker, but he missed a forty two yarder first time all year. Pittsburgh goes for the playoffs. Ravens don't, and they fire John Harbaugh.

Now they say Keems are going to pledge to fire their coach if Harbaugh would come to their team.

So, believe me, this is the one time the Giants, you can't screw this up. You got to go get this guy. He doesn't even want to be the GM. The GM's there. He says, Gonna do your job.

I don't want to control it. Just let me do my job. Be the perfect match. I just had to get off to my chest. I'll mention it at least one more time.

It's good for my therapy. It's good. It's basically personal therapy for me. Back in a moment. Breaking news, unique opinions.

Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Joe. Have I been perfect in this? God dang no. I wasn't perfect as a teacher. I wasn't perfect as a coach.

I wasn't perfect as a soldier, but I was pretty damn good at all those things. Game's over for him now. It was all me, I was the bad guy or whatever.

Well, put up or shut up now and tell us what you're going to do to make this state better. Answer these tough questions. Quit hiding behind this and expect for the next 11 months for me to ride you like you've never been ridden. What is he even talking about? Ride what?

Ride the media for looking into your fraud and terrible, terrible management style?

So the meeting got so bad because one guy does a story over. The holidays, where the media scrutiny is historically the least, he says, I'm not going to run for reelection and I won't resign. How dare you ask me to resign? Why? Because you suck as a governor.

Now we're finding out you look the other way, or we're hearing some testimony now people were threatened if they didn't look the other way. with pictures of their houses and with their kids look uh where the kids went to school.

So, I don't know what's going on with that place that's supposed to be so nice, and the governor that's supposed to have such a big heart. Michael LaRosa joins us now. He's a former special assistant to President Biden and chief spokesperson to First Lady Jill Biden and House Democratic leadership in the U.S. Senate as communications director. That's all part of his resume.

Michael, welcome back. I just want to bring you a little of the press conference. Monday was an announcement, Tuesday was a press conference. He was so unhinged, blaming racism and Trump. Neither one of those things will fly.

What's your take from this? Yeah, and it wasn't even a press conference. It was a press statement. He didn't even take questions. And if I were a constituent, I wouldn't be too pleased about that.

There'd be a lot of questions I would have. He's been doing this from the very beginning, and I've been really disappointed in the governor. I think he's a great guy. I like him personally, but. There's been no contrition.

There's been no ownership and responsibility. And yesterday, the turning this around and trying to blame the president, Trump. Was, it was almost too like he was disconnected from reality. This is a. This is a historic example of fraud.

And it's serious. And if it wasn't serious and if it wasn't a political liability, He would be running for re-election. Um but he's not because He has become a little bit toxic. And when you forced your allies and your friends and your fellow Democrats To fight on political terrain that they were never planning, they never chose to fight on. They are going to have to absorb his liabilities.

And he didn't do himself any favors yesterday. I don't know what he was talking about. I really don't. I want to know about the agencies he oversaw that betrayed the taxpayers that voted for him. Yeah, I mean, there's a few things going on.

Governor Gavin Newsom quickly praised him as basically doing a great job. You think he's going to regret that? Yeah, I do. I mean, look, I don't know if if Hypocrisy matters anymore in politics these days. It can be.

Overshadowed by personalities and viral moments, but um I don't but I don't understand. And I thought Democrats, I thought we were kind of ready to turn the page into a more radical moment of candor and have tough conversations with each other as a party. We have to be okay with Acknowledging mistakes, acknowledging incompetency or neglect, in this case, of programs. By the way, these State welfare programs. Like these are the legacy programs of the Democrats' Great Society and the New Deal.

And to be so cavalier and neglectful. of how we've treated These programs do a disservice. It's disrespectful to the legacy of Roosevelt and Johnson and Clinton and Welfare to Work and the CHIP program. Yeah. We need to be more protective and loyal of the programs that should be protected and not so much loyal to the executives or the candidates just because they have a D after their name.

We need to be able to say they effed up and we can find another Democrat.

So there's a DA Ellison who came out and said, look, I prosecuted that fraud. I got $80 million back.

Well, we're talking about between $1 billion and $9 billion. And then one of the groups you took a contribution from, but you're talking about money that should have been going to teach children with autism. You're talking about money to go with people who are challenged economically, who are homeless. You had a food program that was abused by the millions. And now you have good programs that the president says I'm freezing all the money until we can find out where the fraud is and how to stop it.

And it's hurting good programs in the past. For example, Jennifer Larson weighed in last night with Will. And he talked about how Her own son has autism, cut eleven. I think all of Minnesota is so tired of people not being held accountable. Stepping down is just it's it's his way out.

This is so ugly and so widespread, and he was so complicit, in my opinion, of course, but. I'm more worried about the 30 to 40,000 children if they don't pull this back. this prepayment review and pay us that are going to be left Innocent children, they're going to be left with no services. The schools can't take them. The schools were the people who said, We can't take you and discharge them.

They'll have nowhere to go. Moms and dads, somebody's going to have to stop working and stay home with these children. I, you know, whatever happens to Governor Wallace, just leave. It would be great if he just left, but that's the problem. You're talking about the most vulnerable people who are being abused.

Evidently, the Somali families would come up with healthy kids. They'd say, Here's the money that's set aside for you. You don't need it, so let's split it. I'll hold it as an organizer. You take half of it for your family.

And this went on for years. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, um I think since Since even since 2015, right? Yeah. So Michael, what do you think? What do you think about the fact that he was vetted to be the running mate of Kamala Harris by Eric Holder and his law firm? Yeah, and look, my former colleague who did our vice presidential vetting, Dana Remus, at Coving and Burling, who I love and admire, but They got they they have some well, first of all, look.

Kamala Harris has A presidential nominee, their first decision, their first decision of consequence is their judgment on choosing a nominee. If she had won and by the way, she she to be fair, she lost by a little less than one and a half percent. It was a relatively close race in the scheme of things. Had she won, her administration would be engulfed right now in a scandal, in a controversy, because of her VP. And say what you want about her.

She didn't do that to President Biden. We vetted her.

So what happened? What went wrong? And if she doesn't answer these Sean, because she's made it clear she's still ambitious, she's setting up a pack, she's clearly motivated to want to run again, If she has learned any lessons from how she communicates and how she reacts to events. I don't understand why she's not. Admonishing Not just admonishing Waltz, but talking about what we just talked about here: the programs set up by FDR and Clinton and Johnson, these historic programs that as Democrats we take pride in: that we try to help the vulnerable and the disabled and the sick and the elderly.

Well, we are making the Republicans' case for us because of The lack Of oversight and mismanage that occurred in Minnesota. We're just, and I don't understand why she's not putting out a statement about this.

So, you think Kamala Harris, you think Kamala Harris should absolutely talk about how disappointed she is? One thousand. This was the only. Her judgment is going to be in question. Forever now.

I mean, at least for the next three years, because i the next time she does a an interview could be whenever, right? She's oh, she's continuing her book tour, right? This this month. I guess it was apparently successful, so she decided to do another month of it. Yeah.

This is not going to go away. What journalist, what actual journalist worth their salt, is not going to ask about this? Why should we trust, why should Democrats trust your judgment? When You chose a vice president who A vice presidential nominee, a running mate who had some serious competency and governing issues. Remember what a terrible debater he was.

Number one, called himself a knucklehead. And I have to agree now. Number two is he wasn't a head coach. He was an assistant coach for a handful of seasons, no legendary coach. Number three, he was in the military good.

But you didn't serve with glory. He overemphasized what he did, and he let people down by not going to Iraq.

So, with all that there, you can make any judgment you want. I go, sorry, Governor. Appreciate your support, but I can't have you as a number two. But uh obviously She has not said anything yet. I think there were things like this: like, look, he comes out of in a Democrats' world, in what used to be for both parties, right?

He came right out of central casting. Teacher, a coach, like the guy next door, a veteran. It was right out of central casting in terms of the way he handles himself, his hands going everywhere. I don't know what he was talking about half the time. Sean, the craziest I'm sorry, Brian.

I don't know how I called you, Sean. I'm sorry. Brian. The craziest part to me, the biggest red flag occurred when he got the gig. Because he did something gutsy.

He went out and campaigned for the job, which Democrats are always told not to do. Yeah. So he went out and campaigned for the job. He gets it, shows to prove that he's an effective communicator, that he can throw a punch, that he can attack Trump, that he can go on TV, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the f what happens when he gets there?

He does nothing. They muzzle him. They literally chopped his balls off as soon as he got there. You're just going to listen to the people, the same Biden advisors and Harris advisors who. Did them no favors in PR over the last four years?

Oh, yeah.

I want to get you two more things. I saw over the weekend, you saw the Venezuelan, what the president did with Maduro. He's now in a jail cell after appearing in court in Manhattan. He's in a jail cell in Brooklyn.

So, right away when this happened, Ben Rhodes, former Obama National Security Advisor, puts out on Twitter, on X, a regime change in Latin America based on absurd rationales about drug trafficking, no explanation of goals, and counter to everything Trump promised on the campaign trail. And we're not even a full year into the Trump term. And you write back. Give me a break. How many innocent civilians did Obama kill with drone attacks in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria?

When Democrats controlled the House and Senate in 89, no one argued that Bush didn't have the authority to capture Noriega and send him to Miami. Let's not forget Obama's surge of force in Afghanistan after campaigning on ending dumb wars and attacking Hillary for lacking the judgment to be president because he voted for the Iraq war authorization.

Meanwhile, Obama tapped a VP and two secretaries of state who supported the same resolutions. The Obama crowd should sit this one out, especially when it comes to breaking campaign promises. But let the weakened woke progressive pearl clutching begin. What's been the response to your response to Ben Rhodes? I love what you wrote, by the way.

Um Because keep it mixed, you know, like again, Democrats don't like when you say the quiet parts out loud or even the obvious parts. I mean, but you. How can we just not stand for anything? Obama didn't get permission to launch strikes into Libya and Pakistan and Yemen. At one point, he got a UN resolution.

Well, big deal. That was first of all, at the time, people thought, like, that is not congressional authorization. That is not the kind of authorization people have in mind. But. He ignored Congress.

He ignored. They ignored. They did everything. Um that all presidents have been doing, frankly, except here's the difference. In Panama, in Grenada, in Kosovo.

Those presidents who sent Um troops in or or or the air strikes. We we knew First of all, we owned the aftermath. We stayed around in Panama and Grenada and Kosovo. We made sure that the peace. Was kept, and that rule of law was restored, and that we transitioned the government when it was ready and governable.

But that is not what they did. And he put domestic politics, Obama put domestic politics ahead of the people of Libya. I mean, we just. Totally Docie out and left. Yeah, and he said that's his biggest regret of his presidency, too.

So I want to talk about New York. Obama people just don't have any room to stand on right now.

So, you know, Dan Goldman is considered as, I think, as liberal as any Democrat. I mean, I haven't seen any moderate or. were conservative elements about his uh his service. And then you have him going against this guy named Brad Lander.

Now, why am I bringing to you a New York race? Because Brad Lander is being backed by Zo Ram Mdani to knock off a fellow Democrat in his district, a sitting congressman, backing Goldman or Governor Hokul and Akeem Jeffries. This is an example of how the socialist wing of the party is going to war with not even people that are moderate. And there's some moderates in New York, moderate Democrats. You're going after an outspoken liberal Democrat.

Can you make sense of that, Michael Aroza? No, I can't make sense of it. I don't get it. I mean, Yeah. Dan Goldman, like He's been on the front lines of trying to impeach Trump and fight Trump and, and, um, You know, by all standards, a progressive Democrat, a left-word Democrat, not necessarily, now you wouldn't call Dan Goldman a moderate.

I just don't get it. But you have a socialist, you have a socialist which just wants socialists there. This is not something Mike LaRosa talks about. You're not against home ownership, are you? No.

Yeah. I mean, I don't get it. But it's going to be a problem because you're seeing it. You're seeing these problems. There's a lot of primaries right now that are under the radar, and they're going to get excited to see because they're congressional districts where a lot of them are actually safe Democratic seats, but they have these fault lines and these microcosms of what you're seeing in New York in some of these congressional races in the suburbs.

And it's going to be interesting to watch over the next couple of months because they're going to start. And look, I suggested I'm a Goldman Democrat at this point. Michael LaRose, I just wish he was stronger for Israel. Michael AROSA, thanks so much. Back in the morning.

Thanks. It's Brian Kilmade. The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. It doesn't make anybody feel wonderful for me to sit here and tell you that this is one of the fastest recovery and rebuilding efforts that the state of California has ever seen.

And I'm proud of that, but I do have to acknowledge the grief, the suffering, and the pain that people have gone through. She is absolutely clueless. How she can get away with that statement is insane. That is Mayor Karen Bass, member, famously knows there's an emergency, fire bearing down. And she goes to Ghana anyway, forced to cut the trip short and come back in disgrace and sit there with the President of the United States, who told her to cut red tape and get these people started.

And she basically said no. And now there's almost nothing rebuilt. The insurance company is not paying. The most affluent people that you'll ever run across are in Pacific Palisades, Altadina, more working class. And now you're just seeing, now they're taking a bow a year later.

You crazy? There's nothing good about that rebuild, and that's what should be hanging on the governor's head. How you act in a crisis, what you do when the chips are down, how you fight back. Or didn't. I mean, tell me one thing Gavin Newsom has done productive.

Where Mayor Bass wanted to change the subject, and she got a chance to do when the president put the National Guard into Los Angeles trying to suppress and subdue the crime there and the unrest. And then you can quickly just change the subject, but we remember exactly what happened. And so does everyone in California. All right, you listen to the Brian Killmee Chow. I want to see you in person at Fort Myers on February 14th, Valentine's Day.

Go to BrianKilly.com, History, Liberty, and Labs. From high atop, five. Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead.

Hi, one, so glad you're there. Brian Kilmead, coming to you from Midtown Manhattan, right around the country. Around the world, we know our press secretary is going to be speaking shortly, updating us everything going on from vaccines to Venezuela. We'll discuss that with some aftermath. Right now, there's hearings happening in Minnesota of the fraud scandal.

It's only going to get bigger. The governor and DAG are both invited back out there in February. That would be electric. Get them under oath, get them to tell the truth.

So, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen is going to be here at the bottom of the hour, and Carl Robe is standing by.

So, let's get to the big three. Number three. The only thing that matters is 2026, taking back the House of Representatives. Newsom just said that the only thing that matters is 2026 and the House taking back the Congress. But I would say, why?

They don't pass legislation. No one's passing legislation. Unless your goal is to just impeach President Trump again. It would help if they gave their agenda besides affordability.

Well, how are you going to make things affordable? Midterm mania. Trump has a plan, as Republicans' margin forever shrinks as they lose another congressional Republican, and Dem's divide grows. Number two. It turns out Americans like what they deem to be successful foreign policy operations.

And in this case, they view the ousting of Maduro, at least up to this point, as a successful one, and therefore the support way up. Yeah, it doubled. Venezuela first, Greenland next. We discussed the Trump agenda and what it means for America. Number one.

Answer these tough questions. Quit hiding behind this and expect for the next 11 months for me to ride you like you've never been ridden. Is it to make sure that you're doing your job? I'm not going anywhere. You can make all your requests for me to resign over my dead body.

You're going to, wait, wait.

So you're going to get mad at the people asking you to resign because of your horrible running of the state and because of a scandal that you oversaw? Major media fraud chaos Waltz and is about to descend on Newsome. Fraud is front and center. I think the midterm should be about that if I'm a Republican. Carl Rove joins us now, who is a Republican, and a Fox News contributor.

Carl, what do you think? Should fraud now be something Republicans run on? Intent intentionally? Yeah. Well, it's in Minnesota for certain, but you have to have evidence of it elsewhere.

And there's probably the GAO, the General Accounting Office. Estimates the amount of fraud in the federal budget is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. There's plenty of opportunities, but I've never seen anything as astonishingly large. and well organized as the Fraud that we're seeing on the state level with these COVID programs and child programs that have been. systematically looted.

by some well organized, apparently groups of left wing activists. And so yes, it's going to be an issue. But right now, it's Michigan. Let's see how much further it goes. Yes, we know.

ML, yes, right now it's Minnesota. I think Maine is going to be huge. Washington State is huge. And they say California is the mother load.

So we'll see where that goes and what it unveils. Because I think you're going to have some Republican candidates like RoConna who said, I want to get to the bottom of fraud.

So it's not going to be Gavin Newsome. Let's protect him.

Some of these Democrats look at him as a potential opponent. Don't you think that plays into this? Yeah, I think it does to some extent. You mentioned you had accidentally referred to Roe Tahana as a Republican the first time you mentioned it. But yes, he's a Democrat.

He has got ambitions in 2028, and he knows that there can't be multiple people from California. And this may be a way to take out or at least dust up Gavin Newsome. Because, look, we knew this during COVID. Remember all the people in prisons who got COVID money in California because they had these rings inside the prison that figured out how to abuse these federal programs?

So, yeah, this is going to be an issue this year. Starting in Minnesota, we'll see where else it goes. If you are a Republican and if Klobucher runs for governor, which it looks like she might, that would open up that seat. Is there a Republican that would have a shot at that seat that you might know offhand?

Well, the seat. The seat doesn't come open. She is in the midterm, so she gets to free run for governor, keeping her Senate seat. And if she were to be elected governor, she would name her own replacement. She would resign from the Senate after some time after winning the governorship if she were to win.

And then as being sworn in as governor, she would be able to replace herself. She probably would not do that. She'd probably do it simultaneously. She wouldn't want to leave Tim Walls with the idea that he could appoint himself to the U.S. Senate.

Right. How many years has she left, you know? Yeah. I want to say that she's got four years left.

Okay. But it may be two. Yeah. All right. So we look at the generic ballot at the midterms.

It's 36, 34. Excuse me. Yeah. It's. It's a four-point separation between the two.

Tell me what the game plan should be for Republicans to close that gap.

Well, there are actually two gaps. You're talking about the Yeah, you're talking about one that's close, and that's the generic ballot gap. And uh the you know the The difficulty in applying that to the house races in particular is. is that we have so many districts in the country that are solidly R or solidly D and a relatively more modest number of seats where that actually that generic ballot is going to matter because for example, You know, a district might be, you know, like Michigan seven. Tom Barrett.

Won by four points last time around. That's going to be a seat where a four-point advantage to the Democrats in the generic Bella could matter. The more problematic gap is the enthusiasm gap, which also tends to be more variable. The generic ballot tends to move slowly, but enthusiasm among each side's adherents tends to move a little bit faster and a little bit more erratic. And there's where the Republicans have got a problem, because today the Democrats have a significant advantage on the enthusiasm measure.

Democrats are far more enthusiastic about turning out to vote. We've seen it in every one of the 2025 special elections, even the ones that we won. You know, Tennessee 7, district that Donald Trump won by 21, and Mark Green, the congressman, won by 20. And we're lucky to get a Republican member of Congress in that district in the special election by nine points, running against a total lunatic. I mean, this woman the Democrats put up could easily have been a great candidate for the Democratic Socialists in New York City, but in Clarksville, Tennessee, she wasn't exactly very popular.

Her views abolished. The police, et cetera, were not exactly, you know, sort of routine, but the Democrat enthusiasm showed up. And as a result, a district that we won by 20 to 21, we won by nine. But if you want to know about the divide in the Democratic Party, don't have to wait anymore. All of a sudden, you have Dan Goldman, a lefty liberal, who's being challenged by another socialist, Brad Lander, and supported by the 34-year-old mayor of one week, Mayor Zandani, taking on the governor who's supporting the other Democrat, Dan Goldman.

This is just the beginning. Remember, Keem Jeffries had to fend off which was about to be a primary challenge. The socialists going after the Democrats, that can't be healthy for a party. No, not at all. In fact, this look, this is the opening this is the opening part of this ki of this whole war, and it's going to go on until twenty twenty eight.

I mean, we're back to a more emotional and, if you will, divisive Time that we had in the Democratic Party leading up to the 1992 nomination. You remember the Democrats had lost under Mondale, you know, Jimmy Carter in 1980. Mondale gets one state in 84. Michael Dukakis gets his clock cleaned in 88. And the Democrats were divided.

And ironically enough, Bill Clinton stood up and attacked. uh a a prominent Democrat, black activist. And crystallized that the Democratic Party had to make a decision. Was it going to go to continue to go left or was it going to try and claw its way back to the center? And we know they went to the center, and now Bill Quinton would not even be nominated in that party anymore.

Let's talk about Venezuela. The operation was a flawless War Department operation. Nobody denies that.

So the president says, I don't want a new government in there. I'm going to keep it the shell there. I don't want to pick up the garbage. I don't want to write the checks, government checks. Keep the trains running.

And this vice president, now that she's president for now, should listen to me.

So, your thoughts?

Well, I know he's concerned about regime change, but there's no way that we're going to get American oil companies to invest In Venezuela, as long as Maduro's gang is still in power. These are people who have systematically looted the country. And with all due respect to the President, this was an enormously successful operation. And he has enormous sway over the the Venezuelans, but This is not going to change for the good over the long haul until there is a change in government. The good news is he's got time to bring that around.

There's no need he's Probably correct, Marco Rubio is probably correct, that there's no alternative today to having the vice president in charge. But let's remember, she's a thug. She helped all of the bad things that we blame on Maduro. She and the Interior Minister and the Defense Minister were all part and parcel. Her brother is running the National, he's like the speaker of their house.

He's running the National Assembly. These are a group of communist thugs. Who loot the country for their own personal gain and suppress freedom and liberty. And that's going to have to at some point end. But we shouldn't expect it to end today.

And the president has to have leverage over them. Let's give him time to execute the plan and trust in the Secretary of State to be able to guide it. I don't want to use stereotypes, but when I think of Texas, I think of oil. I think you're in Texas, so I'm going to think of Carl Roven oil. The oil executives meeting with Chris.

Um The Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. Chris Right. And they're going to look for some type of commitment and a way forward of what they need to get back in there. Do you think they will? Grab it.

My gut tells me, in fact, I'm putting this in my column tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal, that I don't think they will until there's a stable democratic regime. Remember, 20 years ago, this same crowd. The same crowd. Expropriated the assets of all the American oil companies except Chevron. Chevron is the only U.S.

company operating still in Venezuela, and even it operates under the most difficult of circumstances.

So you're talking about oil companies. Look, it's not, you know, get yourself a crew and head out to the field and plop a drill down, and the big oil comes rolling out. These are expensive billion-dollar engineering projects, and no company that doesn't have assets in Venezuela today is going to spend that kind of money until they have a confidence that over the long haul, those assets are not going to be taken like they did 20 years ago. Even Chevron is there. If you talk to people inside Chevron, they want to get out.

They've wanted to get out for years, but it's like, why? We can't justify walking away from the capital that we've invested there. We're trying to find a way to maximize our return on that money, but we can't without doing enormous damage to our company. Company walks away from what we've done over decades in investing in the country. But I guess they're hunching it because the stock prices in all those companies, Conoco, and Exxon and Chevron, they're all going up.

So I think they'll do something, and I think that with 15,000 U.S. military personnel off the shore, they should feel good about getting started at the very least. And the President, I love the fact that he told China and he told the Vice President, now the President, to kick out China, Russia, and Iran.

So then they got to do it. Yeah. No, they're now under pressure, and let's see how they handle it. How would Call Rove handle Greenland? Uh Look, I'm if the President wants additional U.

S. military facilities in Greenland, he can get it by treating Denmark with respect. The idea that Denmark is going to give up Greenland, which has been part of the three kingdoms of Denmark for hundreds of years because Donald Trump threatens the U.S. military, is ridiculous. If he it is a vital security interest For the entire West to have greater impact and greater influence and greater facilities in the Arctic region.

But we can get those without threatening a close friend and longtime ally and trying to become, you know, trying to take their territory. How would we like it if somebody said, well, you know, we want to have Hawaii or we want to have Alaska or we want to have Puerto Rico. And you know, we wouldn't like it. And the President can get what he wants without making these threats. And I've seen the comments recently that, oh, yes, what he's really trying to do is he recognizes that he's not going to be able to get Greenland, but he's doing this in order to get leverage over the Danes to give us additional facilities and military outposts.

Well, look, they'll be happy to do that if we treat them with respect, as allies and compatriots. Lastly, on Iran, Senator Lindsey Graham, cut 39. And to the Ayatoas, you need to understand: if you keep killing your people who are demanding a better life, Donald J. Trump is going to kill you. Change is coming to Iran.

It'll be the biggest change in the history of the Mideast to get rid of this Nazi regime. To the people of Iran, help is on the way.

So there is a sense that this is a little bit different because they're falling apart on the inside.

So Senator, what do you about the Senator?

Well I agree with him that change is on the horizon. The question is, what do the Moolahs do? Realize this is not this is not only The unrest that's happening today is starting in the Grand Bazaar in Tehran. This has been where the two previous revolutions have taken place: the revolution that brought the Ayatollahs to power and the revolution that put the royalist regime in power before that.

So, this is a conservative part of the country. These are people who should be natural allies. of the of the regime, and instead they are protesting that the economy has been absolutely wrecked. 40% of the people live in extreme poverty, 80% of the people now live in poverty. This used to be one of the most you know prog one of the most prosperous parts of that part of the world because of their oil wealth.

And they're learning, you know, a well-educated population. And so, no, I think change is coming. And the question is going to be how much by the end of this coming year, this year, are the Mulas going to they've got limited tools to solve the economic problem. The only way to solve the economic problem is to have a free society that allows people to have property and to advance their lives by industry and commerce. And this regime is like, in some ways, like Venezuela.

They're stealing the money from the people in order to enrich the nomenclatura. You know, in this case, it's the mulas. In Venezuela, it's the Maduro regime. The insiders get the money and the people get screwed. Yeah, the people in Turant can't even get water, let alone the inflation.

Carl Roe. Yeah. Thanks so much.

Look forward to your column tomorrow in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks, Carl. You bet. All the best. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, at the bottom of the hour, your call is next.

Real talk, real guests, real insight, where curiosity meets conversation, is the Brian Killmeat Show. The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead. I'm going tomorrow to mark the anniversary with my friends and neighbors who lost everything. I have one of those homes that's filled with toxins, and the insurance companies don't want to pay us anything.

They don't really want to clean our homes. New York Times just did a very interesting piece about a family who was told it was safe to go back into their homes, and they've all tested positive for lead and neurotoxins.

So that's what these families are having to deal with. And guess who is shielding the insurance companies? The governor. You know, the insurance commission that is populated by the richest insurance companies in the country, they're making sure, with the help of Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass, they don't have to help anybody. It's been a year.

Nothing has been done to my house. We haven't had any remediation. And I've got so many neighbors like that. And then you've got the people who have lost everything and they're being offered pennies on the dollar for what it would take to reconstruct their homes. And you can't do it.

And also, you can't go and get permits unless you have a settlement. With your insurance company, they are going to delay as long as possible, even though it says in your policy: this is what you paid for, this is what you're owed, that is what the governor is doing in that state. He's running interference. It is criminal, it is immoral, and the president is right. All he has is a line of crap.

That is Kennedy living. She has a house out in California, burned to the ground, or actually, it's condemned, but it's still there, but it's unusable. And she's going through hell, but so are her neighbors. And that's why the mayor says she did such a great job, and the governor is awful. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin.

It's Brian Kilmeade. ICE insist upon the Constitutional Command that we shouldn't be using U.S. military in hostilities, except for. Self-defense from an attack without a vote of Congress. And I insisted upon that with Presidents Obama and Biden and also with President Trump.

I view the attack on Venezuela as illegal. Thank you, Senator Kaine. Totally inaccurate, not illegal. You can take executive action, especially on an indicted criminal who we had a $20 million bounty on his head under Biden. It went up to $40 under this president.

So, why he says stuff that he knows is blatantly untrue? Because it's in the partisan, even though we had 11 months until an election, they're still in the partisan mode. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen joins us now. Armed Services and Appropriations Committee. I know there's just been a briefing.

A committee, and one of the committees was just briefed by. Marco Rubio and Pete Hagseth, Secretary of War. Have you gotten yours yet, Senator? Yes, I actually just walked out of that briefing. Oh, you did.

It was Chairman Kane, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. You had Director John Ratcliffe there. You had Pam Bondi, Secretary Rubio, and Secretary Hegseth. And Brian, let me tell you, that was the best briefing, classified briefing, that I have ever been part of. And I mean that sincerely.

I've set through hundreds of classified briefings. I've already been briefed on this one previous time, but not quite in depth. Any Democrat that walks out of that and says they were disappointed in the briefing, that says they're not proud of what the American intelligence community and the American military did, they're going to flat be lying to the American people. It was phenomenal, and we should be very proud that we brought this guy to justice. That was, by the way, Maduro was indicted almost six years ago for poisoning and killing Americans.

In 2024, we lost more Americans to drug overdoses than we did U.S. personnel in the Vietnam War. We had a war going on in our streets, and the main guy that was sponsoring it, that was allowing these cartels to have a safe haven in his illegitimate, I wouldn't say illegitimate country, but in his illegitimate position to be the dictator over Venezuela, we brought him to the U.S. and hold him accountable. That is great, Brian.

Yeah, so what is the school of thought? What did they tell you about the transition?

Now that we're a few days into it, Del Codriguez, the vice president, came out defying. I want a proof of life. I want Maduro back. And then she changed. From the time I ended my show at 10 o'clock Sunday, till I got up to Fox and Friends, there was a new statement.

And the statement said, we're here essentially to work with the United States the best we can. And now we have this cooperation on oil and gas because they can't sell it. They can't refine it. They're all backed up. They have nowhere even to store it.

There's no tankers there. We just caught two other tankers. But what's your sense about Del C Rodriguez's ability to run that country differently than? Maduro.

Well, she is no friend of ours, and I doubt very seriously when they have elections that she'll be elected to run the president to run the country. But this was never about regime change. This was a law enforcement, a law enforcement activity that was to bring Maduro to hold him accountable for his behavior.

Now, what we have, though, is we have a strong leverage now of this oil. Remember, this oil has been sold on the market at a huge discount. I mean, just China alone was taking roughly 400,000 barrels a day. You have Cuba, that they were 100% reliant on Venezuela oil, which is why you had a security force there that was protecting Maduro, which obviously a lot of them lost their life doing so. And so the leverage point we have now, excuse me, Brian.

is the ability to sell this oil for Venezuela. at an open market price instead of a discount price and help them pay their bills, pay the military, pay the law enforcement, pay sanitarian workers and keep their lights on essentially.

So we want to work with the Venezuela people to allow them to have an opportunity to choose their next government. And right now the person that is that person we got to work with, well, she's not a friend, but she has to work with us because she has no choice because in a few days they run out of money. Right. So in the end, I know it's never easy when the President is taken out of his bed, justifiably, and put into a prison in Brooklyn. But I understand this Interior Secretary Cabello is as bad as it gets, walks around with spikes in his bat, has everyone scared to death, and you got motorcycle gangs going up and down the streets making sure there's no Trump supporters out there and nothing but Maduro supporters.

Did they address that at all about how we don't get messed up in this Iraq style, but we somehow provide some type of semblance of freedom to the people? Yeah, I've got to be pretty vague on this because this was classified and until it's declassified or it becomes open source, but I don't want to be the person that causes it to be open source. I will tell you, we're working. With people inside Venezuela to make sure that the democracy is restored, that there is some type of structure there, which is why you saw the statement that changed in what, less than 12 hours?

So there is a coordinated effort. To bring stability there.

Now we have no boots on the ground, zero. We pulled everybody that went in, every single person came out, and our assets came out as well.

So but that doesn't mean that we don't have contingency plans, but I don't think what we're seeing as of right now, Brian, isn't A reason to deploy a contingency plan. Right now, what we're seeing is a country that is stabilizing after 25 years of dictatorship, and they're finding the footing, and they're going to find out the United States is a friend. All the oil that is coming out of Venezuela that was being sold on an illegal market and that wasn't going to the Venezuela people, we are now going to control that. Not one dollar is going to be deposited into the U.S. Treasury.

It's going to be used to go back into Venezuela to allow them to become the great nation that they used to be. And I think the Venezuela people, home and abroad, are excited about what's happening and the opportunity for them.

So, Senator, and you know, I don't know what I don't know.

So, if there's something else you want to relay to the audience that I'm not asking that you think that's unclassified, please let me know. But I do would like to ask you this: about an hour ago, they announced that the U.S. has seized two tankers, one under a Russian flag. The Russians, I heard, were escorting the ship with submarines. But when we actually boarded it and took it, even though they asked us not to, and who do they tell us not to, they reflagged it mid-journey, and we just took it anyway.

So could you tell us anything about that as a member of Armed Services? Uh we we did um take that ship. It w they s they claimed it was theirs. It was not. It was illegally flagged.

Um as far as the escorts, that is Um That's Inaccurate. I'm trying to be as close to it as I can be. They did threaten something to that nature, but listen, this is the Western Hemisphere. This is the Western Hemisphere of Americas, right? And we are we're the we're the The power in the ocean, and we will protect our backyard.

We've made it very clear that there's not going to be one drop of oil that goes into Venezuela or leaves Venezuela. And everything that does, we're going to take control of it, and then we're going to work with them. Like I said, this isn't to go to be deposited inside the U.S. Treasury. Every drop of oil we take right now under the sanctions that we have them under in a blockade will be deposited, be sold on our open market, be deposited in a separate account, and be written in checks back to Venezuela government to stand that country back up from the years of theft that the Maduro regime had taken from the people and the great nation.

I mean, honestly, I don't know if you've ever been to Venezuela, but it is a beautiful, I mean, it is a beautiful country, and beautiful people have a tremendous amount of pride in their country that has been robbed from them from the Maduro. Regime, and we are there to give them the opportunity to get to the right. They also have Ritter. And don't forget Guyana right next door. Maduro was threatening to take that, by the way.

We made sure that didn't happen.

So we also know that they had a huge oil discovery, too. Which is going to benefit everybody in the region. Are we going to get our prisoners out? We understand that Venezuela has some prisoners. Is there a plan for that?

Yeah. Okay. I can't go into it, Brian, but yes. Understood. Absolutely, there is a plan for that.

And the president is very good about going and getting Americans all across the world. I mean, you saw that. The Biden administration, they paid huge amounts of money and traded a Doctor of Death for a WNBA player. And that has caused a tremendous amount of destabilization because the guy is back at work doing what he used to do. And what we saw with President Trump is they are released because of the President's ability to negotiate.

And right now, we don't have to negotiate. We know those prisoners are coming home. Senator, did they go over Cube at all in the briefing? Not really. They talked a little bit about Colombia and Cuba.

Cuba was just the fact that Cuba is being, Venezuela was propping up Cuba, and they know that. And Cuba is in an interesting, peculiar situation, but not militarily wise, not details or anything like that. Talked about Cuba or Colombia a little bit. That's not the same. Venezuela is not the same as Colombia.

I mean, yes, there's a loudmouth elected president that's in Colombia, but we still have and we've continued to have good working relationships with Colombia. And ever since we helped them come out of the literally the Civil War that they were in with the drug cartels that were operating and taking that country by storm, we've always maintained very good relationships with Colombia.

So the rhetoric coming out of the new president there isn't really that big of a concern to ours. This is the worst crisis in their 67-year communist history. They have ration cards, but no rations to hand out. No electricity for an average between 15 and 20 hours a day. They have skyrocketing inflation.

Eggs cost $8. They get pensions on the average of $7 a month.

So there's no way this guy, I mean, this country or this island can survive under this regime.

So I just think we all should brace ourselves for just a collapse. uh uh almost you know a collapse of that country. The other thing we're looking at is massive protests for ten straight days in Iran. And we have nothing to do with it. We're they've they earned all of this unrest with the lack of water, inflation through the roof, Billions and billions going to Hamas and Hezbollah instead of to their own country.

I'm getting the sense, and I talked to some people this morning, that this is a riot, this is a series, this is unrest like we have not seen. And you talk about problems rippling through the region. Think about the militias. If something happens to that regime, the militias that will not get serviced in Iraq. Think about Hezbollah and Hamas, who won't get billions.

Think about the Houthis that will be cut off from arms if the Ayatollahs fall. I'm sure this has been thought through. Yeah, there's a big picture that you got to look at this. Yes, Cuba is a failed state, but this is what happens when socialism takes over a free nation. We know socialism does not work.

And you can say a regime in Iran is real close to what's been happening in Cuba.

Now, different religious backgrounds, but it's the same type of dictatorship. You saw what's happened in Venezuela.

So Venezuela's collapsed. Cuba's collapsing. Iran is, it might remember, Iran used to be a huge partner of ours in the 60s and 70s. Businesses were openly operating there. Iran was considered one of our close friends in the region.

And ever since the Shah was overthrown in 1979, now you're seeing this regime finally start to collapse. It's interesting because the timeframes are close to the same. But what people aren't talking about is what's happened to China because of it. Keep in mind: 400,000 barrels a day from Venezuela was propping up China, and they were buying it cheap in a discount. Price.

Iran, there was even more oil coming out of Iran.

Now, because of the unrest, they're not able to get the shipment to China. China only has about 90 days of supply of reserves and oil. And when you take Venezuela off the market and you take Iran off the market, and now you have in Russia that they're having to be dependent on, and that's getting very important, very difficult. That backup. Could be roughly 45 days.

So you're going to see a behavior change in China too, because they're going to have to go back to the open market instead of buying it at a 25 to 35 percent discount from the open market.

Now they've got to absorb that into their economy, and their economy is trickling.

So you see dictatorships, socialism, communism all around the world right now becoming very destabled because it doesn't work, which is why it's ridiculous that you have Democrats now that are trying to push socialism like Mendami in New York. I mean, because we see that it fails. And when one crumbles, they all begin to crumble. Senator, I can't thank you enough. Just a fountain of information, a lot of breaking news today.

Last question to you is the President's message and the game plan at the midterms. Can you give me three things that Republicans are all on the same page that they're going to look to target to get their message out for the midterms?

Well, we're talking about the kitchen table. It's all about the kitchen table. It's about actually getting health care to work for the American people rather than affordable, unaffordable health care that has been absolutely a failed experiment by the Democrats. We're talking about bringing down the costs of groceries because when our economy grows, inflation comes down. That's why we've seen inflation go from a high of 9.1 percent during the Biden administration to around 2.4 percent.

We expect interest rates to drop and then it's about energy. If you bring down energy costs, you're also going to bring down the quality of life for the American people.

So if you do those, that's because the economy is coming, we're creating jobs. We've got to stay focused on that what we do, the Trump's economy, works for the American people. And you have to ask, are we better off today than we were before President Trump was in office? The answer to that is absolutely. Are we a safer nation?

Absolutely. Do we have our borders secured? Absolutely. Do people around the world respect us? Absolutely.

And it's all because the American people chose to put the Republicans in office. And that's what we've got to stay focused on. And, Senator, I'm looking right now to get you into the octagon for the UFC fight at the White House.

So we're just coming, we're looking at a few opponents, and we'll have you have to sign off on that. Is that all right? Yeah, I want to sign off of them because they've got to be very unskilled. Because, in order for me to come out of retirement, it's going to have to take somebody that's got less skill than me or no time in the ring. We'll see.

I'm going to find out. I'm pretty sure you can handle yourself. Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, thanks so much. Back in the morning. Thank you, Brian.

Ah. The headlines, the stories behind them, and the people who make them only on the Brian Kill Me Show. Information you want, truth you demand. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Here's the reality, though, and this is where Steve Basciotti, the owner of the Ravens, really had a tough decision to make.

Because there's no guarantee they're going to find somebody as good as Harbaugh this time around. Hell, it's been 18 years since they've done a coaching search. And there's a chance that Harbaugh is going to land somewhere else and instantly improve a team that needs someone like Harbaugh there. He's not being let go because he's a bad coach, it's just time.

So, yeah, sometimes it happens. You have great coaches who just move on. They feel like people have stopped listening to them. And it's so very hard to have a coach without a success and just turn the page.

So that's the deal. And the reason why we're playing that is because John Harbar, one of the great people in the NFL, is now free stunningly. He got fired from Baltimore. And I just hope the Giants not only interview him, but make him an immediate offer. There's about seven teams, including teams with coaches, that contacted him and said, We want you to come.

We want you to possibly come to our team if you would commit.

So there's also there's talk of them going to every team, including Arizona. But I don't know why he would go to Arizona. They have almost no history. They have that one brief moment when they got to the Super Bowl and had a chance of winning. But there's really no there's no quarterback there.

That you can really build on. The guy's too small. And I think that you really got to start from zero. The guy si and Horbaugh is 63 years old. He's got to build a team that wants to learn, that's got young talent, has got high draft picks.

and a history of winning, not lately, but the Giants got four Super Bowls. And Harbor could get another. And I think the guy loves challenges. I talked to somebody last night that knows him. He goes, his wife does not want him home.

He wants him to continue to work because she's working.

So he's not taking a year off. And he doesn't need to be the GM. Hire Harbaugh.