Trump Mourns Sen. Lindsey Graham: "He Was Like A Member Of The Family"

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Welcome to the Brian Killmeat Show. I am Mary Walters, sitting in for Brian Killmeat. Coming up later this hour, Francis Suarez, the former Miami mayor, will be joining us to discuss Cuba on the brink of collapse and the new Fox News special, Cuba, a new dawn. That's hosted by Rachel Campos Duffy. But right now, we are joined by retired Army Colonel Seth Krumrick.

He's the executive vice president of Global Guardian, and he is here to join us. Let's talk about what's going on in the Middle East. Sir, thank you so much for joining me. Hi, Mary. It's my pleasure.

Good morning. Good morning to you. Global Guardian has evacuated people from the Middle East, over 4,000 people from the Middle East. Since this whole thing started in February, going back and forth with Iran and the U.S., I was shocked when I saw that because I didn't realize people needed to be. evacuated.

People needed to basically be rescued. Wh who who were those people? Who were those over 4,000 people that had to be evacuated? And why couldn't they just get on a plane? Hi, Mary.

Well, so the big difference is we evacuated 4,200 clients in the first 10 days of the war. When all of the missiles and all of the drones were firing and hitting in UAE, Bahrain, the Gulf, Global Guardian has ground teams and medical teams in over 145 countries to include the Middle East and throughout the Gulf.

So when everyone was saying, hey, shelter in place, we talked to our clients, which are corporate and family members, and said, you actually have another option. We can get you out. And what we did was we transported them to Oman, to Saudi Arabia, where there was reliable airspace, and we were able to fly them out immediately to be able to get out of harm's way. And then, after that 10 days, we've been working with those corporate and business travelers that are working in the area to help them navigate all of these evolving and turbulent times that we're in by using intelligence so they make informed decisions, giving them day-to-day security on the ground with armed agents and secure transportation. Medical, we've got a wonderful relationship with the Cleveland Clinic, so we have Global Medical, and of course, crisis response should they need it.

That's always available globally for our clients.

So that's the context behind it. But we are very busy at Global Guardian. Yeah, it sounds like you're very, very busy.

So, what is happening? I mean, I know a little bit about what is going on with Iran. I, you know, probably a little bit more than the average person just because of my job.

So I have to read a lot about it and stay informed. But I'm super confused. As to why this is continuing, it seems as if they say, okay, no bombing during the Ayatollah's funeral, which goes on apparently for a really long time.

So, no bombing during that.

Okay, great. And then they walk away from the table, walk out of the room, hang up the phone, whatever it is, and then Iran bombs a bunch of ships. And so President Trump at this point is just bombing back. Is it a cultural misunderstanding? What is it that this keeps happening?

Why? Both sides think that they have won in this fight, believe it or not. And that's the crux of the entire problem. And it's really difficult to negotiate if you don't have somebody with a stronger hand. And that's really one of the tricks that we're dealing with now.

The U. S. wants No nuclear Iran. I think any rational human would say, yes, Iran should not have a nuclear weapon. But Iran has very clear different goals, which is the regime survives and they are able to fix their failed, not failing, their failed economy, which is what they want to do.

So all of this is a negotiation.

So they see the Iranians see this as an ongoing negotiation strategy to get what they want. The U.S. is fighting in the military spectrum. We are demonstrating, hey, we can blow up all of your nuclear facilities and do whatever we want there. But Iran is fighting back in the political and the economic space, saying, hey, we think we can outlast you.

So we're going to make things politically very difficult for you and your allies in the Gulf. And then we're also going to give you a complex problem in the Strait of Hermuz and a global economic problem that you have to solve because we, the Iranians, think that this is an unpopular war at home and we can outlast you so that we can get the best negotiating economic. Economic package from you. Also, keep the regime in charge. And we think if we play this right, we're going to be able to make money on the Straits of Hermuz going forward.

So that's the Iranian position, and it hasn't changed as of yet.

So President Trump, I think, has pretty we've hit them pretty hard economically. You mentioned the economic impact. And we've hit them pretty hard economically. But it seems to me as if they don't care. They live a very third world life.

They are used to hardship. And Do do they care? Is this something that just doesn't bother them?

Well, I'm going to add to every point you just said. Those are all facts. But the reality, the harsh reality in the world, especially in the Middle East, is if you have a government that's willing to kill their own people at scale, that government can hang on for a very long time. As off-putting as that seems to us, it's true. Look at the Assad regime.

In 2008, everybody thought Bashra Assad and his family would fall because of all the fighting that was happening there. I was on the joint staff in the Pentagon, and there were a lot of analysts that were grave dancing on the Assad regime. And I pushed back and said, no, if they're willing to do this to their own people, they will hang on a long time. And they did. The same thing can happen in Iran.

The U.S. still has a few more levers to pull. The economic blockade that we stopped executing is still an incredibly powerful lever that we can put back into place to really put the boot heel back to the Iranian economy. And there is sort of the break glass in case of no other option of attacking their infrastructure. But the problem is, if you go down that road, You could really open up Pandora's box into a humanitarian disaster.

We have to be really careful about bombing their power and their water for long-term effects to the region that nobody wants. What about cyber attacks? They're ongoing. I mean, as we are speaking, there is a constant volley of cyber attacks happening. And there's, frankly, there's no governors.

Every possible aspect of targets are on the list. The Iranians, for example, we help our corporate clients. We also protect in the cyber and digital space, as well as like cameras and gates and things like that. We see. Endless amounts of Iranian cyber attacks on our corporate clients.

Make no mistake, Iran, there's a new phase of warfare where U.S. businesses are now targets. The Iranian coups force came out and had that list of 18 companies that they said are legitimate targets. 17 of them were major U.S. tech companies, and then there was JPMorgan who got lumped onto that list.

So they're reaching out and attacking all the time. And we, of course, are doing the exact same thing. And there's been a long history, decades long, of cyber attacks to stop Iranian nuclear development and production and also against their regime.

So this is going on behind the scenes for sure. Yeah, and I I would as you said, going both ways, we we can get them, but I think w Cyber attacks affect us much more because we have a much more connected society than they do. What about the people on the ground? Let's talk about the Iranian people. We saw them come out, we saw the protests.

They wanted, you know, they were even saying, attack us, please bomb us. We need to get rid of this regime. And many, many, many, something like 40,000, 40,000 of them have been killed so far. What about something like Starlink or something to keep the people connected? Would that help put the pressure on the Iranian regime if they could not silence their own people?

The short answer is yes. Any time that people that want to overthrow or challenge a government, the key fundamental thing that they need is a communication platform to be able to coordinate all of their response. But you hit something really key that I want to highlight for your listeners. When the Iranian people protested in January, because the economy had failed at that point, and they came out and Iran turned around and killed 40,000 of their own people. Between the protests being stamped out by the regime and the U.S.

bombing campaign starting in February 28th, the Iranian people had to go to 40,000 funerals. Think about that. That took a lot of wind out of the sails and a lot of motivation out of all of those people that were sitting on the fence and saying, hey, we do need to get rid of this regime. When they saw all these funerals at scale, it basically shell-shocked everybody there. And they're in survival phote.

The common man on the Iranian street, who's the biggest, frankly, victim in all of this, they are in survival mode, not revolution mode. And we have to factor that into our decision-making going forth of what's actually feasible on the ground. Because if you're going to win a war, you do need a ground force. And the only viable real ground force in this case would be the Iranian people. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that that's what the regime fears the most: the people having no fear. Unfortunately, the people are not armed. From what I understand, we gave arms to the Kurds who were supposed to give them to the people and just kept them.

So there's that. What happens after all of this is over? I would assume the U.S. is going to prevail. I can't imagine that we're not going to prevail because I think President Trump is just determined at this point.

There's so many tribes and so many different groups and factors in Iran. Do you almost need a strongman to keep it together? Kind of like the former Yugoslavia. They needed Tito to keep it together. Where do you see that?

You know the area well. What happens with all those different tribes? Yeah, I think you hit it on the head. I do think the U.S. prevails, but when we say the U.S., I would also add in all of our Gulf allies because they're really key ingredients in this entire mix.

It's definitely not just U.S. versus Iran. Here's what I think is the most likely outcome. I do think at some point there is a negotiated settlement, though I'm very concerned about it because there's not like a third-party arbitrator, a referee, if you will, that'll hold all sides accountable if they violate some sort of negotiated deal. But if you're asking, hey, what do I think this actually plays out in over time?

I think there is a negotiated settlement, but I do think Iran ends up with some sort of control or some sort of part in the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that from a larger strategic perspective, when you look at the 11 major maritime choke points around the world, we are seeing the international laws and rules of the world being rewritten in front of us. And that's primarily. frankly, at Global Guardian, my biggest challenge of helping my clients now navigate, hey, this is the new world we're in. I think we all have to be prepared that the U.

S. will prevail, but Iran will not be the big loser in this. They're going to have some sort of role going forward. Yeah, I can't imagine allowing them to charge a toll. Every time you do there.

I I agree, and I think it sets a horrible precedent, and I think we have to do everything in our power not to let that happen. The mod the the what we can hope for is that the moderates in Iran can out Sway and outvote the hardliners in Iran. The economic packages that the U.S., the carrot, if you will, that we're offering them is robust. There's a $300 billion reconstruction package in there, which goes a long way considering the deep economic abyss that they're in right now. We can hope that that wins the day and allows some sort of rational relationship to come forth.

Because if the hardliners are able to ride this bow wave of emotion after the Ayatollah's funerals, then the road's going to be extremely turbulent and rocky, and we're going to be in this for a long time. Yeah. Lastly, very quickly, if people want to find out more about Global Guardian, how do they do that? GlobalGuardian.com, Seth Krumrick. I'm always here to help, but my entire team is here to help.

We're literally around the world, and everything I just told you about the Gulf, we're doing in Ukraine, we're doing in Israel, doing in Latin America. We had a huge help for a number of clients in Venezuela, helping get accountability when the cell towers fell and we had people couldn't get hold of loved ones or employees. We're able to get hold of them and help evacuate and everybody.

So we're doing this around the world now.

So if you're a world traveler or you're a corporation that works in this new world that we're in now, you need a partner like us. We're best in class and we're look forward to helping. Thank you for the opportunity, Mary. Absolutely. Seth Krumrick, Executive VP of Global Guardian.

Thank you for your service and thank you for your time today. Have a great rest of your day. Anytime, Mary, I'm a big fan of the show. More coming up on the Brian Kill Me Show. Learning something new every day on the Brian Kill Meat Show.

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Please drink responsibly. The more you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Killmead. Hey, welcome back. Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead.

Don't forget, you can join me here, always 866-408-7669, as long as we don't have a guest. And coming up, we are going to be joined by Francis Suarez, the former Miami mayor, to talk about a new Fox Nation special, Cuba, a new dawn, and it's hosted by Rachel Campos Duffy.

So you can also. Tag me in a post on X at Mary Walter Radio. There's no S in that. I want to talk a little bit about the big story that's today and it has been this weekend, and that is the passing of Senator Lindsey Graham. He died after a cardiac arrest call to his home, and he was.

He had an autopsy, and the chief medical examiner identified the cause of death as an aortic dissection due to arterial sclerotic cardiovascular disease. What they used to call hardening of the arteries. It's basically what that is. And listen, his dad. Died when he was 69 years old of a massive heart attack.

And a lot of you know the story. He grew up in Central, South Carolina, a town called Central, South Carolina. And his parents had a restaurant and a bar. It was known as the Sanitary Cafe, which I think is a hilarious name. And he and his sister, Darlene, worked in that as they grew up.

And he later credited that working-class upbringing with his drive to, you know, always do better and kind of created his work ethic as he grew up. They lived in a room behind it. They moved into a trailer and then eventually into a house next door. And he he his dad, as I said, passed away from a massive heart attack when and died in his sleep. And his mother died of, I think it was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

So excuse me, Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 52.

So He was 21 at the time. His sister was 13, had no parents, so he adopted her.

So, good for him. I mean, a lot of things you didn't know about him. Also, I thought it was pretty interesting that he is one of the least wealthy members of Congress. He'd been in Congress forever. and shockingly did not wind up.

Amazingly wealthy walking away from Congress. I just wanted to play this for you. This is President Donald Trump, and he was on Meet the Press, and he was giving talking about the passing of his friend, Lindsey Graham. Can you tell us, Mr. President, How you received this news and your immediate gut reaction when you heard it.

So what makes it even stranger is that I got a call last night sometime at, you know, the early evening. Maybe in the sevens. And he called and he said we're all set for the Save America Act. He was pushing the Save America Act like crazy. He got back, said he just landed from Ukraine.

I said, that's a long trip to make. And he said, he sounded a little tired, but perfect, but a little bit tired. I had a right to be. And he was a worker. He was really a worker.

But Uh but he sounded great actually, but he was he was uh he actually said he was tired. But he he wanted to pass the Save America Act and I said, Well we're gonna get it done, Lindsay. We're gonna get it done. I'll see you like soon. We thought maybe we might even meet today.

Yeah. And then that was it. And that was, you know, very Around the time, it couldn't have been much longer. It could have been his last call. I don't know exactly, but.

I got a message about one o'clock in the morning from one of the people at his office that he had passed away. I said, you got it I just can't believe it. He was like a member of the family to me. It's very tough actually. Yeah, you can hear it in his voice.

You can tell that the President and Lindsey Graham were close, probably not just work close, but friends close. We know that they golfed quite a bit together. And this is hard. And I will say, the comments coming in from most people, at least the fellow Democrats coming in. Are actually very heartfelt.

You can tell that Lindsey Graham was very well liked. Coming up, Francis Suarez, former Miami mayor, joins us. We're gonna find out more about Cuba, a new dawn on the Brian Comey Show. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead.

Yeah. And welcome back to the Brian Kilme show. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilme. I want to talk a little bit about Cuba. And a new show that's going to be on Fox Nations called Cuba: a New Dawn.

It's hosted by Rachel Campos Duffy. And to me, it seems perfect. Because we everything that's going on with President Trump and putting pressure on Cuba, where we know that they have well, they have blackouts all the time, they have brownouts all the time. And I think the people there have kind of gotten used to living this way. But It's been seventy years.

Since they voted themselves into socialism and then they wind up with communism, right? That happens. And it looks like, and I love history.

So I look at these things, and it seems like it's a generation, maybe a generation and a half, that are living in these conditions, and then unrest starts. They're like, why are we living this way? And that process may even be sped up because of how connected we all are. Right online.

So, not that they see those things in Cuba, but they hear about them. And President Trump is kind of reviving the hope that Cuba. can be free of this. and he is putting economic pressure on them. And there's this new Program.

It's on right now, by the way. If you have Fox Nation, if you don't, you should get it. But if you have Fox Nation, this Cuba and New Dawn just started last week on Fox Nation. It is hosted by Rachel Campos Duffy. Duffy, I want to go to Cut 32 here.

This is just a little preview of the show. You can hear a little bit about it. And then we'll talk to the mayor. Cuba is in crisis. Poverty.

blackouts, fuel shortages, buildings on the verge of collapse. and a people repressed by an authoritarian regime. But change is on the horizon. Cuba's next, by the way, but pretend I didn't say that. The Trump administration has revived hope that a Cuba Libre, a free Cuba, is actually possible.

Very soon, this great strength will also bring about a day, 70 years in waiting. It's called a new dawn for Cuba.

So how did this jewel of the Caribbean become a nightmare and what will happen next? I'm Rachel Campostafi and this is Cuba, a new dawn. All right, joining us now, Francis Suarez, the former Miami mayor. You can find him online at Francis Suarez. That's super easy.

Sir, welcome to this show. Thank you so much for joining me. It's great to be with you this Monday morning talking about a subject that, of course, is very near and dear to my heart. Of course it is. You were the mayor of Miami.

I mean, everyone knows how Cuba-centric that part of Florida is. But also what I find so interesting that I love about it is that Cuban immigrants are like the old-time immigrants who came to this country because they wanted to be free. They wanted to assimilate. They adopted America as their home country. They chose America and they assimilated.

And we don't see that now with some more recent immigrant groups.

So I think the rest of the country could learn a lot from the Cuban immigrants. You heard me say that I think it's about a generation, maybe. Generation and a half before the unrest starts. And is that what we're seeing now in Cuba? Yeah, I think you said something really interesting that caught my attention as you were sort of framing the program when you talked about that phenomenon of a generation and a half.

It's actually 66 years, is what I was counting, more or less, since 1960, where Cuba has been under communist rule, communist control. And I think one of the things that's interesting about this is that. I've always said communism is the easiest sell in politics. It's an easy sell because what you're doing, and we know that society from the dawn of humanity is an inverted pyramid, right? Less wealthy people on the top, more people that are disadvantaged on the bottom.

And so, what you do is you basically have this sort of slick salesman approach where you tell the people on the bottom: listen, you don't have to do anything. I got this. We're going to use this thing called government to make things better, to make things more equal. And all we're going to do is you don't have to do anything. We're just going to take more from the top and give it to you in sort of like this Robin Hood type of fashion.

What they don't say, the sort of disclaimer or the caveat that is never told is that it's never worked in the history of humanity because it creates a massive disincentive for production. If you're the one at the top who've worked hard, who've sacrificed, who have been away from their family, who have risked capital, who have had to hire people and fire people and deal with the stress of all that, and all of a sudden, The government is coming and just taking more of what you've earned, more of that dollar, and giving it to someone else who hasn't sacrificed, who hasn't worked as hard, who hasn't had to make some of these tough choices in life. Um, that creates a massive, massive disincentive. And if you take that to the extreme, which is what communism is, um, people leave. I mean, they just basically leave, like you said, and they leave in droves.

And, you know, imagine how hard it is. I think sometimes in America, we forget how incredible we have it, right? And how. desperate you have to become to leave your country of birth, right? The language that you speak and have to start all over from zero.

People who are very educated, in many cases, doctors and lawyers and engineers, et cetera. And we were very blessed that the country of the United States To Us in legally. And, you know, and my, you know, my grandfather was a professor. My father studied here in the United States. He came at 12 years old, didn't speak English and learned English, got almost a perfect score on the SAT.

Five years later, got a full scholarship to Villanova University where he graduated summa cum laude, mechanical engineering, and got two graduate degrees from Harvard and has written 12 books and was the first Cuban-born mayor of Miami.

So, to your point, we have not only do we love this country, but we've embraced what this country has afforded us, which is the opportunity to be successful, to provide for our families, to play by the rules, to work hard, which sometimes, by the way, is not an attractive, you know, I joke, you know, the opposite of communism, right, is sort of capitalism. And capitalism sometimes is not an attractive sell. Why? Because you're telling people, you got to be disciplined. You got to work hard.

You got to study. You got to do all these things that are not maybe exciting to people, as opposed to you have to do nothing, and we'll give you more. Yeah, and by the way, I love your father because I too am a villain of a wildcat.

So there you go. He's got to be amazing. Oh, he's a great guy. He's one of my best friends. One of the things I noticed that's different that I wanted to ask you about is the communism that is now springing up.

As you said, it's an easy sell. You can vote your way into socialism. You've got to fight your way out when it becomes communism. Is that the people who are really pushing this right now are the young in this country who have been well indoctrinated. But what's interesting is most of them are little nepo babies.

Most of them have wealthy parents. Most of them have never really had a job of any kind of consequence. And most of them are still, you know, their seventh year getting a doctorate. Like they're perpetually in school. Whereas like Cuba.

It was something like, what, two dozen rebels with guns in the jungle who managed to overthrow it? It's a different type of takeover, I think. And how do you see that playing out? Because it's a different type of takeover.

Well, I love what you said when you said you can vote yourself in, but you have to fight yourself out. And the reason why. It's a very true statement, by the way. And the reason why is because once these people, whoever they are, whether it's in Venezuela, in Russia, USSR, wherever in the world, China, whenever they get power, They do two things, or a few things. One is they control the media.

So they control, there is no free press. They control the dissemination of information. They control the apparatus of repression. Very important. Anyone who dissents.

Goes to jail or dies basically. And that keeps a population under control. because there really isn't any place and this is what people talk a lot about. I've been criticized in the past when I talk about military intervention in Cuba, and this is why it was necessary in Venezuela. You know, governments have these instrumentalities of war, right?

Whether it's planes, tanks, guns, whatever it is, and populations, even. People, you know, even countries with millions of people in population or tens of millions of people, they just don't have the means to be able to revolt against that kind of weaponry.

So there has to be either some sort of internal military revolt where the military does a coup because they're the ones that are controlling these instrumentalities of war, or there has to be external intervention. There's really no other way. And so, what happens is you have, to your point, I think socialism and communism is one of, if not the largest fraud perpetuated on humanity. That's my claim. And I think it's because you don't ever tell people the consequences of it.

You just talk about, we're going to write this wrong, this injustice, right? They create a boogeyman, right? And in the U.S., we're starting to see the boogeyman out of the billionaires, right? Oh my God, these people have so much money. You know what I mean?

They must have done something wrong to get it. They must have defrauded somebody. Instead of saying, well, they invented this incredible You know, these incredible devices, these incredible tools that we're using. I mean, look at Elon Musk, you know, landing rockets backwards. If you would have told me, you know, 20 years ago that rockets are going to land backwards, I would say you need to be institutionalized.

You know, that satellites are going to be able to provide high-speed internet when you're on planes or when you're on boats in the middle of nowhere, right? And like if you're home. I mean, you know, you're going to be able to FaceTime yourself and your family can be on the other side of the world and you can see each other in person so that the distance that you have just doesn't seem so far away. You don't feel so disconnected from your family when you're away. I mean, these kinds of tools, which have created wealth and have created productivity in our society, are things that should be rewarded.

They're not things that should be punished. And so that's where the fraud component comes in. No, absolutely. I want to talk in the time we have left, just a couple minutes left here. President Trump's pressure on Cuba, you know, the island is really in dire straits right now.

They don't have any energy. They don't have the oil coming in. Do you think that it's going to be easy for President Trump to get them to succumb? I do. I do, and I think he's been masterful.

At doing this in Venezuela, obviously, he, I mean, if you look at his strategy, it's pretty genius and it's pretty clear. And obviously, I give a lot of credit also to Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Like the strategy is simple. We start bringing carriers into the theater of war, right? Like you start seeing these carrier groups come.

As it's coming, because it takes a few days for these ships, they're massive ships to get from one place to the other, they start negotiating. I call it the BOA constrictor strategy, right? You start tightening the noose, sort of tightening as you negotiate. You're negotiating with more and more leverage. And then, you know, he's not afraid to act.

So that if you think that the leverage is false leverage, or if you're like playing sort of chicken with a president, it's a game you're not going to win. Right. And he has shown that he will be patient. He will try to negotiate. He always wants the negotiated outcome more.

But that ultimately, if you mess around with him, we saw some of his comments on it around just in the last few days. If you play around with him, it's not going to end well for you. And I think he has a plan. And I think the plan, in my opinion, is generational peace and prosperity. And I think sometimes as a population, when we see gas prices or things that obviously, hopefully in the short run, are not, you know, are a little bit higher than they would normally be with the economy that we have and with all the good things that the president has done.

We have to think long term a little bit. It's almost like the opposite of communism. We have to think about the long term benefits of this disciplined approach, of this courageous approach, to take out America's enemies so that we have a generation of peace.

Well said. Mr. Mayor Francis Suarez, former Miami Mayor. You can follow him on X at Francis Suarez. Super easy.

I did that. Just follow him on X. And check out Cuba A New Dawn. It is streaming now only on Fox Nation with host Rachel Campo Stuffy. And I think it is so timely.

I think right now Cuba's not getting the attention, but I think probably in a couple of months we're going to see a lot of movement with Cuba. And hopefully it's going to be in the right direction. Hopefully that's what we're going to see. Sir, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

You're welcome, Mary. Thanks a lot. More coming up on the Brian Killmeat show. Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead. Radio that makes you think.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Lindsey Graham was just a powerful force from a member of the United States Senate. But as a friend, I'll never forget when I started the South Carolina Prayer Breakfast about 10 years ago. I called Lindsay, and Lindsay is not, or sorry, Lindsay. Was not a morning person, and I called him and I said, Lindsay, my prayer breakfast at 8 a.m.

He's like, Tim, if Jesus comes before 10 a.m., I ain't going. And of course, the first person in the room. Lindsay Graham, about 8:01, he comes in the room, 8:30-ish, and he was there. That's how he treated his friends. He would do the uncomfortable to make others comfortable.

Yeah. And that there, Senator Tim Scott on Fox News Sunday talking about his friend Lindsey Graham. And that's what I will tell you: look, I was not. A huge Lindsey Graham fan because I just, there are times when I just thought he. was not I just felt that he did some things that I did not agree with.

That doesn't mean that he's wrong and I'm right. It's just things I didn't agree with. I didn't really get the warm fuzzies about him as far as being able to trust him. But I didn't know him. And hearing from the people on both sides of the aisle who knew the man.

I've I've really changed my opinion. Of Senator Lindsey Graham. And there were times that he did things that we're gonna, we'll we'll um we'll get into it. Um Some things that he did that I just was cheering when he did them. And I just actually, do we have time to play that right now?

Can we play Cut 16 right now? We have time, right? If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020. You've said that.

Not meat. You've got nothing to apologize for. When you see Sodomire and Kagan, tell them that Lindsay said hello. Because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy.

This is the most unethical Sham. Since I've been in politics, And if you really wanted to know the truth, You sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. To my Republican colleagues, If you vote no. You're legitimizing The most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics. And I loved that.

And I remember when it happened, and that was him talking about that was during the Kavanaugh hearings. And he went off on the Democrats, and there's a much longer cut that is out there. And he went off on the Democrats about the way that they were treating Brett Kavanaugh. And I was cheering when that happened. I remembered watching that.

Because I'm a news nerd and so I watch things like hearings. And I just thought he was so spot on.

So even though there were times that I was like, gosh, can you trust this guy? But I saw that he's golfing with Trump all the time. And I didn't even know if that was like a smart thing. But I think President Trump's probably a pretty good judge of character.

So, and apparently I was wrong, especially you heard Tim Scott, you'll and Trey Gowdy, you'll hear them all. The only people who are really speaking badly of him. Are the social media commentators on the left doing what they usually do? which is destroying someone after they've passed away. Mary Walter, you're listening to The Brian Carmede Show.

From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the Brian Kill Mead Show. I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian. You're always welcome to join me at 866-408-7669.

And I think you're going to want to join me after our guest coming up here. You can also tag me and post on X at Mary Walter Radio. There's no S, it's just Mary Walter Radio. You can do that and leave your comments there if you'd like. Joining us right now is Dr.

Tom Kirsting. He's a licensed psychotherapist, family counselor, and author of Raising Healthy Teenagers. He also has other books out about raising kids in a digital world as well.

So you might want to check that out. You can find him on X at Tom Kirsting. Dr. Tom, thank you for joining me. What's up, Mary?

Just Tom. But how are you doing? And you know what? No better person to fill in than you. Oh, you're so sweet.

Thank you so much. By the way, he has been a guest on my podcast, which you can find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker, YouTube, Rumble, and Getter at Mary Walter Radio. Just look for it there. I'm so glad you were able to join me today. Because I've been carrying this story with me, and I.

Wanted to really talk about it because I had seen it happen more and more. And I have friends who are also going through this, and I kind of get it. But we're talking about family estrangement. I think it's the Wall Street Journal just did a piece on a poll by YouGovPoll. And they found that 38% of American adults are estranged from at least one family member.

And a writer, a therapist, Paula Reinhart, wrote that about one in four adult kids has reportedly gone no contact with a parent.

Now, is this a recently new phenomenon with like with the 30-somethings, the 2030-somethings? Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you voted for Trump. He's a racist, you're a Nazi, and they never talk to them again? Or is this more widespread over the generations? Yeah, you know, it's interesting, actually, you know, the producer reached out to me the other day to discuss this.

You know, I I was r I've been thinking about this and it's you know, as a therapist in my private practice, you know, people come for many different things, but it it's almost like I I hate to say this, it's almost like the majority of people I deal with As some form of an estrangement from a family member. And this is also friends, and it's like, you know, it's number one, it saddens me. But there's no there's different layers. Definitely polit you know, politics has definitely gotten into this. I've seen that where you know family mem member A is a Democrat, the other one's a Republican, and they and they refuse to speak, one refused to speak to the other.

You know, and it's and it's sad, um, but there's more to it that we'll get into. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and and I th you know, I I there there's a family member on the in-law side that I have nothing to do with. I mean, I'll talk to them if there's talking, but we don't see each other in person because of COVID. Because of the COVID craziness and being banned from family events, like years afterwards, because COVID broke their brains.

And I'm like, all right, I'll keep you safe and I will not see you anymore. I'll keep you safe. I'll be here. You know, you do you, and you know, give me a call every now and then.

So I guess, why is that the only option for some people?

Well, you know what? It's like and if you look back at like, you know, previous generations, it was o you you didn't see as much of this 'cause it was like families first. Family comes first. You always got to stick with family. But I think people are starting to wake up to the point where, you know, if I have a toxic family member, whether it's a parent, a brother, or sister, and I'm exposing myself to that constantly, I'm now personally, mentally, and emotionally damaging myself.

So, what I tell people when they're in these situations is: you know, before you just pull the plug on a family member, you know, you got to have a voice, set some boundaries, create some distance. The hard part is getting. that the toxic member To even realize that they're being toxic at all. It it's usually met with defensiveness. Of course, of course, because nobody i that that's a hard thing.

No one wants to look in the mirror, right? Wh when you think you're right about something like family members who think they were absolutely right about the way they treated people during COVID, because they were right, you were wrong, and that's that. You know, I I get that. And it's interesting. I have a um That you say, you know, that being around a toxic family member, I know someone who's close to me who finally broke it off with her mother, who is older.

But she's the oldest daughter, and she works. And the mother was constantly, you have to do this for me, you have to do that for me. And it just became almost an abusive situation, at least in her mind, it did. And there was no talking to mom. And she's like, I'm done.

My brothers can take care of this now. I'm finished. And she broke off. She has not spoken to her mother in months. And she said, I've had enough.

And again, she's probably has her own family, and her mom was interfering with her daughter's immediate family now because if her daughter's all riddled with bullets from mom, she's definitely taken that into her own family dynamics. She probably saw the trickle-down effect starting to affect probably a relationship with her husband and maybe her kids. And she finally got to the point and said, look, I can't expose myself to this anymore. And in a perfect world, in a perfect world Um it would be The mom would get it, right? That woman's mom is like, okay, you know what?

In a perfect world, wow.

Okay, I see this. You're more important to me than anything, and I'm going to try my best to do better. But people get very, very stubborn, like the old expression, it's, I forget who said it, it's easier to fool a man than it is for a man to admit he's been fooled. That's true. I like that.

Yeah. So, so let me ask you, I want to get into this just a little bit before I run out of time when we dance around this.

So, in generations past, it was family first. But are you saying it's okay to pull the plug if you feel that the relationship is abusive? Are there things you should do first? Do you go to counseling or do you just walk away? Yeah, well, I think initially, you got to remember it is family.

These people brought us into the world. Step number one is make it clear that I now have a voice here, even though I'm a son or daughter, even if your parents are older and you're an adult child. Set some boundaries and make it clear what your needs are, and then create a gap. And if nothing improves, you could bring up going to therapy. And if the mom or dad, for example, isn't going to do that, at some point, yes, you have to protect yourself.

And it's not.

Well, it's family. I gotta yeah, I get it's family, but at what point do you say, what about me, right, and my well-being mentally and emotionally, and how that's impacting my new family here?

So, yeah, it's uh. Unfortunately, there are those times where people have to do what's best for them, and that may be separating themselves from an immediate family member, unfortunately. Yeah, and the piece goes into the generational issue because I think we see it more with the younger generation. You know, again, because you voted for Trump, you're Hitler, whatever. But they talk about helicopter parenting, and they say some young adults lack the resilience to meet life's challenges, and that can involve just taking a stand against your parents.

So that's the way it morphs into because of the challenges in life and challenges with dealing with aging parents and launching and all that good stuff, mom and dad cutting you off because you're 30 now. Those things that they can't handle it, so they just cut the ties. Is that part of it? Yeah, I see this. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I see this with younger adults, like in their early 20s, like a lot of them. Like mom is still tracking them on Life 360, watching every one of their moves, where they are in a car, where they're going, and just. It's it's like a never ending lawnmower helicopter parenting of a of an adult. And to the point where that twenty one, twenty two year old, who's now an adult, is so frustrated, right?

So frustrated that they they wind up pulling the plug. It's not usually permanent, but it's more of a message. Like you gotta let at what point are you gonna trust That you did a good job parenting me and let me be free to go on into the world. At what point do we, you know what I'm saying? That's how I like to look at it, like for the parent.

Like, at some point, you're going to say, wow, you know what? I think I did a really good job here.

Now it's time to let Johnny spread his wings and figure things out and mess up and fail and succeed and all that stuff.

So does therapy and counseling often work? I'm sure you've seen people who are in this, they're trying to get through it. Does it often work or is it just too hard for the, especially an older person, to see that they were in the wrong? And what about adults, parents, who say no more contact with my kids? Like, I want to hear about both those things.

It definitely does work, right? I've dealt with this, and it's like the therapist, like me in this case, it's more like I'm a referee. And the good part about what I do is when you have, you know, when you have the two parties coming in, when they're outside of the office, it's fireworks, right? Screaming, yelling, hanging up the phone, right? But when it's in the office, it's usually not, right?

Because I'm like a third party and they don't want to do that.

So that's where the difficult work comes in on my end, you know, because you can't. Come across as being one-sided and favorable to somebody else. It's just trying to help them meet somewhere in the middle and make small commitments and work with those commitments and see what happens from there. Does is it usually successful? I yeah, yeah, on my end it it usually is.

It's not it's not always perfect. But it's successful in a manner where, okay, the mom's now going to get rid of the Light 360. They're going to stop texting and calling their adult son 50 times a day to check in on them and tell them to do this, make sure you apply for this job, do that, and just let them be. Because you've got to remember, the children, even if they're adult children, they feel, I think I've probably spoken about this on the show. We have to think about how they're interpreting the dialogue, right?

So when it comes to parent-child, no matter how old the child is, the child is often interpreting it as they're being talked at by the parent.

So I tell parents, talk with them. Instead of just saying, make sure you do this, do that, why'd you do this? You screwed up. Instead of being militant like that, say, hey, you think it would be a g good idea to maybe do A, B, C, or D? You know what I mean?

And just let them let it be a conversation instead of a talking at, a talking with. Yeah, that's that's that's very true. It's good, Danny. It's hard to get out of that parental role. Yeah, yeah.

It's hard to get at that.

So, how long, I mean, if these estrangements go for a long time, do they ever come back together? And what does it take? Not always. I mean, some are permanent, unfortunately, where like uh it's just never going to come back. And I think, you know, if you're looking at one party, if let's let's talk uh an adult child, if their parent Comes back from a different angle.

Right. And with remorse. And with apologies and with a commitment to make some changes, what you'll often see is that. you know, that sh uh adult child, you know, is is amenable and is going to bend a little bit and you know, for the for the greater good of it instead of being rigid themselves. That's you know, again, but it's a process.

And no two situations are the same, Mary.

So why is this growing now?

So, again, I think part of it, like, it's growing. Like, are you looking at the younger generation, right? And it's to that point where the parents, you know, are constantly. Like you mentioned earlier, helicoptering, and now we have these devices where they can continue to helicopter. And it's just it kind of takes a life of its own on.

And now you have somebody who, as a kid, was used to that. That's what their norm was. And now they're a little bit more mature, where they could see from their own lenses instead of just I'm the child, you know, I'm going to do what my mom or dad tells me to do. And I think they're kind of putting their foot at their feet down. And it's different because we didn't have all this stuff, you know, 30 years ago.

You know, it was just a regular relationship, no constant monitoring. Like, I remember when I was my parents had no idea where I was when I was a teenager. You know what I mean? That's very true. Pretty much every step you take.

So that's what you're blaming a majority of this on? You think the source of a majority of this is the helicopter parenting? Yeah. I think that's a part of it. And I also do think that the political stuff, right, which is crazy, like when you think about it, how much.

Control of people's minds and lives, their political affiliation has. It's like really crazy when you think about it. And, you know, people. Even in families, they just, it's almost like they refuse to be associated with, even if it's a brother, sister, or parent, because. that that person may think differently.

It's really it's it's kind of sickening actually. Yeah, oh, yeah. I think there's a lot of broken brains. That's what I call them. Just very quickly, someone tagged me in a post on X and said.

I've been estranged from my mom since I was eight years old when my brother was born. Today, they are inseparable. Neither one has any contact with me, and it's their choice. And based on the picture, this person is probably in his 40s, if not older. Yeah, and if the person is pointing, you know, pointing that out, it's probably having some kind of an impact, whether it's subconscious or not.

And that person sounds like they're waiting for the brother or the mother to make the first move, and they may never make the first move. You know, so maybe what the individual posting can do is drop a little olive branch out there to either one of those parties just to check in and see what goes on, you know, see what that leads to. But if he hasn't talked to his mom since eight years old, there's definitely some deep-rooted resentment, and that person may very well just be like, I'm not doing that. That's got to come from them. But that would be, you know, sometimes we've got to kind of step out of our own rigidity and, you know, and make some kind of a little chest move every now and then.

But that's easier said than done. Like, I could say that. The person that just posted that is different. You know what I mean? And it it may be so deeply cemented that that person can't bring themselves to do that.

Yeah, I think sometimes you just get very comfortable in that, in the estrangement. You get used to not doing holidays with family. It just becomes your new normal. And so you just don't, after a while, don't miss it. You make your own family, you make your chosen family.

I had someone once say that. Just because you're born into a group of people doesn't mean that if it's abusive, you don't have to remain with that group of people. And I think sometimes people have to understand that, especially in an abusive relationship between family members. Yeah, well, this is a fantastic conversation. I knew it was going to be.

I'm so glad we got into this. Dr. Tom Kirsting, thank you so much. Follow him, Tom Kirsting. Also, check out his books on Amazon and also where books are sold.

I'm sure they'll be helpful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Good talking, Mary. Be well, all right?

Take care. Thank you. 866-408-7669. If you want to jump in, this to me was so familiar and I thought it was so timely to talk about because, like I said, I just had someone tell me that she goes, Yeah, I don't deal with my mom anymore. And I think people are afraid of being judged.

And I'm not, I was just like, okay. And and I knew that her mom was being really, really, really, really demanding. She's divorced, she's older, and she's the only girl. And I'm not surprised that it happened, but she said, Yeah, I just couldn't do it anymore for my own mental health. I just couldn't do it.

I had to cut her off. Yeah. So I was like, wow.

So, if it sounds familiar, you can use a different name, use a different place you're calling from. That's fine. No one's going to know who you are. 866-408-7669, or tag me to post on X at MaryWalter Radio. It's coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show.

Yeah. Want even more, Brian? Download the podcast at BrianKillMeadShow.com every episode. Exclusive interviews on demand. More of Kill Mead coming up.

Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. And welcome back. 866-40-87669. We were just speaking with Dr.

Tom Kirsting about a piece in the Wall Street Journal about going no contact and this trend of family estrangement. And I see it. Like I said, I'm estranged from a family member just because of the way I was treated during COVID. You can't come here, you can't come to this crash, you can't do this, you can't do this. In 22, the end of 22, when it was all the craziness was over and they.

We're still crazy. And, you know, I, because I didn't get the vaccine, I can apparently kill somebody at, you know, 100 yards.

So. I said, okay, fine, then I'll stay away. And I have, and haven't seen him since. That's it. I just stay away.

I did what I was asked.

So that's that. But if you want to share, 866-408-7669. P, let's see, excuse me, Jill in Illinois. Jill, welcome. You're on the Brian Kilmey Show.

Hi. Good morning. Hi, how are you this morning? Doing great. Go ahead.

Good.

So I'm listening to you. I actually work in the parental alienation field and have for 22 years as an alienated mother. And what's something that hit me when I was listening just a moment ago to the gentleman you were reading the letter about who was eight years old? That was an alienated child who grew up to be estranged from a parent but was carrying alienation through that entire process.

So I think sometimes people interchange those names in error when alienation starts as a child and there is no contact. There are three levels, mild, moderate, and severe to parental alienation. And that very, very many times, in many cases, carries over into adulthood with no contact at all.

So I think you're exactly right on the money. People are using things like COVID, using things like my mom didn't give me a birthday gift. As an adult, and turning on their parents or turning on a family member because society and social media has allowed them to make that move. It's okay to do that. I mean, I feel like in your case, you know, make a move.

Take a step to try to get back in because it's not healthy for you psychologically or emotionally, certainly, even though you probably feel like you're doing well. Jill, I appreciate you, but I'm so sorry we're up against the clock. I don't mean to cut you off, but thank you so much. And by the way, I have reached out, but I want an apology.

Sorry, maybe I'm petty. Maybe I am. All right, more of your calls coming up, Pete, Jessica Perry. Hang on. We'll get more of your calls coming up on the Brian Kilmead show.

The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. And welcome back to the Brian Kill Meet Show. I am Mary Walter, sitting in for Brian. 866-408-7669 is our number.

Or you can tag me in a post on X at Mary WalterRadio. We're talking about family estrangement and it is growing. More and more people are. Are becoming estranged from family members, whether it's a lot of its parents, parents, and child, some of its siblings, some of its other relationships for whatever reason. And um Yeah, I want to talk about it.

Now, the guy who tagged us in the post when we were speaking with Dr. Tom Kirsting said, I actually just turned 60. I've been pushed away from them my whole life, and I've extended the olive branch a dozen times. Last straw, my aunt passed. I asked them for them to let me know, but they didn't until a week after.

And, um,. She said, When she asked why I found out about the funeral, when I asked why I found out, my brother told my mom not to let me know. You can only bang your head against the wall so many times before you realize it's not worth it. Yeah, and I kinda get it. I kind of get it.

It's a sad story. But like I said, I know people who are going no contact with parents for various reasons. One parent, if not both. Pete in New Jersey. Welcome.

Thank you for hanging on. You're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi. Oh, sure. My my my money is not your.

were uh in the teenagers. Uh my niece My mother worked at the Pentagon. My my my uh ex-sister-in-law. Uh-huh. She worked she had a new job, well apparently a new job a real estate agent.

How neither one could Conclave button is up, she triggers her angle. Um So they call by uh Uh their mother, stepmother. And she sent the taxi. My mother had had me in DC at the time because we go to all the uh different advantages that they have that the the uh different museums that they have Right.

So I've never interfere. My brother defended his wife, which he should what he should have done. I had agreed to come and I said, You're both wrong. Mom, you shouldn't have interfered between the or between the two parents. A magic of a good score?

Well, very, very quickly, because we're running it very quickly. We have a lot of people who want to get on. But the bottom line here is you resolved it. You got in the middle. You said, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're both wrong.

And that's the end of that.

So, very quickly, if you want to tell a good story, you got to make it like 30 seconds. Why do they got divorced? But my niece is a doctor in um And uh We're at uh a restaurant in Connecticut. No, my no all four grandparents Uh no My parents, their parents. A brother and a fourth ki and the two kids.

Mhm. And the young on my father's uncle uncle on the father's side and the other uncle on the mother's side. Mm-hmm. That was ten of us. Uh my niece is actually a mother from Vietnam.

Yeah, and we'll tend pickly after a week.

So somebody looks and see my niece, and she says, Oh, look at that Korean, pretty Korean girl. My niece turns around and elbows hands on her hips and says, I'm not Vietnamese. I'm a Jewish Vietnamese American. Oh, that is nice. That is nice.

Pete, thank you so much for sharing those stories. I do appreciate it. Let's head to San Antonio, Texas. Jessica, you're on the Brian Kill Me Chow. Hi.

Oh, then the couple times that you and I talked, I didn't know you cut your family off. I didn't. I was cut off. I did not cut them off. I was told your presence is not requested.

Your presence is not required at four different events.

So I said, okay. That's so sad.

So me, the situation was different. I grew up with two very toxic parents as an only child. And it was a very abusive household with drugs and physical violence. And it was a lot of games, like my mom would have me and her hide downstairs in the basement.

So when my dad was drunk and came back, he would be looking for us. Like she played a lot of games like that. Um And so when I was, you know, I got, I think I was like in 10th grade, and I was changing during gym and the school noticed the bruises on me. And so they had sent the state out to figure out what's going on, which, you know, back then all the parent had to do was just say, no, no, everything's fine. And then you couldn't say anything because as soon as they leave, you're going to get killed with by your parents anyway.

Right. And so I moved with my aunt to New York briefly, and then she couldn't handle me. And no wonder, no wonder I was a problem teenager because of obviously everything I've been going through. I did terrible in school, and now I realize because I had so much at home. Yeah.

So when does the estrangement come in? Who are you estranged from?

So, my well, everybody. I have no family. I'm sorry. My mom and dad. I left as soon as I could.

So I left the house at seventeen years old for the Army and then I never looked back. And I would briefly, you know, as an adult, would come to visit. But, you know, when you're away from it and then you put yourself back in it, you see the toxicity of it, you know? Yeah. But you know what?

You try, and that's good. But as the doctor said, you know, when a situation is abusive, then you have no obligation. And then I don't like the idea of obligation. If people don't want you around or if people treat you poorly, I just don't think it's healthy to think that just because they're family, you need to be involved in that situation. I think sometimes your own mental health is for the best.

Now, if it's just because somebody voted Democrat, I think you're a Republican. I think you're a little crazy at that point, right? But in a situation such as yours, that seems to be a very, very different animal. Jessica, thank you for joining us. And thanks for listening to the Brian Kilmead show.

I just want to go through these quickly.

So if we could just get to like the estrangement part, like, yeah, I was abused as a child, that kind of thing, whatever. That would help. All right. Shelly in South Carolina, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi.

Thank you very much. I just want to put out there, for the last six years on and off, I've been estranged from my daughter. The first reason was because Roe versus Wade was overturned. Then the second time was because Trump was voted in, and apparently I was the tying vote. Uh So all those things And then it comes to, I believe, the therapists are really.

Machine These millennials too take care of their mental health.

Well, My daughter was neither abused psychologically or physically or sexually. I'm not saying she's Not valid on some of her reasons, but she is completely cut off everybody in the family. And I've offered to go to therapy with her. No, no, no. It's just.

There was a major altercation the day before my mom's funeral and it just It's blown up since then and So I think Therapist? Should try to see both sides and not only agree with the so-called dictum, because this therapist probably really thinks that I'm a horrible person, but I have two other children that adore me.

So, you know. I think it all stems from the liberal therapists. I'll say it. Throw it out there. You know, they want to yes these again, so-called victims.

They want to yes them instead of giving them, hey, how about you just fuck it up, Buttercup? You know, and it leaves me angry. I'm done past the hurt side.

Now I'm just angry. And I. You know, Shelly, I think also what happens is that you know. People, the inability to, as you said, suck it up buttercup, but the inability to say, okay, you know, especially when it comes to things like politics, those types of things, that you just say, okay, you see it differently than I, we're just not going to discuss it. And you don't.

I have friends who are liberal. We just don't discuss politics. We know we don't agree, but they're really good people. And other than disagreeing on politics, listen, I have friends who have a different religion. Do I not speak to them because we have different religious beliefs?

Of course not. And that I think needs to be addressed in a lot of this. To your point, Shelly, and thank you for joining me. To that point, when someone says, oh, you know, you voted for Trump, you're the reason he's the president. It's just not rational.

And I'm a big fan of Therapist shopping did therapy year decades ago, and I think everybody needs it at some point. And didn't like the first one. Didn't like the second one, loved the third one because the third one told me, Wow, you're really messed up. I was like, Oh, thank you, like you're speaking my language, this is awesome. And had no eye.

That's just the type of person I needed to look, you know, slap me around a little bit and go, What the heck's wrong with you?

So, therapy to me is a great thing, but if you, the person with whom you have an issue, if that's the reason you're going to therapy, doesn't want to have therapy with you, they don't want to. Make it better or try to find a way back, you can't. You just can't. You can't. And take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, right?

All right. Quick break, and then more of your calls coming up here on the Brian Kill Meat show. Yeah. Coming to you on a need-to-know basis, because mandy, you need to know. It's Brian Kilmead.

Yeah. The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead. And welcome back. Got a couple of texts or Tweets, I guess, here on X.

Art says there's a great book by Henry Cloud called Boundaries. Everybody needs boundaries to protect themselves. The book gives biblical backup for each of their points. Peace wanted to know the name of the man who he had on that started this out, spoke about relationships and families. And does he have a book out?

It's Dr. Tom Kirsting, K-E-R-S-T-I-N-G. You can find his books on Amazon or wherever you books are sold, wherever you get your books. And I know he has one on raising healthy teenagers. He has one on digital, you know, protecting your kids from the digital world.

I don't know if he has one on family estrangement, but you can go check it out. All right. So there's that. So that's what we're talking about. A Wall Street Journal article about family estrangement and how it's growing.

Or maybe it was New York Times, how it's growing. And it seems more pervasive with the younger generation. They seem to be willing to just say, I'm out. But a lot of psychiatrists, psychologists are tying this back to the helicopter parenting and how these kids didn't have a moment free. Parents, somebody was watching them all the time.

And now they're like, I need to throw all of that off. And bye-bye, mommy, bye-bye, daddy. 866-408-7669. Let's head to Rhode Island. And Patty, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show.

Hello. Good morning. Nice to talk to you. Long time listener. Thank you.

I'm glad you're here. Go ahead. Okay, so I'm a retired geriatric nurse, and I have seen families. And All of us age, say 60s, 70s, and our parents are in 80s, 90s that.

Some of the siblings. Grow up. during their life and some of the siblings Operate in the same manner they did when they were kids. And I'm talking about personalities, working on problems, how they approach their siblings. And the biggest difficulties Start when the parents are old enough that they need assisted living or long-term care or a lot of hospital.

Ins and outs. And the person who has the health care proxy, power of attorney, excludes the rest of the family, including the wife, and feels that she needs to make, or he, needs to make the only decisions when other siblings are actually probably more capable.

So there's a lot of dissonance there. And then, of course, decision-making falls apart. And this was just not in my own life. But a girlfriend who had married into the family and was a geriatric nurse. And one of the youngest who had no medical experience was making all the calls.

and excluding all the family, including her father.

So it's something I think we're going to see more and more of of the aging population where siblings have a falling out. And then You know, it's five, six years now for me when that situation happened. And my mom is 94 and a half. And at the time, she said, Well, I'll just have to do what they want because I have to hold the family together. And it was, no, you do not.

You know, we should all be doing this.

So out of six, Only three, three here talk, two there talk, one doesn't talk at all. You know, and it's really sad. It is, it is. Patty, thank you for sharing that. You know, my husband is a physician, he works also in the ICU.

He's an intensivist. And it's amazing what you see when people are at the end of life, families are at the end of life, and they get together. And like all of a sudden, one family member, a son or a daughter who's been estranged, you know, flies in from wherever they move to to get away from the family and decides that they're making all the decisions. Family dynamics are funny, they're weird, they can be painful. And if you, that's why, you know, what the boy with Patty's talking about, you have a goodwill.

It's all I'm going to say. Very quickly, Perry in Illinois, I think you'll be our last call on this. Welcome to the Brian Killmeat Show. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

So I have been estranged from my son for most of his life. He's twenty-six years old. I'm 64. When my son was two, I finally made the decision after a long, tumultuous relationship with my ex-wife to finally file for divorce. And my reason was I did not want to raise my son up in a house full of hate.

So the divorce happened, and I had a lot of visitation with my son. I would pick him up from school on Tuesdays. He would stay overnight. I'd drop him off on Wednesdays. I'd pick him back up Thursdays from school, stay overnight, drop back off on Fridays.

And I'd had him every other weekend.

So I was really, really involved in his life, and I wanted to be. I just didn't want the tumultuous relationship. I since had remarried. I've been married 20 years, been with the same woman now 24 years, got a great relationship. I raised her two children up from age two and age five.

My ex-wife did parent alienation on my son and absolutely refused to allow him to enjoy anything that we offered. And he, over the years of his childhood, started to dislike us more and more and more because of the parent alienation. And it created a lot of animosity. Then he went down, and then he went down the wrong path. And in high school, he got caught selling.

Prescription drugs. He got expelled. I decided to get back into his life and really try to get him, graduate high school and get him on the right path. And he agreed. And that lasted for about a year, year and a half.

And then he realized he was not able to manipulate us and to really pull the wolf over our eyes. And he started going the other way and went back to his mom. And so it has been a very tumultuous and unfortunate situation for a number of years. Yeah, you know, when parents get divorced, a lot of times you hear the story that, you know, dad has the second family. And the kids from the first family a lot of times wind up losing out when dad has the second family.

And I'm not saying that's what happened with you. That may be the way it was perceived, but I'm not saying that that's what happened with you. You know, a lot of kids feel like, oh, you know, the second family got everything I didn't have because they have, you know, functioning parents. They have a good, loving parental relationship to raise them in. And A lot of them feel like this, the first family was the experimental one.

They get chucked to the side, and then daddy goes off and has the second family with a younger wife. And those kids, you know, has another children, and those kids get the better end of the stick, if you will.

So I'm sorry that that happened, Perry. But you know what? You tried. You tried to get back into his life. He's got problems.

And maybe when he hits rock bottom, you know, Perry, thank you so much for the call. When he hits rock bottom or finally decides it's time to get my act together, maybe he'll realize. You know, and he will come back. Unfortunately, Deborah in Athens, Georgia said she didn't speak to her dad for 13 years. I wish we had time to take your call because I'd love to find out how you guys got back together.

Like. How you healed 13 years of a rift. And Jenny in Ohio thinks estrangement's happening today because the kids are not. Bit To the kids, not the parents. Oh, maybe, maybe that may be happening as well, too.

It's a really sad situation all around, but the guest was Dr. Tom Kirsting. If you want to look him up, you can follow him on Exit Tom Kirsting. And also, his books are available on Amazon and everywhere you buy books. I'm Mary Walter.

You're listening to the Brian Kilmedge Show. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead. And welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. I am Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmead.

We have our guest coming up, but very quickly, I would just like to share this with you: President Trump putting out on Truth Social. I recommended to Governor Henry McMaster that Lindsey Graham's wonderful sister Darlene to serve as interim senator from the great state of South Carolina. This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsay, who loved her dearly. I love that. I think that's fantastic.

You know, Lindsey Graham took his sister in when she was 13 years old, and both of his parents had died within 15 months of each other. And he took her in. even though he was in college, he's twenty-one years old, she's thirteen, and he raised her. and looked after her and did a wonderful job. And I just think that that I love that idea.

You can tell that President Trump really had a good connection personally to Senator Lindsey Graham. And I just think that that's just a wonderful, wonderful thing that the president recommended.

So there you go. All right, we'll keep you updated. Joining us now, Rafael Manguel. I hope I pronounced that correctly, Manhattan Institute criminal justice expert and attorney. You can find him on ex at rafa underscore m-a-n-g-u-a-l.

Rafael, welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi. How are you? Thanks so much for having me. Oh, yeah, glad you're here.

I'm doing great. Thank you. I want to talk about, we're going to talk a little bit about immigration, want to talk about crime. Also, want to talk about New York City. And one of the things in New York is, of course, there's a housing crisis.

We have a housing crisis in New York. According to Livs of TikTok, and they show the receipts here, is 40% of New York City rentals are occupied by people born outside the U.S. And since we don't have a housing shortage, we have an illegal immigration invasion.

So what is the solution by the good socialists of New York to this issue of not having enough housing because forty percent of it's taken up by people who were not born in this country? Yeah, I mean, look, it's basic supply and demand, right? I mean, if you have more people with a fixed housing supply, there's going to be more competition that's going to drive housing prices upward. What the Democratic Socialists of America, which is a misnomer because they're neither Democratic nor for America, wants to do in response to this problem, is basically place price controls on the housing supply, which does nothing to improve the quality of the housing stock that exists, nor does it do anything to increase the likelihood of new housing being built, which is the only way to get around this problem. And so, what Democrats and the socialists really have to contend with is reality.

And what does reality say? It says that we need to lower the number of regulations to allow more housing to come online, and we need to take the price controls off of the landlords who are stuck trying to manage maintenance and taxes and all of these costs that we impose on them. And there's something else that's an even bigger number than that 40,000 that you cited, which is the number of vacant. Apartments in New York City. Apartments that are sitting vacant because it is not worth them being on the market to the landlords.

Because, in order to bring them up to code, they would have to spend more money than they will be able to earn back with the regulated rents. And so, if we can get rid of that, we can solve our housing problem. But I don't think the Democratic Socialists of America are interested in that. Can we just call them communists? Sure.

Okay, cool. Because I don't know what the difference is between a democratic socialist and a socialist other than the word democrat being the bow on the pig. Because we're not ready for full-blown socialists. Yes, so they're just going to put the frog in the pot and turn the heat up just a little tiny bit there.

So here's the thing: I'm going to float this. Tell me what you think. I think that they know darn well what's going to happen. I think they know that landlords will stop repairing these buildings because they don't have the money because the rent is stabilized now. They can't raise the rent, even though the costs of insurance and just the labor and maybe an air conditioning, whatever the cost of the goods plus the labor.

And insurance is going to do. It's going to raise the rates. They're going to make less money. And for some people, this is their job. This is their livelihood.

This is their kids' college fund, right?

So, what do they do? They don't do it.

So, then what happens? The city comes in and condemns the building. What does the city do? They seize the building. Isn't this what Ma'am Donnie and the other communists want?

They want those apartment buildings. They want them to go into disrepair. They want them to decay so that they can then. Seize them because the government's going to fix it, the city's going to fix it, and make them all better. Isn't that their plan?

Well, I certainly think that there's reason to be suspicious that that's their plan. That's for sure. I mean, you have people like Cia Weaver who have a long record in history of talking about things like, for example, getting rid of private property in places like New York, calling homeownership an example of white supremacy and that sort of thing.

So I think for the radicals in that movement and in his administration, it's certainly their hope that the city will be able to condemn and then transfer these properties to their friends in the nonprofit sector to run them. But again, that is not going to solve the housing crisis, right? That may give the select few who are lucky enough to get these apartments the winning lottery ticket of lower rents, but it's also going to give them a poorer quality of housing stock. I mean, it's not as if we don't have this experiment already underway in New York City, right? I mean, the government runs several hundred thousand housing units through NYCHA, through the New York City Housing Authority, the public housing projects.

Know if you've ever been to a NYCHA building, Mary, but they are not very nice places to live. The city has proven over the course of many decades that it has no idea how to manage rental properties, that it has no idea how to keep them up to code. Every single winter, you will see stories in the news in New York City where residents of the NYCHA properties are complaining because they have no heat. What makes them think that they're going to be better than the private sector landlords that house the vast majority of New Yorkers? I say that the evidence suggests that there's no reason to believe that the city can do this job well.

No, absolutely not. And you mentioned Sia Weaver and the rest of them. They're all little Nepo babies, right? They all have very wealthy parents. Ma'am Donnie is one of them, obviously, who is shockingly living in rent-controlled housing in New York, which I thought was hilarious since his parents are millionaires.

But we're not mad at millionaires. We're only mad at billionaires, right? That's what it is. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the problems with rent control, too.

I mean, it what happens is, is the people who are lucky enough to get into a rent controlled apartment, right, it's not means tested.

So they can be wealthy and they can save even more money by paying lower rents, even though they can completely afford market rates and then they don't have any incentive to leave, right? I mean, why would you give up a rent controlled apartment to go take your you know, to go end up paying market rate rents?

So what happens is these people stay in apartments way longer than they need to. And the people who actually are struggling to make ends meet end up priced out of or kept out of the rent control market. Right. Right. Exactly.

So it's, I think this is designed to fail. This is purposeful. I always said that about Obamacare, and I was absolutely right. Designed to fail so that the government has to come in and make health care free for everybody. We're just going to go Medicaid for all.

That's what we're going to do. And it's going to be the same thing here because it never affects those who are making those decisions. I also want to quickly switch to a piece in The Federalist by John Lott Jr. And he talks about the crime statistics. Long story short, there's two different types of crime s statistics.

You have the National Crime Victimization Survey, you have the Fed's the FBI's crime statistics. But what they basically show is that as Immigration enforcement. Is taken out across the country. And what are we going after? We're going after the big fish first, right?

The people who are wanted on crimes in their home country, people who are wanted on crimes here, people who are known drug dealers, people who are breaking the law. Shockingly, The violent crime rate is going down. Do we believe those statistics? Look, I do think that the statistics support the claim that violent crime, serious violent crime, is on its way down in a lot of American cities, right? I mean, that's not going to be universal, but if you aggregate them across the country, I think we're seeing a positive trend moving in the right direction.

Do I think that there's a relationship between that and immigration enforcement? Look, I think that there's certainly evidence that suggests that that is a very high likelihood. If you look at the data that's been put out by the Department of Homeland Security, they say approximately 58% of the illegal aliens that have been arrested and processed for deportation have a criminal history of some sort or another.

So they might have a prior criminal conviction, they might have prior arrests, and they might have open pending criminal cases. If that's the case, when you have 60% of some 393,000 removals, I think, to the midway point of this year, constituting criminal aliens, people who have a criminal history, I think that's certainly going to make a dent, especially if those populations Are concentrated in high crime parts of the country.

So I think, yes, we're moving in the right direction on serious violence. I do think that immigration enforcement is likely part of the story. But there are lots of other things that are being done around the country. I mean, you have progressive prosecutors who have been ousted from their seats in places like Los Angeles, where George Gascon lost to Nate Hawkman, in San Francisco, where Chase Aboudin was ousted via recall, in Oakland, where Pamela Price was ousted via recall. You got Chicago, Kim Fox is no longer there.

Marilyn Mosby is no longer in Baltimore, right?

So that movement is kind of dying out, and they're being replaced with law and order prosecutors. The federal government is undertaking all of these joint task forces and deploying them to cities like Memphis and Washington, D.C., which have been crime hotspots for years on end. That is showing that it's paying dividends. And then police are returning to enforcement in cities around the country, right? New York is one of them.

One of the things that Mom Donnie's allies continue to hit him on is that the NYPD is still doing. Doing more enforcement. They don't like that.

Well, that has a lot to do with the fact that crime in New York City is on its way down. But All those things together. It's amazing what happens when you enforce the law. Christian's contestants go down. Isn't that weird?

It's so strange, Mary. It's so strange. I mean, here you have, you know, 2020 bringing about the culmination of the Black Lives Matter movement, where prosecutors were taking a massive step back, where police were taking a massive step back, where criminal justice reform was the term of the day. Laws were getting enacted left and right to reduce the scope of bail, to cut jail and prison populations.

Well, let me tell you something: for the first time in over a decade, the national prison population has gone up the last two years for which we have data. I don't think that these two things are unrelated. When you have more enforcement, you get less crime. The evidence is clear as day. There's historical, causal evidence for it.

We have current anecdotal evidence for it. The only question is: will progressives actually learn the lesson that is right in front of them? Oh, hell no, because they're smarter than us and they truly believe that they are truly the smartest people in the room. And when you have that kind of hubris, You don't see your own shortcomings. You could possibly never be wrong.

Everybody else is wrong because your feelings told you that you are correct.

So I don't have zero. Expectation of that happening. I want to ask you about one more thing here in the minute and a half, two minutes that we have left. Since you are an attorney, we're talking about crime. Can we talk about what we're calling a teen takeover?

Back in the day, we called it rioting, but now it's a teen takeover. Most of these people aren't teens, most of them are over 18. A lot of them are as young as 13. But a lot of these cities are having a hard time dealing with this. There's a place near me, I live at the Jersey Shore, and they come down on the train from New York.

They don't pay the fare, they just overwhelm the train. Everybody knows exactly where they're going. Shockingly, chaos ensues. Guns are recovered at all of these. They're very, very dangerous.

How do we handle these things? You have to break them up. You have to respond with overwhelming force. And this is going to be difficult to do in jurisdictions that are underpoliced, right? You're going to need massive police responses.

You cannot take your foot off the gas when it comes to post-arrest enforcement, right? It is not enough to simply take these kids home to their parents with a slap on the wrist and say, don't do that again. A message needs to be sent. When you cause this kind of chaos, you need to be prosecuted. You need to do some jail time.

You need to pay hefty fines. You need to do community service. And we need to start thinking about what, if any, responsibility parents have. Yes.

Okay.

So, can we do that? Can we jail parents or can we do something? Like, I'm a big fan of, okay, you love that town so much, you want to go there? You and your parents or parents, my hunch is there's no daddy in the home, because if there were, this stuff would not be happening. But, mommy and their child need to go to wherever it was and help clean up the mess they created on the weekend.

They got to go down the next weekend. And I don't care if the mess is already cleaned up, you got to sweep the streets. I don't care what it is, but they got to do something to make it punitive to help them feel the pain that they caused others. Is that even that creative type of sentencing? Is that even allowed?

It's very, very difficult under current law. I mean, we have some examples where parents have been prosecuted, for example, for giving their children access to firearms that were then used in a crime. But you need some kind of overt act on the part of the parent that makes them part of the crime. But when it comes to the imposition of hefty fines, chances are that these teenagers are not gainfully employed and able to pay them themselves, right?

So that's going to help fall on the parents and make their lives a little more difficult. But yeah, I do think that we need to start getting much more creative and much more aggressive about the responses to this. This is not a new problem, right? Wilding has been a thing for as long as I've been alive, certainly longer than that. The question is, what do we do in response?

I think massive police responses, arrests with real criminal teeth behind them, prosecute these kids, and young adults send a message. Yeah, I doubt that the mother can afford to pay the fine either. I agree with you. This to me all goes back to the parents, and the parents have to feel the pain.

Somehow, the parents have to feel the pain. Raphael Manguel, thank you so much for joining me. He's with the Manhattan Institute Criminal Justice System. He's an expert there. He is also an attorney.

You can find him at RAFA underscore Manguel, M-A-N-G-U-A-L over on X. Thank you so much for letting us use your brain. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. More coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show.

From breaking news to big name guests, Brian brings you insight you won't hear anywhere else. You're listening to the Brian Kill Meat Show. Yeah. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Kilmead.

And Brian's out today on Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. You can reach out to me on X at Mary Walter Radio. Also, don't forget to look for my podcast on YouTube, Getter, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Spreaker. Just look for Mary Walter Radio. Coming up after the break will be Senator Rick Scott.

We're going to talk about the passing of Lindsey Graham and the future of the Save America Act. Lindsey Graham is very, very passionate about that.

So we're going to talk about that with him. I wanted to share this with you. I had heard something about this, and I'm like, whatever happened to this, it didn't happen over the 4th of July. And that's the Patriot Games. President Trump devised this.

It's going to be a televised teen athletic competition. It's going to take place in Ohio next month and it features a military inspired boot camp circuit. The games will also feature aspects of classic American sports like football, basketball, soccer, and track with made-for-TV quote-unquote twists. And they win a $250,000 scholarship. Award so in money.

So I would assume that's also good for trade school as well because they're also big on trade. And that it will be August 9th through 11th. The competition will include rounds that test excellence in skill sets of beloved American sports. High school students aged 14 to 17 from around the country will be selected to compete in individual and team challenges testing strength, endurance, agility, and strategy. Actor Dean Kane said it's like the Ninja Warrior Games.

And he said it encourages patriotism. I think it encourages fitness and competition, and those are all wonderful things. Finalists will compete in an obstacle course to test their strategy abilities as well as their skills. President Trump denounced the games in 2025. Danielle Alvarez, the spokeswoman for America 250, said Trump wanted to highlight what does the what highlight what the next generation brings to the table.

High school students are being invited to apply and submit video statements, and the administration will select the winners who will compete. I believe, not 100% sure, but I believe they're picking one from every state. They will only have two categories: male and female. That's it. Sorry for everybody else, the other 34 genders, male and female.

All right, Senator Rick Stott coming up next on the Brian Killmead Show. Information you want, truth you demand. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. You never felt invisible in Lindsey Grimm's presence. In part, Because he had so much pain and misery as a youngster when his parents died 15 months apart and he adopted his sister.

His family became his sister in America. And there's not a more Aggressive, obvious public servant in this nation than Lindsey Graham. He loved America. And frankly, it's because he loved Americans. He's going to be missed.

Oh. That there being Senator Tim Scott on Fox News Sunday, obviously talking about the loss of Senator Lindsey Graham. To continue that discussion, Senator Rick Scott is joining us now. You can find him at SenRickScott on X and follow him. Senator, thank you so much for your time and joining me this morning.

Well, it's a sad day in D.C. because you come back and Nancy's not here. And so. Everybody um uh love being around uh Lindsay. He um He was um He was a patriot.

He cared about this country. He cared about every American and our safety. He cared about our allies. He knows there was good and evil in the world. He knows that Putin and Xi and the Ayatollah.

You know, can be drug immune. I mean, they're the evil, and we are the good guys. And so he's a big loss. And we'll be whoever takes his place, it's going to be really hard to fill his shoes.

So what a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person who had a tough life, but made something really special out of it. Yeah, I felt that I've learned so much about him in the aftermath of his death that we did not know before. And I will admit, and I've said this on the air, he wasn't always my favorite. I think there were things that he did that I disagree with. But then again, my husband does things that I disagree with.

Heck, I do things that I look back on and I'm like, what the hell was I thinking, right? But finding out his story, his backstory, and about his sister, speaking of which, President Trump just posted on Truth Social about half an hour ago that he thinks that Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene, should be appointed in the interim to fill his seat in Congress. And to me, that just goes to show how. Close President Trump with Lindsey Graham on a personal level. Is he, first of all, what do you think about that, about the idea of appointing her in the interim?

I've not met her, but I imagine if she's anything like Lindsay, she'll be a powerhouse. And I'll tell you what, I don't think there's somebody that talked to the President more, a senator that talked to the President more than Lindsay Grant. I mean, they played golf together. They didn't agree on everything. But they they they're bold individuals.

They care about this country. And so I think she would be a wonderful choice So the so, but I mean, it's it's you can't, you know, this stuff like this happens and you just hate, why does it happen to really good people?

So, so yeah, no, it's it's hard. And I wanted to ask you, and you've kind of voiced it, but I view what I've learned in the hours, you know, the day or whatever, day and a half since his passing, since the announcement was made. I've learned that it seems to me as if Senator Graham was old school. He's part of the old school establishment in Washington, D.C. But at the same time, he was not the old school establishment.

He is leaving being one of the least rich members of Congress. We all have this view of Congress of being Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren and these people who benefit and profit off of their status in Congress. But it seems Lindsey Graham was not one of them. I think his net worth is something like $1.5 million. Was he old school but also different at the same time?

Well, he cared about the tradition of the Senate, but he but look, he knows we have to change. First off, I'm very appreciative. In 18 when I was not supposed to win my Senate race, he came down and campaigned for me. It was right after the Kavanaugh, and he was a superstar. Everybody loved him coming to Florida.

When I ran against McConnell to be the leader in 22, he stood with me and supported me.

So he was not part of the establishment crowd saying, oh, I'm just going to do whatever leadership tells me to do. He had his views, and he was passionate about them.

So one thing that I think South Carolina could always know about Lindsay is he cared about the state, he cared about the country, and whatever Lindsay believed, he was going to tell you. And he'll tell you, he didn't go backstab you. He told you right to your face, I agree with you or I disagree with you.

So he was a great person to work with. I don't know how anybody could not appreciate Lindsay's passion and dedication and service to this country. And it's interesting, that comes out in the. The Claims that are coming out, the accolades that are coming out from both sides of the aisle. A lot of times, there are some on the left, we know who they are, who will say something nasty, will say something inappropriate, but you're not seeing that coming out from the left.

So, to me, that says this guy was respected. And I think there are a lot of people in Washington, D.C., that we don't respect, nor do they deserve our respect. But it seems that he did. And I want to ask you about Senator Jean Shaheen, she's a Democrat. Everybody's out in New Hampshire.

And yesterday, she urged members of Congress to pass a Russia sanctions bill in honor. Of Lindsey Graham to cement his legacy as an advocate for Ukraine. He had just come back from Ukraine. He wanted this package, this package of sanctions on Russia to be passed. And so it seems as if this is bipartisan.

Is this something that you see Congress doing in order to honor Lindsey Graham? I I I I hope so. It's a ro first off. Lindsay was right. Lindsay was there's no bigger supporter of the Ukraine in the Senate than Lindsay, no bigger supporter of Israel than Lindsay.

He knew the ISIL was bad and he knew Putin was bad.

So I think we ought to pass the Russia sanction bill. It's something he's been working on. The President supports it. And so and I think it's there'll be plenty of bipartisan support to get it done. What about the Save Act?

I know that is Save America Act. I know that is something else that he was passionate about, and I know he promised to the President that he would get that done. And apparently, he told a staffer That he had work to do and he wasn't feeling good, and they wanted him to go see, you know, go to a doctor. And he said he had things to do. And one of those things was he wanted to work on the Ukraine issue and also the Save America Act.

He said, I'll go later. And obviously, that did not happen.

Well tell me talk to me about the Save America Act because time is running out for this because apparently Congress can't work in the heat.

So you guys are gone for all of August. I I don't know. Do you need do you need air conditioning? Do we need to go fund me? I'm from Florida, so we know how to work.

So I have an op-ed today up on Fox News talking about let's do what Americans do. Let's work five days a week. Matter of fact, I'm a business guy. If you're in business, you pretty much work every day of the week. You're working seven days a week.

So we know we have to get this done.

So here's what I hope. I hope as Republican and Democrat senators come back from this two week resource when they did what I did, is go around my state. They heard from everybody saying, you've got to secure our elections. We have to have secure elections, so you have to pass the Save America Act.

So that's my hope. I know I'm going to work on it. I know Mike Lee's going to work on it. Ron Johnson's going to work on it. We have whatever we have to do, if we have to do the talking filibuster for two, three months, whether we if we have to get rid of the filibuster, we've got to secure the elections.

The American public, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, want it. The only people that don't want it. are the Democrat centers. and a few Republican sitters.

So we've got to all get together. and say, this is what the public wants, do it.

So it's it's really frustrating to make. Yeah, no, it's super frustrating to those of us out here, what 80%, if not higher, of Americans are like, why don't you want to see my idea when I vote? Like, this is insane. But it also seems as if Jon Thune doesn't want this. John Thune can enact the standing filibuster.

Why don't they have to stand there and debate, right? Why do we let them just clock in and walk out again? Why doesn't Jon Thune crack the whip to get this done? Yeah. But John Boone is a hard worker.

He's a good person. It's a tough job. But we're going to have to do it. Anyway, some of my colleagues are not going to like it.

Some of them you know, some of my colleagues have decided to vote against the bill, which makes no sense to me. If you're by the way, every you know, if you're up for election, you you better vote for this bill because it's going to be one of the biggest issues in November. But I think you should do it. I think he ought to we ought to say we're going to do this, and we're going to if we have to get rid of August recess, which are supposed to be off five or six weeks. Let's get rid of it.

Let's stay here until we get it done. Let's work five, six, seven days a week. Let's do this. And it's the most important thing for our country.

So let's take as many days as it take, and we're just going to work on the Save America Act. Yeah, I just don't see him calling for that. I just don't. It just seems as if he does not want to put those Republican senators who are, I think probably we know who they are, are in maybe more purple states and don't want to vote for it because I think they feel that they're not going to win the reelection and then Republicans lose the Senate. And I think that that's the calculus that is being made.

But, well, first of all, do you agree with that?

Well, I don't understand why we're not we haven't done the talking telebuster already. I just don't personally understand it. It's a bipartisan issue. Democrats won it. Republicans won it, independents won it.

So I don't think it's I think it's a positive for an election, not a negative for an election. I I I don't know of the Repub Republican that's up. this cycle, it's not supportive of it. No. I mean, every every one I know of is up.

Um And and the ones that have tougher races. like Susan Collins and Dan Sullivan and John Hugh said.

So they clearly all support it.

So I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me.

So I hope. I hope everybody came back from this recess energized. That we're going to get this passed. We'll see. We have lunch tomorrow.

We'll get what the agenda is. Thune is you know, Thune is the leader and he said he gets to make these choices. But hopefully, people that are up know that that are, you know, that he wants to make sure they win their election. I've told him we've got to pass this. We've got to do that.

We've got to show people we're going to fight for secure elections, whether the Democrats want to try to stop us or not.

Well, Couchett is doing it for Lindsey because he wanted it done, and he promised the president he was going to work on it to get it done. And I think it is an incredibly fitting memorial to have it done in his name. And as I said, I didn't really know much about him. I was kind of lukewarm on Senator Lindsey Grant, but the more I've learned about him, man, what an incredible, incredible human being and insanely humble because we didn't know these things about him. He was very, very humble.

And God bless him. Senator Rick Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And good luck getting the Save Act. You know, five of you can take Thunder. That's all I'm going to say.

And I'm just going to leave it at that. There could be a vote. That's all I'm going to say. All right. Thank you so much.

And I look forward to you guys working in August like the rest of us. Yep, I agree. All right. Have a good day, Mary. Thank you.

All right. If you want to jump in, 866-408-7669, anything we talked about during the show, 866-408-7669, or reach out to me on X at Mary Walter Radio. There's no S in that. There's more coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. The headlines, the stories behind them, and the people who make them only on the Brian Kill Meet Show.

Yeah. For a From his mouth to your ears. It's Brian Kilmead. It's for me very familiar and it's very healthy. When I say familiar, maybe it's nature nurture.

When I ran for mayor, just for what it's worth, I ran against a member of the Green Party, which was, you know, Aspects of the DSA that we know it today. In fact, I'm one of those Democrats that deeply believes in addition, not division. And so I want a Big Ten party. I want to win. The right is ruthless.

They know how to win.

Okay, that was Governor Newsom.

Okay.

Yeah, on the rise of socialism. He's like, Yeah, I wonder. I believe in division. He's, I don't know if it's a California thing where he uses a lot of words to say very little, very Kamala Harris. There's a lot of words.

So basically, he's like, Yeah, I don't care. As long as you're on our side, we'll take you in. Nazis, whatever you have to do, communists, we'll take you. Because it's inclusive. It's inclusive.

We don't have to have standards. And that way, if Republicans do something like one of their candidates has a Nazi tattoo, remember they went after Pete Hagseth? Remember that? You could just say, oh, yeah, look at that right there. And then not be hypocritical at all because we believe in.

and inclusivity. Yes.

Very quickly, I want to go to speaking of that Graham Platiner, and I want to go to Rokana because Rokana was a huge backer of Graham Platiner. And now all of a sudden Now, because the per w the woman who came forward was a Democrat. Suddenly we believe her Here's Rocana Do you regret endorsing him? Yes.

You flat out regret I got that call wrong. I endorse a lot of people, but when I make a mistake, I take accountability. And I think what people want is the humility to take accountability if you make a call that's wrong.

Okay, so that was him with Christian Welker. And I would have asked, I would have, as a follow-up question, said, Well, what was it that made you realize that you backed the wrong horse? Because it wasn't the Nazi tattoo. It wasn't roughing up the one girlfriend where she alleged that he put her arm behind her back, shoved her into a room, close the door, and wouldn't let her out again. It wasn't that.

It wasn't the alleged cheating. It wasn't any of those things. This was the bridge too far for you. Why? What was that?

There should have been a follow-up there, but they're not journalists, let's face it. She's there to give him an out. That's what that's about. But so apparently, they're floating this guy, Troy Jackson, whose name's been around for a while, but a far-left activist group called Progressive Victory, who wants a full-on communist. Said that they had backed Platiner, but then when they floated Jackson and then they backtracked because they found out some what they called troubling information from their Maine contacts.

They described a bottle-throwing incident as an open secret in state politics in Maine with multiple witnesses. And they say it's part of a broader pattern of problematic behavior by prominent Maine Democrats towards women. Here's what they say: As Maine Senate president in a state Senate caucus meeting several years ago, Troy Jackson, in a heated disagreement, struck a female colleague with a bottle he threw at her. There are many witnesses. We are choosing to share some of this now to avoid repeating mistakes.

Okay.

But it'll be okay. Unless the woman he threw the bottle at is a Democrat, and then it won't be okay. But do they not vet these people? What is wrong with them? Do they not vet these people?

It's insane! Absolutely insane. I quickly want to go to Tony, listening on WABC in Clifton, New Jersey, to talk about Graham, excuse me, to talk about Lindsey Graham. Tony, I've got about one minute. Welcome to the show.

Listen, when we lost beloved President candidate, All his legislation was able to be put through by LBJ. And now we have lost our beloved Lindsey Graham, who we are going to miss in So much, and I pray that everyone who's listening, all you people that have an impact, Lindsay wants the Save America Act passed. God bless you, Lindsay. Bye, Mary. Thank you so much, Tony.

That was really nice. That was really nice. Yeah. But you know what? Times are changed, it's different.

It's different now. Democrats, you know, you heard Gavin Newsome there say Republicans are ruthless. They'll do anything to win. That's not true. That's the Democrats.

Are you kidding? I'm not a registered Republican because I don't think they fight to win at all. Period. I just don't think they do. Whereas Democrats are the ones who say by any means necessary, and they're very proud to say by any means necessary, and they mean it.

We'll elect a guy with a Nazi tattoo. if it gets us the seat. That's what they will do.

So they've made it quite clear that they will do anything for power.

So, I don't think that's necessarily the Republican.

So, got to be careful. But, yes, God rest Lindsey Graham. I'm Mary Walter, and you are listening to the Brian Kilby Show.