After criticizing Trump, Biden to implement China COVID travel ban

From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. How are you? Yes, I am Mary Walter, sitting in for the amazing Brian Kilmead.

A lot to talk about. We're taking out the old year, bringing in the new year. I think we're all hoping. that 2023 Is better than 2022. Unless you had an amazing 2022, in which case, let's hope it continues into 23.

A lot of that's going to depend on your wallet. A lot of that's going to depend, obviously, on the economy.

So let's talk about that and get David Nelson, Bell Point's chief strategist and host of the Money Runner podcast, to look into his crystal ball for us. David, welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi. Hey, thanks for having me. Absolutely.

So I've been doing some reading about what's going to happen with the economy or what people think is going to happen with the economy in the coming year.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I am absolutely shocked, gobsmacked, whatever words you like to use, that Joe Biden has not crashed the economy. He is the luckiest man alive. I mean, didn't we all think this was going to be 08 all over again and house prices were going to plummet and it was just going to be, it's going to be terrible. How has he not crashed the economy? How is this happening?

The truth rarely lives on the extremes. It usually falls somewhere somewhere in the middle, and there's been a lot of mistakes here. But the economy overall in the United States has been obviously very resilient post COVID. Uh but the Clouds are clearly there on the horizon, and I think the biggest problem right now for the economy and for the Federal Reserve, Jay Powell, is they've got to get a handle on inflation because if you let that run out of control, it will permeate and crush everything. And I would say the biggest message that Jay Powell is trying to send out there right now is he wants Americans to lose their jobs.

That's going to be the only way he can get the inflation picture to where he wants it. I think he understands that peak inflation, the commodity inflation, the prices of the pump and the grocery, I'd say the peak is largely behind us, but what he wants to get a handle on is wage inflation, and he'll do anything to crush that.

Well, that's cheery. Uh but see, so so here's where I get confused because a lot of so many people are getting paid more to stay home than they are to work.

So, first of all, how do I get on that gravy train? That's what I want to know. You know, 'cause I'm the idiot working. But the other, how long can we sustain that? If more people go onto the system, can the system s sustain that?

I can't see how I mean, look at our our level of debt in the United States right now is higher than it was at the end of World War two. All right. That's an unsustainable that's an unsustainable picture.

Now slowly but surely, Washington has got to get their act together, and that's really the biggest problem because the Federal Reserve has got a very tough job. They've been trying to drain liquidity from the system. Washington seems to keep pouring it back in. And unfortunately, in Washington right now, the mindset and has been for maybe the last decade is politics are basically I win, you lose politics. And the only thing that matters is protecting your turf.

And I frankly think Americans on both sides of the aisle are pretty sick of that. Oh, a hundred percent, although it's There is an attitude in the country as well of I win, you lose, I'm going to get mine. And so there are people who know that sitting on their butts and playing video games and collecting ACA and all these other benefits that they get, and actually having a greater median income than the people who are paying for it in their state. They know it's wrong, but I think there's a feeling of, you know, what the system's broken, and I can either be the idiot who pays into it, or I can be the guy who takes from it. And if they're going to give it to me, I'm going to take it.

So I think there's that. It's always been that way. I've talked to people that had come off welfare back, and even when I first started studying this from an economic standpoint decades ago, and it was always a system, if you just wanted a little bit of help, you couldn't get it. You had to take all the help. You had to be completely out of the workforce to really get all the benefits of being in the so-called system, as you put it.

If you just needed a little bit of a helping hand on one thing, That wasn't available to you. Right. And that's wrong. I'm a big fan. I have no problem with some kind of safety net.

I get it. I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem with working my butt off between Christmas and New Year's and not doing anything. And my New Year's Eve, I'm finally going to get some sleep. Whereas there are other people who are partying and having a great time, and I'm paying for it.

And I think that that's where the system has become broken, in my humble opinion. Can you just address home sales? I've seen conflicting reports, but we know that pending home sales have plummeted year to year, 37.8%. That's a lot. I mean, it seems that the market is cooling somewhat.

Where do you see that playing out in the coming year? It really depends on rates. As rates go up, it makes housing that much more unattractive. When the cost of capital goes up, it doesn't just affect Wall Street and stocks. It affects things like your home.

It makes the home, buying a home, more unaffordable. And We've seen these declines. First of all, housing starts, permits are down. prices are down. And as rates rise even further, and I'm not really expecting it to go a lot further, I'm expecting the Fed funds rate to probably peak out at around 5%, but that means that your mortgage rate and depending on the 10 year, is probably going to be between 6% and 7%.

That's a pretty hefty package, especially when we've been in a zero interest rate environment for the last decade.

So I think housing is going to be problematic, and you're not going to be able to take equity out of your home. And if you're sitting in a high house with a low interest mortgage, say 3%, you're not going to want to move. Because you're going to be jacked up to 6%.

So it kind of becomes stagnant and we go nowhere. Yeah, but I guess it could be good news for some people. You know, there may be people who are selling second homes, for instance. You know, they have a second home, and maybe you want to move to Florida, and somebody's got a second home in Florida.

So if you've been saving and you've been sitting and waiting for prices to drop, this could be a buying opportunity for some people.

So at least the market I don't think is going to get as bad as it was in 08. It doesn't look like that. And again, Joe Biden's standard world. What we're seeing right now, we're seeing an economic downturn for sure, and we're going to have a recession next year. If we didn't get a recession next year, it would be the first time in a half century that the indicators that we look at got it wrong.

But this is not 2008. I want to stress that. Our banking system is relatively robust. We don't have the insanity that we had leading up to the housing crisis back then. We may see an economic downturn, but I think it's going to be relatively modest.

Yeah, and I I think people are are just kind of afraid of that.

So I think there's a lot of money that's not being put into the economy. People are holding on to it and saving it because they're afraid of what's coming next year. Everybody's kind of like waiting for that shoe to drop.

So a lot of people are holding on to that money. The IRS is now going to delay that $600 reporting threshold for people using Venmo, eBay, selling stuff on Etsy and Airbnb and all of that. Why are they why have they decided to delay that? I think it was because of the outrage to the American people. It wasn't just about collecting extra revenue, it was really an invasion.

to just see what's going on with small amounts of money, the transfer of capital. at almost every level, government wants to see what you're doing. And I think Americans I think the pushback that politicians got from that probably shocked them. And they weren't really ready for it. And they decided, you know what, let's punt this.

Let's address this at a future time. I think it's going to come back, and we'll be talking about this some point next year. Uh, but I d I don't think anybody wanted to deal with it right now. Yeah, and if they get the move to digital currency, it's going to be so much easier to track every single dime you spend. And maybe they're just waiting until they can get more of a move towards digital currency, which there still will be people like me with dollars under the bed.

Listen, Americans, when it comes to keeping their own money, if they've hit the point where they feel that they're paying out too much of their income, will find a way to say, you know what, the government's now you're unfair. I don't mind paying my fair share, but I do believe that this is not fair. They'll find a way to get around it. Even Donald Trump said, yeah, I didn't pay taxes on this, or I didn't, you know, I've got a better tax rate because I'm smart. It's you know, what it really comes down to is you've got a tax code that is seventy seven thousand pages.

And most of the lines of that code are ways to avoid paying taxes in the first place. And people are going to gain that system and they're going to use the law. It's not illegal to do this. We all take advantage of what we can, where we can. We need a much simpler tax code.

You need to just throw out what we have right now. Start all over, come up with a base rate. I personally I go back to what Steve Forbes had put out years ago, the idea of a a flat tax, that everybody's paying something in the system. You got probably half half of the public right now aren't paying anything into the system other than the payroll tax.

So you need to do that. And overall, the tax level would come down, economic activity would move higher and it'd just be a better system. But right now, it benefits those at the very, very top. Right. Yeah.

And I would love a much simpler. You know, even Donald Trump was talking about returning your taxes on a postcard because you would know in advance how much you're going to owe, which I think for a lot of people is a good help. But the people who aren't paying in telling them they have to pay in, that's never going to play politically because you'll have people like on the left or on the right, but mostly I think the left would say, I can't believe you're doing this. Look at what you're making this poor person pay taxes. Look at how selfish the Republicans are.

So I just think once you give people that benefit and they get used to not paying, they're not going to start paying. You're not going to be able to force them to start paying. That can be pretty difficult. Yeah, it's very difficult. 26 states are planning to raise the minimum wage next year in the coming year.

Some of them are tied to inflation, and some of them have a cap to prevent against big jumps. But some of these minimum wages are getting up north of $15 an hour, some $16 an hour. What does that do to businesses and their personal economy trying to keep a business running? It'll probably be self-defeating, I think, what they're going to find, especially if look at ticket industry, say, like fast food. And this is generally a starting area for young people to start out, get into the workforce, get a work ethic.

and and make some kind of a salary and understand understand how capitalism works. Those jobs will go away because these businesses will find automation. It'll be the incremental. that kicks them over the top that says that we're going to spend the extra money on this automation. and the jobs will disappear.

And that the machines will take over. They'll find a way to get around it. They'll find a way to be profitable. And in the end, that's what will what will dictate this. Because in the end, money touches everything.

And if I can be more profitable by hiring a machine than I can with by hiring a seventeen year old their first time employment, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, so the it fascinates me when I look at this and I'm not an economist like AOC is, so you know, maybe I'm not that smart, s but when I look at this, I I think exactly what you're saying, because if I raise the rate up to like, say, a man what the manager was making, or the guy above the fry guy, I got the fry guy making $16 an hour, first job, like you said, learning a work ethic, or maybe a senior citizen who's looking for extra pocket money.

So they're making $17 an hour.

Well, the guy I was paying to, you know, make the burgers, a more skilled job, was making $17 an hour.

Now I got to pay him more. And it seems like there's a domino effect. And to exactly what you said, you know what? I'm going to find a way to get around this. And there here, some guy comes out with an automated system.

Guess what? You don't have a job. You don't have a job. You don't have a job. How does Washington not see that?

Like, how are they that stupid? We've been through this before. This happened in the auto industry twenty, thirty years ago. We saw the bottom net we saw the job market there. They priced themselves right out of it, and we lost our job market and our auto industry to Japan for many, many years.

And that, of course, has since come back, especially with the idea of right to work states. came back and the unions had less control over that. But In the end, Water seeks its own level of they'll find a way to be profitable, even if it means shipping the job overseas. Right. Yeah, but it's just amazing to me that the lack of basic economic knowledge or just common sense of how this is going to play out.

How do you not see down the road what this is going to be? It seems to have accelerated, in my opinion, in this country. There's no discussion of, oh, well, what's going to happen if we do A? You know, like if, you know, the people who want to open borders, for instance, we should open the borders.

Okay, well, how's that going to work? Who you know they don't think. I think because you you're thinking long term. Unfortunately, Washington thinks in terms of an election cycle. And the election cycle for many of them is only two years long.

So what they're looking for, how do I get votes in this next election cycle?

So if I can pass a piece of legislation that will make me look good, I'll let the next guy worry about the problems that, that creates. Yeah, yeah, it's very sad. All right, coming up, you're going to stay with me, which is great. I want to talk about Southwest, and you know, they got a ton of money, they got millions and millions of dollars, and now they're going to have to pay out a lot of money and what happens to them.

So, we will talk about that next with our guest, David Nelson, on the Brian Kilmeat Show. Expanding your knowledge base, it's the Brian Kilmeat Show. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. I'm Ben Dominich, Fox News contributor and editor of the Transom.com daily newsletter. And I'm inviting you to join a conversation every week.

It's the Ben Dominich Podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to FoxNewsPodcasts.com. Precise, personal, powerful. Is America's weather team in the palm of your hands? Get Fox Weather updates throughout your busy day, every day.

Subscribe and listen now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. He's so busy, he'll make your head spin. It's Brian Kilmead. I'm Mary Waltzer in for Brian Kilmead, and we're joined by David Nelson, Bellpoint Chief Strategist and host of the Money Runner podcast. David, Southwest Airlines, along with all of the airlines during COVID, got a lot of money.

A lot of money because we couldn't let them go under. They had to keep paying their employees, which I get. But they constantly, these airlines will a lot of times will get a lot of money from the federal government. Look what happened. They didn't upgrade, apparently, their software system.

I don't know what they did with the money. Oh, wait, they used it to buy back stock, didn't they? To raise dividends for investors. How much does this cost Southwest? Because the government's going to come down hard on.

Gosh, I don't know. I mean, the lawyers are going to have to weigh in on this. Obviously, some heads are going to have to roll on this. But you brought up maybe a big You know, a big problem, and it's really part of the underbelly of Wall Street. It's something I've complained about for years.

In the lead up to this, For maybe the previous decade, airlines were buying back as much stock as they possibly could. And the first time that we needed they had a crisis they had to be bailed out. And we that's part of that mentality. We try to pick winners and losers in Washington, and we try to solve it by injecting a lot of capital. I think in hindsight, if we look back, letting them fail would have probably been the better option.

People think, oh my god, what would have happened to the airline industry? The airlines wouldn't have gone away, the companies would still exist, they'd just be different owners. and they would have wiped out the debt that was there, and perhaps they would have been able to reinvest in some of these modern systems that might have done a better job here. Yeah, and I just looked it up, and I'm sorry I was wrong when I said millions. They got billions of dollars.

Billions, billions with a B. According to Yahoo Finance, they got $7 billion in federal pandemic aid.

Now, some of it, $976 million, was a loan.

So that part had to be paid back. And then the second tranche, they got a $565.9 million loan. But but this this has to I I'm with you. Let them fail. This idea of taxpayers having to pay out businesses that are poorly run The shareholders are the ones who should pay the price.

Companies were wiped out, the shareholders and debt holders would have lost their money, and that's as it should be. That's what's supposed to happen. We're supposed to let bad businesses fail. The business will still go on. Those airplanes would be picked up by new owners, maybe more efficient owners, and you'd probably end up with a better system in the long run.

David Nelson, thank you for joining us, Belpoint Choose Strategist. Catch him on his podcast, Money Runner. Have a wonderful new year. You too. Thanks so much.

Absolutely.

All right. Let me ask you: 866-408-7669, your travel nightmare stories. I have many, many connected to the airlines. Yeah, I was on the last flight out of somewhere.

So I'll tell you all about that, but I want to hear your stories too on the Brian Kilmead show. Hey, it's Will Kane, co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend. Join me as I share my thoughts on a wide range of topics from sports and pop culture to politics and business. The Will Kane podcast. Subscribe and listen now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com.

From the Fox News Podcasts Network, in these ever-changing times, you can rely on Fox News for hourly updates for the very latest news and information on your time. Listen and download now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Information you want, truth you demand. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. I was supposed to fly out on Christmas Eve, December 24th, and Southwest.

Just canceled me with no notice, and now I've been canceled three times. You think they would have been aware of that before this busy holiday season?

Well, obviously, disappointed in the Southwest. We feel very angry because we already have everything planned for our Christmas vacation, but it didn't come right. It didn't happen. Because the Southwest Airline. If they cancel this flight here, we're stuck here another day.

So now I gotta hopefully find another hotel, pay for more food, more cabs, you know, just a lot of other things, pay for people to keep watching our house for longer. Oh Southwest Airlines travelers who were just stuck all over the country. That last guy was on vacation for the first time at New York City from Mobile, Alabama. You get stuck in New York, man. That is expensive.

That is expensive. Southwest, it says that they are going to, they're supposedly returning to normal operations today, and they have scrapped more than 13,000 flights since December 22nd. They blame it on crew scheduling technology. And they finally caught up with the backlog of pilots and flight attendants that were stranded in wrong locations. Yesterday they operated 1,600 flights, including one hundred and four that were empty planes, no passengers, but instead they uh they did that so they could put crew planes and crews in position for full operations today.

They think they will have enough empty seats to fly over the next several days to accommodate any stranded passengers who still want to fly on the airline. And conceding that a lot of people gave up though or got ground transportation, I kept saying this is like planes, trains and automobiles. Right? Like, this is what this is like. It so reminded me of this.

People trying any way to get home, not for Thanksgiving, but to get where they wanted to go for Christmas.

Now, Southwest says that they will refund tickets on canceled flights, and they promised to reimburse travelers who were forced to pay for hotel rooms, meals, and flights on other airlines. They said the process will take several weeks. They lost seventy-five million during a smaller disruption in October last year that resulted in about two thousand canceled flights.

So imagine how much they're going to lose this time around.

So you know what they'll do? Oh, we're too big to fail. We need more money. The Federal Government has to give us money. That's coming again down the road somewhere along the line, so I say let them fail.

But I'm a big fan of that. If you're a good company, succeed. If you're not, nobody's bailing me out when I make bad decisions and bad choices.

So how come I got to bail them out? Yeah. One eight six uh eight six six four zero eight seven six six nine. eight six six four zero eight seven six six nine. Have you ever had a problem trying to get somewhere and it just was one thing after the next, after the next with the airlines?

Because I can tell you some stories. You never, ever, ever want to go on vacation with us. Ever. We had, first of all, I was on the last flight out of Sarajevo back in the 90s. You know, when that whole war thing broke out, last flight.

Oh. They could not get they wanted all the Americans out. They could not wait to get rid of us.

So that was a banging on the door at 2 o'clock in the morning scenario. State Department coming to get us out. They're like, You're out, out, you gotta go, you gotta go, get on this bus, we'll go. And it was like, oh, okay. That's what happens, though, when you travel in a country where the State Department tells you not to travel.

Yeah. Did it once, okay. I have been on I oh gosh traveling out of Newark one year I already remember the airline, And this was back when you had a call. You couldn't do it online.

So I had a call. and confirm our seats the night before.

So like eleven o'clock I call 'cause my husband's like we're packing and and and he said, I don't remember where we were going. I'm sure he does. And I call and they confirm my seats we get to the airport, get to Newark the next day, and we we get to the terminal and we're we're where we're supposed to go, and we just see police and and r yellow tape. We're like, What the heck is going on? and there's people fighting and it's a disaster.

the airline declared bankruptcy at midnight and went out of business.

So an hour after they took after they confirmed my seats, they declared bankruptcy, shut everything down and went out of business.

Now, luckily, we had put our tickets on an Amex card, and because it was on an Amex card, we would automatically get the insurance and travel insurance.

So we could have gone home, but we didn't know when we were going to get our flight because Amex booked us on another airlines, you know, on a wait list.

So we had nothing to do. We rode the monorail. You know the monorail at North Carolina? It just goes from one end to the other, stops, and then comes back and goes the other way. We rode the monorail like a bunch of hobos with our feet on our luggage sleeping.

Because we didn't have anything else to do. What else are you gonna leave sit in an airport for so long? I felt like Tom Cruise in what was that movie where Tom Cruise gets stuck in the airport. That's what it felt like. Terminal.

I think it was called Terminal. That's what I felt like. And that and oh, and I got more. But I want to hear yours. Eight six six four zero eight seven six six nine.

Have you ever experienced anything it doesn't not maybe not to the extent of what happened with Southwest, where you just missed everything. But I'm sure there are people who have missed you know, weddings and funerals and all sorts of things because the airlines screw up.

Now weather I get I I kinda get you can't control the weather. Liberals think they can, but but you can't control the weather, right?

So so I get it. If it's if it's unsafe to fly, I'm okay with that. I'm like, all right, I'm safe. I'll keep my feet right here on the ground. I got you.

I'm s I'm shocked that technology hasn't progressed past that, but it hasn't.

So if it's bad weather, sometimes those things happen. Twenty nineteen, in the summer, we were coming flying to DC back from Montana, back from Boza, Montana. And it was a quick weekend trip wi and flying back and it took us forever. I had to be up at 3 a.m. and in the studio at 4 a.m.

to do my show in the morning in in D C And I didn't know if I was going to make it. I'm texting the producer, like, I don't know if I'm going to make this. We left, it was dark in the morning when we left to get on the plane out of Bozeman, and it was delayed and delayed. And then we got partway across the country in thunderstorms, and we were going to go to Houston. And then we didn't go to Houston.

And they sent us to, I don't know, we went, we made several stops. They finally let us off the plane in Pittsburgh, and everything's closed. You can't get food, you can't get anything.

So people were sharing rations and no food. And we finally got to DC at I want to say like midnight. And we left we were up at like four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning to make our flight. It was like a six o'clock flight. And we got home at we got back to DC at midnight.

I've been on flights where they've lost my luggage. I've been sitting on a plane. We're sitting on a plane. And we didn't go anywhere, and we didn't go anywhere, and we didn't go anywhere. And it was a big plane, and we were going skiing.

I think we were going to Colorado. And we're like, What's happening? And there was a flight next to us that was supposedly before us that was also going to the same destination. It was a couple of hours earlier. And that flight sitting there and there were just a handful of us on this plane for the later flight.

And then suddenly somebody goes, Hey I just saw my luggage get loaded on the plane next to us, and so everybody runs to the window. there were seriously related a dozen people on this huge plane. And we're all looking out and we see all see our luggage going on to the plane next to us. And then they offered to serve us beverages.

So my husband's like, get off the plane.

So I got off the plane and tried to get onto the flight next to us. And I called him and I'm like, Okay, I don't know if this is bad, but the pilots just got off our plane and they left. They just left us there. They left us sitting at the gate. They just left us at the terminal feeding us coffee and orange juice.

No food. And then finally they told us that the flight was canceled. But they could reschedule us tomorrow. But my all my luggage was on the plane that was leaving.

So I want to hear your stories 866-408-7669. If you have any of these nightmare stories, like I said, you never ever want to travel with me. The Times, and I've got more. It's insane. We're flying.

out west and we wound up going from Newark To Houston on one airline. In Houston, how to get a flight, and they're like, oh, to Chicago, to Chicago. In Chicago, they're like, okay, when you get to Chicago, that's as far as we can take you. But there's flights out of Chicago on this other airline that you can get to get you where you need to go. And we wound up having to take a flight to Houston, got to Houston, had to find another flight to get where we needed to go.

It took us four flights, two airlines. and something like eighteen hours to get from Newark to Denver. And needless to say we arrived without our luggage. No luggage. Luggage is nowhere to be found.

And exhausted.

So I had no ski equipment, I had no ski clothes, I had only what we packed in our carry-on bag.

So it's always an adventure.

Now, recently it's gotten better. 2019 was the last one that was really bad, and that was just because of weather. And, you know, what bothers me is when you land in a place like we got stranded in Raleigh once. Megas were coming from Mexico, and that was another one that took, you know, I could have wa I could have gotten crawled in the back of somebody's in the trunk of somebody's car and been driven over to the border and gotten home faster. And we get there, and they didn't have a crew.

They knew the crew was going to time out, but they don't wait until the crew times out before they call the new crew. And you have to sit. And they can't let you off the plane because it's an international flight.

So you just sit? Quickly, let's go to Brad in Florida. Brad, you're on the Brian Kilmead show. Hi. Oh, Brad's not ready yet.

Okay.

So I want to hear his story. It's 866-408-7669. We'll talk to Brad and you coming up on the Brian Kilmead show. There's no topic he won't touch, and there's no opinion he won't engage. One of the great joys of my life.

Call in with yours at 866-408-7669. It's the Bryan Kill Meet Show. From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Kilmead.

Southwest wasn't prepared, and unfortunately, this has been a decade in the making. We have sounded alarm bells. We have tried to get them to change processes, but it's a combination of processes, outdated technology, and infrastructure. When one domino falls, it creates so many other issues. We start each day with enough pilots, flight attendants, ramp agents, customer service agents there to do the job.

But once one interruption occurs, it's those processes that cause the need for so many more people. And that's kind of the efficiency and the problem with the processes. Yeah. It's the CEO of Southwest there, um, apologing us, uh, what happened. I'm sorry, that was yeah, Casey Murray, um, on your world with Cavuto.

That was not the he's not the, um He's the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association president.

Sorry, I apologize there. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kimmel. You can follow me on Twitter at Mary Walter Radio. And I just saw on Twitter, somebody tweeted out a picture. It says, Ever wonder where your luggage goes when it's lost?

And there is a roly bag, a wheelie bag, and it must be blown by the wind. It's just going off the tarmac, past the planes, out onto the runway, and nobody stops it. A guy, Sky Chefs, drives by, you know, like, and this bag is just wheeling its way further and further, and off it goes out onto the runway. It's just like. Talk about your travel nightmares.

I shared mine with you. I want to hear yours. Brian in Pennsylvania, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi, Mary. Thank you.

I come from an airline family, and I worked for several airlines myself. And I just wanted to comment that people should be talking about the fact that the airlines have been deregulated. And because of that, one aircraft now has many duty stops. And if something happens with the aircraft, the whole system collapses.

So our airline industry used to be very efficient, and it's not anymore because it's just a bus with wings that has too many stops, too many responsibilities. My horror story is when I was younger, I was on the last flight out of Warsaw, Poland under Communist rule when the country collapsed because of the work strikes. If you remember back, I think it was the seventies and eighties. My mother was there as a scientist giving a symposium lecture, and we were there, and one day the embassy, the U.S. flag.

was pulled in on the embassy and it was mass panic. And we had to rush to the airport. We flew. Over the trees. We were about a hundred feet over the trees because they had to get out of the country and we flew to Germany and it was a nightmare.

And you know what? It was never discussed in the U.S. that the embassy closed and many people were stranded during that time. But anyway, that's my story and comment. Interesting, and thank you so much.

And we have to remember, it's not the pilot's faults, it's not the staff's fault, the crew's fault. And everybody yells at them. And I always feel so badly for them because it's not their fault. You know, they can't make the planes fly into places where it's not supposed to be going. But his story was very similar to mine getting out of Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslavia, the last flight out of Sarajevo, but it was different in that the State Department knew we were there and we had seen them in our week that we were there.

They knew where we were. We knew who they were. It was very obvious. And we got the bang on the door at 2:30 in the morning to pack your stuff and get out. And uh so it was a little bit of a different um but but there was a lot of panic getting on the planes 'cause there were a lot of people trying to get on the planes planes to get out.

Let's quickly go to Donna in Oklahoma. Donna, welcome to the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm a Southwest employee. And I just want to apologize to everyone. for what happened. It has been in the making for a while. Our current CEO has only been on the job about a year.

So he had inherited this problem. But our customers have been great. They have been understanding. I know that everyone was frustrated, but I think have to come. Our customers for understanding that the people on the ground had nothing to do with the supplied tenants of pilot.

Let's never think. Um and then also um self-love. very good balance sheet.

So I don't think we have to worry about Southland's going bankrupt. domestic carrier in the United States. But hopefully we'll take some of that money and up Great though.

so this will never happen again. Once again, we apologize.

Sorry guys. Yeah. No, I feel so sorry for you. The stuff that is hurled at the people who are, you know, the customer service face-to-face, I could never do your job. I'd last five minutes and somebody would pop off at me and it would be all over.

So bless you for keeping your cool and being able to do it. I hope 2023 is a better year for you, Donna. Thank you. And very quickly, Brad in Florida, you are on the Brian Kill Meet Show. Hi, Brad.

Good morning. Thank you. First of all, love you, Mary. Love when you fill in. Thank you.

I love you too. I'm I retired from uh Continental Airlines and back in the eighties we ha there was a huge blizzard that came across the uh the country in uh Uh Denver was our main hub. and it completely shut down Colorado. And I had a family that a very arrogant family that, you know, even the The little kid was uh uh dressed in uh fur. Fur jackets came up and they were going to veil for Christmas and they wanted me to charter them.

A flight. They they made it. And I said, listen, you know, Colorado is shutting down. Even though, first of all, I can't charter you a flight. But second of all, even if I could, it ain't going anywhere.

And they were not very understanding at all. And actually, the police eventually had to come and step in and say, listen, you know, do you want to eventually go to Colorado or do you want to end up in jail for the whole weekend?

So it's like the last thing you said, it's not the people on the ground's fault. Of course. Especially when it comes to weather. You know, exactly. And I got to rumb up, Brad, thank you so much.

Like I said to the last caller, I can't do that job.

So I'm appreciative of those who can. And I, you know, weather, I've been shuttled all over the country. Like in 2019, I was in Minneapolis. I was, it was supposed to go to Dallas. We wound up in Pittsburgh.

We're all over the place. But you know what? We were all in it together, and it's not their fault. It really isn't.

So it's nice to know you're kind of not alone. You know, this happens to everybody. It just happened at a really bad time. I'm Mary Walter, and you're listening to The Brian Kilmey Show. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show.

Brian Kilmead. Thank you for that, Frank. I am Mary Walters, sitting in for Brian Kilmead. 866-408-7669 is my number. We're going to be talking COVID here.

I just want to let you know if you want to follow me on Twitter, it's at MaryWalter Radio. Please do. And you can follow this woman on Twitter as well, Dr. Jeanette Neshwat, Fox News Medical Contributor, Family and Emergency Medicine Doctor. And she's at Dr.

Jeanette. Dr. Jeanette, thank you so much for joining me. Appreciate it. Good morning, May.

Happy holidays. It's great to be with you. Yeah, happy new year. We're almost there. Can't wait because this year has been less than stellar.

One good thing though, one good way to end the year I'm seeing is that Israel is declaring is going to declare the coronavirus pandemic officially over next month. They're doing it in stages, january eighteenth. The civil civilian health system is handing the responsibility. for all COVID-related treatment and testing. They're going to be they're going to get that from the Home French Command.

So it's it's not going to be like this big program. And on the last day of January, it will be categorized alongside the flu. They said it's at the endemic stage now with the disease spreading at an expected rate, and we expected to have a scenario. like any other viral disease in the winter. This is good.

Is it premature? No, I don't think it's premature, and I applaud Israel, and the rest of the world needs to be following suit. My last shift, Mary, yesterday, I saw about 50 patients, 55 patients. Only four of them tested positive for COVID. Everyone else was your typical run-of-the-mill issues, whether it was a broken bone, appendicitis, or influenza.

So what does that tell you? We are no longer in a state of crisis. We are no longer in an emergency when it comes to COVID. From what I see here on the front lines in New York City, having taken care of more than 20,000 COVID patients, I can tell you it certainly is no longer a pandemic emergency.

So I completely agree with Israel, and I hope we'll see the United States follow suit. And I think Israel has been at the forefront for so many issues, for so many years. We've always followed their data because our CDC didn't really have what we needed. And so I'm so happy to see this. And it's really a step in the right direction.

Absolutely.

And I was I was at our our our hospital here in New Jersey where you know it's still mandated that in in a um A hospital setting, I believe, is still mandated that you have to wear a mask. I know in doctors' offices now it's up to the individual physician, but if you are, if your practice is owned by the hospital, they're still mandating that you wear masks in the doctor's office. And I think it's just, I don't think that is ever going away. I think it's stupid. I think it's ridiculous.

It's nonsensical. I kind of all know they don't work. They're not going to prevent you from getting COVID.

So it seems to me as if the virtue signaling, though, especially in blue states, is never going to end. There's always going to be some degree. We've got Boston talking about making kids wear masks. They're going to decide today for two weeks when they come back from vacation, you know, back from the Christmas break. Philadelphia looking at making the kids wear masks.

It just is just not rooted in the science, and I don't understand it. Yeah, when it comes to having to wear the masks in the hospitals and the doctor's office, I think that's going to be a bit more of a challenge. But for the masking of the children is absolutely incredibly absurd. many reasons. Number one, you know, a flimsy cloth mask.

Or surgical masks, especially on a small child's face, it's not gonna work. They're gonna be fiddling with it, they're gonna be kicking it off, they're gonna be touching their faces. And we've seen studies and data that shows there's no statistical difference whether they're wearing it or not. If a child is gonna catch COVID, they're gonna catch COVID. And we know that children are the lowest risk groups when it comes to COVID.

Fortunately, they were spared from serious. Life-threatening disease like adults, and masking the first two weeks, it's just it really is just. I find it to be so disheartening because kids need to see the faces and the expressions and the smiles of their colleagues, of their teachers. That helps with emotional growth, development, growth, engagement, communication, speech.

So you really, in my opinion, at this point, when it comes to kids, I think masking them is harmful at this point.

Now, it's a completely different story. If you have a child undergoing chemotherapy, of course, you want to do everything you can to protect them. But the majority of children in this country aren't in that boat. Right. No, absolutely.

So we had a little bit of a debate here yesterday off the air. And I want to know, I said, we're going to wait to ask Dr. Jeanette this question. Is there a difference between vaccinated and unvaccinated blood? Because it's happening all over the world where some people are demanding unvaccinated blood because they have not been vaccinated.

They don't feel it's safe and they want unvaccinated blood.

So the only difference is if you're vaccinated, you're going to have antibodies from the vaccine. But now if they don't want vaccinated blood, then are they saying that it's harmful? Are you saying that those antibodies are harmful?

So it's completely backwards illogical and it makes no sense. But the only difference between the blood is the antibodies that you have. Those antibodies will not last forever. That's why we see patients You know, they can be vaccinated, they can't be vaccinated. They can get COVID more than once.

I've had many patients who've had COVID more than once. And why is that? Because those antibodies, they don't last forever. You know, at most, I think the most I've ever seen them last is maybe around nine months, ten months. Do the antibodies from people from from natural uh acquiring of the virus, from getting the virus, do those antibodies last longer and do we know, than uh than the antibodies from the vaccine?

From what I've seen in my patients, it seems like the natural immunity, the natural infection immunity, seems to be stronger. But now, if you had COVID and your symptoms were so mild and you compare that to, say, someone that's had five vaccines with all the boosters, then you know it's a little bit of a different story. They might have a little bit more protection because they have a more robust antibody level in their system because they have five shots in their system versus someone who had just a little exposure to COVID, therefore had mild symptoms had mild production of antibodies.

So their antibody level might be a little bit lower. But I think for most people, natural immunity is very robust and very protective. And for some people, it might be more protective than the vaccine.

Well, you have dashed my dreams of selling my pure unvaccinated blood.

So I was thinking, I could start up this could be a thing, you know, like hey. Here we go. Yeah, it just further validates the fact that there's still a lot of questioning and research that needs to be done with the vaccines. But, you know, we have literally billions of people across the globe who have been vaccinated. Vaccines do have side effects, but we do know that, especially for senior citizens, they did do a good job of keeping a lot of seniors.

out of the hospital and from dying, but not everybody needed the vaccine.

Well, yeah, but when everybody was telling me, because I was saying, look at Sweden and telling me that I want grandma to die, and it was yelling at me, wow. Guess who was right, right? The people who were saying, oh, look at this country, look what they're doing over there. Look what Israel's doing. One last thing.

We know that China's having an outbreak now because they went for zero COVID, so nobody got COVID, right? Nobody had naturally acquired the germ, the virus.

So now they're having this huge outbreak. Two planes, half of the passengers on two flights from China to Italy tested positive when they arrived. President Biden is now going to do what President Trump wanted to do, but President Trump was a racist. Wants to require them to test negative prior to arrival in the U.S. Is that a guarantee, though, that they're not going to test positive when they get here?

Absolutely not. It's no guarantee. I had p when I had COVID in January of this year, I tested negative on Monday. Tuesday morning, I woke up, I tested myself again and I was positive. It can change in a matter of hours.

I see that happen all the time.

So, is it 100% foolproof? Absolutely not. I think it might catch maybe 20, 30 percent of people. But will that stop the spread to the United States? No.

But you know what? Those people who might be sick, what the heck are they doing getting on an airplane? Stay home, get better, have some courtesy for your fellow neighbor by not spreading it to them. But in all fairness, wouldn't you want to get out of China too if you could? Yes.

I hear you. You know, there you go. I kind of understand. They're like, you know what? I may have, maybe I'm not feeling so great, but you'll live.

You'll be fine. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. You know, and one question: you talked about when you had it and you tested.

So, you know, I had it. You know, I had Delta. I lost taste and smell the whole bit last year. And, you know, so a couple months ago, about a month and a half ago, I wasn't feeling great. I had some of the same symptoms, you know, like a little fever, low grade, like 100, you know, a little bit of a throat thing going on.

And I was like, my husband says, you know, you have all the same symptoms of when you had COVID.

So I said, well, maybe I should test. And my husband is a critical care doctor. And he looked at me and he goes, why would you test? Is it going to change anything? You're not going anywhere anyway.

And I was like, oh yeah, well that's a good point.

Well, I mean, I would want to know. That's why I'm going to change it. I would want to know if I was a change. Who's going to change? That's a good question.

Because I'm going home. I'm flying to Nashville right now. If I had COVID, I don't want to spread it to my 70-year-old mom. She hasn't had it, knock on wood. But that would be a personal reason for me why I would want to know.

Everyone has their own personal reasons. Yeah, I mean, if for some people, you don't need to, but you know, just for me, that's my would be my reason. Yeah, no, I doubt I understand that, but you know what? If you had the flu, you wouldn't want to spread it to her either.

So you probably wouldn't go out of that. And I think that was the point he was making. He's like, you're not going anywhere anyway because you don't feel good. Exactly. Yeah, that's true.

True. Why would you test her? Good point. Yeah, I'm just paranoid. You know, my mom, she's a widow.

She raised five of us kids on her own, and so I'm extra protective of her more so than others. Yeah. See? Just like those people who get on the plane from China. Yeah.

I understand vacation. They're going on m a vacation to Italy. That's a little bit selfish. Yeah, that is very true. It is very true.

But you know, this brings this, we can wrap this up by saying, you know, whether it is a mild, you know, whether it's the flu or it's just like a mild case of COVID as it gets more and more mild, you know, people used to go to work sick all the time, right? I've got the flu, I've got a runny nose, I don't feel great, but I've got to go to work. We did it all the time. And maybe this is going to change that because if you don't know if it's COVID or the flu, you should stay home regardless of whether it's the flu or COVID. Yeah, you know what?

It's okay to take care of yourself. 2023 should be a year, a New Year's resolution for self-care. Take care of your body. Put yourself first before your job and your work because, you know, there's only one of you, right?

So it's okay to take a couple days off and rest, recover so that when you do go back to work, you're feeling your best and you'll improve your work performance. Exactly. Well, you have a safe flight. I hope you get there based on what's been happening. You have a safe flight.

Have a safe flight, and I hope you have a wonderful time and a blessed new year. Thank you so much, Dr. Jeanette Neshwat. Merry, happy new year. Have a good one.

Thank you. 866-408-7669. If you would like to join me, I've got more coming up on the Brian Kilmead Show. Learning something new every day on the Brian Kill Meat Show. A talk show that's real.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. I'm Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Killmead. I want to let you know you can always catch my podcast Tuesdays and Thursdays, 7.15 p.m. Airs live on YouTube and on Getter. Tuesday's podcast is no politics, and Thursday's podcast is politics.

You can download the audio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify about 24 hours after we air the podcast, and you can just listen to it if you'd like. I appreciate that.

So, we were just speaking with Dr. Jeanette Neshwat. And we're talking about the pandemic. Israel is downgrading coronavirus to flu status. It's going to be around.

They're accepting that it's going to be around. It could be the flu, could be COVID. It's going to be treated the same. In the meantime, China has a huge outbreak because they tried to enforce this zero COVID policy and the people had enough of being locked down and being put in camps and everything else to try to keep people from getting COVID, try to prevent the spread. And it didn't work.

So now it's just burning through China because nobody had it, right? And so everybody is getting it now, despite them all being vaccinated up the wazoo. And in Italy, Earlier this week, two separate flights from China to Milan, almost half the passengers tested positive from COVID.

So Italy officials have announced they're going to test all travelers coming from China. But that doesn't necessarily mean if you test positi if you test negative on the other side and you get there and you test positive. When when we lost taste and smell, we were fine. My husband and I were fine. And then all of a sudden we're like, wait, I can't taste it.

Could you taste it? Where an hour before I was smelling something, I was like, oh, that smells really good. An hour later, I had no sense of smell.

So it goes like that. And we've got Biden now saying he's going to regulate travel from China. Brad and Virginia Beach listening on WNIS. Excuse me, Hank. Where did I get Brad from, Hank?

Sorry about that here on the Brian Killmead Show. Where did I get Brad from? Oh, it doesn't matter. Happy New Year, Mary. How are you?

Thank you. Happy New Year to you as well. I'm looking forward to a new year. Listen, I heard you talking with the doctor, and she's just a superstar. And you guys were talking about Chinese people flying to Italy.

But if you remember when this whole broke out, several years ago, um there's a lot of um They make a lot of like uh Prada and uh like Louis Vuitton up in the northern part of Italy. And the Chinese people went back for Chinese New Year, and then they came back and they brought the disease, and there was, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people died in northern Italy. And it blew up.

So my thing is, why would they let that happen again? Yeah, well, do you remember back in January 2020 when President at the time, then President Trump announced a plan to restrict travel from China because of what was happening, exactly what you're talking about, seeing it blow up all over Europe, right? That's where we saw it. And just a couple of hours after he made that announcement, then candidate Joe Biden said, This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering to lead the way instead of science. And then the next day he tweeted out, We need to lead the way with science, not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fearmongering.

But once again, Trump was right. It should have been done. And now Joe Biden is going to do what Donald Trump tried to do, and Joe Biden called him a xenophobe and a racist and everything else. It's the smart thing to do, regardless of the party, right? Yeah, I mean it's uh it just makes sense, but it's like when Trump d does it, it's nonsense.

When Biden does it, it's commonsense. But it's actually the opposite way around. But my thing is, all those poor people that died in Italy, there's a lot of large Chinese population that work in there in the garment industry up there. they went home for the Chinese New Year, they came back, they didn't know they were infected. And it just bloomed.

It was a a lot of people. There was a lot of uh People in Italy that were upset about the fact that the Chinese people came back with this disease. If you remember.

Well, of course of course I would be upset. I think we were all upset. Like I remember saying, Why are we still allowing we should we should stop all travel? We should put a pause on all travel from Europe, from everywhere, because people from Europe then, not necessarily coming from China, but the Chinese were coming from China, landing in, like, say, Germany, and then the flights officially coming from Germany. You know, as a way to get a r get get around any kind of ban.

That can't be. That can't be. And I hope, I hope. President Biden learns his lesson and does the right thing. Hank, have a wonderful new year.

Thank you so much for joining me. Coming up, would you prefer in the new year? More sleep or extra money. What would make you happier in the New Year More sleep or Or extra money. They actually did a survey about this, and I'll tell you what this survey says because when I saw this question, I'm like, oh, I know my answer right away.

I know mine. Do you know yours? 866-408-7669 is my number. 866-408-7669. If you could get one or the other, which would make you happier, more sleep or more money in the new year?

I'm Mary Walter, and you're listening to The Brian Kilmey Show. A radio show like no other. It's Brian. Kill me. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmy.

Thought we'd have a little bit of fun since we're heading into the holiday, into New Year's. A survey was done of 2,000 adults, and they found that 40% asked them, would you rather have more sleep? or extra money. In the bank in the new year, in order to increase happiness. Which one of those would increase your happiness more?

More sleep? Or more money. Forty percent of adults said of of those who are very happy with their lives said they're more likely to get they they want excellent sleep. Seventy two percent of respondents uh feel present in their everyday lives, and one in five, eighteen percent said feeling that way, an average of three days a week.

So to increase your happiness, people believe they fe feel that they need less stress and they need to be more rested.

So they chose more sleep, forty five per cent. What do you choose? Or which excuse me, which do you choose? I know which one I choose. Eight six six four zero eight seven six six nine Let's head to Jacksonville, Wade.

You're on the Brian Kilmey Hey, thank you very much for taking my call. You are a fantastic host, by the way, so always happy to hear you. Thank you so much. Look at that. That's my New Year's present.

Thank you. Well, I'll kind of give you one answer that maybe does a little bit of all the above because I think, you know, I actually lose sleep because I don't have enough money.

So by default, I would say more money because if I had a little more money, I would be less stressed, therefore, I would probably sleep better.

So is that kind of work by Technically saying more money would give me better sleep. 100% because that's exactly what I was going to say. If I had more money, it's not that I would sleep better, I would sleep more, I would get more sleep because I work crazy hours and my work is sporadic. I don't have a full-time, like, steady gig.

So my work is very sporadic. Like this week, there were nights earlier this week I was getting three hours of sleep.

So, you know, because I do a show later, but then I have to do a morning show.

So I was getting very little sleep.

So I'm with you. If I get more sleep, I'm much less stressed. I am a much nicer person, by the way. As my husband will tell you, a rested Mary is a happy Mary. And that, for me, I could get.

I could I'm just happier.

So I get it. You w you lose sleep. That's why you want it. Absolutely.

Happier bank account, better sleep, I guess. Yeah, well, they say the average person experiences 10 sleepless nights per month, and that explains why 71% of all those surveyed feel like superheroes who could take on the world when they sleep through the night. I don't have a problem sleeping through the night. That's not me. Wade, Happy New Year!

Thank you so much for joining me, and thank you for listening to the Brian Kilmead Show. And I flipped what he said: if you had more money, you would get more sleep because he wouldn't be as. As restless. Me too. If I had more money I'd get more sleep too.

So that, yeah, 100%. Sleeping is a good thing. It's so weird. My nieces, when they were little, you know, little kids, I don't want to take a nap. And I always spoke to my my nieces like they were little adults like adults, uh, 'cause it would always confuse them and I'd love to watch their faces.

And 'cause very few adults speak to them like like adults. They speak to them like kids. And so I would say to them, Look, When you get older, trust me, you would pay good money for a nap. I'm telling you, take the nap now while you can get it. And they would just sit there and look at me 'cause no adult ever spoke to them that way.

And I had one of my nieces come up to me and said to me, She goes, You know, Aunt Mary, I remember you telling me that I would want to take a nap when I get older. And she said, And she's out in the world now working. She said, You were so right. Is it C? See?

Ian in Michigan, you're on the Brian Kilmead Show. Hi. Hi, Mary. How are you doing today? I'm doing great.

It's almost the new year, and I'm looking forward to lots of good things. Fantastic. It's always a fantastic time to actually hear you guys. I absolutely love the show, love the people on there, and you guys always bring a smile to my face, that's for sure. Oh, thank you so much.

That's kind.

So, which do you want? If I could wave a magic wand, what would make you happier? Which would make you happier in the new year? More sleep or more money? Hands down, more sleep.

I truly believe when it comes to more money, more money equals more problems, more. Um more people asking for money, people putting you in a different class. Set and expecting other things from you. Honestly, if you could get more sleep, maybe an extra two, three hours. I think you'd be regenerative, you'd want to work more, you'd want to spend more quality time with the family and be less stressed out.

So but like our last caller, like Wade though, Wade says he he doesn't get sleep because he's stressed about not having money.

So if he got money, he would therefore get more sleep. I was always taught in my family to be content with what you got.

So never stress out about what you don't have because you didn't have it before.

So the best thing to do is just make the best out of what you got. You know, you know, that's so interesting. My grandfather always used to say to me, like, when I would be worried about something, he'd say, you know, if you don't sleep tonight because you're worrying about this, is it going to change your problem? And I'd be like, well, no. And he goes, Good, then go to sleep.

It's easier said than done, I think. I think it's a good mantra to just be content with what you have. But I think for a lot of people, that's a hard thing to do because you're looking at the problems. You're looking like, oh, maybe I can't pay this bill or I can't do this, or, you know, I want to help my kids out, whatever it happens to be. And so that goes through your brain.

And sometimes you just can't. I do find keep a piece of paper next to your bed, like a pen or your phone or whatever. It's better for pen and paper because instead of turning your phone on, and you write down whatever it is that's keeping you up, and then you've got it on the paper and you can go to sleep. I think at that point in time it would be the piece of paper and the pen. Put it down.

Ian, thank you so much for joining me. I hope you have a wonderful new year. All right, 866-408-7669. Speaking of money. And whether you want m money.

Because for me, like I said, if I had more money, I definitely would would be sleeping more. And if I had more sleep, I'd maybe, well, no, if I had more money, I could definitely sleep more.

So they've released Trump's tax returns. Democrats released his tax returns, which, by the way, I think this whole thing is criminal and horrible and sets a terrible precedent. But Republicans won't use it against Democrats the way they use it against us. You know, your tax returns are supposed to be sacrosanct. I'm sure, you know, Joe Biden only released the years he wanted us to see, which was 20 and 21.

I want to know what was going on in 2014 when he was telling Ukraine to get rid of this prosecutor or we're going to withhold billions of dollars in aid. And that prosecutor just happened to be looking into a company that his son owned.

So the House Ways and Means Committee released a partially redacted version of Trump's tax returns today. This is what Democrats have wanted to do, right? Because we're going to get him now. Here's the thing. We kinda knew there was nothing there.

Because If there was something there, it would have been leaked out when Trump was president, and nothing was leaked out when Trump was president.

So that's how you knew. I I've always said um they they leaked everything on this man. This they they broke every law in the books to try to get him. that they w we there was nothing there. And sure enough, they they finally get em.

and nothing leaked out. And so, what we learned in Trump's finances from 2015 to 2020. The the redactions only hide personal sensitive information such as social security and bank account numbers. Of course, they voted along party lines. Republicans said we shouldn't do this.

You can literally go online and you can read Trump's IRS form filing from different years. The Supreme Court ruled that he had to turn them over. Um It shows that he paid little to no federal income tax from 2015 to 22 because he claimed millions in business losses, and they write each other off, right?

So, as you go through this, his enterprises reported losses, foreign tax credits, deductions, charitable donations, and some other things, but nothing illegal from what we can see. Nothing illegal in here. He used the laws that Congress has put in place.

So, you can hate him and you can say, oh, he didn't pay any income tax. Yeah, but he took a lot of loss, lost a lot of money. And if you don't like it, then have the Democrats change the tax rules, but they don't because they use the same tax rules as Trump does. And they make the same money and they pull the same thing.

So it's never going to change. This was just a way to try to hurt him and just take away more of his rights because they hate him so much. It's really an illness. It really is. Let's head to upstate New York.

Jane, you're on the Brian Kill Me Show. How are you? Fine, how are you? You're great, thank you.

Okay, this is what happens. I am a retired adult. Um I get my check. Every month at a certain time, I sit down and pay every single bill, and then it's out of the way, and then I sleep better.

So that's how it goes. There's two schools of thought on that. For you, that works, and I think that's great. I was raised that you wait as long as you can to pay the bill because otherwise you're taking interest away from yourself.

Now, that was back in the day. You probably made a lot more money on money in the bank, a lot more interest than you do now. But you know my father always taught me you pay your income tax. If you have to pay, you wait till the last day to pay that because otherwise you're giving them a free loan. And if you're getting a refund, you do it right away.

There's always the problem that something might come up and take what you're waiting to pay. I I just yeah, I just don't go that route. I make sure everything important is out of the way. And then I can take a breath. You know, I understand that because that's a good point.

You know, if you know your finances best, Congress doesn't realize that. They think they know how to spend your money better than you. But you know your finances best. And if that's what works for you, I think it's a great tip for people who do lose sleep over paying bills and am I going to have enough at the end of the month and all that kind of thing, because then you know what you have left to work with. And you can budget from there and go, okay, this is what I got till the end of the month.

And that's that. Jane, thank you. Appreciate that. And you have a fantastic new year. All the best in the new year.

I hope you have fun celebrating. All right, more of your calls, 866-408-7669. I'm Mary Walter, in for Brian Kilmead. Educating, entertaining, enlightening. You're with Brian Kilmead.

The more you listen, the more you'll know. It's Brian Killmead. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. Did you hear Joe Biden finally signed the 4,000-page $1.7 trillion omnibus? Signed it yesterday in the Virgin Islands.

But get this: the guy who wants to put oil and gas out of business, the guy who wants us to drive smaller cars and cars that only go so many miles an hour and wants to hobble us and have us burning, I don't know, we're not allowed to burn wood. I guess we're gonna have to be like the Scots and grow peat and burn that in our homes for heat. He had the bill flown To the Virgin Islands To the vacation home in which he's staying at the Virgin Islands. White House staff. Flew the bill.

Down to the Virgin Islands so he could sign it.

So he 'cause it wasn't ready when he left for vacation. I don't know. Maybe the family could have gone ahead and he could have waited if it was that important to sign it. I mean, he'd have signed it by the end of the year. But, um so maybe he could have waited.

This is why these people are such a bunch of flipping hypocrites. Yeah, it's it's like all of the Hollywood elite lecturing us about global warming, and then you know, um, Harry and Megan, those two can't stand those two. Horrible people, in my humble opinion, from what I know of them. And they could be lovely people, but their public persona is not that good. You know, they got he they were got some award, you know, for their work on the climate.

They arrived in a private jet and got in a big black SUV. Is there no way this could have been signed remotely? It couldn't be done? I find that hard to believe. I couldn't fax him a copy?

Like, just fax him the last page. You know, you do that a lot with contracts and things like that. You get the whole thing, but then they factor you, you just have to sign it. I can sign contracts remotely. You have an auto-sign thing that you can sign remotely, and it's perfectly fine.

It's good, it works. But no, he flew it in a private private plane I'm sh I doubt that the bill went coach. I'm sure the bill went first class in a private jet. Reporters who were traveling with the President were locked out of the signing ceremony, and the White House only released a photo of the President in a suit signing the bill at some desk in the the vacation home in which he's staying. Friends of his, a billionaire couple Bill and Connie Neville.

They staying for free. And the couple was on the guest list for Biden's first state dinner at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron. Hm, I wonder if he uh is writing down this little donation. on his tax returns. of, you know, the free house.

Here's another one for you. Joe Biden again. Germ listen to this, German researchers purchased purchased biometric capture devices on eBay. Had no idea what what they were, and I learned a little bit, and didn't know you could buy them on eBay, but they did. According to the New York Times.

Now, the ones that they got, the biometric capture devices that they got, included fingerprints, iris scans, photographs, names, and descriptions of individuals, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of them worked with the U.S. Army and could be targeted if the devices fell into the wrong hands, according to the report. In the New York Times, U. S.

military equipment from Afghanistan is showing up for sale on eBay. They cost under two hundred dollars. Where did it come from before eBay? It seems to have come most recently. From Afghanistan.

Metadata on the device it's called the Secure Electronic Enrollment Kit, or SEEK uh revealed that it had been last used in the summer of twenty twelve near Kandahar, Afghanistan. This is why when they have these things like this fast thing and you just have to let them give your you know, scan your iris, and then you can like get on the plane rout and like No Pretty sure you're not keeping that data safe. Nope. Mm. Like my social security number.

It's only going to be used for, um, f for taxes.

Now it's your ID on everything.

Now everybody's got your social security number, and people are shocked that my social security number keeps getting stolen. Right. Exactly how the devices ended up going from Afghanistan on a battlefield to an online auction site is unclear, but the data, which offers detailed descriptions of individuals in addition to their photograph and their biometric data, could be enough to target people who were previously unknown to have worked with the U.S. military. And if the wrong people got this, these are the people that we left there in Afghanistan and totally screwed over.

Thank you, Joe Biden. And now if if we just left that information there too. How eBay sellers obtained the devices is unclear. This device with 2,632 profiles was sold by Rhino Trade, which is a surplus equipment company in Texas. The company's treasurer said they bought it at an auction of government equipment and did not realize a decommissioned military device would have sensitive data on it.

He said, I hope we didn't do anything wrong. It also has American troops information on it as well. It came from TechMart, an eBay seller in Ohio, and TechMart's owner, Iman Arafa, declined to say how he got it or any or two other devices that he sold to researchers, which is also decommissioned military equipment. You know, how did these devices wind up for sale? on eBay.

It's crazy and scary, but we all saw this coming. I mean, I didn't see things being sold on sale for eBay. But thank goodness that that information wasn't used to target these people who helped us, and then we screwed them over and they're fighting for survival. They're still in hiding. And who knows, maybe some were targeted.

And that's a sin. I'm Mary Welcher, and you're listening to The Brian Kill Meet Show. From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead.

Marywalls are in for Brian Killme. Thank you, Frank. Appreciate it. Let's talk about your kids and social media. Such a big topic in 2022.

Tom Kirsting is a family therapist. He's the author of Disconnected Anneisms. His new book is Raising Healthy Teenagers, and it comes out this Friday. Find him on Twitter at Tom Kirsting. That's Kirsting with AK.

Tom, great to talk to you again. I'm so glad we have you today. Thank you for joining me. Yeah, great talking with you too, Mary. Thank you.

So much, you know, this really was the story. The gift of the pandemic, I keep saying, is parents started to pay attention to their kids. Parents started to pay attention to what their kids were learning in school. Parents started to see how long their kids were on devices, on screen time, and started to realize: well, maybe this is not the best thing for my kids. One of the things that I thought was super interesting is a study that found that children who spend excessive time playing video games report the feeling to the need to play more and more and more and being unable to stop trying.

And they say it could trigger OCD in preteens. How does that happen?

So it's yeah, let me explain that.

So O C D, obsessive compulsive disorder falls under the umbrella of anxiety disorders, okay?

So the way these video games are designed and even that study also mentioned that watching videos triggers could trigger O C D.

Now in and of itself, The way these kids are playing games and watching videos, it's very obsessive and compulsive.

Now, in or if for kids can actually develop OCD, here's how that works.

So, you take a kid that's chronically playing video games or chronically watching videos, they're designed to target that pleasure-seeking part of the brain, you know, the dopamine-producing part of the brain. And what happens is if that stimuli, in this case, video game or short videos, if that's removed, it now triggers a feeling of anxiety within the person because the brain has gotten so used to getting that fix.

So, once it's removed, it actually creates a very uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, you know, oftentimes irritability, and sometimes even defiance and violence. Yeah, it's interesting. And I know, I think we all know like somebody's kid who is into a gamer. You know, I know a kid who thought he was going to become a professional gamer and dropped out of college and had a lot of problems and finally righted the ship. You know, they finally got it turned around.

But it took years and years and years, and disconnecting him from this stuff from his parents was very hard. He got very violent and very lashed out. And so I see where they can become addictive. But I think you have to have an addictive personality in order for them to become addictive. It's like any, like some people can have two drinks at a party and that's it.

And other people can't, you know, and and so I've seen people move on from drinking. They kick drinking, which is fantastic, but then they take up smoking. They kick smoking and they take up, you know, exercising and working out like a maniac.

So I think there's a thing an addictive personality element to this. Am I wrong? No, that's absolutely correct.

So it's not this isn't going to happen to everybody.

So there are kids that play chronic video games, watch chronic videos, but they don't develop a mental health condition. They don't develop either an addiction or an OCD type thing. But we're seeing, because of the nature of the world our kids are living in, where this is so pervasive, That we're seeing more and more kids that are developing addictive tendencies. And it's concerning. It's like what you just mentioned about, I think you said a friend of yours who's.

you know, son thought he was gonna be a professional gamer. I've had tho so many of those kids in my private practice office, you wouldn't believe it. And, you know, they really believe that this is gonna be their path, or they're gonna be a YouTuber or something like that, you know, social media star. And it's just such a bad direction, you know, to really think that you're headed. I mean, there was a study a couple of years ago, Mary.

They did a survey among kids, you know, about career future career choices. and social media star was ahead of Doctor and Astronaut. Wow.

Well, you know, it's like a basketball player. You know, everybody's going to be a basketball player, a professional ball player. And and it's just like, you know, it's just not reality. But um, if we they can make it look at some of these influencers, some of these kids are making a ton of money now, but when you're no longer cute and young, you're not gonna be making a ton of money anymore and you're gonna need some kind of something to fall back on. And they they just don't think that far ahead.

No, they don't. And kids are just by nature, they're impulsive, right? They want they want attention, they want to be noticed.

So if you take some seventeen or eighteen year old Instagram influencer or TikTok star, right? And yet maybe they're making all this money, But once they fall out of that limelight, you know, because they experienced that at such a young age when they really don't know how to handle that mentally, you know, a lot of them it it it turns into a crushing blow for them. Just like a lot of, you know, you take NFL football players, right? They come out of college, they're superstars, right? Making all kinds of money.

And then their career lasts only, you know, three, four, five years. And then they fall into ir irrelevancy. And, you know, it affects it affects how they feel about themselves.

So you mentioned anxiety and the too much screen time in teens, and they get this anxiety if you take it away from them. I've noticed by watching some of these reality shows, I'm a big fan, I admit it, I'm sorry, one of my guilty pleasures is teen mom. And you're following these girls because from the time that they were in high school and now they're in their 30s or early 30s for some of these women, they all have anxiety. Everybody's in counseling. Everybody's on some kind of medication for anxiety or depression.

One of them, they get together and they have like a tell-all at the end of the season. And two of them had had a fight at the last one. And one of them had to walk off the stage because she couldn't handle my anxieties just so much. I can't even be in the same room. What happened to the ability to cope?

It's like nobody, what they call anxiety, we used to call Tuesday. You know, oh, there's a bump in the road. There's bumps in the road in life. Our parents are just looking at us and go, sorry, kiddo, get out there and fight. But you know, I talk about this in my book, Disconnected, which is all about screen time and how it's impacting kids and so forth.

And I have a section in a book that I call social media self-esteem, right? And an acquired anxiety disorder. And, you know, the key word there is the word self, self-esteem. And when I'm out lecturing, talking to kids and so forth, I explain self-esteem. The important word there is self.

So how a person feels about themselves, how powerful they are, the amount of joy and happiness they have, only comes from within. It never comes from the outside world, right?

So when you're young and your whole sense of self is coming from attention from the outside world, it it actually damages your self-esteem. Hence these these uh this show you just mentioned with these young kids getting all this attention, and as they develop into adulthood, they don't really know self. And if you don't know self, you can't have a strong self-esteem. Yeah, it makes sense. I just vividly remember my mother telling me once, I don't care about your self-esteem.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. She was just like, I don't care what your friends think of you. I don't care. This is what you're doing.

And that was the end of the conversation. And that was that, you know, and you walked off and you're like, okay, you know, but I do think it toughened us up for the real world. And I really sound like, you know, some 80-year-old, you know, kids that are so soft, but it seems like they can't handle any kind of adversity, which is why I think screens and social media are so attractive because you can be who you want to be. And, you know, TikTok, for instance, there's they're finding a lot about TikTok now and its effect on kids. And a new report finds that harmful content on TikTok can appear within minutes of creating a count.

They found within 2.6 minutes after joining, users were recommended content related to suicide and eating disorders were recommended within eight minutes. I mean, that to me is just, this is everything you want to keep your kids open. Away from. But if that's what you're being bombarded with, this is what all your friends are doing, this is what is being, you know, cool, it it's gotta eat it their self-esteem in a bad way, as opposed to my mother's like, I don't care about what your friends think, you know, I don't care about your self-esteem. It's a different type of damage, I think.

Yeah, and that TikTok study is really, really terrifying and abusive, in my opinion. You know, the fact that they have such powerful algorithms that they're going to take young vulnerable kids down this dark rabbit hole where they're continuously just repetitively watching these self-destructing videos. And they're not intentionally doing that. They just get sucked down that rabbit hole, like I mentioned. And they need to be held accountable for this.

And there's, I think, some potential legislation in play of banning TikTok. from the United States, mainly because of, you know, there's China stealing information. But I personally I would love to see that, you know, for the just for the sake of our of our kids and and and their mental and emotional health.

Well, you know, to your point, more than 1,200 families are suing social media companies over their kids' mental health. There are 1,200 families pursuing lawsuits against TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Roblex, which I never heard of, and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook. More than 150 lawsuits are going to be moving forward next year. But here's the thing: where were the parents? You know, you give your kid this device, and I understand it's tough to regulate.

I get it. But I look at people that I know who raised three kids, and each kid got a cell phone at 13 that only made emergency calls or whatever. And then at 15, they got a phone that they could get on the internet with. But at night, their parents had to hand their phone over to their parents. And those parents went through the history and things like that.

I, you know, where are these parents? You can't just blame these companies to parent your children, I don't think.

Well, you know what? It's something I and when I'm d out lecturing, Mary, I there's something that I call social conformity, right? And for example, I'll have a crowd of, let's say, 300 parents, and I'll say, raise your hand if you think it's smart. for an 11-year-old to have a smartphone. And never once has anybody raised their hand.

And then I go on to say, I'll say, well, great, we can all agree it's a really bad idea for kids that young to have a smartphone, right?

Well, you we you probably don't realize that the average age of first smartphone issuance is ten years old.

So the majority of of all of you out there right now that know it's a bad idea your kid has one, even though you know it's a bad idea. And that's how we operate as humans. We kind of just you know, we don't mean to do it. It's just a form of peer pressure even for adults. And we wind up just, you know, conceding and just giving in simply because all the other parents around us are.

And that's that. That's an uphill battle. But is that concept a new generational thing? Because I think parenting has changed so drastically with my generation. My parent my generation changed parenting very, very drastically from how we were parented.

And we wanted to be our kids' friend. We gave in. Oh, but everybody else has one. My parents were like, I don't care who has what. You're not getting it.

That's it. You know, it it so I think we we changed parenting drastically. At least that is my perception of it. Has it changed that much? Yeah, without no question about it.

Like, I I come from that generation too. It was like, this is the way it is, right? And it was you know, there's different types of parenting, like authoritative, right? And then there's authoritarian. Authoritarian is no good.

Authoritarian parenting is like, you're going to do this my way and you have no voice. Authoritative is, all right, I'm going to listen to you, but I'm in charge. Right. And these are the rules. You don't make the rules around here.

I do. You know, and it's, you know, that's sh you know, it's it's, you know, showered with love and support and all that. But nowadays, yeah, it does seem like a lot of parents are just like they don't want their kids to experience any kind of emotional harm at all, you know, feeling bad.

So they just, you know, they just give them what they want and it's it's really it's really damaging. Yeah, absolutely. You learn a lot from bruises, right? You do. You know, if you're out in a playground, the best thing for kids being outside is, you know, get scraping their knee on a playground, you know, when they're young, getting into a little scuffle with some other little kid.

That's how you learn. That's how you develop social emotional skills by being out there in a social way. Yeah, more coming up with Tom Kirsting is a new book coming out in February called Raising Healthy Teenagers. Find him align at Tom on Twitter at Tom Kirsting with a K. More coming up with Tom Kirsting on the Brian Kill Me Show.

Giving you everything you need to know. You're with Brian Kilmead. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead. Mary Walter sitting in for Brian Kilmead, and we're with Tom Kirsting, family therapist, author of Disconnected, about your kids and those vices, you know, all that, getting them disconnected.

And his new book comes out in February. It's called Raising Healthy Teenagers. Follow him on Twitter at Tom Kirsting. Kirsting with a K.

So we were just talking about parenting and how it has changed a lot. And we want our kids to be happy and we don't want them to experience any kind of negativity. But you pointed out a piece. from the Telegraph that talks about how social media kills i i i it it kills creativity. Excuse me.

Social media kills boredom that may lead to creativity. And boredom, a German philosopher noted that boredom was the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. Because so back in the day, we would, because again, I feel like I'm 10,000 years old here. We didn't have a device to scroll through, and our parents would go outside and have fun, go play. There was like that sentence, go play.

And we did all sorts of things, and we built stuff. And I dug to China with the kid who lived next door when I was five. And we did all sorts of things.

Now I think kids just get on the device.

So, how does that spur creativity? Yes, so that you know, that's in I read that study and I was just like excited to see it because that's something I also talk about a lot in in my book, my lectures.

So think of it like this, Mary, like you go back previous generations when people were s you know waiting for a train, right, compared to today. If so if peop if you're waiting for a train and there's fifty, sixty people there, what's the common denominator? They're all on their phones, right?

So it's almost like every back in other generations, you'd just stand there and it would just you'd just be there, you and your thoughts, or you'd read a newspaper or something. Or you'd talk to somebody. Yeah, or you have a conversation. Exactly. Exactly.

Or you have a conversation. Thanks for pointing that out. But nowadays, we are so addicted to these things that we're distracting ourselves from our self, our deeper self. And our deeper self is within. It's like where our passions and all of our skills and our creativity come from.

And the only way to extract those things or to develop those things is in the silence. And I refer to boredom as the miracle grow for our mind and our emotions. But You know, we're at a point right now where people don't even know what boredom is, and if they intentionally try to go into that state, they they freak out because they don't know how they don't they don't understand their mind. They don't know how to use their own thoughts. Their thoughts are being used for them.

It's very interesting. It's just a very interesting concept. And you know, when I said all they'll talk to each other, there is a woman who is probably smarter than Elon Musk, I think, because her name is Mary Jane Copps. She's known as the Phone Lady. And she has a Business Insider did a profile on this woman.

She coaches young people, Gen Z and millennials, to help them feel more confident and less fearful of speaking with people over the phone. She charges $480 an hour for one-on-one coaching, $365 for 30-minute webinars, and she trains staff for corporations starting at $3,500 a day. And she says these kids, they've never had the skills given to them because this is the first generation to grow up without a phone on the wall in the house, and you had to answer. Your parents told you what to say when you answered the phone, and how to find out, yes, who's calling, please. Like, that was the big sin, not asking who was calling.

My mother would send us back, find out who it is, you know. And so it's amazing that they don't know how to talk on the phone. Yes, or in person. And actually, in my next book that's coming out in February, Raising Healthy Teenagers, I have a chapter on that about teaching our kids to communicate. And I give an example of we were in Disney World a few years ago, my wife, my kids, my in laws and my father in law, you know, he's almost eighty years old.

And you know, we'll be online for 45 minutes and he'll strike up a conversation with somebody behind him and just talk. You know, for like 45 straight minutes, right? And that is so important, the ability To be able to communicate fearlessly with other people, even strangers, right? That's how we develop something known as emotional intelligence, which is the ability to understand our own emotions, the ability to regulate our emotions, the ability to empathize with others. It's called EQ.

And the only way to develop a very strong EQ, which is more important for life success than having a high IQ, is from having lots and lots of in-person interaction with other people, which is something our kids lack tremendously. Yeah, 100%. I've watched them on the beach. I've watched like my nieces on the beach with their girlfriends. And, you know, here's a bunch of 16-year-olds sitting in a circle on the beach, which, by the way, for those of us who are far past 16, that's a very intimidating thing to do.

And I'm sitting there with all these girls, and they're all with their face down in their phones. And I was like, I said to my sister-in-law, do they talk to each other? She's like, oh, no, they're talking to each other on Snapchat. That's what they're doing. I was like, it's insane.

So, I'll tell you, I'll give you another example, right?

So, at my office, my five office. You know what? Actually, I got to tell you. I got to tell you. I'm sorry.

We're out of time. We're up against the clock. If you want to know more, you got to get the book, Disconnected or Raising Healthy Teenagers by Tom Christie. Have a great new year. I appreciate you joining me here on the Brian Kill Meet Show.

Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show. I'm Mary Walter with you, sitting in for Brian Kilmead. If you want to jump in, I've got some breaking news for you. 866-4087669.

There's still a lot going on, man. I'll tell you, for the week between Christmas and New Year's, this has been a jam-packed week. And you would think that, you know, since all the politicians are home. You know, glad-handed trying to make money, that it would be a really slow news week. And it has not been a slow news week.

So, the big news that just broke is they have a suspect in custody in the killings of those four university students in Idaho. The Moscow Police Department, FBI, and Idaho State Police are announcing that they have a suspect in custody. It would happen November 13th, those four University of Idaho students. A man in his mid-20s was taken into custody by local police and the FBI at 3 a.m. in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

They say the suspect is a college student but does not attend the University of Idaho, and he appeared in court this morning.

So Interesting, you know, the mystery deepens, but I kind of felt bad. I did. I didn't kind of. I felt badly for the police because everyone was armchair quarterbacking their investigation. Oh, they did this.

You know, they, oh, too many people walked in and out of the crime scene. Oh, they drove over the tire tracks. And I get it. But you knew I don't know, I just like knew they were gonna solve this. Because this is a place in Iowa where these things don't happen.

And this was so violent and so, like, not, it was so out of place for that area. that somebody knew something. I I just think somebody knew something, somebody talked, and they just couldn't say anything. And so, um, they're still asking for anybody with information to call. But I think a lot of people really helped in this because this was just so out of the ordinary for that area.

So that's good.

So if we get another update, actually, there's an update. I think they said at 4 o'clock.

So 4 o'clock this afternoon, there will be an actual presser, hopefully with more information. But I understand when they can't give you a lot of information.

Okay.

Kevin McCarthy, this just out about Kevin McCarthy. He clearly doesn't have the votes to be elected speaker. Clearly, he doesn't. You've got Matt Gaetz out there saying, No, I'm not voting for Kevin McCarthy. You know, Matt Gaetz says, We need to impeach Mayorkis.

Kevin McCarthy came out and said there are not going to be any impeachments. We'll do investigations, but we're not going to do show trials and impeachments for political purposes.

Well, there's a lot of people who want Maorkis to be impeached because of what he's doing to this country on the border. He's not doing his job. I personally think Biden should be impeached for the exact same reason. What is Kamala Harris doing? People are being killed in this country by the fentanyl that is coming across that border.

Children mostly being killed by this, and they are doing nothing to stop it. You can't tell me that that is not an impeachable. Offense.

So I know Matt Gates is out. He has suggested Jim Jordan to run. Steve Scalise's name has been floated to run. Andy Biggs openly challenged Kevin McCarthy, so he doesn't have the vote.

So here's what he's doing. Kevin McCarthy is floating a last-minute deal to try to get these people on board for him so he can become the speaker.

So he's offering. a rule change in Congress, a congressional rule change that would make it easier to remove him, a House Speaker, in exchange for voting for him.

So if you vote for me, I'm going to put this rule change in.

Now, based on politics in Washington, when you see these deals, a lot of times the first half of that deal happens and the second half never does.

So, I would be very leery of this. His offer would lower the threshold required for a motion to vacate the chair. It forces a vote on retaining the speaker, okay?

So, currently, because of a rules change that was pushed through by Nancy Pelosi, because she didn't want to be removed, only a member of the House leadership can offer a motion to vacate because Nancy wants to maintain power for obvious reasons.

Now, House Republicans, conservative House Republicans, want that standard to be repealed. They want to allow any one member to force a vote on the Speaker at any time. Which, honestly, if this is your leader, you should be allowed. Anybody who he's leading in Congress should be allowed to say, Hey, you're not doing a good job. We need to have a vote on you.

It shouldn't just be a narrow group of people who have a vested interest in him maintaining speakership in the rank and file are not happy.

So I like this idea. Yeah, and and Andy Biggs said every member of Congress was elected to legislate on behalf of their constituents. To do that, members must be able to hold their own leadership accountable. Allowing members to offer a motion to vacate the chair is seen as an insurance policy by hardline Republicans, and many fear that once entrusted McCarthy is then going will refuse to threaten a partial government shutdown. They don't think that this is the concern, that McCarthy doesn't have the backbone, the spine, the will to fight, to stick by his guns.

They want Joe Biden to make concessions on policy, and they can threaten to shut down the government if he doesn't give them concessions. But will McCarthy have the backbone to do that? Or is he going to do what Mitch McConnell does, which is cave, cave, cave, cave, cave, and give the Democrats everything they want and give up any kind of power or leverage that they have?

So, um again, he needs two hundred eighteen votes.

So we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens with this. But he is starting to negotiate in order to get what he wants. One other last piece of news that has just come up Is okay. The mother of Hunter Biden's four-year-old daughter, London Roberts, a former exotic dancer that he met and, you know, didn't really remember meeting and fathered a child with her, and didn't that was a whole big lawsuit, and he said it's not his, and it turns out it is his, and then he wasn't supporting, and then she had to fight him to get his financial records in order to make him pay child support, etc.

Well, and infamously, someone takes a picture or notes somehow that the Biden mantle where they have all the stockings hung up. This child never has a stocking, you know, not included as part of the Biden family. They are keeping her at arm's distance.

Well, she has now made the request through her lawyer. In a case where Hunter has asked to lower his child support payments, the request that she made. is uh to f give her child the benefit of carrying the Biden family last name. Let me tell you, she's no dummy. Hunter wants to lower his child support payments.

You know, if Hunter If Hunter didn't blow through so much blow, uh Hunter probably would have more money in order to support his child.

So a Roberts lawyer asked the court to dismiss the request due to Hunter's long and lengthy history of attempting to avoid discovery by filing endless and recurrent motions for protective orders. And so she c she countered with the request that her daughter, Navy, takes the Biden's last name. To the extent this estrangement is misconduct or neglect, it can be rectified by changing her last name to Biden, so that she may undeniably be known to the world as the child of the defendant and member of the prestigious Biden family, her lawyer wrote. I have to tell you, I love it. I think it's brilliant.

And honestly, if you're thinking about the kid, no matter how much I can't stand Hunter Biden, I can't stand the Biden family, and I think that they are very, very hinky in their business dealings. That child, though doesn't deserve to be neglected by by her grandparents. She doesn't deserve to be treated as an outcast because of the way in which she came into this world, because their son, Acted irresponsibly. And and listen, so did her mom. They acted irresponsibly.

That shouldn't be foisted upon that child. And I I think it does harm to that child, and I think that they need to work this out. And should the child have the Biden last name? Why not? Why shouldn't that child have the Biden last name, especially if it's gonna open doors for her as it opened doors for her father?

Why would you deny the child that?

So, you know, we can laugh at it, and I do think, as I said, I think mommy is one smart cookie. But if daddy's trying not to pay, that only hurts a child. Why do you do that? You got the you have the means. Your family has the means.

Don't deny the child. It's just petty. And irresponsible and harmful to you. You don't harm children. It's not her fault, the means under which she was born.

Not her fault at all. All right. If you want to jump in anywhere, 866-408-7669, if you want to comment on any of this, I have some more news coming up for you. And somebody. Is going on tour in the new year.

I did a double take when I read it. Wait till you hear who it is. I'm Mary Walter. You're listening to the Brian Kilmead Show. Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead.

Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show. I'm Mary Walter in for Brian Kilmead. Uh, here's a little bit of something that's not really making the news this week, but you should know about. According to an executive order, it's going to take effect January 1st.

If you are a federal employee, you will receive an overall pay raise of four point one percent as well as an average locality based pay raise of half a percent.

So some two point one million federal employees will receive average raises of four point six percent. Yeah. Multiple years of lower pay raises for federal civilian employees than called for under regular law have resulted in a substantial pay gap for federal employees compared to the private sector. This alternative pay plan decision will allow the federal government to better compete in the labor market to attract and retain a well-qualified federal workforce.

So here's the thing: when I was out looking for a job, my dad always told me, get a job with the government, work for the government, get a government job. They never run out of money because they'll just raise my taxes in order to pay your salary. Get a job. You get every day off, every holiday, you get everything off. You can retire early, guaranteed pension, get a job.

And of course, I didn't listen to him because I'm a dummy. And I should have listened to him because at the time, the deal always was: you know, these union jobs, whether it's federal government or whatever it happens to be, but mostly federal government, government jobs, you got paid less, but you got better benefits. You got better health care benefits. You got your, you know, you got pensions. You never lost money.

Your salaries were never cut. They were always raised. And so it was very hard to get fired.

So the perks were always better in the Public sector than they were in the private sector. In the private sector, in exchange, you got more money. but you had to put the money away for yourself as far as some kind of retirement and and sometimes your your health care wasn't as good as what they were getting in the government and you usually had to pay a lot more for it. right.

So that was the exchange. But now it's gotten to the point where the salaries have been raised for the federal employees because why?

Well, we can't we can't compete in the labor market. We can't get good employees.

So now it's not only better benefits, but now it's also better pay as well.

So that whole thing has been flipped on its head. The raise falls below the 7.1% year-over-year inflation rate recorded last month. The federal government spent approximately $215 billion. I almost said $2.5 billion. There's a big difference between $2.5 billion and $2.50.

$115 billion in the fiscal year 2016, compensating federal civilian employees. I'm also a big fan that we have way too many federal government employees, right? I and I'm sure, you know, a lot of you do a great job and and everything's wonderful, but I gotta I gotta think that there are people who work for the federal government who who want a challenging job, who who want to work hard, and they just Do the grind. That's it. And they could be so much more u so much better utilized than they are.

And they're they're just not well utilized at all. And it's kind of sad. It is kinda sad. You know what else is said? CNN has announced that they are limiting alcohol consumption on their New Year's Eve special.

Yeah, that was a train wreck. What happened was last year is Andy Cohen was on with Anderson Cooper. And. Andy Cohen got loaded, I mean, toasted last year, and it got out of control. And he said, if you look behind me, you'll see Ryan Seacress scrupulous losers performing.

I'm sorry, but if you're watching ABC, you're watching nothing. And he expressed regret later. But Ryan Seacrest now supports the decision to limit alcohol consumption during the broadcast. And here's the thing: in Andy Cohen, I try to put context. Andy Cohen, I think, was insulting ABC.

not Ryan Seacrest, per per se? I think it was more of a shot at the competition than it was at Ryan Seacrest. But, um,. Secret said, I don't advocate drinking when one is on the air. I don't know how that started as a tradition, but it's probably a good idea to scale back CNN.

But then he also said, We will not drink until 105 in the morning, although I might send them some Casa Gu Dragones to Kila just to tempt them while they're on the air.

So I think he saw the humor in it. But when he just going after the competition, but I get it. I see why they're limiting it. Uh all right. One quick note here.

Pickleball everybody's playing pickleball but me, and I don't understand it.

So going into the new year, I'm going to explore and see why. I don't know why, but there's almost like this cult following of pickleball, and it is one of the fastest growing sports in the country right now. It's grown 40% in the last two years. It's crazy. I don't understand it.

I was kind of hoping to get into like curling or bobsled where all I have to do is run next to it and jump in and ride, you know, or curling where I just have to sweep. But pickleball? You gotta work at that. I don't know about that one. All right, last but not least, I told you someone is going on tour.

Guess who is making a comeback tour in 2023 with a possible start in the spring or summer? Bill College. Hosby. Bill Cosby Remember Bill Cosby? First of all, he's eighty five years old.

Now, if you're still funny, I don't care how old you are.

So he'll probably perform, you know, sitting sitting down. He was released from jail last year after serving three years. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled that his due process rights had been violated, so he was released. But he is still facing a lawsuit brought by five women in New York who claimed that he raped them.

So it's going to be interesting to see Who attends this? Right, like, who attends this little event with Bill Cosby? And the comments on social media were very funny. He said, There's so much fun to be had in the storytelling that I do years ago, maybe 10 years ago. I found it was better to say it after I write it.

He has a book coming out as well. But here's some of the comments: ladies, there will be a two-drink minimum. Oh, groan, groan. Uh the only comedy show where the audience won't make it to the second drink. Bill Cosby is going back on tour, but tickets will be hard to get because they're all blackout dates.

Come on, you laughed. You know you laughed. Listen, everybody, have a wonderful, incredible new year. I hope 2023 brings you nothing but wonderful things. Thank you to Brian, obviously, for letting me sit in the chair, and Allison, and Pete, and Eric for all your help, and you for joining me as well.

I'm Mary Walter. Have a wonderful new year. Thanks for listening to the Brian Kilmead Show. Put the power of over 100 meteorologists and the worldwide resources of Fox in your hands with the Fox Weather Podcast. Precise, personal, powerful.

Subscribe and listen now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts.