Danny Penny NOT GUILTY; PLUS Syria dictator overthrown, flees to Moscow

From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead. All right, here we go. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. And in case you thought things were going to slow down, the election's over, and we'll just get ready for the holidays.

Time to look back, reflect, and project. Not a chance. We have so much breaking news. Also, the president of the United States acting like the president-elect acting like the president and the president taking vows for stuff that he really should be apologizing for. This hour, joined by Steph Kite.

She's an Axios political reporter. Bottom of the hour, Jason Chaffetz in studio. Before we talk to the former congressman, let's get to the big three.

Now, with the stories you need to know, it's Brian's big three. Number three: this judge. This DA, they've got it out for this hero. This is a good man, and it's more or less. Go home, take your weekend, and come back with a conviction of son.

It's so wrong. Vicki Palladino, she was a local legal official. Danny Penny's trial could end today. As jury already let judge know, the top charge won't fly astoundingly. The judge wants them to consider a negligent homicide.

This thing should be over, but I'll tell you what, I have a theory, and I think what's over is the woke DL. I'll explain. Number two. I thought Pete Hagseth was a goner, and that's not true anymore. I mean, I think it's possible he's going to get confirmed by following the kind of the Brett Kavanaugh playbook of when you're in real trouble, fight back really hard.

That's something Trump likes to see. Maybe that'll save you. I'm not sure about Tulsa Gabbard. USA Today is Susan Page. Trump shines on the world stage as his nominees, especially Pete Hagseth, marshal major support.

We're going to look at the new position filled and what other nominees like Tulsi and RFKJ are facing as their confirmation gets closer.

Okay. Number This is so good. This is so significant. The fall of the Assad dictatorship, the ripple effect of this is just going to be remarkable. It's truly, I believe, equivalent to the Berlin Wall, which led to a ripple effect of dozens of countries becoming free.

Joe Wilson, he's so underappreciated with his international policy. Also, he served in the military as his kids do. Titanic plague shifted in the Middle East. As Syria's brutal dictator watches his army fold and he scrambles to Russia, while we have to make sure of one thing: the Russian military base and their seaport flips back to Syria. We examine where we go from here and what this new government has already done.

And the person who deserves full credit, and I'll ask you this, Jason, is, in my view, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Oh, I thought you were going to say me, but I was going to say that was a bit of a drug. Normally I would. Normally with. Benjamin Netanyahu.

Look, he's been the true leader in that region. I know you had President Biden try to stand up and say he pretend that he had something to do with it. This is all about Netanyahu showing strength, projecting strength, having the fortitude to do what he needed to do. And the world is better without Assad in there. But I'm telling you, this is a real period of uncertainty, and it's a bit scary.

You know, do they have chemical weapons? How many chemical weapons? Where are the chemical weapons? Who has the chemical weapons? Those types of things need to be fleshed out.

So here is Joe Biden. Taking a bow, cut to. For years, the main backers of Assad have been Iran. Hezbollah and Russia. But over the last week their support collapsed, all three of them.

Because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office. That is so wrong. Brian, American taxpayer dollars have been funding at least two of those three in big, big ways. Iran, it was strengthened the moment Joe Biden came back into office in Hezbollah. Are you kidding me?

He has done nothing to he hasn't done nearly enough, let's say that. He's done nearly, not nearly enough, to help take those down. He's standing up taking credit where he really shouldn't. He told Hezbollah to not Take He told Nenyao, do not take any attack. Don't attack Hezbollah at all.

Don't go in on the ground. Don't take out Nasarella. They had the exploding pagers. They went in on the ground. The tunnels were much more sophisticated, intricate.

They were armed to the teeth. And then he took out Nasarella and then took out the two guys who are supposed to replace Nasarella. Totally decapitated Hezbollah.

Now, what's the big deal about that?

Well, not only is it good for the Lebanese. But then the Hezbollah is bodyguards to Assad, working and making themselves the enemy of everyone in the Middle East who weren't affiliated with Iran. At the same time, Russia, totally distracted by a war in Ukraine that was supposed to be six weeks, instead is three years. They lost 700,000 people, begging Yemen to fight with them and North Korea to fight with them. Then you figure in when they were told with Iran.

When they bombed you, take the win. No, we're not going to take the win. They hit back and they wipe out a lot of the missile defense around their nuclear sites. Then they come back and take out the radar and the rest of it. And because they've been neutralized, because Hamas and Hezbollah have been marginalized, in Hezbollah's case, really destroyed.

Sinoir was the affiliate, it was going to be the direct link. He's dead. They're like only 15% of Hezbollah fighters are left. They are naked. And they have no missile defense, no radar defense, but they are now rushing to get a nuclear weapon.

Do you think Israel? Knowing that Trump is going to come in, is going to allow them to get a nuclear weapon? There's no way. Look, Russia spread, you summarized that very well. Russia is spread far too thin.

Netanyahu deserves all the credit. I mean, he put things into motion years ago to be able to do those pagers and exploding phones. I mean, that's one of the greatest military moves I've seen in a long, long time. We're never going to say anything like that. Unbelievable.

The pre-planning and the execution and the timing of it was just absolutely unbelievable. One thing I want to bring up, Brian, that most people aren't realizing is. I went to Jordan, right on the border of Syria. There are something like 700,000 Syrian refugees sitting in Jordan and other places around. What's going to happen with all those hundreds of thousands of people?

Are they going to want to go? Did they go back? How do they go back? What did they go back to? I'm just going to.

This might be an opportunity, right? It is. These poor people, they don't want, they're not part of the fighting force. They're just, they have literally been for more than a decade sitting in these little tents. I mean, it's the most depressing thing.

I was there for hours, and it was hard to fathom, let alone being there for 10 years. The humanitarian suppression that was happened under Assad is just untold. That story really needs to be fleshed out. And then, how do these people get integrated back into their homes? They say minimum 500,000.

Many of which bombed with barrel bombs of chemical weapons.

So we've hit them 75 times in the last 48 hours. We're looking to secure the chemical weapons, as is Israel, who moved up in the goal and no longer is that the demilitarized area. They moved up to fill the gap.

So far, now, look, I'm not naive.

So don't say that Brian, you came in on a Monday and you thought this was going to be a great government. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the guy that took over, his name is Mohammed Ghazi Jolani. We have a $10 million bounty on his head. He was working with Zarkowi for a while.

But what's so interesting this time is the prime minister under Assad is still there. He says he's working for an orderly transfer of power. Isn't that interesting? Basically, show you how to work everything. Unlike with the Taliban, when Gahani took our money, our helicopter, went to another country, just abandoned the place.

This guy's trying to do it.

Now, he's also one of the founders of Al-Nusra, an extremist Sunni organization. Not something that should be lauded.

However, he claims he divorced himself from Al-Qaeda. He's wearing a suit. He said all sects are going to be protected, including Christians. And what people should understand is Alawite is a form of Shia. And they had no business running that country.

The only reason they stayed in power was because they were willing to kill everybody if they had to. The dad in the 70s. Through the 90s, and then the ophthalmologist, younger loser son, who decides he's going to be even more brutal than his weird-looking dad.

Well, in the proximity that they had to Iran, which was doing a lot of the funding here, this is what Joe Biden never understood at the beginning. Or if he understood it, did the exact wrong thing. We should have been starving Iran because Iran was then taking this money, putting it into Syria, putting it into Hazard, putting it into Hamas. It's a total loss. And look, people, some people had foreshadowed this.

They could see it coming. The rebels were making progress. But it's overly, it would be an oversimplification to say all the rebels are good. The power vacuum there still needs to be sorted out. And there are some good folks, but there's some not-so-good folks, right?

Christians, Druze, there's a whole bunch of others that are in vulnerable situations. I think you got to finish off Iran. No, I think you have to finish off Iran, but that nuclear program's got to be ended. And now they're going to starve them. They lose them.

Not the people. They're about to starve the government. Right. And the government, by the way, the people see this. Yeah.

And that's going to give them impetus to do something. Number two, the Russians getting that military base was so detrimental to the region.

So if you could get them out, stop them from getting access to that port and that military base, that's the land bridge for them to get the Iranian drones. That's the land bridge for Russia to get Houthis, the weapons they need to close the Red Sea. I mean, I know I'm oversimplifying to a degree, but what I basically said is irfutable. It's just the question is, they are now making overtures to the new government. We got to stop that.

I'm all for not getting involved in other governments, but Russia has to be stopped. How do you get him out of those bases? It's complicated. First of all, we've got to get our new president in there who actually knows how to negotiate in 3D chess. That is a really interesting thing.

He says I don't want anything to do with this, not our problem. Understood, but he also wants to solve the problem in Ukraine. And you've got Russia and tentacles all over the place. They're all tied in together. You can't just say, hey, this one doesn't touch this one.

It's all related to where Putin is going, what Putin wants to do. Here's Frank McKenzie, the general in charge, who took the orders from Biden and said, I only want the airport when told by the invading Taliban, what do I do? The Kabul is wide open. He said, Just give us the airport. Cut six.

I think President Trump will look at the merits of the case. Our interest in Syria is probably preventing violent extremist groups from being able to plan and execute attacks against our homeland and the homeland of our friends and partners abroad. I agree with him. It's a mess. They're no friend of ours.

They've never been a friend of ours. But we have interests, and those interests are preventing attacks on the U.S. homeland from ungoverned spaces. If Syria could very well become an ungoverned space. Right.

And they're worried about the ISIS operatives in prison right by our 900 guys. And I'm all for springing innocent people from prison. They said in the prisons were children. Yeah. And women.

It's just because they were children and women, not because they were. It's different than the al-Qaeda ISIS guys that are in the portion where our 900 people are. And I think we're trying to make that clear.

So now I'm glad we had that 900-person presence there, aren't you? It's dangerous. It is very dangerous. But you know what? This is what.

People in our intelligence services and other things do. Look, the ungoverned spaces is also very real. And again, this is why I bring up these refugees because when you have 700,000, you got to deal with these things. We uh come back. I want to deal with the transition.

Uh we have another segment with Jason. Uh I want to see what you take, who's going to have the toughest time. People think this Syrian thing makes Tulsi's road tougher. What does Jason Chavis think? Don't move.

Diving deep into today's top stories. It's Brian Kilmead 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. From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Kilmead. It's amazing to me that just real quickly on Joni Ernst, the Trump campaign clearly is trying to make an example of her right now. I mean, look, there's a pressure campaign going on behind the scenes. I mean, people are talking about her divorce records, threatening about primarily her, calling her a Ryan or Republican in name only.

This sort of pressure isn't going to help Pete Hagseth get to his confirmation. But what it does is send a message to other Republicans. You stand against Donald Trump's nominees. We're coming after you, too.

So, Rachel bade on ABC yesterday with Politico, your thoughts, Jason Chaffetz, about the pressure on Joni Ernst to get on board with Pete Hagseth. The pressure is immense. Look, the guy's highly qualified. I think some of the things they're going after him are ridiculous, unfounded. I hate all these anonymous sources.

You know, I personally worked with the guy for seven years. I've never seen him the way they try to describe him. I think he's a wonderful guy. And he, look, you have a cabinet secretary that's going to represent the approach of the president, and he's going to push hard back on this. And I think he should.

I think the one that has the most difficult. Time is Tulsi Gabbard. I've always felt like that because she wasn't a Republican conservative. But at the same time, I think they're going to try to push and parse her personal political views. That's not the position of the ODNI.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is not a policy-making position. That is to gather the 17 security agencies, make sure that they're not siloed, that they're deconflicted so that the intelligence can get to the president's office. That is a role that is highly... You got to be highly organized. It's almost like a cop on the intelligence apparatus, right?

Yeah, and to have some skepticism and have some challenging to, hey, how are we filtering this information so that the president can make the best decision? They gather all that information and give the presidential brief along with others that are in there, the National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, others. But that information is not. Totally policy-driven. Right.

A couple of things. It's a brand new position, really. It's only 10 years old. But she's going to be on Capitol Hill today. Here's what Kevin Roberts said of the Heritage Foundation: Cut 30.

I think you have to connect two threads here. First of all, the people who say that we must be involved in Syria largely would be the same crowd who have told us that interventionism, this adventurism that comes from neoconservatism, needs to continue. It's the same people who are in the Senate saying that we can't have Tulsi Gabbard, we can't have Pete Hegseth. 675 military leaders, Shannon, just since Thursday, have signed a letter that Heritage is leading defending Pete Hegseph. I think you'll see the same sort of defense of Ms.

Gabbard, who's an excellent selection. Who's a Democrat by trade, who's been 20 years in the military, who's been called a Russian asset and an ally of Assad. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Look, she's challenged the status quo. She's shown that she can stand up and speak truth to power.

She's asked pivotal questions about our foreign policy that I think haven't been asked for a long time. I wouldn't necessarily agree with her on a lot of these things, but to question the patriotism. To question her commitment to this country is absurd. And that's the kind of thinking I think that Donald Trump, that's the coalition he put together to win the election, and that the type of information that he wants coming across his desk so he gets all the viewpoints to make the best possible decision. I think that's just a wise, smart, and seasoned chief executive officer, a wise, smart, and seasoned president.

That's what Donald Trump's trying to do.

So yesterday, over the weekend, we had a chance to see the president act the president-electak as president. He goes over to open up the church in Notre Dame, is back, and then meets with the president of France, and then meets with Zelensky again.

So he tweeted out, he gets sat next to Joe Biden.

So what do they do? They lean over and start talking, and she says this. He says this, very nice. She couldn't have been nicer. It's politics.

You have to get used to it. She was very nice, and we had a very nice conversation. Prince William, we had a great talk with the Prince. I asked him about his wife. And he said she's doing well.

I asked him about his father, and his father's fighting very hard. We had a great talk. He's a good-looking guy. He's a really, very handsome last night.

Some people look better in person. He looked great. He looked really nice. I told him that. Donald Trump just tells you exactly what he's thinking.

That's why people love him. And I think he's right. And you know what? Give some credit to the Bidens here. They lost.

Their party lost and lost bad. But you know what? They have opened up their arms. They said they're going to help with the transition. They've been friendly to the president.

And that's what our country expects. James Carville says Joe Biden's really mixed legacy because he didn't get out in time. That's not why they lost. They lost because he's failed cognitively and the border. If you really want to help Joe Biden, just build up the border, you idiot.

I mean, you've let the whole country in, other countries in. Thanks so much, Jason. A talk show that's real. This is the Brian Kill Meat Show. I do think that you're going to see a flurry of activity in the first hundred days from the executive.

Branch, but I do think something that's being underappreciated here from a legislative agenda is what is the legislative agenda? The one item that's really there is going to be trying to renew the tax relief package from 2017. And when that was passed, 12 House Republicans defected.

So we talk about the fact that there are 53 Republican senators, which should help in his confirmations. But Speaker Johnson is going to have an enormous task next year, and it's going to be a really hard job. And he really doesn't have margin one or two members at all to actually lose. And so getting legislation through the Congress is going to be very difficult. And certainly, if Trump isn't getting his way, he's going to blame Senate and House leadership for that.

I mean, I did forget this. The president didn't even get like maybe 30 Republicans in the House to vote for his tax plan.

Now, when they get bulked up and everyone gets back in Elise Stepanik's seat and Waltz's seat, And There's another congressman who's also moved out of his seat.

So, three.

So, they'll have a five-seat advantage.

Now it looks like it's going to have a two.

So, you got the majorities, that's good. But it's really going to be difficult for Johnson unless he could focus on some Democrats that ran as Republicans, like Tom Swazi in New York, and really pressure him, especially when it comes to the border, or pressure him, or try to just put an outstretched hand. Steph Kite joins us now, Axio's political reporter. Steph, welcome back. Thanks for having me.

So Steph, first off, on this agenda, I mean, we forgot because it's been so long, been two years, I mean, how Johnson got this job and the fracturous nature of the House. Do you think it'll be any different with President Trump Holding the, you know, orchestra baton. I mean, look, it's going to be slightly easier to have Trump in the White House versus Biden. You know, Trump is going to have a lot of influence, especially over some of the House Freedom Caucus members who have, over the past few years, kind of been the block of representatives who have been most likely to kind of buck against Johnson and before him, McCarthy.

So, look, Trump's going to have a lot of influence, but also Trump might have to do a lot of personal work to get some of these conservatives on board with the kinds of things that he wants to get done, especially when some of his major policy priorities are going to require a lot of government funding. Look at his immigration plans, for example. Deporting millions of people is not a cheap endeavor and will require significant resources that Congress is going to have to pass. And so there's going to be challenges there, especially when you're looking at only being able to lose maybe one Republican in the House. It's going to be very tricky to try to keep all.

The different factions in the House happy and get done what Trump wants to get done as fast as he wants to get it done. I saw you column about Senator Cassidy and RFK. I want to hold on to that for a second. Today, Tulsi Gabbard's on Capitol Hill, at which time she's got to deal with some people on the left, anywhere where she used to belong, who think she's a Russian asset, that her an Assad at a secret deal, which is highly insulting to her, I know, and defies her 20 years in the National Guard and her years as a Democrat. What is going to be her biggest challenge?

Nonetheless, she is certainly going to face a lot of tough questions about her connections with Assad, about some of her travel abroad and her relationships with foreign leaders. There's no question about that. Democrats and Republicans are going to want to hear her out and to have her answer to those concerns that some people have had, even if they are her former Democratic colleagues. This is a very serious process, and she will be asked about that, especially given what's going on in Syria right now. That really just raises the scrutiny for her going into this week.

However, my sense is that most people in the Senate want to get her through. I don't think she will be the toughest confirmation fight, but certainly the situation in the Middle East, her particular role in intelligence, will lend itself to some really tough questions that she's going to have to answer. There will be a hearing process. There will be some Republicans who are maybe skeptical of her lack of experience specifically in the intelligence space itself. But my sense is that she She is likely to get the support she needs.

And we also know that Trump is particularly invested in her getting across the finish line. He took some time to kind of throw his weight behind Heg Seth publicly. He did end up posting on Truth Social, but we expect Trump to be a lot more involved in pushing to get people like Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. across the finish line.

So let's talk about RFK Jr. Senator Bill Cassie is a doctor. You think that he is going to have a tough time going along with some of what RFK said in the past? Cassidy has a unique history, right? He's one of just three remaining Republican senators who voted to convict Trump of impeachment in 2021.

So he has that baggage. And of course, he's going into reelection in 2026.

So there's a lot of political difficulty that he's going to have to navigate here. There's a lot he's going to have to balance. He is a doctor and cares seriously about the health care profession and is likely to be at odds with RFK Jr. on some of his beliefs around health care. The other side of this, and this is something I hear frequently, is that RFK Jr.

has been a very pro-abortion person. That's been his dance for a very long time. And that could be unsettling for some Senate Republicans when it comes to his confirmation process. And again, it's a very hot issue that could put Cassidy in a tricky position of potentially angering pro-life groups in his own state as he goes into 2026 or also risking the The ire from Trump if he decides to push back against RFK Jr. too strongly.

Do you think that there could be a Democratic challenge to him, a worthy challenger to Senator Cassidy in Louisiana? The thing that Cassidy is most worried about is not necessarily a Democratic challenger, but a Republican primary challenger. He already has one, the state treasurer who has already brought up his past vote on impeachment. And we've also, Clay Higgins has long been rumored to be mulling a 2026 run as well. That's another name that gets floated frequently.

Again, another more conservative, very pro-Trump voice who, if he primaried Cassidy, could create a real competitive primary come 2026.

So that's interesting.

So you think that could be a problem. But you know, a lot of things is too, Steph, is we go on. What he said in the past. Oh, what does RFK Jr. think about vaccines?

Then he's an environmental guy, then he's a vaccine guy, and now he's big into food.

So he might just go back and go, Yeah, in 2012, I thought this, but I don't think that anymore.

So, I mean, it's not like he's a politician that had to dig in and vote on things. He's been just an activist most of his life. Yeah, and I do think it's a confirmation process that I'm very curious to watch play out because he does also tap into a lot of concerns that a lot of Americans have about how health care and HHS is run and the focus on a lot of people very interested in a more holistic approach to health care.

So I think it's going to be a very fascinating and different kind of confirmation process. And sure, vaccines are going to be a part of it. Vaccine mandates are going to be a part of it. There's been a lot of since COVID, a lot of concerns around how those policies are handled. And then you also throw in the abortion issue.

HHS does have a lot of control over policies related to abortion reproductive care access.

So people are going to want to be hearing from him on that as well. I want you to hear.

So the other controversial pick is Cash Patel. A lot of people didn't know much about him. They don't realize he's been defense as well as a prosecutor and what he's done leading up to this. Here's what Donald Trump said yesterday about Cash Patel. Yeah.

And cash patella is very fair, I'll tell you. I thought Cash may be difficult because he's, you know, a strong conservative voice. And I don't know of anybody that's not singing his praises. The other day I was watching, and Trey Gowdy, who's A moderate person and very smart and very respected in the party. He's Cash's biggest fan.

He said, This is the most misunderstood man in politics. He's great. I guess they work together on the Russia hoax or something. And Trey Gowdy became a fan. You know Trey Gowdy.

Everybody respects him. And you know Just like him. Others also. I don't know of one negative vote. I don't think he's going to have any negative votes.

Is the president overstating that like he usually does? But it is surprising to me that so many other people are not dug in on him that are actually for him. What are you finding, Steph? Yeah, I mean, I was also surprised by how positive most of the reactions were to the announcement that Trump was going to choose Cash Patel to leave the FBI. I was on the Hill at the time and talking to Senate Republicans And you know, while you know, many people aren't willing to fully say they're going to vote yes on him, they want to have the process play out.

Um, plenty of people were very open and encouraging about the choice, which you know, I do think people thought it would be more controversial, especially given the role of FBI. And Cash Patel has you know his conservative personality, he's a bit of a firebrand, um, he is someone who's been very, very, very loyal to the president-elect. Um, but even people like Joni Ernst, for example, I spoke to her, asked her about her thoughts, and she was very positive about Cash Patel saying that she hopes that he gets confirmed, that she thinks he will, and she thinks that he's a great pick. She's someone who has been, you know, much more reserved when it comes to Pete Hexeth for DOD, for example.

So, you know, it's still early. We haven't yet had the full Cash Patel week that is coming. I'm sure there will be questions raised, but it does seem that, to the President-elect's point, it does seem that the response so far has been fairly positive, and there have not been many Republicans. Who, at least, publicly have been willing to push back on that choice. You know, there's a big difference.

Just a big picture question. I know you're going to be dug in. You've always been very fair. I don't care who the president is, or Democrat or Republican, but not many people can say that, especially other organizations. I've always been amazed over the last six, eight years how many times, if something goes good for Trump, they'll just find out something in his personal background or it'll go the other direction.

And I just feel like it's been more fair this time around. I'm seeing more people, even in the business sector, come to visit him, from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk being his best friend right now, and then Jamie Dimon being in constant contact, and he was a pretty constant critic.

So I asked Mike Waltz from his perspective, when he was a congressman as opposed to being by the President's side, what's his perspective from Mar-a-Lago? Here's what he told me Saturday night on One Nation Cut 22. Literally, everybody is coming to the table, often right there on the patio in Mar-a-Lago, from the media to moguls to even to world leaders. And I think it's a couple of things. One, these are just common sense approaches.

It's the mandate for common sense that President Trump's bringing. Two, he's ready to deal, and he's ready to make deals and big deals, transformative deals for what's good for America. But I think importantly, especially when it comes to mainstream media, thanks to Elon, he's been able to just work around him and make his case for climate change directly to the American people, and they responded overwhelmingly. And I just can't tell you enough how much that mandate matters. But these engagements have all been overwhelmingly positive.

And whether, as you've seen, Bezos talking about deregulation, Zuckerberg talking about AI, Elon talking about going to the moon, this president is ready to do big things. And it's an honor to be by his side as he does it. Is he do you feel like he's cheerleading or do you think that he's portraying I mean, that's the way I see it. How do you feel? Do you think he's being accurate in his descriptions?

Look, I mean, we've definitely seen many more maybe mainstream voices rally around the president-elect this time around compared to, you know, 2016 and 2017 when it really was just the Trump loyalists who were around him. And, you know, the country, many people were kind of reeling at his surprise election in 2016. There are a lot of reasons why this time maybe is different. And I do think the fact that Trump won, so handedly, the fact that he won the popular vote, the fact that he won every single swing state, does go to show that this is what the American people want. And so people who are in power, people who are making big decisions, are going to have to respond to that.

And the reality is he's going to be president. And so it makes sense for people to be coming to him and giving them their ideas. We also have seen that the president-elect is someone who is willing to take phone calls, willing to sit down with people, willing to hear different perspectives out. And I think we're seeing kind of a response to that, that people have learned more about how he operates. And so we're seeing people respond in kind.

We'll see what happens. It would be good if the temperature goes down a little bit and get some people to buy in because a lot of this stuff is really not Republican or Democrat. I saw some of these conservative columnists go, Yeah, he's not really talking like a Republican. He kind of just goes issue by issue. Steph, thanks so much.

We look forward to reading everything you write. Thank you. All right, 1-866-408-7669. We're going to come back and take your calls. A lot going over.

The Syrian stuff is impactful. I know you don't get up in the morning thinking what's happening in Syria, but it really means a lot. It shows there's massive change underway. You'll listen to the Brian Kilmeat show. giving you everything you need to know.

You're with Brian Kilmead. A radio show like no other. It's Brian Kilmeade. When I look at the suspect and I look at his behavior from beginning to what we think is when he left New York City, there's a quality to it that suggests there's a little bit of practice there and there's almost a lack of experience. And those two things are very different.

So what I mean by that is it looks like he practiced things. He probably had been to New York before and knew what the route was. He knew where the victim was going to be. He knew what his schedule was going to be.

So that would come with Knowledge, but the experience means is he an experienced assassin? And I would disagree with that.

So practice versus experience.

Well, put it this way, he's clever and he's fearless. And we're talking about the murderer of that healthcare executive, Brian Thompson, right on four blocks from here in front of the Hilton, right in New York City on Sixth Avenue, just gunned down. It looks like they use a veterinarian gun, which they say you use it to kill kill animals that are That are fated to die.

So you take one shot, you got to reload. Take one shot, you got to reload. It wasn't continuing to jam.

So, what we know is for the sixth straight day, the NYPD is looking at 60,000 surveillance cameras. They know that he started in Atlanta. They know that he traveled to New York City. They know he went to the Hilton. They know they went uptown to this hostel.

We knew he used a phony name to check into a room. Then he came down and shot him. He got there at 5 or 6 o'clock, shot him at 7 o'clock in the morning, and then within 30 minutes was outside New York City. He got right through Central Park. He left a backpack there, at which time he loaded the backpack with.

Monopoly money? Yeah. Monopoly money. He had hopped in a cab. There's pictures of him in a cab without a mask on, smiling with the desk agent.

So I've never seen like it. Either he's a sociopath and doesn't understand he's about to spend the rest of his life in prison, maybe even looking at the death penalty, or he really feels he can get away with it because he's shooting a healthcare executive, which a lot of people vilify, which is crazy. New Yorkers are celebrating the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO, they say. Eight contestants, they're having fun with it. They're doing a shooter-look-alike show.

Eight contestants donning hooded outerwear and face masks were surrounded Friday by dozens of onlookers whose cheers amounted to votes in their A nose thumbing stunt. The winner, whose green jacket and face covering made him look dead ringer for the cold-blooded assassin, said he headed forward toward the park after wear hearing from the contest that morning. Rocahana came out and says he's not surprised by the online support for the suspect because so many people have gone to war with their health care providers. It's crazy. He got a Columbia lecturer, who would have thought, St.

Louis University associate professor who came public. It's just crazy. Um Here's a little from the NYPD Chief of Detectives, Cup 45, Joe Kenny. we have him entering the Port Authority bus terminal at 178th Street and Broadway. As we know, that's an interstate bus terminal.

So it's our belief we saw him go in. We didn't see him come out.

So it's our thought that he got on one of those buses. And we're running that down now. Yeah. Meanwhile, Mayor Eric Abbas, former cop captain, he said this, cut 43. We don't want to release that now.

If you do, you're basically giving a tip to the person we are find we're seeking, and we do not want to give him an upper hand at all. Let him continue to believe he could hide behind a mask. You idiot. We're hearing this. You're saying the quiet part out loud.

Plus, obviously we know who he is. He's got fingerprints, unless he's really diabolical and has fake fingerprints or something. But he has fingerprints on the water bottle he got. He had a burner phone with fingerprints. We have him in a cab.

I'm sure he touched something. I've got his backpack. I'm sure he meddled with that. We know who he is. They know his name.

But are you really thinking, well, if he doesn't know my name, they'll never find me? Come on, Mayor. All right, you listen to the Brian Killmee show. Go to BrianKillmee.com, find out how to see me in Jacksonville, Florida on February 15th. History Liberty Labs, BrianKillmee.com.

From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kilmead. Welcome to the latest moments of the Brian Kilmey Show, right from Midtown Manhattan, heard around the country, around the world. David Rubenstein is going to be with us, co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlisle Group, author of a brand new book.

It's so cool. It's called The Highest Calling Conversations on the American Presidency with people that have written extensively about it. Everything from Truman to Adams to Jefferson to Washington. Of course, he worked for presidents. Got a real sense of the put.

He's got a great political acumen, a great mind, obviously, self-made multi-billionaire. We're going to be taking your calls too. This hour, we're also going to be joined by Michael Goodwin, who's standing by. We're also watching developments on the Danny Penny trial. We know deliberations are underway.

This thing never should have been continued. The jury deadlocked last week. And now they're back in action on a lesser charge this week.

So let's get to the big three.

Now, with the stories you need to know, it's Brian's big three. Number three. This judge, this DA, they've got it out for this hero. This is a good man. And it's more or less: go home, take your weekend, and come back with a conviction of sorts.

What? I am outraged too. She's the New York City Councilwoman, Vicki Palladino. Danny Penny trial could end any moment. Why it's ridiculous.

And I believe when this trial is over, innocent or guilty, this is the end of woke DAs. Alvin Bragg will be the latest. Chessa Bodine also was ousted. We watch Gascone be ousted. You are next, Bragg.

Number two. I thought Pete Hagseth was a goner, and that's not true anymore. I mean, I think it's possible he's going to get confirmed by following the kind of the Brett Kavanaugh playbook of when you're in real trouble, fight back really hard. That's something Trump likes to see. Maybe that'll save you.

I'm not sure about Tulsa Gabbard. Trump shines on the world stage as his nominees, especially Hegseth, marshal major support and a comeback. We look at the new positions filled while the other nominees like Tulsi and RFK are facing their confirmation and it gets closer. Tulsi's on Capitol Hill today. Number This is so good.

This is so significant. The fall of the Assad dictatorship, the ripple effect of this is just going to be remarkable. It's truly, I believe, equivalent to the Berlin Wall, which led to a ripple effect of dozens of countries becoming free. Yes, that is Joe Wilson, Congressman underrated in South Carolina. Titanic plates have shifted in the Middle East as Syria's brutal dictator watches his army fold and he scrambles to Russia like a coward.

While we have to make sure of one thing, that Russia's military bases and seaport flip back to the Syrian government. We examine where we go from here and what the new government will look like and the dangers we all should worry about. Michael Goodwin, welcome back. New York Post columnist, you're the same guy, right? That's me, Brian.

Thank you. First on Syria, I give full credit to Prime Minister Netanyahu, defied the Biden administration, took out Nasarella, blew up those tunnels, went into Syria, took out, decapitated the entire regime with exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, and now, by defying them and finishing off Sinoir and Hamas, which are on their last legs, exposed Iran's vulnerability and let the rebels take the country because Hezbollah was no longer watching Assad's back, and you have Ukraine and Russia battling it out, so they were thoroughly distracted. Full credit to the Prime Minister. What about you? Absolutely.

I have something to read to you, Brian, that I discovered on Twitter. You mentioned Sinwar, the late head of Hamas. Senwar set out to destroy Israel on october seventh. But instead he destroyed Hamas. Hezbollah, Assad, And Columbia University.

Absolutely. I mean, all those. Kind of a trickle-down of that event of October 7th. It really, as you said, Unleashed is that it had maintained this This very shaky equilibrium with Hamas on one border, Hezbollah on another. And October 7th changed Israel's calculation.

It correctly decided it could no longer live in that kind of precarious situation with enemies around it, all supported by Iran. And so in taking out first Gaza and now Hezbollah and striking even in the heart of Tehran, it has shown that it will no longer tolerate enemies on its border who are determined to destroy it. I mean, think of what, again, what the United States would do if there were terrorist organizations in Canada or Mexico who swore an oath to destroy us. We would not tolerate it for a minute. And so Israel has many such groups.

That's where to destroy it, all leading back to Iran, Assad being one of them. I mean, it's hard for us to understand here the geography of how tight everything is there. I mean, Israel's jets, when they when they take off at an Israeli uh uh military base, within a couple of minutes, They've flown over Israeli airspace and have to turn around before they fly over enemy airspace. I mean, it's so tight and it's intolerable. And Netanyahu, and not only that, he survived Joe Biden's attempt to squelch him at every move.

This would blow me away: is that he tried to take a bow for his action in support of Israel in Lebanon, where if he had his brothers, if they listened to him, Nezer Allah would still be in power and Sinwar would still be alive. Cut to for years, the main backers of Assad have been Iran. Hezbollah and Russia. But over the last week their support collapsed, all three of them. Because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office.

Really? Why is that? Because you fattened Iran. You didn't confront them on anything. In fact, you paid them off to get hostages out.

And then in Syria, as far as I could tell, you just ignored. And then in Lebanon, you didn't want them to touch it at all.

So somehow, and by the way, you let Russia didn't take any of the signals that Russia was invading Ukraine. But they got distracted because the Ukrainians know how to fight. But I don't want to spend this whole time talking about this. I want to talk about the transition. You have a good feeling that Trump's on the right track.

Why? Yes, a small group of us from the New York Post went to Mar-a-Lago last week and had some wonderful conversations with the President, the Vice President, other members of the administration as it takes shape.

Some of the nominees were there. It's quite the beehive, and it's a remarkable thing to see an administration taking shape. And one of the things I came away with, Brian, is that President-elect Trump is so much more ready now, I think, for this job than he was in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen at this same stage. You remember he came to Washington then. He didn't really know anybody.

He had run against the establishment of both parties. And there was no government in waiting, no government on the shelf, as there normally would be for each party that comes along. And this he had to recreate he had to create a new government with a lot of people he didn't know. He didn't know what they believed in. He didn't know how committed they were to his view, his vision of the government's role.

And so you get the Rex Tillersons, you get Jeff Sessions. You have all kinds of people in White House aides as well who didn't pan out, who turned out to be on a different page. And so this time, I think he has clearly he knows what he wants, he knows who he wants. And to watch the Hegseth nomination, just as one example, right, I think eight years ago, Hegseth would have gone down in flames already. But I think this is a much savvier administration, and I think that the world has changed.

I mean, you mentioned kind of him on the world stage in Paris. Over the weekend, I mean, how clearly the American president is the center of the political universe. And Donald Trump, I think, has been welcomed back into that role because the Macrones and the others see what has happened with a weak United States. With a you know, to hear Joe Biden take credit for what's happened in the Mideast is a little bit like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise. I mean, it happened despite Joe Biden.

Michael, I think it was a good question. I think you're right on that, but I want to factor this in. They also figure they just instinctively fought back because you had John Kerry over there, this guy's unworthy, he's going to get impeached, and he doesn't understand the position. He's a businessman, he's a T V host. And then they're realizing after four years, a lot of the stuff he was saying was right.

And Jamie Dimon said the same thing about a few months ago. He's over in Davos, and he said, maybe we should take a step back and look at some of the things he did. Instead of just criticizing him, he was right about immigration. He was right about the trade agreements. And I thought to myself, something's happening here.

And maybe Macron feels the same way. We weren't paying 2%. You know, we we were we were lackadaisical. We never converted these Eastern European countries never converted their military to Western equipment. Therefore, we're never able to be resupplied.

And listen listen to what Michael Waltz said to me on Saturday night, Cut Twenty Two. Literally, everybody is coming to the table, often right there on the patio in Mar-a-Lago, from the media to moguls to even to world leaders. And I think it's a couple of things. One, these are just common sense approaches. It's the mandate for common sense that President Trump's bringing.

Two, he's ready to deal, and he's ready to make deals and big deals, transformative deals for what's good for America. But I think importantly, especially when it comes to mainstream media, thanks to Elon, he's been able to just work around him and make his case for common change directly to the American people, and they responded overwhelmingly. And I just can't tell you enough how much that mandate matters. But these engagements have all been overwhelmingly positive. And whether, as you've seen, Bezos talking about deregulation, Zuckerberg talking about AI, Elon talking about going to the moon, this president is ready to do big things.

And it's an honor to be by his side as he does it. And Bezos is going this week to Mar-a-Lago. I mean, I completely agree with Walt, whom I also met. I had that moral orgo. Um that uh The important thing, Brian, I think, is the contrast.

America and the world. knows that the last four years were a disaster. And you compare them to the the the first Trump administration And you s and voters. From all walks of life, said we want that, we want more of that and less of this. And now so you have going forward, look, this is not about recreating the first administration.

This is a whole new approach, a whole new set of problems, a whole new set of people that Donald Trump is recruiting to work with him, people who actually are self-recruiting in many ways. They are coming to his side because they are patriots, because they want to see America do better. They know America can do better than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris produced. And so that's why I think there's a lot of optimism. I also think it explains why there's less.

of the resistance. Far less of the resistance than we saw eight years ago. I mean, I was struck by Trump's language with Christine Welker when he talked about her. You know, you're so biased. You could do so well if you basically would just be fair.

I mean, that he could just say that to her. And we all know what he means now. This is not an exploratory thing. This is for real now, and he's coming back in the White House. And it was a good message, I think, for a lot of the leftist media.

Just be fair about it. Just try to understand why the country has made this decision. Just be fair, go, okay. How are you going to do the deportation? Let me see, that's going to cost $21 billion.

How are you going to get that? That's fine. Those are good questions. Yeah, that's a fair question. Have you targeted, how about this?

Have you targeted different Democrats you think you could win over to your side with a House majority so slim and so many people ran on your agenda? And I'll give you a number of names: Tom Swazi. In New York, there's people acting like you. They act like Republicans. Will you call on them to help you out?

You know, I'd be very curious to see what he says about that, if he even knows it. But here's what he says he's going to do to people that didn't vote for him, Cut 19. I'm going to treat you. Every bit as well as I have treated the greatest MAGA supporters. There's never been anything like MAGA in the history of this country.

These people are so dedicated to making America great again. It's very simple. And I'm going to treat them just the same as I treat MAGA. We're going to treat everybody good. We want success for our country.

We want safety for our country.

So, I mean, I know he has no resentment. And I would love to see him now in this period go back to Chicago. Come back to New York City, but with people, with his new HUD secretary, whatever it is, the director of urban affairs, and say, you know, what do you need? How can I fix it? How do you want me to pressure your local government?

Understand what I want to do about illegal immigration. No, I'm not targeting anybody because they're minor, just to go in there because I don't need your vote anymore. The sincerity would just go a long way. Look, I think the opportunity for momentum is clearly there. It probably will not get a lot of Democratic support in the beginning.

They'll have a lot of like the Swazis you mentioned, the Tom Swazi, they'll have their fingers in the wind. They'll want to see whether the Republicans can stick together and deliver on some of these early promises. And then if it looks like a kind of bandwagon effect, they'll jump on. But the Republicans are going to have to stay united, that narrow majority in the House. And the White House is going to have to get things done, the same in the Senate, with it's got a bigger majority, but a more problematic one in some ways.

And so the first step for, I think, expanding the momentum is for the Republicans to stick together, to unite, to show that they are going to stick with Donald Trump, and then and for Donald Trump to listen to them when they have a problem with something, so that he can keep this unity going. And then, I think, is when you'll see the Democrats jumping on, not wholeheartedly, but for an issue here, an issue there.

Some will do this, some will do that. But that will be enough. To create this sense of a bipartisan change in Washington. Michael Goodwin, always preaches respective, especially now. We're going to have the inside track in this administration.

It'll be fun to watch. Thank you, Michael. My pleasure. Thank you, Ryan. Politics, current events, and news that affects you.

Brian's got a lot more to say. Stay with Brian Kilmead. The more you listen, the more you'll know it's Brian Kilmead. Right then and there, it should have just been the the trial should have been over. And Daniel's attorneys have stated as such.

This is a mistrial now. What they've done, in essence, is this. They gave them the second shot. to go back. and tell them come back with a something.

And I think it's so wrong. And what she's referring to, Vicki Palladino, who's a local councilwoman here in New York, is just saying that when you decided that the first charge of manslaughter was not going to hold, you don't go back with another charge and say, well, we'll get rid of that, just go back and do that. Because you get the sense of the judges, like, if I get rid of this, promise me you'll convict him on that. It's unheard of. It's crazy.

It's as you're putting your hand on the scale for the case against Danny Penny, who's the hero of that subway, in so many ways. And it's such an embarrassment. I also think the President of the United States, President of the United States, is going to do something quickly for him. And if he is, in fact, convicted, I believe if he can, in fact, but most of the public knows this.

Now, some people think, oh, there's going to be riots. I guarantee you, if Danny Penny is exonerated, and he should be as early as today, there won't be any riots. Al Sharpton pays for them. These people show up outside. There's no race involved.

They saw Hawk Newsom coming out yelling this race and nobody cares that the assailant was black. They thought that he was nuts and he was going to kill somebody. and he was supposed to be subdued. Hopefully, there's justice in this case. But Danny Penny's life will never be the same.

Who's in the Brian Kill Me Show and we come back, David Rubenstein, bring some depth to our conversation about the presidency as we get set to anoint the president-elect, who's authored the greatest comeback in American political history. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead. Are you gonna do that? Are you gonna go after Joe Biden?

I'm really looking to make our country successful. I'm not looking to go back into the past. I'm looking to make our country successful. Uh Retribution will be through success. If we can make this country successful, that would be my greatest.

That would be such a great achievement. Bring it back.

So that was President Trump yesterday with his first interview since winning the presidency on television that I know of. He said his first one to meet the press. Kind of an interesting choice. Did not know how that kind of relationship. But a person who put it all in perspective has spent the last considerable amount of time putting it all together.

He wrote a book, David Rubenstein did. He's co-founder and co-chair of the Carlisle Group and author of a brand new book, The Highest Calling: Conversations on the American Presidency, which he had direct contact with, first-hand experience with, and then has access to all those in the past and in the present. David, welcome back to the Brian Kilmey Show. My pleasure. Thank you for having me back.

Love your book. Great idea.

So, as you look back at these presidents, first off, you did it as a conversation. You didn't say, okay, here's my view. You said, let me go find the foremost expert on that president, and let me ask the questions you think are more relevant to get a better handle on who they were. That's an interesting approach. Where did it come from?

Well, I've tried over the years to be nonpartisan. I don't give money to politicians. I try to stay out of politics and therefore maybe Mike can look at things at a bipartisan, nonpartisan basis. But I've been interviewing Scholars and major figures in front of Library at the Library of Congress, in front of members of Congress the last 10 years. And I try to be balanced in what I do.

So it's not one side or the other. Though obviously, I know these people reasonably well. I know their strengths and weaknesses of those who are alive. And I interviewed a number of the living presidents So one thing you start with, not a surprise, you start with George Washington, the only one to get all the electoral votes. He's got everything.

He's got the country united really before we broke into parties. You wanted to sit down with the curator, the lead historian at Mount Vernon. Great choice. He's very impressive. What did you learn from that interview?

That George Washington didn't really want to be President of the United States. He no male member of his family had lived past the age of fifty, and he was fifty seven at that time. He didn't think he would live that long. Secondly, after he got the job, he wanted to quit after a couple of months because he had to go get advice and consent of the Senate for some of his appointments, and he went up and met with the senators, and they didn't like some of his appointments. He was so upset, he was thinking of quitting.

And then after one term, he was thinking of quitting and then got talked into saying for a second term.

So he was an incredible person, not an easy person to get to know, wasn't a backslapper, not an easy politician, but obviously the most respected person in the country. And without him, we wouldn't have a Constitution because he presided over the Constitution Convention, and everybody knew that he was going to be the first president. And I think without that knowledge, I'm not sure the Constitution could have been approved as it was. You combine Jefferson and Adams. I find that so interesting.

I had no idea that Adams really felt like Jefferson was more of a, you know, instead of the author of the Declaration of Independence, it was a collaboration. And he was more the one with the pen in his hand than the one who created it. That was the beginning of maybe Adams and Jefferson beginning to grate on each other. Yes, Adams was the leader of the Continental Congress, really, and he was the one that really picked Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was eight years younger, and Jefferson wrote it, but in the end, Adams was very upset that Jefferson got credit for writing the Declaration of Independence when it was a collaborative effort.

And we celebrate July the 4th and not July the 2nd. July the 2nd was the day that we voted to be independent, and that was Adams' effort. And he was always upset for 50 years that the man who gets the credit for the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence was Jefferson, not Adams. Yeah, which is so interesting, too, is that when the Revolutionary War starts, what does Jefferson do? He just goes back and says, I think I'll study philosophy.

And just leaves, right? And then they make him let they want him back in and they elect him governor. He's not a great governor. What was his thoughts? He's in the prime of his life.

The revolution means so much, but he didn't want to fight for it.

Well, he was mostly he wasn't a great fighter, let's say. He was a very smart person, but he wasn't a great public speaker. As a President of the United States, he only made one speech in public, the first inaugural address. He was a person who wrote thousands and thousands of letters, but he didn't really like to talk in public. In fact, when the Declaration of Independence was being criticized at the Continental Congress for things he had written, he never spoke up to or objected to what people were doing.

They made about 60 changes in his document, but he never wanted to speak publicly about why he didn't like the changes. And in fact, for nine years, he was so embarrassed about the way they made the changes that he didn't admit he was the author of the Declaration of Independence. Later, when it became more popular, he did. And in his tombstone, he wanted the author going to be called the author of the Declaration of Independence. That was what he put in first on his tombstone.

Yeah, I just thought it was interesting, too, that it didn't look like. Um Jefferson really liked the Constitution, right? Didn't really think it was necessary.

Well, Jefferson was abroad when the Constitution was being drafted, and he told Madison and correspondents, look, maybe it'll work, maybe not, but it won't work for more than twenty years. In fact, he thought every twenty years they should reshape the government or reshape the Constitution.

So he didn't really get that involved in the Constitution. Though interestingly, when he became President, he did something that the Constitution really didn't permit. He bought the Louisiana purchaser, did it where there was no authority to buy land like that, but he ultimately swallowed his view that President should have very little limited powers and went ahead and did it. It was a great thing for the country because it doubled the size of the country. But David, you know, it also did, I think you would know better than most because of your economics background, didn't it put us into a recession?

Well, we had some economic problems. I don't know if they were just due to him, but the economy, remember, the United States was a tiny, tiny country in those days. We had three million people at the time of the revolution. Three million people. That's all we had, and half a million people were slaves.

So a tiny country. The idea that we would have a robust economy was something that many people didn't think was ever really going to happen.

So we're talking to David Rubenstein, who took a lot of great biographers, people, experts on certain presidents, and said, I'm going to interview you, and you're going to tell me more about this president and what makes him special. With FDR, you get Jonathan Dorman to talk about him. A guy that's an aristocrat. He has money. He looked up to Teddy Roosevelt, even though one's a Democrat, one's a Republican, dominated by his mom.

How did that figure into who he was? He was an only child. His father died when he was relatively young, and he was more or less raised by his mother. And he was the only child she had. He'd had a stepbrother from a father's previous marriage.

But she was so domineering that when he married Eleanor Roosevelt, he gave them a wedding present of a house in New York. Very nice. But then she bought the house next door and carved a door in between. And so she could go back and forth every time. How would you like to have your mother-in-law with that kind of privilege all the time?

So she dominated him a lot. In fact, when he went to Harvard, she went up and bought an apartment at Cambridge, and she lived in Cambridge while he was a student.

So she was domineering. Yes, he was not considered a great intellect, a great leader. But then the point of the book is that because he got polio, he developed a grit and a determination to recover from that, which he never really did. But that really gave him the perseverance and the talent to become president of the United States and be a good president. It's amazing.

He died in his 60s. We thought that was so old back then. Move fast forward a little bit and tell me about Eisenhower. People know him say better general than president. What did you discover when you talked to Susan Eisenhower?

His granddaughter, well, as he was a pretty good general, though he remembered, he was 52 years old and a colonel, and he thought his career was going nowhere. And then, all of a sudden, when the World War II breaks out, he becomes, he rises very quickly. He had just been his highest position before, had been executive assistant to Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines.

So he was not thinking his career was going anywhere. And then later, because of the D-Day invasion, he became a legendary figure. As President of the United States, when I was growing up, I was a boy, I thought he was so old and really out of it. But it turns out he was elected when he was 62 and finished when he was 70. Today, that would be young, right?

Yes.

So he also, we didn't have any wars when he was president. We had a lot of prosperity. Our economy was strong, and he built the interstate highway system, got NASA going.

So he actually did a lot of things, but he wasn't articulate. He didn't take credit for things. But very impressive in the end what he did. I mean, it wasn't clear if he was going to be a Democrat or Republican, right? And he intruded down that long.

Yeah. Yes, Truman offered him the nomination to be a Democrat, and Reisnauer didn't decide until the last minute that he was a Republican, and he ran for the nomination in 52. I know, and as we move through this, it's amazing where people come from. Part of the unique American story is where these presidents come from. And one of the ones I really get the sense in listening to some of your interviews, too, that you really respect Harry Truman a great deal.

You talked to Jeffrey Frank on Harry Truman. And I remember just reading his, I remember reading the David McCullough book and talking about a frustrated 30-year-old gets back from the Army and he's on a tractor saying, you know, is this all life has for me? You know, he's a deep thinker, big reader, and feels like he's never going to accomplish anything. Little did they know he'd become a senator and then he'd be the pick to. with almost no money.

He talked constantly about how he had almost no money to stay in Washington, no money to go back and forth. And then the old next thing you know, he becomes Vice President, never really knew VefTR very well, and becomes President. What impressed you most about him?

Well, Truman was honest. He came from a corrupt political machine, but he himself was personally honest. He was a person who was a straight talker. He didn't second guess or think about things in a great way that some people might do, anguish over decisions. He dropped the atomic bomb twice, but didn't anguish over the decision, and probably was the right decision to do.

It saved lives because the land invasion of Japan would have cost many, many, many more lives, Japanese and American. He was a person who was walked out of office, forced out of office in effect, because people thought he was not a very competent guy compared to Roosevelt. Yet now he's considered one of our better presidents. And remember, at the end of World War II, here's what things he did. He not only helped end the war in Japan with an atomic bomb, but he got NATO off the ground.

He got the World Bank off the ground, the United Nations off the ground, and many other things that we still live with. He also created the CIA. In Israel, right? Yes, he recognized Israel when his entire State Department was against it. And his Secretary of State said, if you recognize Israel, I will resign.

It was George Marshall. But he went ahead and did it anyway. Right. And he was somebody who left, I think his approval rating I've read was in the 20s or 30s because of Korean. Yeah, the Korean War went the wrong direction.

They thought it would be better. They were caught by surprise. He had to fire Douglas MacArthur. But he made these quick decisions. But if you read how much he studied, how much he learned, what a student of history he was, you realize he was equipped the right person at the right time.

He was. I mean, even though a lot of people didn't think he had the credentials, he was the only president of the 20th century not to have a college education. You also point out that Prenegast, who's a corrupt guy from his town, from his city, that really catapulted him in the political machine. When he died, he becomes president and he goes to his funeral. All of his political experts said, Don't go to his funeral.

He said, No, I'm going. Yes.

He was the boss of politics in Missouri and St. Louis, and he proposed Truman to run for the House. That didn't quite work out. Then he there was an opening of going to the Senate. He ran even though nobody thought he was really qualified for it, but he got elected from the machine, and he wasn't really beholden to the machine, but he obviously wasn't an enemy of the machine either.

Lastly, or two, before I get to Trump, just as you look at Bill Clinton. I mean, he balanced the budget with him. If you remember, he was able to make deals. One of the last times we really had consistent deals when he dealt with. Democrats, but he was impeached for his personal behavior.

Your thought on how history is beginning to view him?

Well, he balanced the budget or had a surplus three of the last four years as president, and we haven't had a surplus or a balance since that time. Of all the presidents in the twentieth century and the twenty first, he's the only one who, as a boy, people would have said this guy might be president of the United States. Most of the other people were not really superstars as kids. They weren't student body presidents or great athletes or anything like that. But he was.

And people predicted him to be president of the United States when he was a young man. In fact, he was elected governor when he was thirty-two years old. And then he served many terms. And he was elected President of the United States when he was only forty-six. Very young.

When you right, he's still a figure today.

So when you sat down with President Trump, was he still running for office? Oh, yes. I sat down with him. I've interviewed him before. I interviewed him when he first were considering running the first time, that was many years ago.

But this time for this interview, he was actually on trial in New York, and he gave me an hour of his time. And I've known him for a while, and I had had dinner with him not too long earlier, and when he agreed to do the interview. And look, I think President Trump is obviously controversial in some circles, but you have to say nobody has ever come back from the political oblivion or problems as much as he did. Think about it. He has all these indictments.

He's got a conviction. He's got all kinds of civil suits against him. He's got people running against him for the nomination. All the things that we know about. Yet he obliterates the field for the Republican nomination, wins it handily and wins the election fairly handily.

So he came back from the political debt. I analogize it to Napoleon when he was sent from France to Elba, and people thought they'd never hear from him again. He came back from Elba and ran France again. And that's what Trump is doing. And right.

One of the greatest comebacks we're going to see, it's certainly going to be noteworthy in the next four years. I think George W. Bush, I said this when he left, even though the economy collapsed in 2008, you would know more about that than almost anybody. The reasons why, maybe decisions that had nothing to do with him. And then, of course, the Iraq war, the surge was a brilliant move, but it was overwhelmed by the collapse of the economy.

He left not popular. John McCain with the Republican ticket did not really want to be seen with the sitting president at the time, but his approval rating is beginning to go up. Do you think that matters to him?

Well, nobody wants to be unpopular. George W. Bush, when I interviewed him, I said: if we had known there were no weapons of mass destruction, would you have still gone ahead? He said probably not. But at the time, I think he thought there were weapons of mass destruction.

He's tried to atone for it a bit by spending a lot of time with veterans who lost limbs and had other injuries in that war. But he doesn't look back on it with a lot of regrets in the sense that he's wringing his hands all the time. He's a very happy person, very secure. He's painting a lot. He's taken up painting.

He loves it. And he spends time with his library. But he doesn't want to talk about public policy. He's just not interested in it anymore. He will do interviews, but talk about the past, not so much the future.

Wow. And what is your takeaway from this? I know you love the office. Ted Sorensen got you into this.

So looking back at it, you know so many CEOs and powerful people, David. What is your takeaway from the people in that office, the commonalities? You never know who's going to become President of the United States. That's one of the great things about our system. Anybody can rise up practically and become President, assuming you're born in this country.

And I would say that it's amazing that so many people want this job. When you think about it, they have to spend two years of your life, beg for money. You have to bad hotels, bad food, no exercise, no family time. And yet, when you get the job, you have a lot of challenges. John Kenny was assassinated.

Linda Johnson driven out of office. Richard Nixon forced to resign. Ford couldn't get re-elected. Carter couldn't get re-elected and so forth.

So not a lot of great things happen to people. Very few people have left the presidency with their reputation better than when they entered it.

So, when people achieve as much as you've achieved, it's amazing you're still so curious about so many other things and want to hear so many other stories. David, thanks so much. Always appreciate talking to you. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Back in a moment. Expanding your knowledge base. It's the Brian Kill Meet Show. Radio that makes you think. This is the Brian Kill Me Show.

We're back. And by the way, the name of the book that David Robinstein interviewed out at the end, The Highest Call and Conversations on the American Presidency, is fascinating. And you could see it, I mean, I'm sure he taped this stuff because you could see it on camera. There's something about the conversation.

So it's easy. What I did with the book, The Games Do Count, is I'd interview all these people, and only on the premise of making it an essay. What he did is left a Q ⁇ A in there. And what's interesting is you see A lot of people tap into knowledge they didn't have when you get out of questions. For example, if you say, describe George Washington to a George Washington historian.

Okay. They'll give it, they'll tell you. But then if the U.S. specific question about George Washington, what was his thoughts about becoming president? Why did he want to leave office?

That's when you get people to talk about the depth of these characters. And the other thing that comes with the American presidency is the passage of time. And now, ever since Woodrow Wilson, really in World War I, walked out and said, okay, we had a peace agreement here.

Now let's get the League of Nations. Let's talk about what post-war Europe will look like. That was really the first time America was looked to as a leader. And we have not dropped the mantle since. And the president sometimes says, I just want to focus here.

But he wants to be a world leader too, in every way. I mean, that's the way he profiles, too. And we'll have more of that. The latest on Siri, the latest on Danny Penny, and so much more. BriankillMe.com.

From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show. Brian Kilmead. Hi, everyone. Brian Kilmet here. Thanks so much for listening.

We have a lot going on today. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. There's a lot going on with you, of course, with Trump trying to ramp up his administration, Biden trying to wind his down. We also know, too, you're doing a ton of Christmas shopping. It's easy to forget the major story, and that is, of course, the overthrow of Assad in Syria.

He's now in Russia. I assume he's safe. I assume he brought a lot of gold and wealth with him in order to get that coveted position because he's safe. But now, what's going to be next? Brian Rotel at the bottom of the arrow talk about the United Healthcare.

Assassination. But right now, I want to bring in Dennis Ross. He's a William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near Futures Policy and might be one of the most respected people in our country from both sides of the aisle who's worked for Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, as well as the first Bush administration. Dennis Ross, welcome back. Your thoughts, put in perspective, Assad's ouster.

Brian, first thanks for having me. I think it's impossible to underestimate the impact of this. This is a colossal strategic defeat for Iran. It is a colossal strategic defeat for Ram because he invested huge amounts of money in Assad, preserving his rule. Syria was the land bridge, the airbridge to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was the only place where Iran has successfully exported what they call the Islamic Revolution. It can no longer resupply or try to rebuild Hezbollah, which has been largely decimated by Israel. All of this, by the way, has been triggered by the Israeli military achievements because The HTS, the Harar and Hayat Tahrir Uh our shams. is The collection of groups under that umbrella, which is an Islamist umbrella. That group launched its assault.

On the regime only after the defeat, really the decimation of Hezbollah, because Hezbollah was one of the main defenders. out of the Assad regime. They provided the shock troops when Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, was taken over. And all of this is in a sense triggered by what Israel had been able to do militarily to Hezbollah, to Hamas and even to Iran itself.

So this is a colossal strategic defeat. For Iran. Iran, whose focus has been on trying to dominate the region, trying to force. A removal of all American presence, trying to create what they called, customs, they called a ring of fire around Israel. That ring of fire is gone.

Uh and We are in a stronger position to basically create an alignment of moderate states, an alignment of leaderships that want to focus on resilience. in developing their their countries, their economies. This is really a major positive strategic development for the future of the Middle East, and certainly it's a game for the United States. We have to get Russia out of that military base and out of that port. And there's no sign that there's nothing but bitterness towards Russia.

They were killing tons of innocent Syrians as well as warfighters, some of these people.

Now, we don't know who these people are, essentially. We know some of the names. One of these guys, Mohammad Ghazi Julani, we have a $10 million bounty on his head. They say he was working with Zarkowi.

Now he's wearing a suit and tie and saying everybody's going to be safe here. We're not looking for revenge. Do you believe him? It's a really good question. I mean, it's he he first of all, let's say he's he's an Islamist.

What do I mean by Islamist? I mean not someone who is a devout religious person, but someone who is using the religious to gain and maintain power. power. political power. This is an ideology of power.

in which they seek to use the religion, not a belief in the religion, but to exploit the religion for purposes of power, number one. Number two, he clearly has become more pragmatic. He is not someone who reflects the the extreme rigidity and dogma of some of the Islamists because they would tolerate no minorities. He's sending very different messages. to the Druze, to the Christians.

uh to the shear.

So he is, one could say he's become much more practical.

Now, does that translate into someone who has been transformed? Is he someone different than We think he was in the past. I would be, how shall I put it? That's very diplomatic.

Well, that's that's me. I think he would need to prove himself over time that he's somehow been transformed. on the road to Damascus. Um so to speak. Look, I I think that Uh one two Syria is going to be I think looking like a variety of different femtoms.

Turkey controls the northern part of the country. The Kurds are in a different part of the country. you know, well, Turkey was clearly backing HTS, Uh What's the relationship between Turkey and Jelani going to be now? What's I mean, what's the relationship between Jelani and the Kurdish part of the country is a Turks. Erdogan looks at the Syrian Democratic Forces as being basically the same as the PKK.

which we have on a on a tourism list. he worries about a Kurdish Area of a real Kurdish autonomy within Syria that could be a source of attraction for Kurds within Turkey.

So, what's going to happen there? That's sort of the there in the Turkey's in the northeast of the country.

Sorry, northeast. Maybe the country breaks up.

So Dennis. That's the way it feels right now. Dennis Ross is with us now. General H.R. McMaster talked about yesterday, he talked about a bunch of stuff, but what Trump could be doing or what he likely will do, cut none.

I think some things are absolutely going to happen right away, which is really to tighten the grip on the Iranians from a financial perspective, you know, from an interdiction of their ghost fleet and so forth. Maybe secondary sanctions on banks, Chinese banks and others. China buys 97% of Iran's oil.

So they're feeding Iran's ATM so they can continue these proxy wars against us, their Arab neighbors, and Israel, and employ this strategy of really expending every Arab life to accomplish their aims of kicking us out of the Middle East and destroying Israel and killing all the Jews.

So financial pressure, but also I think you're going to see military action against these Iranian proxy forces and maybe against Iran itself. Because Iran is now without missile defense. They're without radar in Iraq to pick up missiles coming in. We think that there's underneath the simmering unrest amongst their population. They lost an ally in Syria and possibly a land bridge to get weapons into Russia and Russia.

Material back to them. And now they've lost Hezbollah, and I think they're about to lose Amas.

So they are in a lot of trouble, and maybe that's the best thing to do now. Financially squeeze them. Would you subscribe to that? Yeah, 100%. I mean, the only thing I would disagree with what H.R.

McMaster was saying is. It's 91% of their oil is bought by the Chinese. But it doesn't matter. It's a huge amount. I think look, one of the things we know about President Trump is that he doesn't want to be in the forever wars in the Middle East He had a large tweet out about this, about Assad falling, and said we shouldn't be involved.

I would hope a little bit of that is modified because there's a we have a small presence in southern Syria along the Jordanian border. It cannot. I would like us to keep that because It's one of the ways to ensure there's no real threat, no spillover from Syria into Jordan. Jordan is a huge buffer for the for Saudi Arabia. It has the longest border with Israel.

You can see these Islamists. This is why I come back to your question on Jalani. Is he going to focus exclusively on trying to build up Syria, do reconstruction, or is he going to look to expansion on the outside? I don't think in the first instance he looks at Israel because they're too powerful, but he may look at Jordan, and we have to. We have to help preserve and protect, I think, Jordan.

Also, it's going to be interesting to see what do they do visit Iraq. One of the things that we saw is the Iranians And the Shia militias that had been sent to Syria all pulled out and went back to Iraq. Are they focused now? On that, what's the future of Iraq going to be at this point? There's a lot of interesting questions, but I start with in answer to your question.

we should be squeezing the arrangements. I'll tell you, I think One of the things that President Trump said even during the campaign, if he had a second term, he would have done a deal with the Iranians. I will say this. The Iranians, and I have a new book coming out, which has a long chapter on Iran. And one thing that is consistent about the Iranians.

They won't change who they are. but they will make tactical concessions that have strategic consequences when you put pressure on them that they view as being costly to them and you give them a way out. I think you may see a real potential to do a deal right now on the nuclear issue, which Whoever was going to be president had to deal with the Iran nuclear program because they have about between 10 and 11 bonds worth of enriched physical material. not far from weapons grade. And they're in a position where they could go for a nuclear weapon.

And that leaves you one of two choices: either you act militarily or you use the threat of military force to force them to fundamentally change the character of their nuclear program so it could never be a nuclear weapons program. Dennis, the other thing is, I don't think if they are really weeks away, Israel is not going to wait, especially knowing that Trump's coming and Joe Biden no longer has leverage over them. I almost find it comical that Joe Biden tried to take credit for the decimation of Hezbollah when he was threatening. And now you better not go in there and said, You better not kill Nasarella. Finally, he got tired of waiting and just did it because he gave up the whole northern portion of his country.

And now he's saying, Yeah, look, look at what's happened under my watch. Come on, we know better. We know that he wanted to ceasefire early with Hamas, even though Sinwar was alive and they still had 80% of their fighting force there.

So there's no way you can rewrite history here for people that are paying attention. Yes, I think it's a fair point. I will say this. He granted Israel a lot. I mean, they basically used emergency provisions to provide.

Huge amounts of material to Israel over the opposition of a lot of others internationally, and obviously, even part of his own party.

So I wouldn't. I don't I think Biden deserves a lot of credit for support he gave to Israel, but your point is right. We were pushing for a ceasefire right before the Israelis took out Nasrallah. And there was some recrimination over losing that because the Israelis acted against Nasrallah. And the truth is, Once the Israelis took back Nasrallah, uh everything began to fall into place.

By the way, the ceasefire in Lebanon now is a function of having Taken out Nasrallah and the entire Lebanese, the entire Hezbollah leadership. But also look, no one anticipated that the Israelis could do to Hezbollah what they did because they seemed to be having such a difficult time. in Gaza with Hamas, which had less than a tenth of the power of Hezbollah, but it highlights something. Israel spent 16, 17 years completely penetrating Hezbollah. and also penetrating Iran.

They were complacent about Hamas and obviously that came back to haunt them. Absolutely. So, and they were having their own internal problems, but Netanyahu has emerged much stronger. And maybe the continuation of Abraham Corn is much more of a possibility. But how this all plays with Ukraine, if Russia doesn't invade Ukraine, if they don't get distracted, they keep assets in the region.

Those assets leave, Hezbollah leaves, and then you see these rebels get up and rise up. Here's what I think is interesting: the prime minister under Assad is there to ease the transition. Here's what else: it seems as though they said, take the chemical weapons, I don't want them. And there's been 75 strikes by our forces. When I started Fox and Friends this morning, by U.S.

forces trying to marginalize or keep ISIS in check, there's a fear, Dennis, that they're going to open that prison, which is full of the worst of the worst, right around where our 900 troops are. That's different than the women and children that are kept just because they were enemies of Assad. Yeah, you're right. You're 100% right. What we have done and what the Israelis have done in the last day and a half in terms of hitting weapon sites, weapon depots, weapon production facilities, chemical weapon sites.

There's a profound concern about not having the remnants of the Syrian military. The military itself was obviously a hollow shell. But the resources that it had built up, because of the Iranians, by the way, and because of the Russians. those can't fall into the hands of of Islamists.

So Both we in Central Command, meaning the Central Command and the Israelis. are acting right now to ensure that doesn't happen. You're right about the prisons. It's different than where the Syrian Democratic Forces are, who the prison they have, which is basically women and children. who can't be reabsorbed anyplace.

Look, we are there's a lot of uncertainty associated with this, but there's also a huge opportunity at the same time. We have to be smart enough to take advantage of the opportunity. Right. So, how do we just real quick, how do you marginalize the Russians? I mean, they created this bitterness.

The people they bet on lost. The ruler that led the country is now in their country.

So, how do we make sure this is a loss for the Russians? Look, I think the key and we we're reminded, by the way, of what Ukraine is costing them. They could not come and save Assad, though they saved him in twenty fifteen.

So there's a huge difference from 2015, and the main difference is they're completely tied down. in Ukraine. The same thing they couldn't provide the Iranians. They can't provide the Israelis the S-300 radars that the Israelis destroy. That's I'm referring to what you said before about no air defense any longer in Iran.

That's because, again, the Russians are tied down. Everyone is focused on the losses of Ukraine, which are real, but the losses of Russia are profound. Uh and this is not a time to let them off the hook. This is a time, I think, to see them lose their port and their air base in Syria. This will also damage Putin and the image of Putin, that he's this great power.

I'm just wondering behind the scenes if there was a way to do that behind the scenes. Evidently, we've had contact with these guys already. If there's a way to do that, if you want our attention, lock out Russia. And maybe there's stuff we can do without knowing that we're dealing with perhaps terrorists with a terrorist background. But the first thing we do is got to stop that flow of weapons to the Houthis, stop the flow back and forth with Iran.

And if they could do that and diminish Russia's presence, that would mean a lot to us. And maybe they want to impress us. They may. I I look, the fact that he wears a suit and tie now The fact that he's that he that Jolani is saying all these things about the minorities. I mean, that suggests at a minimum that he knows how to play the game.

Yeah, so let's see what's possible. And we should do it with jaundiced eyes, very skeptical eyes, but we should do it. Gotcha. One of the Ambassador, don't forget to do that. When you have timing and openings, take advantage of them.

I cannot wait to have you on for your new book. Let me know when it comes out, and our audience would love to get it. What's the name of it? It's called Statecraft 2.0.

Okay. What America needs to maintain leadership in a multipolar world. All right. Download it now. Thanks so much, Ambassador Dennis Ross.

We come back to your calls, and then we go inside the murder of the CEO of the United Healthcare Company. Don't move. It's Brian Killmead. Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show.

There was nothing more discouraging. You know, when we first heard it, Deadlock, Manslaughter, too. Everybody got very excited and we all were and we were like, wow, this is great. And then they conjure this up. to prolong it.

You know, now if you're going to do that. What they should have done was, in my opinion, was sequester the jeweler, the jury, make them stay. Until they come until they can fix this. and not send them home for a weekend. You know, they say they don't talk to anybody.

Do you really believe that? Nobody believes that. It's councilwoman Democrat Vicki Palladino. She's just talking about the Danny Penny situation, where they give them all weekend now to go home and talk to everybody, feel the pressure. Maybe they live in an interracial community where people think to themselves, you got to do it for our race when it has nothing to do with race.

It's a good Samaritan.

So I just hope they still find justice this week, despite the misgivings with the New York City judicial system, the same one that convicted Trump. The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. All right, we are back, ladies and gentlemen. This is just in.

Danny Penny was found not guilty on the lesser charge. You have to have a hung jury on the higher charge. And some people are crying, other people are upset. Danny Penny is smiling for the first time it's been in court. There's a little bit of outrage as I saw live pictures of C.B.

Cotton outside, and you could hear people yelling in the background, rattling the bike cages. Those people are paid. They're ridiculous. A lot of activity outside the courtroom producer says there are two separate groups of protesters. One of them, usual anti-penny group, one is pro-penny group.

Both groups have their own bullhorn. Pro-penny group is screaming innocent, innocent, innocent. Set him free, not guilty, which of course he is. And the fact is that he was found not guilty is significant because it's not a hung jury where they could even think about try him again. You can't do it.

So um There is some justice. This to me shouldn't have even been close. And it shows the calamity, which is Alvin Bragg. And you've got to get rid of all these DAs, and this is the beginning of the end of all of it. Alvin Bragg should be embarrassed.

He brought the case, and now a jury in New York City says not guilty. Of course. Do you want Danny Penny on your subway? Should some crazy man say he wants to kill you? The answer is yes.

That's what the jury decided. Joining us now to talk about something a little bit different. Nothing to do with this case, the United Healthcare CEO case is Brian Rottella, a founder and managing partner of Genco Legal. But you have the knowledge of this area. Brian, is it a surprise to you they found him not guilty after they said hung on the first count, let's make it a lesser count, and they just found him not guilty?

Well, hey, Brian, I have to say, after this past year with the different rulings we have, anything would not surprise me. But we have an adage in the law, especially those of us who've tried cases, the jury usually gets it right. This jury got it right. You said it in the lead-in. This isn't a hung jury.

They found Daniel Penny not guilty. the ramifications of this for future actions. People on subways, people on airplanes, people anywhere in public transportation are now not going to think they could be facing fourteen years in prison if they do what Danny Penny did, that personally my opinion was protecting individuals and potentially saving lives. One item though, Brian, it's not all over. Remember, he was sued.

By the individual that was involved in this, who was sued by his father, the sedent's father.

So he's going to have to deal with this in the civil setting still. He's going to have to pay lawyers and he's going to have to go through a civil lawsuit. But all that aside, this was a great day, in my opinion, for Justice and for Daniel Penny. You would think these people would be too embarrassed that they let this lunatic out with drugs all over his body, sickle cell in every one of his organs, and out there threatening on camera, all these other people, eyewitnesses, and now they want to sue civilly. Why?

You know, they shouldn't have let him out to begin with, but we'll see where that goes. And I do know he's got so much money that was donated to him. I do think those, I think this case would be, you know, he'd be able to pay for these attorneys, in other words. I don't think there's any doubt about it. And Thomas Kuniff.

Kuniff, I think he is somebody that an attorney that led this case has got to feel pretty good about himself. We'll continue to follow this, but in case you do not know, Um Danny Payne has been found not guilty, and he's leaving the courtroom right now. People on the outside aren't happy.

Some are absolutely thrilled. I am thrilled. Brian, the other thing that's happened is the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. Why do you think it is that there are people who are cheering this? College professors, other people out there mocking it, SNL having fun with it.

Why is it that assassination in plain sight in the world country's biggest city, most dense city? would be cheering this. I think it's sick, first and foremost, to state the obvious. Concerns me more than anything about this is a potential Columbine effect. I think you know what I mean by that.

After Columbine, we saw copycats. We've been dealing with that now for what, twenty five years in the school shooting sense. Ideal with CEOs every day. especially in health care, which is so personal to all of us when decisions are made. CEOs get threats.

Leaders in health care get threats. I've had nursing home administrators get threats on their lives. This person was assassinated. I did not know him. I do know people who know him and said he was a really good person, and he left some children behind.

What worries me is two things. One about the crisis insecurity that we have with health care in general, meaning that healthcare professionals, but also other executives in highly regulated and invisible industries, including media, Brian, they don't think they need Private Secret Service. They don't like the look of it.

Now, I don't know if that was the case with Brian Thompson, but there is some indication it may have been. I think this is going to change. I can tell you, people like me, lawyers and people, risk professionals, have been begging many of our executive leaders to take this seriously and realize that security doesn't mean guards and gates and guns. It means doing basic risk assessments. I don't know if that would have changed the outcome here, but I think you're going to see a lot of CEOs and companies behaving differently, and that's a good thing.

Here is a. Here's a CBS put it this way: how people are just fed up. Kind of what you were saying, Cut 47. You think that I didn't need anesthesia to have surgery? You're One thing Americans can agree on: their dislike of the health insurance industry.

We're fighting with the insurance company. Over her dialysis to keep her alive on social media, pent-up frustration spilling out into public view. One possible reason: 12% of claims were denied last year, a 20% increase from 2020, while a 2023 survey found nearly 60% of insured adults experienced some issue with their coverage in the previous year. The system is broken. 57-year-old Roseanne Neal fought breast cancer twice and then battled her insurance company over a follow-up mammogram in 2015.

Neal says her $800 reimbursement was denied three times. When you're not feeling well and still recovering from certain surgeries and you have to deal with an insurance company, it just compounds the emotional and psychological toll.

So that's just a little of why people feel the way they do about healthcare companies. These are the personal stories, Brian, you deal with run a regular basis, right? Absolutely, Brian. And what a lot of people aren't talking about is there's a role of artificial intelligence that crosses over into this. There is it's been very it's been reported, not as much as I think it maybe should be in the media, but there was a class action lawsuit filed against United Healthcare last year that said that people thought that artificial intelligence was being used to do what's called batch denying, basically going through claims in milliseconds or seconds compared to having individuals and humans in the loop looking at these claims.

So now there's studies showing that there's been an upkick since we've had AI, and there's been a question as to whether insurance companies are using artificial intelligence for denials. In the age of RFK being our new health and human services director and transparency, one thing I hope for in this new administration is we get transparency on insurance coverage as well. All those people that we just heard in your clip. I think instead of getting a letter that none of us I mean, you shouldn't have to have me, a healthcare lawyer, understand a letter about a denial that you get, and one in five people will face a denial this year from insurance. We need transparency in how our claims are being assessed by insurance companies in a way that everybody can understand it.

That's something I think would be a very positive change for the industry. And candidly, I think it's something the industry would applaud. Yeah, I think so too. Thanks a lot. Brian, appreciate you joining us today.

He's with Jenco Legal, founder and managing partner. And you can follow him at Rotella Legal. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. Mike Blacker, Brian.

All right. Well, we're following the story about, and it's a good one, in my view, Danny Penny has been found not guilty on the second lesser charge, which is a message from the jury. They didn't take the intimidation and the manipulation. My worry was that they would say, okay, the judge says, I'll alleviate you from the manslaughter. And I'll talk about negligent homicide.

That'll be less. Just four years.

Now go home and think about it. And they came home and said, not guilty, which to me, it seems like a thumb in the eye. to say, screw you, we get it. He shouldn't be here. Let us go home.

We're going home. And so is he. Back in a moment. Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead. The talk show that's getting you talking.

You're with Brian Kilmead. So get this. I'll have the latest on Danny Penny in a second. He was found not guilty. Unanimous decision by the jury on the lesser charge.

But now, this: investigators of the CEO's killing, assassinated at the Hilton four blocks from here. A law enforcement officer said a suspect has been identified by someone who spotted him in a restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The man is being held for questioning in connection with the killing of the health insurance executive. The man was identified based on a tip from someone who spotted him at a McDonald's restaurant. One of the officials said and is being held in Altoona.

One law enforcement official said that the man had a gun. a silencer and false identification cords similar to those that the killer used in New York New York investigators were on their way to Altoona, about 280 miles from the city. The police have been seeking a suspect since Wednesday morning, since the assassination of Brian Thompson. Been a massive manhunt. He was out of the city in 30 minutes.

He left his backpack. It's been discovered. We have not found the gun, but we found a water bottle with his DNA on it. We found him at a McDonald's with his mask. We found him without his mask in a taxicab.

We clearly know his name. They're not sharing it for some odd reason. But we'll have to see. The other story that we've been following this for the longest time, and now we finally got a verdict. Danny Penny was found not guilty by a jury.

Now, think about this. Put this in perspective. Two days ago, on Friday, we found out the jury came back and says, We're hung. We can't get a unanimous decision. But that means at least one will not budge.

So the judge said. Try it. Try it again. They said no. They did it again.

They can't find it. Still no decision.

So he said, I'll do this. Instead of dismissing the case like he should have done, let's say anybody would have done, they come back and they said, I got an idea. Why don't you just go for negligent homicide or just be four years in prison as if to say, let's compromise. I'll eventually let you go home. I know you're deadlocked, so let me emphasize and circle the lesser charge.

And they came back and the juries we don't know until they They come back and dog. They came back and said, no. Uh we all agree that's BS We're not going to do that.

So, this guy is free.

Now, we understand outside there are protesters who have been there every single day yelling killer and all these things when he walks in and out. Most of them, I think, likely are being paid, I am sure. And now, we're going to see Danny Penny try to get on with his life. We know there's going to be a civil trial, they're going to try to get money out of him. Who knows?

But they don't deserve any money. This guy was a menace to society, he was a threat to people on that subway. This guy was a hero to do what he did. And I'm glad, I hope people just give him, I hope he has enough on the GoFundMe page. In order to Uh pay for these legal fees.

I have been texting with the lawyer. He's also from my town. And he's going to eventually come on, I think, real quick. As soon as he gets a verdict, we'll get him on this show. No doubt about it.

He's been on our local affiliate, WABC, before quite often. He's great friends with Sid.

So we hope we get Thomas Cunniff with us, too.

So there's two major stories going on. And hopefully, this is the beginning of the end. Beginning of the end of the woke DAs. Stewart, you're in Oregon. Hey, Stuart, you've been following this too, right?

I sure have. I listened to you each morning over here in Oregon, and I'm a Vietnam vet through the Navy. And anyhow, I do not believe that they should have brought charges against this guy to begin with. And people should look towards parenting. His parents, you know, I don't know if it's just his dad or his mom or what, they should not be bringing charges against Penny at all.

They should look. inward to what they have failed in their son. Right. I mean, obviously, when you get older, it's hard controlling these guys. I mean, when you get in their 20s and the son is one day he's a Michael Jackson impersonator, the next day he's a schizophrenic lunatic who's a threat to everybody.

But you know he's on drugs. You know he's a threat. I'm sure he showed that belligerent behavior. I'm sure he's been kicked out of the house multiple times. And now they want to say they're a victim.

You should be apologizing to everyone on that subway and to Danny Penny. I mean, that's it. By the way, his heart was beating when he was done. He still had a pulse after he let him go. If there were cops there, that wouldn't have even have happened, but they was able to step in.

Now, the family's having a press conference. We'll pull some of that in where they're blaming the system. Let's listen. And clearly, if we get to this point it's too late. We have to be there for each other, and that's our call to action.

Everybody that's pissed off at this verdict, I challenge you to go outside today and help one person. That's my challenge. If you're angry, if you're hurt. Go help one person. That's how we beat the system.

That's how we turn this around by being there for each other. Right. Um You know, that's fine. And now they're going to have people come out and speak. I like that message.

You know, rather than get angry and go wreck stuff and put the cops in bad situations.

Now you go out and say, go help somebody, that's fine. Guys, there's no race in this. Hawk Newsom's out there from Black Lives Matter of the local chapter. They're a disgraced organization that had a ton of money that's unaccounted for. And he's with the New York chapter.

I don't know what he's doing now. But he's been on our show before. I think he's on this show or on TV before. And now they're going to go out there and act like this is race. It has nothing to do with race.

And it and you know what? For for the next time it happens with race, People are going to think less of it because they're going to say everything's race. Nothing to do with race in this situation. We're so past it. This is not 2020.

America has sobered up. And Danny Penny, I feel bad because his life's never going to go back to normal. You know what the guy likes to do? He likes to play an instrument and he likes to surf and be an architect. That's what the guy wants to do.

Now one guy is screaming at people who says he wants to die on a subway, and the other guy just wants to go to class. And who's the problem? And now we're going to see, too, if we get an answer to the killer, the assassin, we find out the man who put Monopoly money in his backpack, the guy who. Goes to Starbucks before he kills somebody in cold blood in broad daylight, or morning daylight, morning light, I should say, and kills him right there. We're about to find out the next page in that story.

For a while, I thought this was going to be the great disappearing assassin, but now it's up to New York City police to go 280 miles to Altoona, Pennsylvania, where it looks like they have a suspect that has an excellent chance of being the person.

So we have, we'll follow that. I believe. I believe you have Gwen Carr Eric Garner's mother talking. Eric Garner is the one who was who had the problem buying illegal cigarettes off the road, and it ended up being sadly resulted in his death. We'll talk about that.

We're also following the other big story: total unrest in Syria. We have a situation where one of the key components, right in the middle of everything, with Russia and Irani in affiliate, get overthrown. Assad is gone. He's finished. He's through.

Here's Joe Biden yesterday, cut one. At long last, the Assad regime has fallen. This regime Brutalized and tortured and killed literally hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice. It's a moment of historic opportunity.

for the long-suffering people of Syria. to build a better future for their proud country. Yeah, proud country is going to. I think the country is going to break up for sure. The other big story is that person of interest, this is what we know.

The person of interest left New York City with the manhunt there. Right now, police sources say the investigations are running DNA evidence that was left behind by the gunman. They're trying to match it to the guy that they have in their custody, 280 miles away. They also have fingerprints to track him down. Investigators are also using the prints and possible saliva samples to build a suspect profile.

The police will run through a database.

So, Danny Penny. has found not guilty. Not hung jury, not guilty, and it looks like they've zeroed in on the lead suspect in the assassination. of that healthcare CEO. Besides that, how much going on?

Do you listen to Brian Killmee Channel? Go to BrianKillme.com. Find out how you can see me in Jacksonville, February 15th, and so much more. Keep it here. The Fox News Rundown.

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Mm.