Radio Show Hour 2 – 06/05/2025

[00:00:13] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. All right. Happy to have you along, my fellow Americans. Sam Bushman live on your radio hard-hitting news. The network reviews to use no doubt continues now. This is the broadcast for June the 5th in the year of our Lord, 2025.

[00:00:41] Hour 202 promoting God, family, country, protecting life, liberty, and property, and doing so on your radio in the traditions of our founding fathers. As you know, we reject revolution unless it's a Jesus revolution. Then we're in because we follow the Prince of Peace. Last hour, we had on Brian Rust of FreeWaterCoinCo.com talking about this incredible legislative piece that just got signed by Ron DeSantis out of Florida. They're going back to gold and silver, just like other states are doing. It's tremendous leadership. I commend them.

[00:01:11] Now we've got Pete Sepp with us, president of the National Taxpayers Union, NTU.org, the voice of American taxpayers. Welcome back, sir. All right. There's so much going on here with this big, beautiful bill. Donald wants you to believe it's a big, beautiful bill. Mike Johnson says it's a big, beautiful bill. Elon Musk, you know, has some pretty negative words for it. But a lot of the Democrats and Elon Musk agree.

[00:01:41] Green says, Rep. Green says, I would have voted no if I knew what was in it. Green, you should have read it, by the way. And the Republicans' big, beautiful bill is a budget-busting boondoggle. The GOP promises, you know, accountability and then runs up a whole lot more debt. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says, first off, I hate that this has become a partisan issue, Pete Sepp, because it shouldn't be partisan. Should it?

[00:02:10] The future of our country and its finances should concern everybody. Oh, I can barely hear you, Pete. I don't know. Can everybody else hear good? Just, I can't? Well. Oh, there you go. Go ahead, Pete. There we go. That's fantastic. Okay, good, good. The future of America's finances should not be a partisan issue. That's absolutely true.

[00:02:37] And I think that what we need to worry about here is how the one big, beautiful bill can be built upon at this late stage in the policymaking process. People might think, well, wait a minute. It's only May of 2025. What do you mean by late stage, Pete? Well, I mean, late for this country. We have got to get federal spending under control.

[00:03:02] Now, the one big, beautiful bill does a fantastic job of making sure that we avoid a $3.5 trillion tax increase on the American people. That's what's going to happen at the end of this year if we don't extend the personal income tax rate reductions, the corporate tax rate reduction, the bigger child tax credit, the bigger standard deduction, the bigger small business deduction.

[00:03:29] That's what's going to happen to our economy in the years to come. We can't take that. We need that money in the pockets of the American people instead of the federal government. Okay, having said that, we've got a lot more work to do when it comes to the spending side of the ledger. You know, I hear all of this caterwauling about cutting Medicaid in this bill. That's nothing of the sort.

[00:03:57] What's happening is they are slowing the growth rate of one federal program, Medicaid, from four and a half percent a year to three percent a year. And you would think that is the end of the world for many Democrats and frankly, some Republicans who are saying we can't do this. Well, you got to do that and more if we are to save the country's finances.

[00:04:23] What about Rand Paul, who's being attacked by President Trump now, Mike Lee and others that simply say, listen, it increases the deficit or national debt by five trillion dollars over 10 years. We've got to push harder. Are they right? I think they are right. Now, in what context do we do it through the one big beautiful bill, the so-called budget reconciliation process?

[00:04:52] Do we do it through rescissions of appropriations that have already been made? The president just sent a small package of those to Congress to approve. Do we do it through another bill that takes on the Social Security and Medicare systems, which are financially ailing and are on the brink of collapse? I say all of the above. And anyone who says, no, we've got plenty of time.

[00:05:19] Let's just shelve that and worry about it after the next presidential election or whatever. They're being tremendously irresponsible. We've got to confront these problems now. What about guys like me that says, hey, you know what? Since January 4th, when Congress took power, they should have been passing teeny bite-sized pieces of legislation that could have funded the proper role of limited government and the essentials.

[00:05:46] You could have single issue vote up, down, clear bills that people could have voted for. And that 90 percent of this could have already been dealt with and worked through by now. But when they wait for this big, beautiful, you know, whatever you want to call it, behemoth, all we've done is pushed it to the end. And now we're up against a crunch again. They're trying to get it done by, you know, July the 4th. But now they say we're running out of money. We've got to raise the debt ceiling. Da-da-da-da-da-da. I think they should have been passing small bite-sized pieces or little bills. You don't eat an elephant except for one bite at a time.

[00:06:16] They should have worked on this little bits at a time. They would have already had most of this solved had they done that, right? Yeah, I think a piecemeal approach ultimately for appropriations especially might have been a good play. Now, what stands in the way of that, of course, is the fact that Republicans only have 53 votes in the Senate and you need 60 votes to overcome the so-called filibuster and proceed with any

[00:06:45] piece of legislation except in the reconciliation process. The one big, beautiful bill. Well, all right. That's a roadblock. But, of course, we put roadblocks in our own way. And it's far from clear that every one of the 53 Senate Republicans would hold fast in one block. As you explained at the opening of this segment, Sam, there are some like Rand Paul, Mike Lee,

[00:07:15] Ron Johnson, senators on the Republican side who are saying this House bill doesn't do enough to control federal spending and we're not going to vote for it. There are others who believe it does too much. You have Josh Hawley from Missouri saying he won't vote for the Medicaid spending restraint that's in the House bill when it comes to the Senate.

[00:07:38] So now we've already we've already had three agencies degrade or downgrade the credit rating for the United States. If we're not very careful, if that keeps happening and they take another tick or two, the interest will bury us. We won't be able to get any more money. So to me, at some point, it isn't a debate whether we agree or disagree. It's a must scenario, right? Yeah. Yeah, it certainly is. And, you know, this is what I don't get.

[00:08:05] The president has criticized some of these bond rating agencies. So have Republican members of Congress saying, well, their decisions are politically loaded. Yeah, sure. There might be a political tinge to them. But look at how the stock and bond markets react to some of the policies that aren't serious enough about controlling the deficit. Look at the last Treasury bond auction we had where there was not a really great take

[00:08:35] up rate among investors of federal government debt. They're getting skeptical of our ability to get this country on a more responsible fiscal track. That doesn't mean it's going to all end at once and we're going to be in doomsday. But it should be a warning sign to anybody who cares about the fiscal future of the United States. How long will it be until we are in a doomsday scenario? I mean, I don't mean to act like the sky is falling. I don't mean to be crazy.

[00:09:04] I do think we need to punish them at the polls when they don't take action. They promised us they would. You know, the Democrats, to some degree, are right when they say you guys promised you would save all this money and now you're spending us into oblivion. At what point do we say, hey, man, it's doomsday. We've got to punish them at the polls. Well, I would say if we see no action at all on controlling even the improper payments in Social Security or Medicare by the end of this Congress, we have a serious problem.

[00:09:33] If we see no action before the end of the president's term on more fundamental reforms to Social Security and Medicare that will put them on the right track, then we're also in a very serious situation. You know, the Social Security trustees are saying that a little after the year 2030,

[00:09:56] 2030, we're going to have a situation where the Social Security benefits automatically get reduced by about 20 percent across the board. That's because the so-called trust fund, there never really was one, but, you know, government accounting is going to be broke by around 2031, 2032, maybe 2033 if we're lucky. That's less than 10 years.

[00:10:25] And if we have an economic downturn, the bankruptcy date could be even closer than that. Go ahead and skip the break. Eldon, do you want to chime in here? What do you think? Yeah, it's I mean, really, we need to transition away from this whole idea of government, especially the federal government providing charity.

[00:10:56] You know, James Madison, he said, I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution, which granted a right to Congress of expending on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. There are many other quotes you could point out, too. But basically, we've departed far from what our founders intended. And we have to transition back away from the government playing Santa Claus.

[00:11:26] So, you know, I suppose it depends on what you describe when you say we have to modify some of these programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. But at their core, they're socialist programs, they're progressive programs. And they have to be phased out. If we're going to have any fiscal sanity in the long term.

[00:11:54] Pete Sepp wrote an article that I think is worthy of discussing here related to this. It's on NTU.org. That's the National Taxpayers Union headline says making doge cuts permanent will help reduce the deficit. Pete, you want to respond to that? Because I really think that's kind of where we should be spending our time, right? Yeah, absolutely. We should be devoting far, far more energy to clawing back federal tax dollars than just

[00:12:22] shoveling them out the door, which is what we're still doing right now. Despite some of the progress of Doge and the Trump administration sending us these budgetary rescission packages, there is so, so much more we need to be doing. And we've got to permanently institutionalize. In other words, create incentives throughout the federal government to save money rather than spend it.

[00:12:50] You know, George W. Bush oversaw a lot of growth in the federal government. But he had one thing right. It was called the Program Assessment Rating Tool or PART. That was evaluating every federal agency not on the chief metric here in Washington, D.C., which is how fast you can spend money, but rather on other metrics. Are you serving anybody with your program?

[00:13:16] Is education or health care or poverty getting better by what you're doing or is there no change? How about the number of people you have doing this? Are they fully efficient? Are they making good use of their time? You know, these are things that the private sector has to do on a daily basis. But for the public sector, it's often an alien concept for them to think about their job in

[00:13:45] any other way but spending a lot of money. And we've got to change that culture. Now, I want to defend Donald Trump here for a minute. Even though I'm against him on the big, beautiful bill, I think we need to do what Rand Paul says. Hey, we need to make sure that we don't spend over the next 10 years, you know, $5 trillion more or whatever else. I've got to defend Donald Trump, though, because he's tried to cut, tried to save, tried to do some things, and he gets shut down by the courts and or Congress.

[00:14:14] Congress has been yay, yay, clapping their hands when Donald speaks. But when it comes to actually following him and doing what he's proposing and everything, they've been derelict in their duty, to say the least. I think Mike Johnson is at the helm of this. And I really don't know what's wrong with him. Pete? Well, the Article I powers of Congress are very clear that they're the ones who are supposed to do the taxing as well as the spending.

[00:14:41] The president's powers were pretty limited under the founders of the Constitution. They didn't envision the president, for example, having almost unilateral authority over trade policy. That's what it's become. You know, we're supporters of saying, all right, do you want to have zero tariffs? So you want to have big tariffs on incoming goods?

[00:15:04] There's a case to be made for that form of indirect taxation rather than progressive income taxes. But Congress was supposed to be the one driving that policy, and they're totally absent from it. Eldon, what do you say to that? I mean, I have to agree. Yeah, that's the point.

[00:15:27] I know I made last segment is, you know, I believe it's called the Reciprocal Trade Act of 1834 or whatever. It was passed by Congress under the FDR administration. And that's when basically Congress said, you know what? We're going to let the president decide on these tariffs and things like that. Well, no.

[00:15:54] That is a power that's specifically given to Congress through the people, by the people, through the Constitution. And it is similar to when Congress passed the United Nations Participation Act. And there in Section 6, it said the president doesn't need authorization to send in troops and supplies to support United Nations wars, the peacekeeping operations like they like to call them.

[00:16:24] And then only a few years later, President Truman took them up on that offer and just said, all right, we're sending troops into Korea. And that was a disaster. We need to scale back these things. Congress, we need Congress to be jealous defenders of its power, just like the president is jealous defenders of his power, I suppose. But it seems like we're trying to, over decades, just amassing so much power in the presidency, in the courts.

[00:16:53] We need to back away from that and have Congress have its rightful power. I think that's part of the problem is we want to make everything sink or swim on President Trump as if he can do everything. He's only one man. He's only one third of the government. He's got a lot of authority and a lot of power. But man, if Congress doesn't back his play and follow his lead, we've got problems. And I'll give you an example. If we're not going to dig into USAID and DOGE and get to the bottom of it, the latest headline

[00:17:18] from our court Kirkwood over at the New American has this headline, six individuals charged with defrauding taxpayers of 66 million in food stamps. Well, you know what? If we just reduce the amount of money that they've got, the amount of fraud they could commit would be reduced proportionally as well. But if we're going to debate whether we can even look into these things, I mean, how can President Trump do any good? He doesn't control the purse strings.

[00:17:48] The House does. He can provide appropriate leadership, which I think in many cases he's done. But yet at some point, others have got to step up to the plate, too. We have a system designed to prevent, say, the president from doing everything on his own. And so we've got to look squarely at Congress and penalize them at the polls or whatever you want to call it. Make them, you know, punish them at the polls if they don't kind of do this. Congress needs to step up and say, hey, we're going to reduce USAID. We're going to look at these things where, you know, the big, beautiful bill is contrary to

[00:18:17] we're going to look into it, make sure that it's running legitimately in a mean, appropriate without waste and everything else. I mean, it's a congressional responsibility, clearly, Pete Sapp. Yeah, and I'm still waiting for the rollback in federal spending that we were supposed to have after this pandemic. Well, it really wasn't because of the pandemic. It was because of government decisions about the pandemic that we got into this situation.

[00:18:45] But seriously, when you look at the inflation adjusted federal outlays between 19, I'm sorry, 2020 and 2025, they increased massively. And still, even though they've been ratcheting down just a little bit, federal spending is over 30 percent higher adjusted for inflation now than it was in 2019. Why?

[00:19:14] What is the emergency? What is the crisis that is so much greater than even the pandemic that federal spending is still this high? There's a starting point to say, hey, remember the way things were in 2019? Houses weren't burning down. Millions of children weren't going hungry. The world was not in absolute turmoil.

[00:19:41] And yet we got along with about 30 percent less federal money. Maybe we should start there. Now, some say that Trump is basically calling to scrap the debt ceiling altogether. But why would he be saying such a thing? It goes against everything else he seems to stand for, Pete. Yes. You know, I'm reminded of Churchill's quote about democracy being the worst form of government except all others.

[00:20:09] That's what the debt ceiling is. Probably the worst tool for fiscal discipline except most others. I mean, if you're going to scrap the debt ceiling and the president agreed with Elizabeth Warren, socialist type senator from Massachusetts, that this would be a good thing. Well, what are you going to replace it with? What mechanism?

[00:20:36] A Swiss style debt break in the U.S. Constitution, an agreement to only budget under the enumerated powers that already exist in our Constitution? What? You know, that is my follow on question. If you think the debt ceiling is so bad and that process has a lot of flaws, a lot of sweet little lies that get told along the way, well, how are you going to get to the truth of the matter?

[00:21:05] We have no detail there. And that worries me. Why would Trump even say such a thing, though? And the problem for someone like me is I don't really want to go against the president. I think a lot of what he does is good. But when he says stuff like that, I can't help but just reject that and go, have you lost your mind? Well, yeah. And that kind of goes back to the question. All right.

[00:21:30] We can have a rational discussion about why this statutory ceiling on the debt invites a lot of game playing. And we get an occasional deal to pull back on federal spending every time a debt ceiling comes up. But the deals collapse later on down the line. OK, fine. It is not a great tool for fiscal discipline.

[00:21:55] But we need to have the conversation about what to replace it with that will really work better. There are lots of ideas. There is good legislation out there that would establish better budget rules. Plenty of ideas. But again, we're not hearing that level of detail right now from the White House. And I would just caution them and counsel them not to put those kinds of things out there

[00:22:25] unless you've got a vision for better spending discipline. And what Trump is saying is don't worry about the increased spending because the economy is just going to rock and roll and grow so much that, man, we'll just be flush with cash. It won't matter. And my response is don't count your chickens before they're hatched, right? Yeah. Never count on a federal government to somehow keep their spending below the growth rate of

[00:22:52] the economy because that has not been the case in previous years. And it has historically not been true since the end of World War II. And my response is if we get a handle on spending and we really do have the growth rate Trump's hoping for or promising, then it'll even be that much better, right? Yes, exactly. And we can finally begin to shrink the national debt at both as a percentage of our economy

[00:23:21] and perhaps in our lifetime, shrink it in real terms. Yeah. Yeah. Some say if they created the debt out of thin air because the Federal Reserve fake money and then why don't we just abolish it out of thin air and just say it's gone by a big, beautiful bill. All it would say is we hereby abolish the Federal Reserve and the fake debt that goes along with it. Can't we do that? Well, there's a lot of investors out there, both in the United States and abroad, who would

[00:23:49] have something different to say about. They would have a conniption fit. That's right. To say the least. NTU.org, the National Taxpayers Union. You've got a friend when it comes to how to handle and reduce taxes. We all agree we need to pay our fair share. The question becomes, how much is that? And how do we make sure that that's in alignment with the proper role of limited constitutional government? Pete Sepp is president of the National Taxpayers Union, the voice of America's taxpayers,

[00:24:20] mobilizing elected officials and citizens on behalf of reform. NTU.org. Pete Sepp, thank you so much. Keep the eye on the ball for us, will you? Will do, sir. All right. Hang tight. Sam Bushman, Elden Stahl continue. Thank you, Pete Sepp. You are listening to Liberty Roundtable live, ladies and gentlemen. We have got to have common sense come to the table, and it's got to be sooner than later, I can tell you that. Hang tight.

[00:24:52] Liberty across the land. You're listening to Liberty News Radio. News this hour from townhall.com. I'm Rich Thomason. Chinese President Xi is very tough and extremely hard to make a deal with. That's President Trump's assessment following a phone call this morning with his Chinese counterpart. Mr. Trump has ordered an investigation into whether there was a cover-up of President Biden's state of mind toward the end of his White House term.

[00:25:22] President Trump said in a statement Wednesday that the probe will investigate whether Biden's aides attempted to deceive the public by hiding serious cognitive decline from the American people. The investigation will focus specifically on actions Biden signed using the auto pen as those on the right levy accusations about Biden's ability to carry out his duties. Trump's order cites Biden's appointment of more than 200 judges to the federal bench, the issuance of thousands of acts of clemency, and the issuance of more than 1,000 presidential documents during his term.

[00:25:51] Bernie Bennett in Washington. Several rulings of note from the U.S. Supreme Court. It has blocked Mexico's $10 billion lawsuit alleging American gunmakers have fueled the cartel violence south of the border. Also, in a case out of Ohio, the high court is making it easier to claim reverse discrimination in employment. And the court is siding with Catholic charities and a religious rights case over unemployment taxes. Having trouble breathing lately? If so, you're not alone. There is smoke over a large portion of the eastern part of the country.

[00:26:22] You know, as far west as the Dakota is, Minnesota, and then a lot of areas east of the Mississippi River, all the way from Alabama, Georgia, up into New England. So a large part of the country has some smoke in the sky. The culprit, according to the National Weather Service's March and Art, is a Canadian wildfire as it continues to burn. Unemployment applications rose to 247,000 last week. That's an eight-month high. On Wall Street, the Dow trading 56 points higher. The NASDAQ is up 85.

[00:26:52] The S&P ahead 13. More on these stories at townhall.com. Wesley Financial Group is not a law firm. Hi, I'm Chuck McDowell, the timeshare cancellation guy and founder of Wesley Financial Group. And I want to set the record straight. I am not an attorney. I've never wanted to be an attorney. And the truth is, I really don't even like attorneys. If I sound like an attorney, I'll apologize. But what I've learned in my 15 years in the timeshare cancellation business

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[00:28:19] And I know you don't like mushrooms. And who can blame you? I mean, mushrooms are a fungus. And people generally try to avoid funguses. Or is it fungi? I'm never quite sure. But, you know, either way, I mean, penicillin is good. Penicillin is a mold. Huh. Well, I guess you're right. So you like penicillin, but not mushrooms. No matter what you talk about, love is what they'll hear.

[00:28:47] Mom, if we talk, will you be quiet? Love to. A thought from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Visit us at mormon.org. Are you ready to stand up for your community and support your local sheriff? Join the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and become a vital member of the Sheriff's Citizens Posse. At cspoa.org, we empower citizens like you through weekly webinars,

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[00:30:16] the crossroads of the West. You are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. Hi, I mentioned that there's just so much money out there, ladies and gentlemen, that it's hard to handle and take care of. It's just hard to deal with. The reason there's so much fraud is because there's just so much supposedly flushed with money everywhere. And that's really the problem. Trump calls for scrapping the debt limit. I think he's off his rock on that one. He's crazy. That's the last thing we should do.

[00:30:45] Do you want to chime in on that, Eldon, before the next story? Do you think we ought to just scrap the debt limit? Well, no. And really, the founders came up with something even better. Like a gentleman just mentioned, well, we have Article 1, Section 8. The problem is that people don't generally understand it and demand adherence to it. And the same thing can be said for something like the debt limit.

[00:31:14] If people don't really demand that it be adhered to, well, it'll be raised. It'll just be a big show. If that's what we want, that's what we get. We get the government that we really, according to our understanding and how much we demand that it be implemented. I know that frustrates a lot of people, but I think that's a reality check that we've got to understand. You cannot just ignore this and think it's going to be fine. All right. Here's the story that I find fascinating.

[00:31:43] I don't even know how to deal with this discussion, really. But here it is. Headline says this. $1.7 trillion sits in lost and forgotten 401k accounts is one of them. Yours is the question usatoday.com asks. $1.7 trillion sits in lost or forgotten 401ks.

[00:32:11] It's easier than ever to track down the lost 401k retirement accounts. And here's an incentive. The average balance is $56,000 in these accounts. They say visit the National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits. As the name suggests, it's a national database of unclaimed retirement accounts. That's one thing you can do. Very easy.

[00:32:40] The second thing they say is enter your social security number, run a quick search and see if any idle accounts come up. Next, proceed to the Retirement Savings Lost and Found database. It's a new site launched by the Department of Labor. Do you want to respond to this one, Ellen? I mean, that's a lot of money, my friend. That would be the biggest lost and found ever.

[00:33:08] And, boy, what a terrible thing. Think what that money could do for the people that are supposed to benefit from that. And what is it doing now? I don't know. I suppose that somebody's benefiting from it, but not the people that put in the money. Yeah.

[00:33:35] They say the lost and found is still trying to reach scale and everything else. This is something kind of new and focused on. It's launched by the Department of Labor to help workers locate unclaimed benefits. I find it just fascinating that we're talking about that kind of money. You know, on one hand, you think, how could this ever happen to somebody? How do you lose $56,000? You got to remember that it doesn't follow you when you move to a different job.

[00:34:02] And a lot of people, based on the way they move from job to job or things don't work out, it's very easy to not be able to have that follow you, right? Anyway. You got to claim it. They say you can also visit missing money. That's the third way you can go ahead and do it, right? That's another database.

[00:34:28] I don't even know how to deal with this, really, exactly. I mean, it's just so massive, it's hard to even comprehend this thing. But they say you can go to missing money. Missing money is a clearinghouse of unclaimed property held by U.S. states and Canadian provinces. Now, I've actually tried to go to that one, but it's very hard to get all the details, you know, filled out or whatever to do it. They make it very difficult to receive your money.

[00:34:58] So that's another one, but some of these things are harder to do than they say. I guess it's worth a try, but I don't know what all has to happen to be able to get your money. Anyway. They say missing money can point you to all sorts of unclaimed property. It's been around for a few years, but it's not as widely known as it should be, they say.

[00:35:27] Anyway, they say the next moves might take more time. You can search employee records. You can do this. You can do that. Here's my problem, though. The government has created this crisis, and that's kind of what I really want to focus on. How did this happen? It's not just that you're derelict in your duty, ladies and gentlemen, that you're the bad guy. It's the government has created this. First off, why do they force us to have these 401k options in the first place? It's a way to give employers the ability to pass along more money to the employees, but it's all controlled by the government.

[00:35:56] The government and the complexities around this, that's what's caused this problem in the first place, Eldon. It seems that government has a habit of doing that, doesn't it? Unfortunately, yes. But I look at this, and I just say, this is a government-created problem. At some point, you would think that the government would be responsible to find you and hunt you down and say, listen, we have your money.

[00:36:22] Or because of our laws and guidelines and regulations and whatever, there's money that's yours that you need to... And at least the government could take it and say, we're going to pay your IRS taxes for 10 years or whatever we're going to do. There seems to be... It seems to me that there should be a way that the government should be helping connect the dots on this thing. Well, maybe so. Yeah, you wonder who's the custodian of those dollars

[00:36:50] and who has their responsibility to make sure that at least on a somewhat regular basis, maybe once every 10 years, that people are given the opportunity to say, yeah, I think that is my money. Well, and I look at it and I go, well, whoever manages these accounts for someone, let's say that you manage an account for me,

[00:37:19] isn't under your purview or responsibility to let me know or to communicate or to follow up or to send me statements or to involve me in decision-making regarding those funds? What I'm saying is there's some kind of fiduciary responsibility here that I think applies, right? Well, anytime somebody has, say, a mutual fund or something like that, then there's statements that go to them.

[00:37:48] And the question is, well, with the 401ks, how is it that they all of a sudden became disconnected? Did people move? Did people change their name? Well, it's tied to jobs. And if people switch jobs, then it just goes by the wayside. And I'm saying if the employer set it up and the employer contributed to it as well, the employer might have some responsibility. Whoever the employer's got that manages those funds have a responsibility. Since the government mandated these, you know, accounts with all the regulations,

[00:38:18] for example, you can't even get your 401k until you're what, like 59 and a half? That's a government rule or whatever. It's I'm just saying at some point you can't just go, oh, that stupid consumer left 56 grand on average out there. No, there's there's more obligation than that. There's joint responsibility here in my mind. Now, I know people would say, well, the government, you know, you can't say the government's responsible. If they mandate all the regulations and the rules and the guidelines and who's the custodian of it and everything else,

[00:38:46] at some point there should be, for example, if I turn 59 and a half, somebody should contact me and say, Sam, these funds are available to you now. You're of age. Right? Yeah. I mean, technically, you can pull it out beforehand, but there's penalties. Right. But, but still factual. But again, that's my point about the regulation and the penalties. Nobody pulls it out because, hey, who wants the penalty? It's a beat. You take a beating on taxes. So I'm like, OK, well, I'll just leave that alone until I'm 59 and a half. Then I get forced to switch jobs. I'm melting down.

[00:39:16] I'm trying to get a new job. It doesn't follow me. I don't realize it's there. I'm not getting statements anymore or whatever the whatever the reason that I'm not in the loop on the thing is. I don't know. But I'm just saying I think it's some where along the line, if you're going to mandate and regulate and control this to the degree that they have, there becomes a two-way responsibility or a three-way. If you have somebody, whoever is the custodian or administers those, at some point there's a fiduciary responsibility there by somebody somewhere. It's not just like, Dura, we lost the money.

[00:39:45] If you can hunt it down, you can have it. Otherwise, screw you. Is that the way it works? That's the way it seems like it works, right? Yeah. Yeah, it seems like it just, I don't know. It seems like you can take it with you, but do you have to specifically request, I guess, if you change jobs or something? Yeah, you have to get a hold of a financial manager, somebody that administers the 401K.

[00:40:13] Talk to them if you want to convert it to an IRA. Talk to them if you want to. There's a lot of different ways you can deal with it. Yeah. But, you know, at some point it's kind of like you've got to work through all that, right? Sure. Anyway, I'm just saying it's amazing. All right, we'll take a quick break. Come on back. I've got a couple of things I want to talk about. Baby names and Mike Lindell. How's that? Eldon Stahl with me, ladies and gentlemen. He's with the JBS.

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[00:43:06] Back with you live, ladies and gentlemen. Did you know that there's baby names that are illegal in the United States, Eldon? What am I legally prohibited from naming my child? Yeah, that's the question. That is the issue at hand. No baby Santa. These 10 baby names are banned in the U.S. That's USA Today.com with the details.

[00:43:34] Yes, Santa Claus, Jesus Christ, Roman III, or III have all been ruled as illegal names by the courts in the U.S. You can't name yourself king or queen or, you know, you think you might be royalty, but you're not, Eldon.

[00:43:54] I suppose that maybe it's in keeping with the Constitution in a sense that there's no titles of nobility. I don't know. That's an interesting one. You can't be named king. Although I think people used to be named king as a first name. Yeah, no more, buddy. You can't do that. Who do you think you are, man? And my question is this.

[00:44:23] You know, I understand that you might not like somebody naming your kid Jesus Christ. I certainly wouldn't do it. But I agree that people need to be kind of careful realizing that naming your children is like a sacred responsibility. It's not something to be taken lightly. But I have a problem with that. Why can't you name your kid that if you want to? Where does the government seem to think they get authority for this kind of stuff? To me, it's crazy town. Well, it kind of introduces itself into going down the road.

[00:44:51] So many other countries in the world, like, well, I have experience in Argentina, but I found out this is common across the world. But basically, when you have a child in many countries, the government essentially gives you a list of names that you could name your child. And you have to pick from that list. Now, that's, you know, where we get to.

[00:45:17] You can imagine just going to a Latin American country and everybody seems to be named Jose and Maria and, you know, just a few different names. And then everybody goes by nicknames. And why? Because people want the freedom to be able to have a unique name by which people can refer to them. So there ends up being this, I don't know if you call it a black market or something, you know, kind of this.

[00:45:46] People find a way around the rules of the government that they provide. And, okay, well, I suppose there should be some reasonable exceptions maybe to what you can name your child. But, I mean, Elon Musk named his child some sort of just X615 or something. So I don't know that that's any more extreme than name your child Jesus Christ or something.

[00:46:20] But, you know, why? The question is, yeah, why should the government be able to tell you what you can name your child? If they can do that, then they can do plenty of other things. And that's the principle involved. Well, and here's the question. You can't name your kid Jesus Christ, but what if you named yourself Jesus? You can do that, right? There's plenty of people named Jesus. Same spelling, really. So my response is what gives of that? I mean, if it's the same spelling, but it's pronounced differently.

[00:46:50] Now, you can name yourself Jesus, but you can't name yourself Jesus Christ, right? Yeah. Now, Kanye West changed his name to Ye or whatever that is. Y-E, however you say that. Ye, Ye. It doesn't have an A on the end or anything, but or an H or whatever. Anyway, it's just weird as could be, right? Yep. Yep. That's, I don't know.

[00:47:15] I think for the most part, yeah, we should have freedom to, and we have for the most part in the U.S. in a sense. But now there seems to be some intrusion that saying, well, you can't name your child this or that. Well, you know, it's like so many things. The government really, that's none of their business.

[00:47:39] And we have to stand up and have certain standards and say, you know what? That's not the government's business. There are certain things that are not for them to decide. They should not be deciding what you name your child or what you cannot name your child for the most part.

[00:48:05] I'm one that believes that, you know, really, it's not the government's decision to tell us what time it is. We can make that decision ourselves without having to go, especially, you know, something like daylight savings time, which is finally people waking up on that. Because I kind of look at it and go, what if you wanted to name your kid Santa Claus, man? You know? Well, yeah.

[00:48:35] What if you want to change your last name to Santa Claus, you know? And you want to have your first name King. My name is King Santa Claus, man. You know? Sure. I mean, I met a lady the other day named Candy Bar. I thought that was a unique name. See, so anyway, it's just very, very strange to me. But here's the interesting thing when you dig into this story from USA Today. It even says that different states have different guidelines. Yeah, right.

[00:49:03] Right, because they're the ones that have to register it in their vital records. And so you kind of go, well, what gives of this? It's just so weird to me. I guess the only way you can know is you can look at the 10 names in USA Today that you can't name your kid. Or I guess you can just try to name your kid whatever you want and see if it goes through. Or if they're like, no, you can't name your kid Candy Bar anymore. No. I mean, I think you've got to name your kid in that role. Right? What if you just name your kid in that role?

[00:49:31] Well, that's one of my favorite candy bars is a nut role. I mean, they've got that dude out there that's this rock star named Jelly Roll. Can't I be nut role? Come on, man. Yeah, right, right. I suppose that's his stage name, but I don't know. It's kind of funny. Why would you go by a stage name of Jelly Roll? Hey, man. He's laughing all the way to the bank, buddy. I'm telling you right now. That's right. Anyway, very, very strange indeed. This guy actually has a normal name probably, maybe.

[00:49:59] His name is Mike Lindell. He's the MyPillow CEO who goes on trial. Battle between evil and good. He says he will take the stand in his own defense. He says he doesn't believe in defense. He's going to go on the offense. Holly Davis or Polly Davis brings us this piece or whatever. And it's just so weird. He says he'll take the stand in his own defense.

[00:50:29] And I guess the battle at hand is he's claiming the machines are evil and the machines are the problem. The MyPillow CEO is kind of having a battle with. They say the defamation trial got underway on Monday. In Colorado, a jury selection reports the BBC. Now, here's what's interesting. They asked everybody, hey, do you have any of Mike Lindell's products? And so many people said yes.

[00:50:57] They're struggling to get together a jury. They say at issue are the, quote, Trump loyalists claims. That's Mike Lindell's claims that the 2020 election was rigged. And he faces off against a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems, Eric Coomer. He claims that Lindell's, quote, irreparably tarnished his reputation.

[00:51:25] And that he now faces frequent death threats as a result of it. So they're going to battle and going to court, buddy. Hmm. Well, that sounds like quite a legal battle. Well, here's the interesting thing. Tina Peters is in jail right now. I pray that she gets free. Donald spoke out about it and everything else. But it's a state issue, not a federal issue. So whether Trump can actually do anything or not, time will tell.

[00:51:48] But I guess what is at discussion is that these leaders of Dominion said it's okay to copy the hard drive for safekeeping or preservation. Well, that's what Tina Peters went to prison over. Right. Yep. So how does she go to prison if it's okay? Maybe she'll get released over this case. Very strange. And we need to keep an eye on this ball. Lindell has an offense fund. He doesn't believe in defense. He's going on the offense. So it's the Lindell offense fund or whatever that you got to fund.

[00:52:18] I support this a thousand percent because I do believe the machines are tampered with. I do believe that the machines are not safe. And really, our elections are a sacred responsibility. And if we can't get that squared away, we're in trouble, Eldon. Yeah. And it's a situation with the machines of really the only way that you can know for sure is if you have to have a high amount of technical training and understanding.

[00:52:45] And that's a very small segment of the population. But the number of people grows exponentially that have the understanding when you talk about, well, can we count the number of paper ballots where somebody received a vote? We can look at that and the average person has the ability to do that.

[00:53:14] So really, we're talking about the ability to identify and correct errors in the voting process. With machines, you have very little ability to identify and correct errors. And that's the key. Even though, yes, human error does come into play. But regardless, it could be in the machines or in counting.

[00:53:43] But the key is how well can we identify and correct errors? And that's why I think we just need to go back to paper ballots. And I think that's the only way to really account for it. And anyway, one of the rules they say if anybody accesses the machines, the only people by law that can access them according to the contract is the Dominion people that made the machines. And that, to me, is a machine use killer. If nobody can confirm except the people that run the machines,

[00:54:11] at some point there's a conflict of interest for the machine makers. Anyway, our prayers are with Mike Lindell. Let's stand with him and do all that we can to see his success. For Eldon Stahl and Sam Bushman, thanks so much for being alongside for the ride. Check out thenewamerican.com, jbs.org, libertyroundtable.com for live and on demand incredible radio and videos. Our nationally syndicated radio network for incredible talk radio around the clock, lovingliberty.net. I'm Sam Bushman.

[00:54:39] God save the republic of the United States of America.