From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in the flurry of news leading up to and after the inauguration of President Trump.

President Biden broke his promise from four years ago and issued blanket pardons to his own family members.

With just two days before the end of his term, his team sent out a press release declaring the Equal Rights Amendment to be an official amendment to the Constitution, which was a position swiftly ignored by Biden's own legal team and his archivist.

Meanwhile, incoming President Trump issued a new meme coin a Trump coin, a piece of cryptocurrency that is so useless in practice you can't even try to use it as actual money.

And yet, its price soared, making Trump a crypto billionaire overnight.

And if that's a normal and healthy practice for as if I should say that's a normal and healthy practice for a new president.

Trump asked his own supporters to watch the inauguration from a nearby arena, while the richest people in Texas sat front row at the inauguration.

And then Trump pardoned everyone convicted of crimes on January 6th, including a number of people who attacked police officers.

To say that the norms are changing is an understatement.

Trust in institutions is at an all time low.

Trump knows it, and so he's not waiting for institutions to act.

He's moving unilaterally on issues like birthright citizenship or throwing out the TikTok ban.

Despite it passing Congress and being affirmed nine oh by the Supreme Court, just last week, Trump supported a TikTok ban four years ago, but now he sees TikTok as a way to shore up support among young voters.

Meanwhile, Americans are generally optimistic that the next four years will be good ones.

A new CBS news YouGov poll shows that Americans in every age bracket are optimistic about the future under Trump.

And the most optimistic Americans, at least in the adult categories, it's Gen Z.

They really like Trump.

67% of young voters feeling good about another Trump presidency.

My guests are returning to the program after an abbreviated visit on Monday.

We're talking about how they see the issues facing this new administration and the country.

We'll take your feedback this hour.

You can call the program of course.

You can also join the chat on our Sky news YouTube page where the show is airing live.

Hello there.

And let me welcome our guest this hour, Luis Martinez, back with us.

The management consultant, former candidate for New York State Senate.

Welcome back to the program.

Buenas tardes.

Good to have you here.

And welcome to Richard Dellinger.

Rick is a retired judge and state senator among many other roles in this community.

Rick, welcome back.

Thanks for being here.

it's great to be here.

I just have one question, Evan.

Right at the start, what did WXXI due to the weather?

It's zero out.

I know I'm wearing the thickest sweater I own.

It's a it's a cold day.

I listened to the weather report on WXXI, and I count on it.

And it seems like there's, they're plunging that temperature lower and lower.

All right, what's going on?

It's a it's temporary.

Rick.

Come on.

it's Roger, right?

I'm.

I'm not getting into global warming right off the top.

We're not doing that.

let me start with this.

And I mentioned this on on Monday, but I want to at least start with this.

Luis.

I look at the numbers of optimism in this country, and Trump is on the good side of every age bracket, but especially among younger voters.

Yes.

Younger than you and me.

but every age bracket is over 50% optimistic.

Why do you think that is?

Because they have a future.

They see a future and the future can be accomplished through the American dream.

When I ran for office, I ran on the American Dream.

Not on regulation, not on taxation, not on inflation.

I ran on the American Dream.

Here's what I think.

I've mentioned this to you.

Actually, I actually mentioned his name.

His name is Dennis, and he is one of many young men literally pushing a stroller at the North Winton Village fair, where I approached all these men who were pushing strollers, and that was my most receptive audience.

If I approached older, mature people, I got some people, shoved my business card right back at me.

So I said, well, I'm going to go where?

Where I can make some difference.

Where I can show them some hope and, and a future.

And and that was my, my best audience, young families.

That was my audience.

Well, so that's reflected in his optimism numbers.

But let me also ask you, are you comfortable, Louise, as someone who has supported this president with this new meme coin becoming an overnight billionaire, people can literally just give money to a meme coin that they can't use.

I mean, it's it's like giving money to the president.

Is that something you're comfortable with?

No, I don't like that.

You don't like that.

But that's you know, it's just like there are things that your spouse does that you may not like, but that doesn't mean that you canceled your spouse, you know?

So that doesn't rise to the level of looking around saying, boy, everything looks like a grift now.

Everything just looks like a lie.

I wouldn't use the word grift.

That's up.

That's up to the to the viewer.

But what I'm saying is that there are some things that he does that I don't like, but most of what he does, I like, and it's that's how it was for Democrats, for Biden or Harris, I'm sure.

I don't know, Rex about to tell you what he thinks about the Biden administration.

so I'm judge.

I'm going to back you up before the inauguration.

In the last 72 hours, it was an active last three days for President Biden, starting with a flurry of pardons that four years ago, he said he wouldn't do.

what do you make of the pardons?

Well, I told you before we started.

Evan, I am, I'm not a big fan of pardons, period.

I never like the pardon of the, by Gerald Ford of Richard Nixon.

I thought he should have been held accountable.

He said he wanted to heal the country.

Well, he he didn't.

What he did is he left a huge scar on the country.

And it's notion of presidential accountability.

That's what he did.

And as as I described it to you, if you run through the last 40 years, you see Reagan pardoning everybody involved in the Iran-Contra thing, Bill Clinton in his midnight pardons, which everybody says was a result of too much alcohol or some other thing in which he pardoned, among others, Marc Rich, who was one of his contributors, was awful.

It's an awful abuse of the power of the presidency, to for Joe Biden to do it after promise not to do it, I think is just terrible.

I also think pardoning a member of his family, Hunter Biden, was a big mistake as well.

What about his brother?

I wouldn't pardon his brother either.

And I know that the reason why I did it is because President Trump has threatened to go after everybody.

But, I don't excuse that as a justification for it.

And I don't excuse President Trump pardoning everybody, including those who beat up police officers on the Capitol steps.

Well, a lot of the time with pardons, we talk about, like you say, the midnight pardons, the last minute pardons.

This is a first day pardon from President Trump.

And there was new reporting this morning.

And maybe the team can help me find it because I want to cite it.

it's not my own.

but there was deliberation in the Trump administration about do we do it sort of ad hoc?

Do we look case by case?

And he kind of got tired of it and said, blanket pardon, 1600.

Everybody who's got convicted of January 6th, they're all pardoned.

All of them I anything.

And first of all, I think that's abysmal.

And I think that the Republican Party can no longer claim to be the law Party.

They might be able to claim to be the Order Party, but they certainly can't be the Law Party when they completely ignored it.

But here's the other thing.

My concern about the pardon power is that the combination of immunity for the president, which the Supreme Court invented on its own, no last year, no precedent for that, and the immunity case last year.

Correct.

And what they've said is the president cannot be charged with any crimes and cannot be held accountable for what he does in his presidential capacity.

Official business.

First and foremost of those is the pardon, which is a tremendous power.

What if those pardons were bought and paid for?

What if Trump or his family was somehow and I'm not saying it happened, but I certainly think some other future president or even this one might do it.

Or Bill, what happened with Mark?

Right, right.

What if what if they're selling those pardons and trade for campaign contributions, or much less money for their family or future considerations for development or whatever?

I think that strikes at the heart of accountability in the United States.

And I worry that the rule of law, the concept of what law is all about, is under fire.

before I get Louise's take on some of the pardons, let me just follow up on that point there, judge.

Is there a mechanism that you see that would reform presidential pardons, or is this the system we're going to see for a long time to come?

I'm a constitutional guy.

The Constitution says that the president has the power of pardon.

There has never been a limitation on the president's power of pardon.

Pardon that I'm aware of.

When you combine that unlimited power with the notion that he's immune from any that's part of his official duties.

I don't know how you get from that to he should there should be some limitation on the pardon power unless it's a constitutional amendment.

I don't see how it stands.

I do think that that is a tremendous threat to the notion of government accountable, if you can pardon as President Biden did, Pete Buttigieg, who's his secretary of transportation.

I don't know that there's any evidence together.

Nobody's ever claimed he violated any law, committed any crimes, and now he gets a pardon.

Are we going to be in a world in which the president of the United States grants a blanket pardon to everybody who ever worked for him, no matter what they did?

That the point on Buttigieg, the point on, I think probably Liz Cheney, among others who got these pardons is an interesting one, because I don't even know how this applies.

Take Buttigieg.

Does that mean for the rest of his life he can't be charged with a crime?

I don't understand exactly.

We don't know that the pardon would be retrospective retrospective to anything he's already done.

It cannot.

Okay.

but it's I guess I grew up in an era where you're getting pardoned for things that you were convicted of or being prosecuted for, not for anything that you might have done, but you haven't yet been.

I mean, it's a very strange heaven.

I want to go back.

Lewis is probably heard this before, but there's an old tradition in the Catholic Church.

It's called a plenary indulgence.

And you get a plenary indulgence.

That's even more so.

Well, when you get a plenary indulgence, you, like, wipe out all your sins.

And it's.

I can never forget the great debate when I was in grammar school about is it retrospective or prospective?

If you get one, does it apply to the future?

I think in these cases, these pardons simply say what you did prior to the pardon, anything that you did, you cannot be prosecuted for a federal crime, still be prosecuted for a state crime.

I think Robert Ludlum wrote about, plenary indulgences being sold by the Vatican in one of his novels.

Might have been in Rio de Gandolfo.

I have to get a look at, That was a huge issue in the Protestant Reformation.

The selling of indulgences and plenary indulgence.

Okay, that's how you.

All right, so.

So, Luis, let me just back up on the Biden pardons four years ago.

He says I'm not going to do it right.

He does it.

I know you're not surprised.

What do you make of it?

Well, it's obvious what he's trying to do.

Protect his family.

Because if you recall, one of the first, impeachment, accusations that was made is when, when Trump made a phone call concerning what was going on in Ukraine.

And he was impeached for that phone call.

The phone call involved his brother and the the criminal enterprise that they were beginning to, to launch at that time.

So, but getting back to a couple of things that were said here, jumping back to that, to the the Catholic practices, I've, I've been I've not been a practicing Catholic and I've been in the Methodist church and, you know, a Protestant church since I was a child in Cuba.

It may sound strange, but it is true.

And, so the in reference to pardons, there's only one pardon as Jesus Christ on the cross and all the rest is just, you know, just chatting with each other.

but the other question was about the pardons.

I you asked, if I like some of the things that Trump does, for example, I don't like you mentioned law and order.

So I'll start with order.

I would have done the J six, people in jail as a, as a an orderly process.

Let's examine the situation.

Okay.

Case by case, case by case.

That's what I would have done.

Okay.

If I was, responsible for that, for that practice, I would have.

I would have suggested to the president, let's do it in an an orderly fashion.

So we don't have the kinds of comments that we heard from, from the judge.

And, and so, so I would have done it that way.

Now, we may find some things in there, but by the way, I think that the J six trial hasn't taken place yet.

What went on in the capital was a just a clown show, and I have a lot of reasons for that.

But so the trial of this, of what happened, not only at the J.

Six riot and also later in the, the Capitol, you know, that that mess will be tried in public using information that was censored heavily by the Biden administration.

Liz Cheney and all the rest.

And even information that was that has been, that has been just destroyed.

Okay.

So this will come out.

You're going to ask me, well, what exactly what I'm so this will come out and I'm not prepared to tell you because no one knows exactly what it is.

But you seem to be concluding that there's some nefarious, very nefarious.

Okay, very.

But you don't.

But you also say, I don't have evidence of it, but I will, and we will have evidence as time goes by.

Remember, this has been hidden.

We we did not know.

You know who.

You know who really turn this thing around.

It wasn't Trump.

It was Elon Musk buying Twitter which is now X the most.

And as he says, you are the media.

And I hope that we come back to the legacy media because I got a lot of information about that.

So, X is now the media, if you want to know if something is right or wrong, you go look for it on X and you will get not the media.

You will get the the opinions of people who know something about the topic.

And then you can choose.

You can choose whom to believe and then chase the truth because that's what it's about.

I'm just having a hard time.

Finally, you're saying that we're going to get the truth about January 6th.

We don't know what it is, but we know that it's worse than they've told.

Exactly.

But we don't know.

Yeah, I don't know why you can say that without it.

Because.

Because the evidence is beginning to come out through places like X, but you have to be patient and go there and find it, okay.

And other sources.

But that's that's where it's displayed.

If you want to know what's going on, go to X.

And now you got that.

The latest updates I'm trying to follow this, but yes, let's come back when that enters the realm of reality and let's stay in reality here.

And let me just talk a little bit more.

I want to credit, thanks to the production team for pointing out it was NBC news who reported this morning that, so two things were going on in the last two weeks.

J.D.

Vance, the vice president, at the time, the vice president elect was telling people the J6 pardons are going to come, but it's going to be case by case.

And anybody who attacked somebody physical violence, that's not going to be condoned.

What people attacked, police officers are not going to be pardoned.

And then I think Trump tired of that.

According to the reporting, two officials who worked on his transition team told NBC news that the decision to do a sweeping pardon was made just two days before the inauguration happened.

they said that the pardon surprised many, in large part because Trump and Vance had signaled recently the president would take a surgical approach.

So now it's 1500 people.

Now it's people who attacked police officers.

And you seem to be saying that was a mistake, correct?

Okay.

Although the trial may show that you don't have see, if you operate under the assumption that the whatever was presented, I won't call it evidence.

Whatever was presented during a six show, it's what it was that that is it 100% of all.

Then A you're mistaken and B you're going to find out you're mistaken.

Well, once here's one thing I feel confident saying, okay, we we can move forward as a country and not appreciate how close we were to something truly ghastly.

If they had found an injured or, God forbid, killed Mike pence, we'd be in a different place right now.

Yeah, you're right.

I mean, there wouldn't there wouldn't be talk of pardons.

There wouldn't be a Trump administration come back to the white House if Mike pence had been killed like some of those people were trying to do.

Okay.

But remember that thousands upon thousands of rioters burned and looted and killed people during the BLM riots, and nobody was, you know, tell me all the people who are locked up and, you know, so there there is that level of crime against the nation that the Democrats celebrated and, and encouraged.

And there is evidence of that.

So I'm not going to defend every individual action in relation to the George Floyd story.

Exactly.

I don't we don't.

That's a whole separate conversation.

I, I take the point that you you saw what happened in American cities.

You were horrified in Rochester, New York, made national news.

Were there rioting?

And it's not clear to me why you're invoking that when I simply say that if I had killed Mike pence would be in real trouble as well.

That is true.

But at the same time, we were in real trouble, and nobody, especially the Democrats, were doing anything about it at the time.

That is patently true.

Okay, so let's move on from J six here.

And I want to yeah.

Can I just make a comment.

And this is why I disagree with Louis.

So I also I do agree with him that the surgical approach would have been much more appropriate.

But but we're not there.

The other thing I want to mention is this notion that something has not been disclosed.

All of the criminal defendants in the January 6th, everybody had an absolute right of disclosure.

That is false or their honor.

That is not true with with with due respect, that is not true respect, Louise, as a lawyer, as a litigant who's been involved in these cases and as a judge, they have an absolute right to disclosure to anything other than national security stuff.

I don't know that national security was raised as a defense to discovery in those criminal actions, but those trials were all occurred with full disclosure as a matter of law, and they were all upheld on appeal.

So the notion that there's some secret information out there that would reverse those actions of people beating up on cameras, police officers in the Capitol, I understand that that story is out there.

I think it's complete fiction.

We'll find out.

I, please note that I want to be here a year from now, and with, your honor, you are you.

What's going to come out?

I will say that with a smile because, with a smile in a sense that it's true that things happen that have not been allowed to be presented during the show.

the clown show that took place called the J6 trial.

I say the trial has not happened yet.

It will happen.

Can I can I just say one thing?

If law and order means anything, it means that we cannot refer to criminal trials that occurred in the District of Columbia involving people who attacked the Constitution and the government of the United States to be called to show trial.

These are not comparable to what happened in the Soviet Union or in communism.

This is the American justice system.

And if there are people who don't want to abide by the adjust justice system, so be it.

That's the reason why I agree with Hakeem Jeffries.

There's a political party out there that doesn't abide by the rule of law, period.

Okay, I'll be back and I'll be back.

Louise.

Thank you.

I look forward to that opportunity.

I'll pay for lunch.

And and believe me, if I come back with egg on my face, I'll be ready.

Okay?

So it won't be about egg on your face, and I'll be about the food.

All right, all right, let's just let's just proceed as if this is going really well and let's move on.

if we could to I want to talk about, some of these initial orders here, and get beyond J6 because we kind of knew that was coming.

It was more sweeping than we thought, but certainly we knew the president was going to move quickly on the southern border.

We knew it would be likely days within, the start of what we could see, deportations, which were, being reported.

Now, I don't have the latest in the last day or so, this from a couple days ago, that the new Trump team could start in Chicago with deportations, that they are very serious about that and that the Trump administration, that President Trump even, sending an order to revoke birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in law.

So that's somewhere where so if, if you're just joining us and you're just meeting Lewis Martinez Lewis, his story is a Republican who ran for New York State Senate as a local business management consultant.

As some as a native born Cuban who came to the United States and is a big fan of legal immigration, you say, I know that this is an issue that was very, very central to you.

What about birth?

Let me start with birthright citizenship.

Did you expect the president to go after birth?

Right.

Citizenship.

Well, birthright citizenship, the way it is in the United States is unique, extraordinary, exceptional.

And I think the only one in the world.

Let me give you some background, Jesse.

And when I worked for multinational companies, I had what they call expats, expatriates.

These are employees that worked for our company.

And in order for us to develop them, they would they would leave their home country and go to another country.

They go from Brazil to Mexico, from Mexico to Canada, from Canada to to, Holland to learn more about the business.

At one point, I remember I had 68 people like that traversing all over the world.

When those employees with their family, wherever they were, if they had a child in that country, that child did not have birthright in that country.

That child was an American or a Brazilian or a Mexican or wherever they came from.

But they were not just because they were born in that country, say Holland were not Dutch citizens come back to United States and we have what are not commonly referred to as anchor babies.

You know, an illegal alien crosses the border, gives birth.

Now we have an American citizen that becomes an anchor baby.

Then everything wraps around that anchor baby in order in order to expedite, if you will, transferred from their country to the United States.

Well, I don't I yield to that to, to the judge concerning the actual language of that law and so forth.

And, and I don't know how difficult or easy would be for, President Trump to cancel that or to change that, that I don't know.

However, the intent to make that like every other country like that I'm used to working with.

Yes, I would, I would I would be inclined to agree with the intent of, I don't know, the process.

Okay.

And before I turn to the judge, is this something that, that you expected to see?

not in that kind of way.

I just kind of like an executive order or something.

I think he if if it is true what they're saying, that it's enshrined in law, then there's a long process, you know, that may have to go through the entire, you know, Congress and all that.

And somebody used the word constitutional.

So I yield again to the judge on that one.

They used the word constitutional to describe it.

I said, well, then if it's in the Constitution, I don't remember where that would be.

But that's that.

Again, I, I'm not an attorney, but you seem to be saying that part of the issue, in your view, is what happens in practice is someone who is undocumented, has a child here, right?

And that changes everything about that family.

Yeah.

And the United States ends up in service with benefits, support, etc..

Yes, for this family.

And you want that practice to end?

Yes.

unless there's some, you know, extensive sacred session.

Let me let me explain something about immigration so that people don't say, oh, he's anti-immigration again.

I have worked in monthly national companies.

I recruited top, top talent from from organizations in Mexico and in Brazil.

And in Canada and so forth.

I know the talent that we lack in the United States, and I know, frankly, where to find that specialist, especially engineering talent, which is what I used to do.

And yet that talent must come to United States legally, as we did.

And and as many millions of others want to do 12 million, 10 million who are waiting for their turn to come to United States legally.

But they have been abandoned.

They have been, sandbagged because they were allowing illegal aliens to come in.

And please ask me why they allowed illegal aliens to come into all these blue states.

And I'll answer that question.

Okay, but but let me actually back up first.

But because you mentioned that if you go around the world, you don't get birthright citizenship, like you're not.

To my knowledge, I've never seen it.

Okay.

And they some people claim that United States is unique.

It may not be right.

Unique is not the right word.

I've got a list of more than 30 countries that allow birthright citizenship.

Yeah, it's actually more than that.

This is from the Library of Congress Albania, Angola and Gullah.

Antigua and Barbuda.

Argentina.

Australia.

Bahamas.

Barbados.

Belgium.

Belize.

Benin.

Bermuda.

Bolivia.

Brazil, British and British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Cambodia.

I mean, do you want me to?

I mean, I'm I'm just saying.

I'm just saying that we do what is best for us, the United States, and then other people can do whatever is in their best interest, just like you do for your family, your neighborhood.

There's nothing wrong with that.

And there's nothing wrong with saying we have to either, eliminate or maybe maybe that's not the right word.

Maybe, address the birthright issue in a constructive way.

I'm good for that.

Okay.

let me ask the judge if you want to weigh in.

Rick.

Birthright citizenship.

Let's start there.

how do you see that issue?

Well, first of all, before I start, I want to commend my my co speaker here, Louise, who came to America, has realized the American dream.

And, I applaud that.

Thank you.

So.

Well, it's it's an achievement.

And I there's so many families that you've been a part of and our nation has been built.

So we're all immigrants in that extent.

So thank you, sir.

I, I, I applaud that.

Let's go back.

Birthright citizenship was enshrined in the United States Constitution in the post-Civil War period.

What it was designed to do was to take African Americans would come here who had been denied citizenship under the Dred Scott decision and to give them citizenship.

All the benefits of citizenship.

And what it said was, if you are born in the United States, you are automatically a citizen.

It's in the Constitution.

No president by executive order can change the Constitution of the United States, correct?

We don't allow our executives to supplement their judgment for the judgment of the Constitution.

We actually don't even allow the United States Congress, in conjunction with the president, to pass a law that is inconsistent with the Constitution.

It's not what we do.

The Constitution sets limits on the power of government.

Birthright citizenship is a part of the United States, in my opinion.

It's part of what we did to make the United States exceptional.

After the Civil War was over, we did something truly exceptional.

We went back and said, those of who were brought here as slaves are now citizens.

If they were born here.

It was one of the most remarkable things we did in America.

It made us exceptional.

I don't care what the rest of the world has done.

I agree with Luis that there's always this question of the the birthright.

citizenship being passed to someone whose child is born in the United States, even though they're not here illegally.

I get that.

That's a real dilemma.

We've got to figure out how to deal with that.

But what we don't do is take away the citizenship of the child who was born here, who has the protection of the Constitution to be a citizen of the United States.

The interesting thing about the immigration problem.

So I thought it was fumbled by Joe Biden, closing the border, sealing the border.

I actually have a proposal, which I floated to other people.

It's just, mind if I had been the president, I would have closed the border and I would have ordered that anyone who was here illegally be deported.

I think that's fair.

But most of the people, there's a huge number of people who are here legally who sought asylum, who filed for asylum.

My understanding is there are millions of pending asylum cases and what I would do to deal with the issue that we got, which is why are we not processing those H-1b visas for people who would be we would want to bring because of their skill level, part of what we need to do?

If I were the president, I would have closed the border.

I would have said, you know what we're going to do?

We're going to hire a whole bunch of retired judges, not me, but other retired judges, to get the backlog of asylum cases out of the way to cut them down, declare a two year moratorium on the granting of any visas to come to the United States, wipe out the asylum backlog so that we could then say we can entertain new claims for asylum or new H-1b visas, and then we can deal with the issue of, those who have come here illegally.

I will say this, I, I am not and I don't speak for the Democratic Party or anyone else, but if you came here illegally, you are subject to deportation, in my opinion, irrespective of whether you committed a crime, you violated our laws to get here.

And under those circumstances, you shouldn't be here.

Yeah, that's all there is to it.

And I understand how people who are, you know, chased by gangs in Mexico or Honduras or Cuba for that matter, I understand their impulse to come here.

It's a humanitarian impulse, and it's a humanitarian impulse to welcome them.

But if the only way we can do that is to break our laws.

I'm a law guy.

I just can't condone that.

And I think that at some point you say if you're here illegally, you broke the law to get here.

You got to go back and apply legally.

We that's the rule of law as I see it.

And until Congress changes it, that should be the rule.

But, judge, I think there's two things that are the two stories that are actually similar, totally unrelated, that indicate what I think we're seeing very quickly with the new administration.

They know that declaring birthright citizenship gone is going to court.

They know that, yes, they know it's in the Constitution.

And the 14th amendment.

They know it's been part of the long legal tradition, and they know that to win, that they got to go to court.

but it's an end around any, any legislative process.

And in the same way that 4 or 5 years ago, one of the first people on the national scene to call for a TikTok ban was Donald Trump, his acolytes.

TikTok banned TikTok ban Joe Biden becomes president, Congress passes a TikTok ban bipartisan support.

Joe Biden supports it.

Then Supreme Court decides 9090 there's grounds for a TikTok ban.

But Donald Trump, who now wants to be the savior of the youth vote, says nope, it's fine.

TikTok come back as long as the company puts right there on there.

Our thanks to great leader Donald Trump and and all of a sudden, it's like a law that passed that was passed by Congress, signed by the president, upheld by the Supreme Court.

Doesn't matter.

But we have an end around going on.

But but just remember, why did they do it?

Why did Congress pass that law after a series of hearings?

And the answer was that China was using TikTok as a tool to invade America's national security.

They were gathering data.

They were turning data on American citizens.

It was a threat to national security.

And at least based on my recollection, Democrats and Republicans said, we're in a contest for world power with China.

That's right.

We cannot have the Chinese using their TikTok platform as a tool to undercut the national security of the United States.

That law should be enforced today, and with great respect to the current president, he may be the best deal negotiator in the world, but we need to get rid of Tik Tok in China's hands.

It's stealing our data that we need in the technological war with the Chinese.

Stop it, Congress said.

Stop it.

The president of the United States said, sign it.

We need to stop it right now.

I'm caught up.

But but Trump wants to be the savior of it, so it's still available.

I mean, it's you seem to think that this is a bad move, right?

Here's again there is there a let's use order okay.

And the order is the last time I looked, Kevin O'Leary, the Canadian businessman, offered $28 billion for TikTok.

I don't know where that offer went, but what he wants to do is take it over.

By the way, I've never been on TikTok.

I either have, I can't I can't even spell TikTok.

So all I'm saying is that the the there are people who want to buy it.

I also heard that Elon Musk may want it.

I don't want I don't want Elon Musk to get TikTok, okay?

Just like I don't want Zuckerberg to have WhatsApp and let let.

And if you ask me, I'll tell you about WhatsApp.

Louis, you and I agree on both of those.

Yes.

So I don't want I don't want Elon Musk to get TikTok somebody like, okay, Kevin O'Leary and his group, whatever, they're fine.

you know, I want things to be unbundled.

Now, Google is too powerful.

You know, you want to far too much concentration of economic power.

Correct.

And and because these are messaging, you know, apps and, and all of that is just too much control under one tent.

So I want to see more diversification.

If you like the word diversify, the diversification of, of, of media like that.

So back to so we agree that that, you know, and I lost track of, you know, who said what to whom.

But the point is that last time I looked Kevin O'Leary wants to buy it.

Of course, he would remove it from Chinese control.

which we agree.

And because it is a tool for the Chinese to to adjust invader.

By the way, I don't use things like Alexa and all that for the same reason.

And I always try everything off when I'm, you know, I so my point is, a lot of things end up in China that we do as a normal course of living.

And Tik Tok is is the most the and the top of the this scale.

But doesn't it trouble you that the new president, who once supported a TikTok ban, doesn't care that it passed into law, that the previous president signed it, that the Supreme Court nine o affirmed it, but he wants to be the savior, so it's fine.

So the ban, I think he's saving it, to use your term, saving it for somebody to buy it.

But I don't I don't know the details.

Okay.

That's the way I see it.

But you can take the thing offline until there's a buyer.

That is true.

And and if you did that, if you took it offline, the next buyer will pay a discounted price.

Right, Louise.

To get it back.

I mean, it affects it affects the value of it going forward whether it's on or not.

Right.

So we agree.

And the end point is that I want somebody else to own it, not China.

And I think there are people lined up to own it.

And the rest is details.

But Trump says I was always on that.

Trump says he wants the United States government to have a stake in the future ownership of TikTok.

Do you want the government to.

No, no, no, no, the last thing we need is the government prying into everyone.

I don't know, you got a little more than we thought this hour.

We are right.

We are way late for no.

That's okay.

We're allowed to agree.

No, we can't we can't disagree on everything.

we're way late for our only break of the hour here.

We'll take a little bit of your feedback on the other side of our own.

Only break.

We are talking to Lee's, Martinez and Richard Bollinger, about their views on inauguration week, what's going on in Washington, and some of the implications.

Let's take this break.

We'll come right back.

Coming up in our second hour, we take a look at one of the specific executive orders signed by President Trump, an order stopping the refugee program.

It takes effect on Monday, and it's unclear exactly how sweeping this is, but it certainly appears to affect thousands upon thousands of people have been cleared to come to this country, including many children and including some Afghan citizens who served the United States during war.

We'll talk about it next hour.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

So I've got a pile of emails from listeners who are feeling like the one thing that we are not addressing effectively enough when we talk about, the concentration of economic power.

When we talk about who has the power and the influence is who was on stage at the inauguration.

So Louis, you don't want Musk to own TikTok.

You don't want Zuckerberg to own WhatsApp.

Correct?

Because there's already enough concentrated power.

Correct.

Are you concerned that the wielders of those concentrated power were all there on the stage with the president at the inauguration?

Yes, but for different reasons.

Okay.

Okay.

So let's let's pick on Zuckerberg for for a minute.

He confessed out loud that it was the Biden administration who really leaned hard on him to cancel and censor information concerning Covid.

That is true.

Okay.

And, that's, and at that time, Twitter was not allowed to do any of that, any of that either.

And again, Mister Martinez, do you lean left or right?

Now I lean to the truth.

And if that bothers you, I'm not your problem.

So what I'm saying is that at a place like X, let's just be connected.

Today is a place where you can go discuss all of these details to the Nazi level and get truth, or at least things or things that appear to be true based on, you know, community notes and things like that.

So, so that's a source of viable information that was not available to us during the Covid.

It was not available to us, during, the lockdowns and all that.

So we need to appeal to those sources of information.

And then we decide we the people decide who's telling the truth and to what extent.

What are the consequences of following one, one, line of thought or another?

That's up to us.

Rick, you want to add to that?

Well, the only point I would dispute with Luis is the Biden administration did, certainly go to the media companies, but they weren't concerned about information.

They were concerned about misinformation, things that were scientifically untrue.

conspiracy theories that had no facts to support them.

And under those circumstances, the Biden administration said, we stand up for truth.

But this stuff that's being circulated on all of these platforms is patently untrue and misleading.

And so I look at it and I will suggest I, I'm always leery of government censorship one way or the other.

But when there's information that says Immer Vechten or whatever they call ivermectin, ivermectin is somehow the solution to your Covid problems.

that is misinformation that misleads America and puts people in a position where they're doing something that's dangerous to their public health rather than improving it.

But and that was science.

Our science all indicated that my my point is this I, I do not want the United States government involved in these organizations.

I'm not on Facebook.

I'm not on any of these things.

I don't trust them.

and my view is it's just, the the worst possible voice ends up getting the most play.

And I think, that's reprehensible in a democracy.

Okay.

Okay.

My response?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Okay.

I'm sorry, Your Honor.

I disagree.

That's okay.

Don't apologize for that.

There's no such thing, sir, as disinformation or misinformation.

Let me give you two examples on the other meeting topic.

Just one.

Okay.

Just on that one.

There is a surgeon I know who during Covid, he had a store of ivermectin for himself and his family that no one else could reach because he's a he's a surgeon.

And he could do that.

That's item one.

Item two.

There's a person that I know personally who ended up in Highland Hospital, a woman.

And, she was she was.

They wanted to intubate her and all of that during that in 2021, I think it was.

And we had prayer vigils outside the hospital during that time when everybody's wearing a mask, are you going to say ivermectin cured her?

Yes, sir.

Okay, so, Luis, listen.

Wait, wait.

Let me finish that story.

Let me finish.

We're not going to go down the ivermectin road this whole.

There you go.

No no no, no, I don't want to listen.

What the the story that you're describing.

Yes, I would affirm it and say, I am grateful that this person, I hope is doing well today.

She's alive and well, and that is wonderful.

Yeah.

What I'm talking about in scientific studies, this has been done and done and done and done.

And ivermectin is not a cure for Covid.

It's okay to say that we can affirm that this has been studied by people who don't have ideological stake, so the surgeon doesn't know what he's talking about, does he?

No, no no no.

My point I'm not.

And even I did not mean to divert this into a discussion about the Covid.

Thanks a lot.

Let's I know I'm off topic.

please censor me and tell me to get back on the topic.

So talk about Trump and where we're going.

Okay.

so, so, but where we're going is RFK Jr is going to be in charge of a lot of public health.

And, RFK Jr is going to take a lot of public health to the woodshed here.

I mean, he is.

Yeah.

We're going to see some real, real change.

assuming that he has his way, we could see change the vaccine policy really quickly.

Are you comfortable with some of what you're seeing there, Louisa?

The treatment of vaccine.

I'm not comfortable with such, babies getting up to 62 vaccines by the time they're three years old and that sort of thing.

So.

And plus, you know, there are people in my family who are, who are health care, you know, credentialed in health care and the ingredients of many vaccines today are very, very, very questionable.

And yet, the problem is that even if you identify that and you want to act on it, oh, wait a minute.

They have immunity.

There's this pharma company.

So there's something has to change now.

Is is, is RFK Jr the best agent for that change?

You know, we could have it in opinion about that, but something has to change.

We can't keep doing that where we've been going all this time and have all these things that are we can witness all around us and say, oh, well, you know, that's the way it is now.

No, I know.

Hold on a second.

I mean, I, I take your point that pharma is powerful.

Oh, yeah.

Very, very, very powerful.

Impregnable at this point.

Constant trade and economic power is doing very well right now.

And, and I think that RFK wants to break up some of that power.

Yes.

I think that everybody can see that.

I, I also wonder when you say things can't keep going.

I, you know, I, I don't want my kid to have polio.

I don't want to go back to a world before a vaccine.

Well, see, that's that's exactly the reaction that we get when we say we need to change, you know, how we do things.

And it's like, oh, you know, we're going back to the very closest.

Now that is not true.

We have we certainly could no, we we why would anyone want to agree with that.

Not that's not the point.

The point is if I have you know, I mentioned 62 or whatever it is, 58, 27, it doesn't matter.

The point is it's too many.

And then you have to if you line them all up and then you have experts here.

Remember, what we want is not experts.

What we want is a debate among experts on these topics, and that debate has not existed on that topic.

I want to see clearly the debates between the people who are pro this and the people who are against that.

And let's hear what it is, what.

And then we will decide.

We the people will decide who's telling the truth.

That has not happened on any of these.

So can I just offer one more idea here?

Luis?

I'm with you.

Yeah.

That if if society gets to a point where the experts are not even allowed to speak or debate.

Right, we're in trouble.

And on any topic.

Not just vaccines, on nuclear war, on all kinds of things.

Right.

Your implication is that that debate hasn't happened.

It has not happened, sir.

When in the scientific community, the development of vaccines happens very carefully, rigorously.

No, the medical journals have learned, have been leaning to the left and only to the left for at least ten years.

So remember, I have people in my family who are who are in the health field and they it is abominable what you know, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, they the the travesties that they have perpetrated, especially during the Covid season, that now they're going to be held accountable and then vaccinated, aren't you do you did you get back?

I have to do I have to answer?

No, you don't have to.

I'm just I'm I'm happy to talk about it, but you certainly don't have to answer.

I'm not answering that.

So the point is that the point, the point is that there have to be a, true, referees in this fight.

And in the last ten years or so that things that used to be the referees have taken a side and have neglected to, to to have not only neglected, forbidden the opposition to have a de say.

And so your view is that the new administration, RFK helping lead this will bring better referees and more debate.

Absolutely.

Okay.

That's what we want, judge.

I couldn't disagree with Luis any more on this.

The debates about the quality of vaccines in the United States have been extensive.

They're extensively probed, when the they're manufactured, when pharmaceutical pharmaceutical companies show up and ask the FDA to review it.

What Trump and others have criticized the FDA is that the process of approval is too long because you spend too much time studying these vaccines.

We ought to be able to get them to market quicker.

The legitimate debate about what goes on in vaccines among highly reputed scientists on the left, the right, the center, all over the world.

This debate has been going on for years, and the notion that that somehow leans left when the fact is America's vaccination of children has substantially reduced almost every single childhood disease for the last 50 years, starting with the Salk vaccine against polio, with the shots against measles, the history of pharmacology helping our children is extraordinary.

We are the leaders in the world.

We are the exceptional country in the world.

Why anyone would want to tinker with that process and say, wait a second, there's a scientist out here in England who says that autism is caused by, the childhood vaccines.

He publishes the story, it takes over the right, and they say, oh, this is true.

Autism is caused by vaccines.

Five years later, after extensive study, they order the physician to retract the article, and they strip them of his medical license because it was all a fabrication.

I agree with Louise.

There ought to be an extensive debate, but the notion that vaccines are put in public without extensive debate in the United States is pure politics.

It's not true in any.

That's the first that's the first Polycarp we've ever gotten on this program.

We're sorry, I know I'm going.

You're reaching for that.

I'm sorry.

I've.

I'm I'm diverting it.

I shouldn't have started this debate on that.

So to think of what the term should be.

so, Your Honor, please look up Marty McCarty.

Doctor.

Marty.

All right.

I know him well.

I read his book.

Okay?

And, he doesn't agree with you at all, so you may want to check him.

I don't think, doctor.

Can I call it.

That's not a great.

Let me.

Let me on.

Let me get some feedback here.

Dallas.

Dallas says we're in trouble if we're not allowed to question the experts.

I agree, Lewis agrees.

Rick agrees.

You have to be able to question the experts, have to be able to.

That is not at all where I am on the subject of vaccines, and I don't want anybody listening to this program to be under the impression that there is something nefarious or not understood about vaccines.

They're extremely well studied.

Not every vaccine is the same.

but I am grateful to be vaccinated.

I'm grateful to have a vaccinated son.

Oh, I don't want to go to a world where we're not vaccinating.

well, again, there is two different.

We're talking about two different things, sir.

Do not do not, do not paint me with a brush that I'm against vaccines.

That is not what I said.

That is not what what RFK said.

What I'm saying is that there are some things that have happened in the last 5 to 10 years, especially in the last five years, concerning Covid that are unprecedented and nefarious.

Both.

Sir RFK has said that vaccines have been have done a lot of damage to children.

Well, let him say that.

And I let him let him back it up.

He can't.

I mean, vaccines have saved so many children from horrible disease.

We're talking about.

You're talking about vaccines like they're vaccines.

I had like the inoculations that I had.

I remember distinctly standing in line when I was 11 years old in Cuba, waiting for my vaccine to come in, I states.

I'm not talking about that, and neither is RFK.

Okay.

So let's not paint.

you know, I'm not painting you with that brush.

Please don't paint you with that brush.

Okay.

Well done.

30s apiece to finish up here.

We've covered a lot of ground.

Clearly, there's going to be passionate debate going forward here.

You said at the start that you are very optimistic about the next four years.

Yes.

Four years from now, give me 30 seconds of your most optimistic.

What has changed in this country that my children and the adult children that I have now, and the next generation behind them, because now my grandfather will have and the same kind of the United States of America that I, that my parents and I had when we came to the United States and we learned to speak English, and then we achieved the American dream.

That's what I want for my children, grandchildren.

Okay, Rick, four years from now, what do you expect?

I hope the United States is got the world's most prosperous economy.

That our inflation is at 2.9%, that our employment rate is at 4.5%, that the Dow Jones increases in value by 30%.

All of those things happened under the presidency of Joe Biden.

If, Donald Trump can, Donald Trump can produce the same kind of economic growth and economic vitality.

I'm all in.

I hope it doesn't come at the cost of our civil rights and the rights of other citizens, including the birthright.

thank you both for being here.

And I guess I guess, well, when the J6 trial happens, I guess we're coming back.

Yes, but I'll be back between now and then.

Let me just say thank you for coming on and joining the conversation.

Louis Martinez, who's a management consultant.

He has run for New York State Senate.

I think everybody agrees, Rick, having served in the Senate, anybody who takes the time to run for office is doing a service to their community.

Absolutely.

And thank you for being here.

Richard Dellinger, former judge and state senator.

Thank you for being back here.

Thanks for having you again soon.

And listeners, hang in.

We've got more connections coming up in a second.

And.

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