It's six Eastern, three o'clock Pacific from coast to coast and around the world.

The Democratic brand right now has about the appeal with the American voter as the crackle barrel rebrand has from America Out Loud Talk Radio.

It's time for Truth Be Told with Booker Scott.

As we begin this Monday night, let me tell you, I have been sick for several days, and I want you to bear with my voice right now.

I'm doing the best I can.

I'm struggling to get through, but I think we will.

And by the way, welcome to Christmas week.

It's great that we are here.

It's a wonderful time of the year for so many people.

And we remember our Savior Jesus Christ and his birth.

That's what this week is all about.

There is a lot to talk about.

We're going to get into it tonight.

I am giving Matt Palumbo the week off because of Christmas.

There will be no Mondays with Matt this week, but we're going to do something a little bit different.

We're going to go into a live X space here in a few minutes.

We're going to get the pulse of the people and take your pulse.

How do you think things are going?

And we're going to discuss very specific things here on this.

And also when we get into a space, the conversation really goes wherever and wherever it goes tonight and tomorrow night, by the way, we're going to do the same thing.

We're just going to let it go.

What's on your mind?

We're going to get into that.

I'm Booker Scott, and this is The Truth Be Told on America Out Loud Talk Radio.

As we start this hour, I guess we could talk about Syria and what happened there.

There was a retaliation, and I've got some audio clip coming up later in this hour on that.

Donald Trump made the decision to retaliate for the two Iowa National Guard troops that were gunned down there last weekend.

And we'll hear about that.

Also, what about another Venezuelan tanker that has been taken over by the United States government down in Venezuela?

This is the second one now.

And Donald Trump says he's going to keep doing it.

Energy is such an important part of affordability.

And we hear so much about affordability right now.

As we go into 2026, and we're going to start getting into the midterm and a very important midterm that is coming up.

Affordability seems to be the thing that everybody is talking about.

Everything is more expensive.

The prices haven't come down.

And they haven't come down, but wages have gone up.

The energy sector, it's a big part of that.

And we're going to get into the conversation here.

Like I said, it is a space on X.

Let's get things started here in this hour inside this space with John.

John, you have the floor.

Go ahead, sir.

I think everything pretty much hinges upon energy and the price of fuel.

Um, you know, as far as uh the price of anything on a shelf in a supermarket.

So um we've got that to deal with.

And it's gonna take, like you say, it's gonna take a little while.

Gotta have some patience um to get those refineries back up and running uh the way they should be.

Uh and I'll drop it there.

No, John, you make a good point because if you go back to COVID, you remember oil during COVID, how crazy it got.

There were uh tankers sitting in uh the Gulf and Atlantic and Pacific.

They were full of oil, but they didn't have anywhere to offload, if you remember that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, John, but I believe oil got down to negative thirty dollars a barrel.

Right now we're sitting at about 55 to 60, which is where it's been most of this year.

Uh Joe Biden's presidency was around 100.

To your point about refineries, though, if you go back to COVID, you kind of have to go back there because refineries, they changed over to biofuels then.

Some of them closed, and we didn't even have the capability once COVID was over and people started moving again to produce enough oil for us that we used every day.

And that's where energy independence came from in Donald Trump's first presidency.

If you go back, I think there was one quarter in his first presidency where they finally started talking about we are energy independent.

What that means is you can refine enough oil that you use daily on a daily basis to be able to support what it is you need.

And we got to a point where our refining capabilities weren't even close.

We're millions of barrels short daily for what we need.

Now, if you take that out over seven days in a week and over a month, you can see why uh Joe Biden eventually had to get to the strategic oil reserve to be able to pull oil out of there.

You're right.

Energy has a lot to do with cost.

I know gas prices where I am, which is in Florida.

I've seen it as low as two fifty-five, two sixty a gallon.

And when you join those clubs at those uh convenience stores, you you can pay, I think I've paid two thirty-five one day a gallon.

And I know other places in the country, it's still really high.

And I hear that those places where it's really high, they're gonna add some more tax and make it even higher.

So it's the beauty of a republic.

And I I talk about this from time to time, you know.

We we seem to want to disagree with New York and California politics when we are a republic.

You know, we don't we don't want to force what those people want, what they think they want in those states.

We want them to come to the conclusion that where they are and what they're paying is not right, and you have to have them change their mind.

And when it comes to Mamdanny in New York, I said this a long time ago.

Let him win.

Let them uh have uh services where garbage is piled up to the second floor windows of apartment buildings.

At that point, then the people of New York City will realize, man, we made a mistake here.

Go ahead, John.

Come back to you.

That's uh uh that's awesome.

What you just said, and what it reminds me of, too, is if you read the Federalist papers, which was the precursor to our Constitution, Hamilton wrote about the four separate territories which made up the original uh thirteen colonies.

Um he wrote about the jealousies and the jealousies between the the four uh independent uh territories was economic and nature's while some some of the four were doing better than the other two or one or three or what have you.

And that's when you had politicians back then that wanted four separate nations within a nation.

They didn't want to become one nation under God.

And so uh and Hamilton also wrote that that what bound it all together, the glue that bound it all together was a common navy.

That's the only uh branch of the military uh the that you'll see in our constitution is the Navy, and that was to protect all of those territories, all the 13 colonies uh on the high seas from the Barbary Coast Pirates back then.

Um so, yeah, very interesting.

And then we're still seeing those jealousies today, aren't we?

A couple of things you brought up there.

Let's talk about first of all, God in the Constitution.

You brought up what is in the Constitution, and you mentioned one nation under God.

Did you know that God or Lord is only mentioned one time in the Constitution?

And do you know that separation of church and state is not in the Constitution?

A lot of people don't know that, but that is the truth.

However, in those 13 first colonies and first states, God was mentioned nine out of those thirteen constitutions in those states.

So again, that goes to being a republic.

If the people of a state want God in their constitution, then by all means put it in there.

If we are truly a republic.

If not, if we're a nation, then it would be in the constitution of all states, but it's not.

So understand that that that is missing.

Maybe it's missing on purpose.

And I've talked about this before too about the Constitution.

You brought up Hamilton.

And, you know, Thomas Jefferson was writing uh that uh declaration of independence, and he sent uh four different copies to proofread and make suggestions for changes, and one of those went to Ben Franklin.

And uh, you know, we hold these truths to be self-evident.

Yeah, I think we have to really understand what these people were doing when they wrote that, because that's not how it was originally written, and it was Ben Franklin that changed that.

You have to understand that there were most people in this country at that time, they were not for leaving the Union.

They didn't want this.

You know, they did not want their own country.

And if you know about history, you know that after becoming a country, we were in bad shape financially.

Terrible.

We we worse than a depression.

We probably didn't have any business being our own country.

I think it's important to know this history to understand what we came through and and what we did.

And you know, you mentioned uh economics in the Constitution, John.

Another part of economics that uh I would use to point to your point to to make your point for you is the Civil War.

You know, the Civil War was started uh because of economics.

It wasn't because of slavery.

There was abolition.

You go all the way back to 1700.

The first abolition track ever written was written by a Puritan, believe it or not, and it was written in 1700.

That was a part of what was going on in this country, and it directly affected the South.

But what mostly affected the South were the tariffs of 1825 and 1858.

The only way the South could make money was through agriculture.

Those tariffs were terrible for the South.

Uh, South Carolina even talked about leaving the Union in 1828, but they hung around.

And when the new tariff came in 1858, that's when everything broke up.

And it became about slavery, and again, slavery is a big part of agriculture in the South, so you can tie them together.

But anyway, I think it's important history to know.

Go ahead, John, I'll come back to you.

Uh, great, great stuff.

Um, you bring up Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin was asked, uh, are we a monarchy or a republic?

His answer was a republic if you can keep it.

Our founding fathers knew uh that we'd be here someday.

They had done the deep dive study on all previous previous democracies and republics.

Scene how they had risen and how they had fallen.

And they knew we'd be here.

And they say a republic slash democracy will last roughly 250 years.

We're there.

We're right at 250 mark right now.

So yeah.

Interesting stuff, Booker.

Thank you, John.

And yeah, that was attributed to Ben Franklin.

I think that's right.

I uh as I remember it, it was a comment that he made to the wife of a mayor somewhere as she was walking out after a meeting.

And I think that that's what he said to her.

It's a republic if you can keep it.

Let's find the original text of the Declaration of Independence.

And I, you know, I talked about this on a space several weeks ago about the their true origins of the Declaration of Independence can be traced back to the early 1700s in uh philosopher in England and um also someone else up in New England.

But uh that's that's truly where the Declaration of Independence comes from.

But another thing I like to talk about when you talk about the Constitution, because you see the left really trying to tear down the Constitution because of it was white colonists.

You know, it's a bad thing to be a white colonist.

What I would point out is that the Constitution was written from a position of oppression.

The people of America and those colonies, they were oppressed by the government in England, and because of that, they wrote a declaration of independence and later the Constitution, they became a country, our country, regardless of whether it was black people in slavery or if it was women and suffrage.

The Constitution was for all people, and it's a very important word that they included.

And John mentioned reading the Federalist Papers.

If you read other history about that all people, or all men, I think it actually says, not all people, but men meaning people, they debated on all.

They put all in there to include black people and women.

You have to understand that because over time the Constitution has been changed, and thank goodness, thank goodness it's written the way that it is, so that we can amend it.

You know, if it were a bad document, if it did not work, then it wouldn't have been written the way that it is, so that you can amend it and make the changes.

And we can forever do that.

Go ahead, John, I'll come back to you.

Yes, spot on.

Um, and not everybody was pro-slavery back then.

They're the they were the abolitionists, you know.

So anyone that wants to to to kind of make you believe or try to make you believe that that uh we were all pro-slavery back then, we weren't.

And if you ever want to see uh uh a great talk about the uh constitution and the amendments, they want to see a great uh debate on gun control.

It's between Chip Roy and Jerry Nadler.

Um, and they're they went head to head at it.

And at one point, Nadler says to Chip Roy, you mean to tell me you think it's perfectly okay uh for our citizens to fire on our military, and that was when they were on the subject of tyranny.

Okay, and and uh Chip Roy's reply was something I'd never heard of before, and I thought it was it was pretty cool.

Uh the what he came back with.

He said, You have to go back to that period uh when the second amendment was put into play, and what it did afterwards, uh it gave newly freed slaves the ability to protect themselves against government tyranny, and it also gave anti-slavery whites to protect themselves against government tyranny.

And what that did was it it boxed Nadler into the corner, and he didn't have anything to come back with to that.

Uh, and I think it's because of if it's if it's the left's assertion today that white supremacy is the biggest threat we face, yet you want to take away the ability for the minorities to protect themselves.

It's uh it's uh that's an interesting box in the corner uh kind of uh uh uh thing that that uh Nadler uh got hit with.

And I'll drop it there.

The second amendment is written to protect ourselves against a tyrannical government.

You just brought that up.

And a lot of times the left will say, Well, you know, it's not muskets, you don't have muskets anymore.

Well, muskets were at that time weapons of war.

So don't let them get that argument on you because that was what they used in the revolutionary war, mainly.

I know there were some other uh weapons available, but largely the musket was the weapon of war in the revolutionary war.

So when they come back and say, Well, it's not muskets.

Well, in my opinion, uh as someone that believes in the second amendment, I think each one of us should have a missile launcher and an F-35, because that's what was written in the Constitution.

When you look at the fact that it didn't, it didn't say that you couldn't have a weapon of war.

And if they were writing that you could have arms, the arms available then were the weapons of war.

They couldn't have seen that we would have drones and the technology that we have.

Joe Biden used to try to make that argument.

Well, what do you want?

Uh you want a F-16?

You think we're gonna give you an F-16?

Absolutely.

I think you should give me an F-16.

Don't you?

I mean, that's that's what it's about.

Um, but I think the Constitution is is interesting.

I took it upon myself to write the 28th Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution.

We can talk about that in a little bit.

But go ahead, Mr.

Dudd.

Go ahead.

Well, as uh before you get too far away from the religious aspect of uh the Federalist Papers, the Constitutional that article I found uh a while back in the Heritage Foundation that talks uh pretty uh straight on about religion and our constitution and the founders.

Our founders, Benjamin Franklin, they were Protestant, they were a mixed bag of religions.

So you know good well they weren't going to get along as far as having a theological debate.

Uh and then the Constitution it says that it is not to establish its own religion.

That's uh let's see that they discuss three major areas of government with respect to religious liberty and church and state relations at the time of the founding religious at the time of the founding religious liberty is a right and must be protected.

The national government should not create an established church and state should have should have them only if they encourage and assist Christianity and religion belongs in the public square.

So it was from the very get-go that like you said, the separation church or state is not mentioned per se, but it is uh kind of said and talked about a little bit implied in the constitution.

And and it's debated, it's debated elsewhere also.

But it's not it's not written in there, and you have to understand why, because the a lot of the people that came here at the beginning were they they didn't have a choice.

They had to, if you study the Puritans and understand them, they didn't have a choice but to do what the government of England wanted them to do.

And it wasn't just England, it was other countries as well.

Talk about the Puritans.

The Puritans went from England, I think it was Denmark or Holland, it went to one of those countries, and they were there for about a decade.

It didn't work out there because they couldn't worship the way they wanted to.

Half of them came back to England, the other half came to America, where the pilgrims had come a decade before them.

And so the the pilgrims welcomed the Puritans, the Puritans, by the way, Paul Revere's father, he also was a Puritan.

There were Puritans in the Boston Tea Party.

Uh, the first person that wrote uh uh an article or a tract about the abolition of to abolish slavery was actually a Puritan in 1700, way before the Declaration of Independence came 76 years later.

But speaking of the Declaration of Independence, I brought this up a few minutes ago.

Thomas Jefferson's original rough draft, he sent four of these out.

One of them landed on the steps of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin took it out, he reads it.

He didn't change much of uh or make many suggestions to change, but here's one he did.

Here is what Thomas Jefferson actually wrote.

He wrote, We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent, that from the equal creation they derive rights inherited and inalienable.

So that's what Thomas Jefferson wrote.

Now, Ben Franklin changed it.

And I, you know, he was a writer.

That's he had a pen name and he he did uh uh his own uh type of magazine at the time.

He changed that.

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable that all men are created equal and independent, to we hold these truths to be self-evident, and I think that's a big difference because you have to understand that what they were doing at that time, they were flipping the bird to England.

And listen to that that self-evident.

You would have to be nuts, you would have to be crazy to not understand that all men are created equal.

It's not sacred and undeniable.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, it's self-evident.

You don't have to look any further than individuals, and that's what the Constitution is written for individuals, which when you go through the last four years that we've gone through with Joe Biden, you you have this intersectionality.

They try to put you in boxes.

That's part of the move to socialism.

They put you in the box of uh gender of LGBTQIA plus plus plus of race.

All of those things are meant to divide us, and they need division in order for their plan to work.

But we need to understand that this constitution is written for individuals, not for groups.

It doesn't.

Work.

And I've said this so many times.

If you look at LGBTQIA plus, there's nothing that a lesbian has in common with a gay man.

Can someone tell me what that is?

A lesbian likes a vagina, uh, gay man likes a penis.

There's nothing in common with them.

So why do they group them together?

Well, they put them together because together they have more power.

But individuals in this country are the ones that hold the power.

The laws that we put in place, which are done by the people and upheld by the judges.

That's how the Constitution is supposed to work.

And it's really a beautiful thing.

And I think it was John, I don't know who mentioned it earlier, that most governments last about 250 years.

There are examples of others that have gone on longer.

If you go back 3,000 3500 years, Babylon was longer, Roman Roman Empire was longer, English Empire was about that, I think.

But we're going to keep going with this space here, taking the pulse of the American people live tonight.

Glad you're here.

Thank you for joining us.

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More truth in minutes on America Out Loud Talk Radio.

As we go through this hour, I guess I should tell you that the names that you hear me calling these people, those are handles on X.

They may have a name sometimes like John there.

Sometimes they are like this next one.

His name is Baba Yaga.

Let's go to Baba.

Go ahead.

And people have forgotten about that, I guess.

And they have to be reminded of that.

But I think that if they don't learn from history, we're just gonna repeat it again.

I think it's kind of simple, don't you think?

I do.

I think that's an excellent comment.

I appreciate that.

I think you're spot on, and that's part of the problem.

We really don't understand history and the nuances of it.

It goes all the way back to the Constitution, but history is the world history as well.

It's important to know all of it.

Look at things like Abraham Lincoln.

I think I talked about this the other night, and the statesmanship that he showed at the end of the civil war is unbelievable.

And we need people like that.

We also need to understand those things and and what happened.

If you don't understand it, then you're easy to repeat it.

Unfortunately, most people just don't care about history.

I happen to like it.

Uh go ahead.

Uh thank you.

Well, my name's Jeremy.

Thank you.

Um I have a question.

Uh, I just learned about a new law that was just passed here in New York on December 18th.

It's called a COPA law.

Um, I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with it, and how do you think it's gonna affect the housing market?

And then eventually the trickle down effect throughout the states as a result.

I'll let Missy uh answer that if she can because that is uh her state.

She is heavily involved in politics up there.

Maybe she has an answer for you.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

It's COPA, COPA.

It was in the New York City.

I don't know if you have any any information on that.

It allows like nonprofit organizations to buy up multifamily apartment buildings.

Um, so pretty much if I had a four-family apartment building or better, and I wanted to sell it, I wouldn't be allowed to sell it to a family member or the public.

I would have to offer it first to the nonprofit organizations or one that qualifies on the COPA to purchase the property before anybody else.

That's what it is.

That's exactly what it is.

You can own up to three units in one building and not do and New York City already has a problem with a lot of people, a lot of landlords that don't even rent their property.

They just let them sit there empty.

This is probably not gonna help that.

Uh, you know, and then if you think about it, like how will it affect the tax exemptions?

Because a lot of 5013 C is not for profit, or I'm sure which everyone that does qualify would most likely have the tax exemptions, like churches and religious organizations and so forth.

Um that how will that affect?

Because now you have property being brought up in New York City being converted into luxury towers.

Yeah.

Residential neighborhoods being converted into you know cities.

Yeah.

Well, the land metropolis the law you're talking about is 902B, and it gives qualified nonprofit and community-based groups the first right of refusal to buy certain multifamily buildings.

You mentioned four up, the number is three.

If you have one that's three, you don't have to do this, you can still sell it privately.

The goal is to help local groups step in before large investors, purchase buildings, keeping homes permanently affordable and stabilizing neighborhoods.

So I guess from their perspective, I'll give it to you from their perspective reading that, is that they are fearful, or maybe what has been happening is large corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard who buy properties, are buying these buildings, they're changing them over to luxury, and the people with less money can't afford them.

So I think this is their idea to prevent that from happening.

And so it's taking it taking it away from a free market.

It's taken away from the free market, which is something that I would like and probably you would like, but that's I think probably what they said.

Look at if you look at people like Bill Gates, for example, pretty much everything he's doing is under the guise of a charity charitable organization.

So we still have a lot to watch out by doing this because in or in all reality, I see this as a major land grab.

So now, if you have people trying to purchase residential property or income property in New York, I mean that's out of the question.

Now, how does it went from 300 to a million to 1.5 to 2 million dollars?

Yeah.

And a regular name.

The house said that you know it's ridiculous.

So now it's like we were competing with Black Rock Vanguard State Groups and all these other corporations because every time you try to buy a piece of property, you're getting outbid by an LLC or somebody, some other entity.

Right.

Not an individual.

So now what's gonna happen when the churches and all these other religious organizations, and not just religious organizations, but organizations under the guise to buy a property.

Yeah, well, let's try.

I mean, I look at upstate New York, for example, where my brother lives, um, property taxes are really high because a lot of the people that own the property in that area are like all religious.

They I'm gonna say they the Jewish communities, you know what I'm saying?

So they have like all these bungalows, like all these camps, and they don't have to pay tax.

So that's why, you know, my brother's tax is so expensive up there.

Uh, you make great points, by the way.

I was just gonna say that people like George Soros and others, thank you.

They they use uh these NGOs to do everything that we've seen the last four years.

We should know that through USAID and what happens.

So I think you you're right to be fearful of what may happen, but I think you're you should be fearful about a lot of what's gonna happen.

Happen in New York.

And I hate to say this.

I am to the point where I just say let it happen.

The people of New York City, they decided for Mam Donnie.

And I, you know, and I don't I don't agree with that.

I'm a New Yorker born and raised, and I didn't I don't think, you know, that's what's happening.

Yeah, let me let me know the transplants voted for him.

New York is really voted for him.

Let me let me finish my thought, and then I'll let you you'll come back at me.

What I'm saying is that it's not my business.

If the people in New York voted for Mam Donnie, let them have him.

One thing I I don't think he's gonna get all everything that he wants uh passed.

I think Hokel's gonna uh probably uh hold up some of the things, but let's just assume for a minute that he gets enough passed to uh really make things tough for New York.

It's happened before.

You know, I I remember being in in New York City in 1978, 79, and it was a mess.

You needed to get the people of New York to need a Rudy Giuliani to get that city back on track, and I think maybe that's where you are right now, and that's the only point I'm making that enough people, regardless of where they came from, they are there now.

They also need to see that the garbage piled up to the second floor uh window uh at apartment buildings is not a good idea because they've lost services because Mam Donny has decided to make transgender tourism part of his policy where he pays for trans surgeries for everybody across the country.

People are gonna this isn't true because you're not the he's not the mayor yet.

Yeah, I know.

I'm just saying in the future.

He's not the mayor yet.

I gotcha.

Yeah, no, I get that.

Yeah, but between COPA and public private partnerships.

I'm just and then what's going what's going on with this uh technocratic uh future that we have, we're looking towards too little, it's a little too robo-copish for me.

Well, yeah, you need to learn about it because it's uh it's not gonna get easier, it's not gonna get better, it's gonna get worse, and unless you understand really what's going on with all of that part of it, then um, which by the way, this Brown University thing.

I I this has been on my mind a little bit.

I don't know what we have come to expect when it comes to cameras in this building.

Does that make a difference?

Do you think that really makes a difference in the the shooting that took place last weekend?

And they solved this in six days.

And whether it's a homeless guy that happened to live in the building that delivered the tip to the authorities to solve it, what does it matter?

It took six days.

Have we come to a point where we think that everybody in law enforcement has to be transparent and that the president of Brown University should know everything and have all the answers.

I think we're demanding too much, and we're not allowing people to do their work.

I think in that investigation, it was done pretty well, really.

I don't know, I don't know how cameras stop that guy from shooting someone.

Somebody needs to explain that to me.

Uh, because that seems to be a story that's coming out of this now.

I don't understand that.

Well, I don't think there's so much, you know, about trying to stop the guy from committing the crime.

They just want to catch the guy for committing the crime because there's a lot of money to be made with criminals.

Well, they caught him.

Well, he he was dead in three days, but they caught they figured it all out in five or six.

And it still took a human being saying this happened, and that tip led to and then that's the way it's always been with law enforcement.

That's the one piece of information that they needed to get to license plate readers, which then brings me to something else.

Everybody's always concerned about, and you brought up the technology.

Everyone's always concerned about what the government may be doing, what they may be doing to spy on you or see.

They can do anything they want to.

If they want you, they can come and get you.

And if you didn't see that from the license plate readers and how they told you where that car was uh after they found out what kind of car to look for, and that's the important thing.

If they know what to look for, they can find you.

Uh the technology is already there.

There's no running from it, there's no hiding from it, there's no stopping it.

If they want to, they can come and get you.

Bob, I'll come back to you.

Go ahead.

Well, no, I just want to say, since you're so interested in history.

Um, see if you can remember this.

I think we need another strong president like Andrew Jackson.

I think that's what we really need.

What do you think?

Well, a lot of people have mixed emotions about Andrew Jackson.

I love Andrew Jackson.

He's one of my favorite.

I used to live within a mile of where his home is.

It's called the Hermitage.

He's an interesting character, if you uh know much about him.

He was uh a lawyer in Nashville, which is where I'm from, and he would tend to go to bars and get into fights, and he was that type of guy.

If you know about his history and in coming through Florida and even in New Orleans as a general, he kind of took things on his own in Florida, and a lot of people didn't care for his actions there.

When it comes to um banking, he probably really changed the the direction of this country.

So I don't know.

I uh Baba when it comes to a president and as divided as we are as a country, and I don't know how this changes.

I would love to see us come together, especially coming up on 250 years.

And I I don't know who that person is.

And when I look at the Democrat Party, uh a name that I've thrown out for months now.

I happen to be on Eric Bowling's show four months ago, and he sprung sprung it on me.

Who do you think uh would be a dark horse for the Democrats?

And you know, Josh Shapiro is one name that comes to mind in Pennsylvania as a governor, but he's short and he's Jewish.

That's probably not gonna happen.

But I look to Kentucky and Andy Bashir, the governor there, and I also have seen what he's been doing recently.

If I'm the DNC, he's the type of guy that I would probably consider because he is more moderate, and they don't they're not gonna win any national elections picking someone from the far left, and maybe someone moderate, regardless of whether it's Republican or Democrat, may do better to you know bring us together in some ways.

And I know a lot of people on the MAGA side, uh, and it's not just MAGA, but it's it's the left as well.

You want it your way or the highway.

That's the big problem we have in this country right now.

We have seemed to have forgotten.

I know John was talking earlier about the founding of the nation and the Federalist papers and other things.

We we seem to have forgotten that debate and differences and talking about them and coming together on a compromise brings solutions, and that is democracy.

And we have forgotten how to do that in 2025, and it's been going on for a while.

You go all the way back to the Connecticut compromise at the beginning of this country, it was a five-four state decision.

Massachusetts was evenly divided at two and two on their vote.

And that what decided how our government would work with the Senate and the House.

So ever since the very beginning, we have been divided.

When it comes to the mainstream media, the very first mainstream media, they were owned by politicians so that they could create a narrative.

None of this is new.

Baba mentioned it earlier.

If we knew history, we would know how to see these things, and I think it's important to see those things.

And Missy, I sent you that other uh affordability post that I did yesterday about uh Yeah, I put I put it up in the nuts.

Okay, did you okay?

Those those are just some visuals on really what Joe Biden did because when it comes to the affordability that we were talking about earlier, and they're trying to put it on Trump, you haven't lowered prices, and again, I talked about it earlier.

You don't want prices really to come down uh that much because that would take deflation of 20% to get the prices back down.

If you had 20% deflation, we would be in a depression, and that's not good for any of us.

What you want is wage growth with low inflation, and that becomes makes things more affordable.

Susie is here from the Pacific Northwest.

Susie, go ahead.

One thing that I saw today.

Uh apparently this whole thing with Brown University.

Oh, it wasn't locked because we don't lock it during finals.

Well, apparently the buildings are locked.

And then we also have information.

You know, I don't know if that's true, but this was for a brown student being interviewed on Fox.

So none of them are locked.

So I found that interesting.

Um that certainly would be a deterrent.

Hello.

I mean, I don't know.

I I don't know.

I just don't know, Susie, how big a deal it is.

I I really don't know.

It's been a long time since I've been on a university campus going to classes.

And everything is locked.

Everything is locked.

Even even class, class buildings are locked.

Yeah.

During the day during classes.

The reason why I ask is because I I would have a I and I'm going back 40 years when when I was in college.

With the thousands of kids moving in and out of buildings, you go from one building to another building depending on what classes you're going to.

It seems like it would be really difficult to keep them locked and not allow other people because you have you know hundreds and hundreds of people at one time moving into buildings.

That's the only thing I think of.

But go ahead.

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

No, that's all.

What else?

What else do we want to talk about?

We had uh a Syrian strike uh talked about this Wednesday night on the program that it was coming this week.

Uh that was when Lieutenant Colonel Darren Gobb was my guest.

Here is Jennifer Griffin from Fox News.

She put this report out on Friday night.

The U.S.

military has struck more than 50 ISIS targets in the past two hours following the president's order to quote hit them hard after the killing of three Americans Saturday, two members of the Iowa National.

Guard and their civilian translator by a member of the Syrian security forces.

U.S.

Central Command launched a massive strike on dozens of ISIS targets in an operation called Operation Hawkeye Strike.

Iowa is the Hawkeye State.

The strikes took place at multiple locations across Syria.

The targets include ISIS infrastructure and weapons storage sites.

Pentagon Chief Pete Heggseth tweeted, quote, this is not the beginning of a war.

It is a declaration of vengeance.

The United States of America under President Trump's leadership will never hesitate and never relent to defend our people.

Sergeant William Nate Howard, 29 of Marshalltown, and Sergeant Edgar Torres Tovar, 25 of Des Moines, and their civilian interpreter, Ayad Mansoor Sakat of Michigan, returned home in a dignified transfer Wednesday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where they were met by the president.

The December 13th attack, which took place while a senior U.S.

military commander was meeting his Syrian counterparts near Palmyra in Central Syria afterwards Syrian security forces helped carry out 10 partnered operations across Syria that led to the death we're told or detainment of more than two dozen ISIS affiliated individuals.

The U.S.

provided support during those raids.

Those raids, Brett, led to the confiscation of electronics and individual interviews that resulted in the intelligence used for this operation to locate potential targets.

A St.com review is ongoing into the exact affiliation of the Syrian gunmen who joined the security forces just two months before.

The gunman was in the process, Brett, of being removed from the Syrian military for suspected jihadist ties.

Okay, so this guy was a jihadist, and he was just there for a couple of months.

He turned his gun on our troops and killed them.

Why are our troops still there?

The number has come down from 1,500 to 900 since June, making headway, but we probably don't need any boots on the ground there anymore.

And I I just found it interesting that this guy had already been identified as someone that uh shouldn't be there in the Syrian army, but he was, and he turned the gun on our guys, as we started the hour tonight in this space.

We were talking about affordability, and we've kind of bounced all over the place.

Let's see if we can get this back on the tracks right now.

Let's go to Jimmy and let's see if we can have a conversation about affordability.

Jimmy, the floor is yours, sir.

When people talk of affordability, are they really asking us to talk about price decreases?

They want the prices to go down so that people who make less money can buy more.

Is that really what people are talking about?

Because historically in America, we were never of a socialistic mindset.

People who had less money were told to make more money.

Right, good business go to work with this.

Yeah, no, I I get what you're saying, and I don't necessarily disagree with you.

So I don't feel like you're pushing back.

I think the affordability issue is being manufactured.

I think that that's what's being used in the 26 midterm.

What I was saying earlier, I don't know if you were here, but it's a combination of lower inflation with higher wage growth.

And you know, you can argue about tariffs and things like that, and we're waiting for uh the Supreme Court and the decision on IEPA.

However, even if they come back and say Trump can't use that for tariffs, there are other things, all the way back to 1973 and 74 that Congress has already said the executive branch can use, but I don't want to get sidetracked.

I want to get back to wage growth being up 5.7%, inflation at 2.7%.

We had one quarter in 16 quarters of Joe Biden's presidency, that there was actually wage growth higher than inflation.

And here we have 5.7% wage growth.

And that and that's what you want.

And I think that also gets to your point, Jimmy, that if there is wage growth and there is motivation for people to actually go back to work, which is something else that you're seeing here in the unemployment rate being a little bit higher.

Unemployment rate was a little bit higher.

Federal jobs are being cut.

That was the number one sector of job creation under Joe Biden.

He added millions of jobs.

Well, you take that away.

And then another thing that increases unemployment rate is people actually coming back into the workforce.

You have to look at that workforce participation number more than just unemployment.

If the number is going up, then that's a good thing because people are getting off the couch.

Maybe they're motivated to get back off the couch because they're making more money.

Yeah, go ahead.

We all know that baby boomers are relatively wealthy, and that uh, you know, they have to send money down, right?

At some point.

In addition, we all know that there's a lot of government workers who are double-dipping pensions.

And so what I really am asking is when I talk to my friends and they talk about this affordability issue.

I sometimes what they I sometimes think what they're really saying is I cannot buy as many things as those people who are working government jobs like that.

Fire woman in San Francisco who's retiring at a half million dollar pension.

And so really they're a bit jealous.

Or I know my parents who worked their entire lives who are getting social security plus pension plus their investment income.

Dividends, plus their actual whatever they're doing on the side still, because they're still alive.

And I'm still unable to buy as much as them.

I'm just thinking to myself, so they're richer than they were before, and they're more successful than they were before.

And other places can afford to pay these pensions out to people who are like 60 years old, and you're upset that you're 35, and people who are older than you have more than you.

It's because you want more now so that you could spend it because you think they're gonna die soon, and you're not, right?

And they're like, no, no, no.

But really, that's what they're thinking.

I think, I mean, that's my opinion on this is.

It's generational jealousy.

It was generational jealousy actually something that's like a real issue, or is it just whining is my question to you.

Uh, let me ask, how old are you, Jimmy?

32.

Here's the here's the thing.

When you look at me, I'm I'm gonna be 60 here in a month.

Let me go back to my grandparents.

They bought a house right after World War II, and they paid $16,000 for that house.

My grandfather died in 1969.

My grandmother stayed in that house.

It was paid for.

She stayed in it until 97 when we had to move her into a condo.

She couldn't have the bigger house anymore, going up and downstairs and things like that.

So 16,000 to 297 over 50 years.

That's how much that house appreciated.

Now, I bought my first house in 1993.

I paid 54,000 for it.

I sold it for 93 in about three years.

Now, look at a house now, and how much it's appreciated over the last, okay.

I'll give you the last house that I bought in Nashville, Tennessee, paid 197,000 for it.

Right now on Zillow, it's a million.

I bought that house in 99.

99 or 97.

So I think it was 99.

So how many years is that?

30 years, and it's gone up ten times.

And I think that's part of the problem.

I I I don't necessarily know that or think, and I don't I think it's a good thought.

The generation question about that, though.

Yeah, let me finish real quick.

Let me finish, Jimmy, and I'll come back to you.

I don't know if it's jealousy.

And I I get what you're saying.

I really do, and I think it's a great point.

I've really never thought about it.

I'm just thinking off the cuff here.

The problem is people in my generation, unlike I I've never worked for a pension.

And uh, you also mentioned the government jobs.

This is something else that I'm frustrated about, too, because in my lifetime, I have witnessed where a government job is not something you aspire to.

You go to it because it had good benefits, but you didn't get paid as much as I did in the private sector.

However, that did flip somewhere along the way.

I'm not sure where that flipped, but now people in government and around government are making so much more money than most of us in private sector, and I think some of us are kind of pissed off about it, actually.

But I'll come back to you.

Go ahead.

So I respect what you're saying.

I would say when I hear these things from friends of mine, and I do talk to older people too.

The houses that appreciate it's because you made that area a better place.

You made that place better because the property tax you paid went into things local services that make people want to move there.

Right?

Yeah, great.

When I hear and I hear about people complaining about a house that goes up 10x over 40 years.

The population of the United States has gone up 3x in 40 years.

Okay, but the places that people want to move to, those places are really desirable.

Because they're safer, the schools are better, and everyone in the world wants to move there.

Yeah, so we are a place where you know.

I know, for example, let's talk about I don't know.

Are you from Illinois or something like that?

Could talk about some towns.

Uh let's say Illinois, right?

Northbrook, Illinois.

God, it was something else 40 years ago.

Now it's suburbia.

And everyone wants to move here because it's basically around all these corporate headquarters.

Those places didn't exist.

20, 30 years ago.

It kind of built up.

So the houses which people bought for a hundred thousand in nineteen ninety-nine, they're worth like a million point two, a million point five.

And I just think, well, is this a bad thing?

So my question to you is You made it a better place.

I thank you for doing that.

Do we want to have a price control that changes this dynamic?

Because you know, if you make the prices of houses frozen, that means that eventually those services which are paid into it that leads to price appreciation, those services go away.

They reduce in value over time.

By making the prices go up in value, crappie taxes go up in value too.

The services get better, right?

And that's usually what happens.

As for the government jobs thing, I don't know anything about that stuff.

I'm I'm with you.

I I mean you're speaking my language.

I am with you 100% on really everything that you just said about that.

Because uh, you know, you look at disrespecting the generations, man.

You did all the stuff.

So you're paying into it now if I want to buy a house.

Thank you for doing that.

But they're not aware of this, man.

They're just saying it's just came out of nowhere, it just grew out of the ground.

Well, a lot of it has to do with uh entitlement.

I have a little bit of different opinion on millennials and generations after them than a lot of people my age.

I happen to have a bunch of nephews that are your age, actually.

A lot of them are getting married right now.

I have I think nine of them total, and they're uh ages from 19 up to ask me.

Uh, thank you.

But they're all good people, you know, and they're they're motivated differently than my generation was, and I appreciate that about them.

I have one that spent uh two years in the streets of Portland, Oregon, as a um some as a uh minister, and then he went to Senegal, West Africa for two years after that.

He's motivated by that.

I had another one that was motivated to uh he's a civil engineer, he went into the army, he served in Afghanistan.

They're not motivated like my generation was for BMWs and and things like that.

They're they're motivated by what makes them feel good.

And uh and I I think that's a little bit different than uh generations previous, and I think you have to find out what motivates them.

And if you find out what motivates them, then you can get them to really be good.

And I I don't think older people take enough time to listen and and figure out how to get them an individual motivated to do something.

Well, that's a whole different story.

You know, that's that comes in from entitlement in the way that they were raised, and that's a whole other issue altogether.

Uh, getting back to what you were talking about with property, you know, you can look at a homeowners association for those of us that have HOAs, we hate them and we love them.

But this is exactly what you're talking about.

An HOA preserves your property value.

And in the same way, and this gets back to something Missy was talking about earlier about local government.

You can drive, when you drive, you can see sometimes you go into an area that'll have a single-wide trailer next to a really you see this a lot in Florida.

Uh, next to a uh five million dollar house.

It makes no sense.

Well, that five million dollar house in 20 years is probably gonna be five million dollars.

If you put it in a community that protects the development and has requirements in legislation, then that five million dollar house becomes a thirty million dollar house, just as an example.

Who knows?

But that's sort of the point you're making is and that that comes back to what Missy was talking about.

That comes back to us and getting involved locally in government.

I would suggest to the people that are your age that if you want change, then you need to change the government.

That's the only way you can really make change.

Unfortunately, a lot of their ideologies are not like yours.

And affordability, coming back to that and what you talked about.

I mean, look at credit card debt right now.

You know, that's why I would argue that not only is affordability uh not just manufactured, it's something that are affecting people at their kitchen tables for a lot of Americans.

Uh what is it, forty-two percent of Americans don't even pay income tax now.

Uh so many Americans look for government to solve their problems, which is uh I think what you're getting at, uh the younger generation is looking for government to put mandates on pricing, and I don't want that, and not even close to that.

But I what I want is opportunity and hope.

I want motivation for a younger generation to see that they can accomplish what has been accomplished before them, have respect for what this great country is for its laws, and I in some ways am missing seeing that.

I don't know if it exists or not.

Can you help me out with that?

You know, I I do hear these concerns when people talk about why private equity is buying homes, and I tell them it's because private equity can actually manage a lot of homes better than small families who own a couple units.

But when it comes to um, you know, the food crisis and so forth.

Man, I gotta come down to this wisdom.

I understand that you think us young people want you want us to run things.

I want to be honest.

I didn't say that.

I don't think I didn't say wait a minute.

Yeah, no, I didn't say I want you to run things, I want you to be involved in things.

There's a difference.

I think um wisdom is important and experience.

And I think that in order to have any important position that is in government, you should have a minimum age of about 45, 850, because things are a lot more complex than they used to be.

That may be the most profound thing that is said here in this hour, and uh that's great to hear from a young American, 32 years old there.

We have gone through a journey this hour of uh a space on X.

It's been great to have you, and thank you for your patience with me in my cold or flu or whatever I have had over the last week.

I'm back in the saddle now, feeling better, but my voice hopefully will come back a little bit tomorrow night as we do another space again tomorrow night to get a pulse of the people during this Christmas week.

We're doing things a little bit different.

I hope you enjoy it.

I hope you enjoyed this hour.

My name is Booker Scott.

Thank you for being the best part of America out loud, and don't you forget you were told two thousand years ago that you are the salt of the earth, and salt without flavor, it has no value.

So whatever you do, keep being salty.

Have a great night.

There is only one truth.

You've been listening to The Truth Be Told with Booker Scott on America Out Loud.