Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.

Grab a stole next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review.

Free Martini's coming up.

Hey, so glad you're with us for the Friday edition of The Three Martini Lunch.

It's been another long, strange week, but we've made it together.

And today we've got no shortage of strange stories, from a special house race in Tennessee to the back and forth between senators urging military members not to obey Trump's legal orders to Trump accusing them of sedition.

And then we're going to be taking a look at how massive fraud has been happening in various welfare programs in the state of Minnesota.

And you will certainly not be pleased with where that money seems to be ending up as it gets stolen.

So, Jim, I know you're excited to dig into all of these, but which one's got you most, priest?

This is you know, It's like there are some times like tgif I don't want to talk about these topics, I want to talk about all these topics.

They are all eye poppingly outrageous in their own way.

Listeners will know there's always a fine line between bad and crazy, Yes, but I don't even think the good is kind of crazy too.

This is a all crazy aftertaste edition of our martinis, no question.

So buckle up.

Here we go and we'll get to all of that in just a second.

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All right, Jim, as our listeners well know, elections earlier this month did not go great for the Republicans in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City.

I mean all of those were tilted against us, but they certainly were more lopsided than we would have.

Liked to see.

But now we've got next up on the docket, the Tennessee seventh Congressional District special election.

That is because Mark Green just decided to resign in the middle of the term and now we've got a special election.

And so the matchup here is Republican candidate Matt Van Epps and Afton Baine is the Democrat.

She is a state legislator.

Polling has Matt Van Epps ahead likely Republicans, the Cook Political Report rating on this, but you never know what turned out.

It's going to be in a special election.

So Democrats are pumping a ton of money in here trying to get Afton Bane over the finish line and score and upset win in Tennessee seven.

And so things are not looking great for Afton Baine right now because she's playing defense.

And that's because a clip from a podcast she did several years ago has come out where she, who is running to represent part of Nashville mind you, says she hates Nashville.

Well, she also represents Nashville State Legislature.

So here's that clip from a few years ago.

He's been heavily involved with the Nashville mayoral race because I hate the city.

I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the penal taverns, I hate country music, I hate all of the things that make Nashville.

Fairly, it makes city to the rest of the country, but I hate it.

Yeah, I'm not that girl at the airport that all these bachelorettes are giddy walking out there, and they're two toned colored pant tone pink shirts and they walk out and I'm like, oh, we got Nashville so loud.

Ah.

The disdain is palpable.

And so now she's accusing the Republicans of launching this scurless attack on her, claiming she hates Nashville.

Where would Republicans ever have gotten this from.

Here's what she's saying.

Now, So I look a little rough.

I have bags under my eyes because the Republican I have saw has finally shifted towards wah And I'm sure you've seen the commercials.

I'm sure you've seen the onslaught of ads.

And then today the Republicans decided that they're going to start this narrative that me the state representative who represents downtown Nashville, doesn't like the city.

Now.

I always want Nashville to be better, right, I want Nashville to be a place where working people can thrive.

Right.

But sure I get mad at the bachelorette Sometimes I get mad at the pedal taverns.

Right, Ben, you're talking to someone who has cried no less than ten times in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

The girl that just goes to the rhyman to hang out.

I don't know how much of a difference this is gonna make, Jim, But I know people who live in the Nashville area and they also hate the influx of bachelorettes and the pedal taverns.

But saying you hate country music in Nashville is like running for office in Wisconsin and saying you hate the packers.

So it's not gonna go.

Well.

I'm in western Pennsylvania and I hate Cole.

I represent New York City and I hate skyscrapers.

I'm in California and I hate natural disasters.

You know, like these, these are what these places are known for.

Right, By the way, it's not true that Republicans are saying that she doesn't like the city they're saying she hates the city because they're quoting her.

The person who makes who is the source of this accusation is you look at the mirror.

I learned it from watching you as the eighties anti drug commercial set, and like, look, there are two places, kinds of places in America and in this world.

There are the kinds of you know, I'm thinking here in Washington, d C.

The area where my parents live near hiltonhet Island.

There are places where the locals hate tourists.

And then the other kind of places, places no one visits.

These are your options.

There is not an option where you have just precisely the right number of tourists that there's never a parking issue, there's never a traffic issue, the bars or restaurants are never crowded like you have.

These are your options.

You can have the kind of community that nobody wants to visit, and there are a whole bunch of places in America that are like that, and people there are generally miserable.

The economies are not great, right.

Or you can have a place like Nashville where people come and visit.

Yes, lots of people have their bachelorette parties, the one time I was there, it was the NA Convention.

I had a great time.

Nashville.

You're beautiful, You're wonderful.

Don't ever change.

That's my perspective.

I would also not vote for a mayor that hates the place.

I would not vote for a mayor that hates the country music.

She could have like, she could have tried to play this off as a laugh and I said, yeah, you know, I kind of went a little too far there, But aren't we kind of annoyed by the bachelorette parties or something?

And she she kind of goes in that direction, but she still acts like Republicans are making this terrible unfair attack by quoting her.

Like the person you have to blame is yourself.

This is not a journey trick.

This is not you know, country music vets for truth.

This is not some sort of really unfair like.

No, this is quoting you.

And you you were aware the microphone was on, right, You're on the podcast, everyone around you is laughing with you.

You really, you know, she could say, oh, I love this place.

I was just joking about it, and you know that's my Andy Rooney impression.

Or do you ever notice bachelorette parties in Nashville.

Notice the pedaling bars.

You all know you're not burning enough calories for all the beer.

You're like, she could have done that, but she did so Nashville the choice.

He is pretty clear the Republican Guess what.

He does not hate the city.

He does not hate the country music, and he does not hate the and all those tourists like you had to caneal annoying or loud, but like they're spending money there, right, you kind of want that to happen to support all these jobs and all these businesses.

Ah, those terrible tourists.

Most Republicans support a war on tourism, as George W.

Bush would say, Democrats believe a war on tourism.

That's true, especially there and during COVID, Yeah, the war on terras, as George W.

Bush used to say, Why does he hate girls named Tara?

This district stretches from downtown Nashville all the way to the Alabama border.

So it's one of these districts that the Republicans, you know, kind of carved out to lean Republican for sure.

So hopefully that's still the case when this vote happens.

But after bay Man, you only got yourself to blame for getting yourself into this mess.

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All right, Jim our bad Martini stems over the last two three days now.

This all started a couple of days ago when a couple members of the Senate and a couple members of the House put out this vague video encouraging members of the military to disobey illegal orders from the president.

I'm Senator Alissa Stockin, Senator Mark Kelly, Representative christ Luzios Congressman Maggie Goodlanyard Representative Chrissy Hulahan, Congressman Jason Crowe.

I was a captain in the United States.

Navy, former CIA officer, former Navy, former paratrooper and Army ranger, former intelligence officer.

Former Air Force.

We want to speak directly to members of the military.

And the intelligence community to take risks each day to keep Americans safe.

We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now.

Americans trust their military, but that trust.

Is at risk.

This administration is pitting our uniform military.

And intelligence community professionals against American citizens.

Like us.

You all swore an oath to protect and defend this constitution.

Right now, the threats to our constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.

Our laws are clear.

You can refuse illegal orders.

You can refuse illegal orders.

You must refuse illegal orders.

No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.

We know this is hard.

It's a difficult time to be a public servant.

But whether you're serving in the CIA, the Army, or Navy the Air Force.

Your vigilance is critical.

And know that we have your back because now more than ever, the American people need you.

We need you to stand up for our laws, our constitution, and who we are as Americans.

Don't give up.

Don't give up, don't give up, don't give up the ship.

So what are they talking about the only indication there was pitting the military against American citizens?

Does that mean calling in the National Guard to break up anti ice riots or so forth.

So Jason Crow, who was there and as a former Army ranger, went on with Martha McCallum on the Fox News channel and here's that encounter.

So when you see this video on all over the place, when you see this video on social media, I think a lot of people scratch their heads and they say, what exactly are they talking about?

Are they talking about not allowing gunboats to make it to the United States carrying drugs?

Is I mean, is that what you're talking about?

Martha, here's a novel idea.

How about we act actually prevent things from happening before they become a problem.

I think that's what they're trying to do.

Sure know what you're saying.

What you're saying is we have to wait until there's a problem to respond to that problem.

No I'm not right.

As a military officer, what I think is important is we train people, we give them information, We prepare people for challenges coming down the pike.

That is what I did as a commander in the military.

That's what I'm doing now as we are standing by our troops, we are reminding.

Them of their obligation from the commander.

And she.

Sing you are military to carry out are you objecting to?

This is very, very vague, and it was so vague in this video nobody only people could figure out what you guys were all talking about.

Honestly, Yeah, wow, She's not alone.

And so Trump, of course, pouring gasoline on the fire like he usually does true social he says, it's called seditious behavior at the highest level.

Each one of these traders to our country should be arrested and put on trial.

Their words cannot be allowed to stand.

We won't have a country anymore.

An example must be sets in DJT and then in another one seditious behavior comma punishable by death.

And so that now has several of these figures jumping back on social media and saying, look, this is exactly what we warned against.

This guy's out of control.

We have to, we have to stop them.

And so the Democrats, you know, are kind of wish casting or nightmare casting, I guess in this situation, and Trump's kind of given what they want to let them be the victim status here.

So Greg, I have a feeling this is one of those episodes gonna run a little long and live down to one of Mike cliches.

There's a lot to unpack here.

This is a double barreled bad Martini.

First of all, for listeners who listened to that first audio by the Democratic lawmakers, just in case they didn't enunciate they said, don't give up the ship with a pee, you might be thinking they're doing something different with the messaging that they're doing here.

Look, if you want to accuse the president of the United States, first of all, and unlawful order has a particular definition to it, right it is, you know, must violate the law, must violate the country.

An order does not become unlawful by being controversial.

Order does not become you know, lots of people object to it.

That does not necessarily make it unlawful.

Not everything that is bad or objectionable is unconstitutional, and vice versa.

So you have this situation where they put out this message there.

I think if you're going to put out a video telling members of the US military that they must refuse illegal orders, it is more than reasonable to say, Okay, what do you have in mind?

What has he issued that strikes you as an unlawful order?

Or what do you think he is going to or about to issue that is going to be unlawful order?

What is illegal here?

And they did not do that.

I'm glad you played a significant chunk of the interview with McCallum.

If we played the whole interview like this podcast would be even longer.

But I think that he does come up with three different examples, none of which strike me as particularly persuasive.

I lay it all out in today's Morning Jolt One.

He said, you know, Trump saying in his first term, can't you just shoot them in the legs or something?

Now, this was apparently happening during the George Floyd protests.

In this you know form of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that Trump said this, this is bad.

The president should not be speculating about shooting protesters in the legs.

But that was not in order, and that did not come to pass.

And it's more than five years ago.

Congressman Crow, what do you have in mind?

So you know regarding this that he says number two, he is also threatening to send the military into Chicago and other cities to go to war with those cities.

That is a very disturbing thing now, with this one easily somewhere more recent.

But his example that he's citing is a truth social post by the president, which is a meme of himself as Colonel Bill Kilgore from Apocalypse Now saying Chicago is about to find out why it's called the Department of War.

This is an AI generated image.

This is bad, This is dumb.

The president of the United States should not be doing this.

But the very next day Trump gets asked about it, and he says, We're not going to war.

We're going to clean up our cities.

We're going to clean them up so they don't kill five people every weekend.

That's not war.

That's common sense.

Even Donald Trump realizes that saying I am going to war with the city of Chicago is a bad thing.

Right.

I don't like how Trump frosted the mouth hyperbolically on social media, but that is not on lawful order.

True social AI generated images are not orders to the military.

Then the third example is probably his weakest one, where he says Crowe says quote number three.

He has also alluded to sending troops to polling stations, which is a violation of US law.

US criminal law prohibits troops from going to polling stations.

He has alluded to that this is just one of many examples.

Greg I think of myself as being a pretty good researcher, not just Google searches and all kinds.

I went looking around for where Trump had said I'm going to send military troops into polling stations.

I have not been able to find that so far.

I think Crow is misremembering an interview with Hannity back into August twenty twenty where he said, we're going to have sheriffs and we're going to have law enforcement, and we're going to have hopefully US attorneys, and we're going to have everybody in attorney generals at polling places.

Now that's bad or that's actually know not there, but the end that's not military.

So this is again examples more than five years ago, not military did not come to pass.

He's over three he has not come up with anything that strikes me as an unlawful order either has been issued or is expected to be issued in the near future.

So McCallum, good for her for giving him grief about this.

I think it was very snippy, and I think if you're gonna make this kind of charge against the president, you should really be prepared for the question, well, what do you have in mind?

What specifics are you pointing to as unlawful orders?

Now, as you alluded to Trump and you know, spreading gasoline, we kind of for those wondering, Oh, he means the Venezuela stuff, she asked him, and he specifically said, we are not talking about Venezuela at all in this issue.

We never mentioned it once.

He says, since you raised it, I'm deeply concerned.

But apparently in his mind, this video is not about the Venezuela stuff.

By the way, I have problems with our venezuela policy and blowing up these boats, but I do not think they're necessarily unlawful orders.

I have not seen an argument indicating the president does not have this authority.

I can dispute the wisdom of doing this or whether it's going to get us where we want to go.

But I don't actually think this is, you know, a violation of the Constitution.

Naturally Trump.

They've set the trap for Trump, and he's stepped directly into the bear trap as hard as he can because he's going to show him by calling first sedicious behavior punishable by death right.

I think it's now safe to say we've Trump has been in our lives for a long time.

We've seen him off first on Twitter and now on truth social He's a rage ahollick.

When something does not go his way, he just vents his spleen in the most angry, furious way possible.

It's probably not very unhealthy.

But here's the thing, Greg, If he asked me, what's the biggest thing that happened in twenty twenty five, we could point to the elections, we could point to bombing the Iranian nuclear A lot of big things happen, but I think a really big consequential one was the assassination of Charlie Kirk and a whole bunch of us afterwards, like, Wow, this has gotten completely out of control.

There's way too much political violence in America.

At minimum, we should stop calling for the deaths of our political opponents.

That that doesn't seem like an unreasonable expectation.

I'll let you decide whether there are plenty of horrible people out there who just say, celebrated Charlie Kirk's death.

Generally not lawmakers, generally democratic lawmakers had a good sense to not put that out there.

But there are a whole bunch of activists and ordinary Americans who are like, Yay, somebody I don't like got killed.

But here's the president saying that because he doesn't like this video that they put out, which there's good reason to object to, he has decided that they are winning sedition and should be you know, arrested, put on trial, and put to death.

Leave it to Trump to do it, I'll like again, Carl Rove has a column where he said, you know, Trump is getting better as he's more time to spend in an office.

I don't think I buy into that.

I think this is a once again an entirely self inflicted wound on the president someone.

You know, the old joke is somebody needs to take away his phone and all that stuff.

It just it does.

There's nothing good about this.

And in a world where we have you know, people taking shots at Charlie Kirk.

In a world we have political violence everywhere, the president saying my opponent should be executed is really not good on a multitude of levels.

I wish you would stop it.

Clearly he's not going to stop it, and I think it's just something we have to live with for the remainder of his presidency.

Who knows if this will still be a story going forward.

But the Democrats get there, their grievances aired again as a result of this, so being the victim is the thing they love the most, and they get another chance to do that.

So all right, Well, anyway, while that fight's going on, there's also a fight to make sure that you have enough money to make ends meet and hopefully put a little bit away in savings so you have something after you retire.

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All right, Jim onto our crazy Martini now.

And this is a long story.

If you want to read the whole story, go to City Journal.

It's written by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Ruffo, and it's basically focusing on how welfare programs in Minnesota the costs have absolutely spiraled out of control and the lot of the money is actually ending up in the hands of terrorists.

Yeah, you heard that right, So this is part of it.

If you were to design a welfare program to facilitate fraud, it would probably look a lot like Minnesota's Medicaid Housing Stabilization Services program.

It was originally put it a price tag annually of two point six million dollars, but those costs quickly spiraled out of control.

In twenty twenty one, the program paid out more than twenty one million dollars in claims and it just started the year before that.

In the following years, annual cost shot up to forty two million, seventy four million, then one hundred and four million, and during the first six months of this year, payouts totaled sixty one million dollars.

On August first, Minnesota's Department of Human Services moved to scrap the program, noting that payment to seventy seven housing stabilization providers had been terminated this year due to credible allegations of fraud.

Meanwhile, in September, the same day that the HSS fraud charges were announced, the US Attorney's Office reported that they had charged the fifty sixth defendant to plead guilty in a two hundred and fifty million dollar Feeding our Future fraud scheme that started out at a three point four million dollar in take from the federal government, but by twenty twenty one, just two years after it started, two hundred million dollars in funding was coming in.

And then there's the autism medicaid program that you just mentioned, Jim.

It started out as a three million dollar program in twenty eighteen, jumped up to fifty four million the next year, seventy seven million, one hundred and eighty three million, two hundred and seventy nine million, three hundred ninety nine million in twenty twenty three.

And so the question is where's all this money going?

And they say, our investigation reveals for the first time that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination, the al Qaeda linked Islamic terror group Al Shabab.

According to multiple law enforcement sources, Minnesota Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of hualas, which are informal clan based money traders that have wound up in the coffers of al Shabab.

The Somalis are apparently fleecing this autism medicaid program because right now, one in sixteen Somali four year olds in the state are supposedly diagnosed with aptism, a rate more than triple this eight average, And so jim As the Stark quoted towards the beginning of the article says, the number one funder of al Shabab and terrorism in Somalia is the Minnesota taxpayer.

Well, look, I I'm thinking back to George W.

Bush and his statement that if you feed a terrorist, we will treat you like a terrorist.

If you fund a terrorist, we will treat you like a terrorist.

Minnesota taxpayers, I'm sorry you have been funding terrorism for quite some time, and it's time for us to come after you.

I say that a little bit tongue in cheek, but clone the Minnesota state government is, you know, the one who is ultimately responsible here and has been absolutely asleep at the wheel, not just on one fund scandal, on several financial scandals.

I'm looking back to July twenty ninth two, only twenty four more than a year ago, where the first inkling of Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota being Kamala Harris's running mate, had kind of bubbled up through the media ecosystem.

And I will put myself down as somebody who's an absolute skeptic of that ever happening headlined Harris VP shortlifter comes loaded with baggage, and I walked through all of these giant state funding mismanagement and fraud scandals that were known at that time.

As you're laying out today, it's gotten much worse that it all happened on Tim Wallas's watch, And it was one of those questions of like why you know there's good news that there is.

The legislature has some a position called the State Legislative Auditor whose job is to go through all the states spending and figure out where the money is going.

Judy Randall's the person at the time, and she's been busy.

She's met a lot of work to do because load it's not just one program, and it's not just small like every state's going to say, Okay, you're gonna have some waste and mismanagement and fraud and abuse.

We're talking about one of these, like a quarter of a billion dollars.

These the largest scale fraud problems we've seen in the state government in a long long time, maybe ever, probably ever.

So the question is why does this keep happening?

Right, and for what it's worth, Miss Randall actually did go through this and basically says that, look, quote, state agencies don't necessarily approach their work with an oversight and a regulatory mindset.

They talk about working with their beneficiaries, they basically don't have any incentive to and don't feel any sense of like, well, why should we you know, perhaps we shouldn't trust everyone who comes to us looking for money.

All right, I hear this, and I feel one degree of outrage and one degree of regret that I did not know about this sooner and apply for grants from the statement.

So because apparently they're not checking anything, we could have had a state funded podcast for a long time, Greg and basically they just had it out.

What's the meme from the little rascals of just throwing the money out the window.

That's what they're doing.

They are dropping money from helicopters like it's turkeys on WKRP.

That's the you know, that's what's it worked there, And I just it is absolutely baffling.

So the other thing is that, you know, one other kind of stray thought next to this, Peggy Newan and columnists with Wall Street Journal.

Somebody who I admire a great deal wrote a column last week after reading the Kamala Harris memoir and John Fetterman's memoir, and she came away with it with the question, like, what do non leftists, the non AOC, non mom dommie Democrats, what do they stand for?

What is we know what the hard left of the party wants to do to the country, destroy it up, turn everything, go, socialists go.

But if you're not one of them, Let's say you're a Democrat and you don't buy into that, what do you stand for?

And I'm a corner post to that where I kind of walk through what mainstream democrats and there are the distinctions are starting to be so small that they're kind of meaningless.

You may recognize the you know, okay, we have to enforce the immigration laws.

Yeah, House Democrats have no enthusiasm for enforcing immigration laws.

Right.

They may begrudgingly concede that we have to do it, but they greet that task the way the most of us greet going to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Right.

So when you look at Tim Walls, I don't know whether you think him as a hard left progressive or as a centrist.

I'm sure he would insist that he's mainstream.

But they don't really believe in paying attention to government.

They run the government, but they don't really believe in paying attention to make sure is the money going where it's supposed to be going.

Otherwise we would not be having a lot of Minnesota tax paramney going to terrorist groups.

That seems like a really low bar that are you make sure that your state funding is not going to islam As terrorist groups?

And in the state of Minnesota, they can't do it because I think in the end, to be a mainstream Democrat you just have to have this kind of unfailing faith in government as being good, and I suspect on some level they're afraid to look too closely because that might shatter their faith in the goodness of government.

So they just get laws a about it and talk about you know, tampons and bathrooms and stuff.

Like that, like these happy social issues rather than looking at the other actual job, which is running state governments.

They have good intentions Jim's, and that's all that really matters.

The details, well, we'll figure out later.

And that's why I'm pretty.

Sure Al Shabab, by the way does not have tampons in his bathroom.

Pretymoy.

Yes.

And they were saying on this pace that one point seven billion dollars got sent back from the US to Somalia, which is bigger than Somalia's annual budget.

So that's not good.

That's really not good.

Should talk to AID Greig.

What are they gonna do?

Sheetz.

Anyway, we finally reached the weekend.

Jim enjoy, I'll see you on Monday.

See you Monday, Greg, Jim Garretty, National Review.

I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America.

Thanks so much for being with us today.

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