Focus with Paul W. Smith ~ March 5, 2026 ~ Full Show

0:00Well, it's great to sit in for Paul W again and great to be with all of you today. And here joined with the team, the team, the team is Paul W likes to say is our producer, the very special and one and only Mike Parsons. Wow. Thanks, rock. You're welcome. I'm hyped up today. And of course, watching the board and making sure that we are on time with everything is our very own engineer Danielle Mason's. I'm here, but I prefer Queen of the Switches. That's right. That's well, that's what Paul W calls you. Well, everyone's going to start calling me that. Okay. That's my thing. Okay. I want to make sure it's consequences. I know kidding. I want to make sure that the program runs on time and everything's perfect today. So thank you very much, Queen of the Switches. Danielle's my hired muscle. She intimidates people so I can be the good guy. She really, really does. But you know, we've got a great jam pack show today. And before we get into the show, I'm not sure if you saw this breaking news.

1:00Mike and Danielle, but the Iranians are at it again. You know, yesterday, the news broke that Iran actually had a boat, a ship, a naval ship called the Soleimani. That was near Sri Lankan waters in international territory. And we sunk that ship, kind of like battleship. We sunk it to the bottom of the Arabian Sea and or the Indian Ocean, excuse me. And now we're hearing news and this is breaking through the independent, which seems to be a British newspaper, British contact press is basically reporting that a second Iranian ship entered Sri Lankan waters after the US submarine attacked the first one. And this is, by the way, this is one of the first times we've used torpedoes, torpedoes out of a submarine to destroy a naval vessel since World War II.

2:02Did you know that? I did not know. I did not know it's been that long. But you know, Rocky, I know you and I were talking and you said that in your experience and in your opinion, you haven't heard a whole lot of really succinct, accurate explanations for why we decided to bomb Iran over the weekend. Those explanations are starting to finally come out and I'm very, very happy that we did, I believe or not. I know that public opinion seems to be separated on both sides, a little bit more against any involvement in Iran, but I got to tell you that I am actually in support of this. And a lot of what isn't being broadcast is a lot of the Middle Eastern nations, like the Saudi Arabian or the Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, and other nations in the area are actually ecstatic that we went into Iran.

3:03Iran was basically setting up the Middle East as kind of a powder keg with funding all these proxy wars. And we've talked about this multiple times, Mike. But you've had the Houthis that were constantly disrupting international traffic around the Arabian and Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea and into the Red Sea going basically vessels that were carrying oil as well as commercial trade, retail goods. And then you've also had Hezbollah in southern Lebanon that were attacking Israel and also causing some problems in the airspace around Jordan. And Hamas, which we all knew what happened on October 7, many, many years ago now. These were all groups that were funded by Iran and the regime in Iran. And now we're hearing the Lebanese Prime Minister today. He basically banned Hezbollah from performing any type of military activities in the south

4:06or throughout all of Lebanon, which now the Israeli military went into the south of Lebanon. And you know, I'm hearing all these stories about, I mean, I'm looking at a Wall Street journal from yesterday, actually, and it says war spreads in the Middle East and hits markets. This war is really not spreading. I mean, there may be one-off attacks here and there. And it may be that the proxies are basically other last life support. But I don't see this war spreading. Well, and that's good because I think a lot of us in Pete Hegseth said it in his press conference the other day that this is not going to be Iran. And I think, I'm sorry, Iraq. It's not. It's not. And I think a lot of us kind of drew parallels to it because, yes, it was a good thing. We took Kalimini out, just like it was a good thing that we took Saddam Hussein out. But then what comes next? Well, we'll see. We'll see, and it'll be up to the Iranian people. But listen, Iran has been playing an active role against the United States for 47 years.

5:12And we are blessed, our next guest, by the way, in the next segment. If you want to hear the inside story of any of this tune in, because we're going to be talking to none other than General Keith Kellogg, who served as the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, the United States Army Special Operations Command. He was my commander for a while. And then went on to work with the White House as a national security advisor and as a special envoy for President Trump. Well, and Rocky, I know that unfortunately, you know firsthand just how brutal that Iranian regime was and could be. Yeah, you know, we're, I'm going to kind of view off, you're absolutely right. And I'm going to view off from Paul W's statement about relentless positive radio for a minute because I'm going to tell a brief story if you don't mind. A story about a friend of mine who served in one of my Army units. It was the 412 Special Operations Unit that did civil military operations

6:12and psychological operations for fifth Special Forces Group. And I was attached to that unit and it was an airborne unit in the Army reserve. And a Captain Brian Freeman spelled Brian Freeman. You can look it up. You can Google it. Brian Freeman was a West Point graduate of 1999 and was a married father with two kids, a three-year-old and a one-year-old, a one-year-old daughter and a three-year-old boy. And he left the military. He finished his obligated tour of duty or service and basically was living in Temecula, California with his family, working with a financial firm if I'm not mistaken. And Brian was called back up, called back up to my unit. And I knew Brian and Brian went overseas to Iraq and in 2007 on January 20th. So we're talking about almost, we just passed the anniversary about a month and a half ago. But Brian was and his team, his small team, was basically in Karbala, Iraq, for a meeting.

7:16And what happened was the Iranian Special Forces, the IRGC, dressed up in American uniforms. Can you believe that? They bought American uniforms. Yeah, they bought American uniforms. They bought American suburban, white suburban and they had M16s, American weapons. And they were flying through all three of their vehicles, were flying through all the checkpoints because everybody thought, hey, these are Americans and American uniforms and they're clean cut and shaven and they're driving these white SUVs that say US on it. So everybody let them through. They went into Karbala and got into a firefight with Brian's team and took Brian and three others hostage and went off. And we're basically trying to go wherever they were going to go. A quick reaction force was notified. And they were on a hot pursuit. When the Iranians heard that they were being pursued, they basically pulled over and summarily executed Brian and his entire team.

8:19Oh my gosh. So listen, war is never pleasant. And I am the first one that will stand in line against war. War is not the answer. Peace is the answer. But peace through strength when you're dealing with people that only understand strength is something that we have to exercise. And sometimes you have to exercise that muscle to make sure that the US is no longer a punching bag. So that's my little tirade of a story about a friend Brian Freeman. But listen, we've got a long show and some of it's going to be really good and some of it's going to be incredibly great and others are going to be very informative. So stay tuned with us because we've got General Keith Kellogg who served as a national security advisor as well as an envoy for President Trump. And he'll be on with us in the next segment. You're listening to to WJR. And this is Rocky Richkowski filling in for the legendary Paul W. Smith on focus.

9:23Welcome back to focus. We're honored to have General Keith Kellogg join us on the focus program. General Kellogg is a highly decorated retired army general and seasoned national security expert. With over 36 years of military career, General Kellogg commanded elite units, including the 82nd Airborne division and served in some of the multiple senior roles within the US government. From senior from national security advisor to the vice president to President Trump's special presidential envoy on critical foreign policy missions. More recently, you've probably seen General Kellogg on Fox News and other news broadcast channels. But General Kellogg has been on the forefront of international diplomacy shaping US foreign policy on Ukraine and offering strategic insight on global security challenges, including the evolving situation right now in Iran in the Middle East. His experience spans combat operations, senior White House leadership and transatlantic diplomacy,

10:26giving him one of the most unique vantage points of the latest developments out of Iran. General Kellogg, welcome to the program. Thank you. It's good to be with you, buddy. Thank you, General. Well, we appreciate you joining us. Can you kind of break down what's currently happening and what it means to global stability right now? Yeah, and by the way, Rockies is the president has been wanting to do something in Iran since his first administration. That's reason he walked away from the joint comprehensive plan of action to jute pola, primarily because it had sunset clauses in there that after a certain period of time, they could develop in rich uranium, they could do to a high level or they could upgrade their missile fleet. So he saw that Iran was a threat and he has always said that he did not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon because if that happened in the Middle East, it would totally destabilize the region. And you treat a nuclear power significantly different than you treat a non-nuclear power.

11:30So he made the decision after talking to Steve Woodcoff and Jared Kushner as soon negotiators. When they both realized that the Iranians were enriching uranium well above three to five percent, which is generally what you enrich to for a nuclear power plant or something like it. And they were in the range of 60, 70 percent. So they were to break out a period that you get to 80 percent uranium. You can develop a nuclear weapon or you can buy one that is there. And he wanted to make sure that didn't happen. The second part of that was that they're missile fleet, the Iranian missile fleet. Could actually reach all the way to France. So you had a question. There was no longer just a regional threat. It was, it was tending trending towards being a national threat as well. And then the third part of that, there was a three of credit government ever since the Ayatollah took over 49 years ago. And that's a credit government, religious-based government, who chant a death to America and death Israel. They wanted to make sure that they were out of the equation in the region and sort of stabilize

12:33the region with his friends, the Saudis, or the Israelis, the Qataris, the Emirates, Oman, you know, do you want to stabilize all of that? So it all came together with this operation against Iran. And people out there don't realize how tough this is. When you see the size of Iran in the geography, you're starting to realize how hard this is. You know, Iran's geographically rocky. When you put it together as a size of Spain, England, France, and Germany combined. It's huge. It's bigger than what you, the initial front we had in World War II. So this operation is not intended to be a one and done meeting. It's going to happen overnight and we leave it, sort of like Venezuela. But it's going to be a protracted engagement that's going to go on for a couple to three weeks. Now, it's going the way it seems to me. It's going better than they believe it was going to happen. Believer was going to occur. In general, Kane just yesterday said,

13:40they're moving from standoff weapons, weapons, engines, fire from a distance, sort of like cabin bombers on target right above it. And now that you can use your whole squeeze of weapons that you couldn't use before, you can bring in as example B-52s if you want to. You can just use all of your air assets. Do I think there's going to be land troops, you know, which infantry on the ground? There's U.S. absolutely not. There was only two places that I believe that U.S. troops could be used if they wanted to. One was to secure landing on your bus because that is right across in the stretch of our moves to make sure you did not have any shore to ship missile systems come into play. And the second was Carg Island, which 80 to 90 percent of the oil industry comes out of Carg Island. Carg Island. And then, since it is an island, you can see it pretty well. And to ensure ethnically, we have got it, we control their oil flow as well. So that is sort of an operational, operational and tactical view of the war that's happening right now.

14:42Well, I think the audience kind of understands now why Brachion General is one of your former, you were my boss at one time. You were obviously the commanding general and I was just a soldier, but you are a wealth of knowledge. And you also date back, you look at the history as being a commander and as someone with your tactical and diplomatic knowledge. What lessons from the past conflicts that the U.S. has been involved with should the U.S. apply to prevent proliferation or further destabilization of the region? Well, I think what President Trump has done, he's like deterrence back in the vote back in the question and the question. And I think the experience that I would say is that previous presidents have not used deterrence to the full weight of American power and Trump does that. So Trump says this is not going to happen, listen to me, and they don't do it. And so he applies the ultimate, which is common power to do it. So when you had a Biden, even Bush or Barack Obama, anybody, they would always talk, but they wouldn't have

15:49action. And I think he's taking the talk, moving the action using that are all of our systems. And when you look at it, you realize that really when it comes to military soldiers, men and women, and our equipment, we're basically first in class. There has been really, we've been able to operate with impunity against the very best the Russians who have sold to Iran. They've sold them the rest 300 and 400 systems. They haven't worked. They haven't used their ship, their short ship missile systems. The Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. So bottom line is saying something and then using that, using the power behind it, which in the past we didn't do, we kind of talked about it. We never were willing to pull the trigger as they say. You're absolutely right. General, we've got one minute left and you know Russia really well. So I wanted to ask you this very important question. Knowing Russia, as you know, and understanding the Ukraine conflict within 30 seconds, can you tell me, have we effectively ended the supply

16:52train of these drones to Russia that have been so effective in the Ukrainian war? No, not really because what's happened is they've now started producing themselves. They don't get them from Iran anymore. They do it. We just have to start taking out, not we, the Ukrainians, now to start taking out the protection facilities of the drones. And you're right, it's a new age of warfare. Drone warfare is being adapted. We're doing it in the United States and the world as well. It's sort of like when the machine gun came into vogue or the airplane came into vogue. So little things like that can change warfare and they've done it. But with Russia right now, the biggest impediment to peace is Putin. It's not the weapons that are looking. Rocky, give me a good example, really quickly. When the Soviets came out of Afghanistan, they had lost around 18,000 and they called it a day. Right now Putin has lost between 1.2 and 1.4 million dead. And he's the one that's really holding up the peace process because of his

17:56desires. And he doesn't want to become another Nicholas II. I think it's about who is the last czar. I think he just sort of said, I'm dead for the day and go home. And now that's kind of been on the back burner, not truly back, but the second burner based on what's happening in Iran right now. So they'll develop and build those things far away from the front. They're starting to be targeted by the Ukrainians. I think that will continue to slow down that whole business and development cycle. Thank you. General Keith Kellogg sold your diplomat and special presidential envoy. You're listening to focus on WGR. It looks the more I look at our ballot in November, it looks like it's going to be a super long ballot with a lot of candidates and a lot of proposals. But one of the proposals that was just submitted to potentially be on the ballot, which I believe it will be, is a ballot called here in Michigan, Americans for Citizens Voting. Now you've probably heard about the Save Act,

18:59Save America Act, which stands for Save Guard American Voter Eligibility America Act. That is at the federal level. But here in Michigan, there was a voter initiative that created this American Americans for Citizens Voting. So I thought we'd have a long time public servant and a dedicated advocate for Michigan integrity here in our state are very on and are former Michigan Secretary of State and now serving in the Michigan Senate, where we're being joined with none other than Ruth Johnson. Ruth has built her career around strengthening voter confidence and protecting the integrity of the ballot. Today, she's here to discuss her involvement with this proposal called Americans for Citizens Voting and what it means for voters across Michigan. You may have heard that the initiative just turned in a record number of signatures to put their petition on the ballot in November. So Senator Johnson, welcome to the

20:04program. Good afternoon, Rocky. Thank you for watching the show today. I really appreciate it. Well, we're glad to have you on with us. Listen Ruth or Secretary Johnson or Senator Johnson, you've got so many hats. I got to ask, tell us a little bit about this ballot initiative and what is it actually doing? Why was it needed? Yeah, that's a great question. So this ballot initiative would really do three things. It would require photo ID to vote and it would require proof of citizenship to be able to vote. And then it would require regular review of the voter rolls to make sure that only qualified individuals can vote. So these are really simple common sense things and 83 percent of the voters support photo ID for voting. And that really includes the majority of independence, Republicans and Democrats. And we do have an issue here in Michigan because some of these very deceptive ads that were run on TV and by mailings. That's Prop 2 in 2022.

21:07You had millions of dollars largely from out of state that paid for the most deceptive ads I've ever seen in politics. And that's saying a lot. They had people in ads that said like they look very credible. It'll enshrine voter ID requirements into our constitution. But what they didn't tell you and then that same proposal in those requirements that enshrine, it also says that you don't need any ID none. So it sounds like it was a there's a bait and switch in other words on the voters. I would call it that very deceptive and I'm sure our moms would call it lying. In November 24, the election here in Michigan, we had almost 30,000 people that would be 29,963 to be exact who registered to vote right before the election without a driver's license or state ID. So we currently in Michigan and I'm not a math wist, but you know 103.6% of our state's

22:13voting age population registered to vote. That's 103.6 of people that are 18 and above so you know that there's something wrong and we also know that citizen non-citizens are voting in our election and you probably remember the very highly publicized case of the Chinese national voted in Ann Arbor and the secretary state then found over a dozen other cases and the most comb county clerk is now finding even more cases. So this is just common sense. You need an ID to get a library card to check out a book. You need an ID to get a Michigan 15 license and you should need to get an ID to vote. And that way we can also verify that only citizens are voting which is so important. No, I completely concur. I'm with the 84% of Michigan citizens that concur that we need to have voter integrity because each one of our votes should be counted. And you know I was listening to that and reading up some news information before we came on

23:18about the 15 illegals that we now now know actually voted in our elections and people say well it's only 15% it's it's not really a noticeable number of voter integrity problems. Well 15 is still 15 and I guess I got to ask you because I also read the article and we've got a one minute Ruth that talked about that you you not just turn this ballot proposal in but that you turned in almost a record number of signatures in support of this. So in about 30 seconds how many signatures did you turn in versus how many were needed to get this proposal on the ballot? Yeah good question. So I think one thing I need to let you know is where you found 15 we have no systemic system. In other words nothing in our system that finds people that are non-citizens. These have to be looked at one by one by people. That's not the way to do it. You preclude non-citizens from registering and voting period. You don't try to go back because there's nothing in our system to stop it. But we got so many signatures we get 750,000 that's the second largest in Michigan history

24:26and what I'm very concerned about is our Secretary of State has for office said they don't even plan on opening them up for months. They need to get those signatures looked at and certified and get it on the ballot. I'm very concerned about a Secretary of State that's running for governor that does not leave in photo ID and will not open those boxes and get started right away. Thank you very much Ruth Johnson, former Secretary of State and current Michigan State Senator. Joining us here you're listening at Focus on WJR. So we're about four or five months away from the primaries where our parties in our state decides who will be on the ballot for November and the person that wins in November takes office and a lot of these office holders have these office holder accounts and these campaigned accounts. And there's been a lot of spending and a lot of news coming out of Lansing because of the investigations that the Detroit news have been doing on our elected officials. So we thought we'd reach in with or reach out to none other than Craig

25:28Mogger. The he covers state government and politics in Michigan for the Detroit news and Craig has been kind of reporting on this story quite a bit. Craig you're on with Rocky on Focus. Hey, thanks for having me. My pleasure. Great. So Craig can you kind of tell us a little bit about some of the most egregious stories that you've uncovered? Yeah, I mean this started as something where we were looking into kind of a single representative, state representative Karen Whitsett who's from Detroit and basically she had stopped coming to session in August the last year. So the last four months of the year she did not show up to vote on anything and we're kind of wondering, well, what was she doing with her campaign money? You know, she raises money. Apparently people were still giving her money. There are some big interest groups that still gave her checks. And what did she do with that money when she was not showing up to vote? Well, she was spending in on some things in her district. There were a bunch of mysterious expenses that we noticed in her report. So then we said, what if we look at every lawmaker's expense report to see what

26:32they're spending their donor money on? And we have done I think three stories now. We've just spent a lot of interesting stuff. People spending money on campaign money on rent, on electric bills, on Netflix. We found one lawmaker who reported expenditures on Netflix. We found another lawmaker who had been paying her son as a campaign consultant. So there's a lot going on here. Well, so kind of unwrap this a little bit for us. Spending on Netflix, was there a reason that this candidate spent their money on Netflix or is that even allowed? This pretty much candidate had made two expenditures that were listed as expenditure, not candidate, I should say, a lawmaker from Macomb County. She had made two expenditures for Netflix, subscription payments for Netflix. And she said that when we brought it to her attention, she said, oh, that was a mistake. That shouldn't have happened and I'll reimburse the money. The little bit unclear how that mistake could happen because one not only would you have had to

27:34kind of mistakenly use your campaign accounts to do that, but then you would have to report it to the Secretary of State and you'd think you would notice it when you're filing the report. So there's still a little bit of a question of surrounding that one. Well, you also covered the fact that there's a lot of people that are no longer running for reelection. And these are not people that are barred by term limits, correct? Yeah, I mean, this is a new trend. These are people, I mean, keep in mind, they just extended the term limits, basically, for people serving an individual chamber. And now all of a sudden, we've got a trend. I think it's, once you get two or three, I think it becomes a bit of a trend of lawmaker saying, hey, I'm choosing not to run next year and it comes at the same time that last year in 2025, the legislature passed a record low number of new laws and there's a debate over whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Some people think it's good. Some people think it's bad. But there are legislators who seem to be a bit frustrated with this process and are choosing

28:40to give up their seat and not run again. It used to be unheard of. I mean, you could probably speak to this. I mean, you would serve out your maximum term if you were given the chance and weren't running for another hire off. So it's a little bit unusual. Yeah, a nice, nice job of turning the questionnaire into the, or the interviewee into the questionnaire. But you're right. When I served, but I served under term limits, I was one of the supporters of term limits and brought term limits to the state of Michigan with Patrick Anderson and Dick Hadley back then. That was quite a long time ago when I, when I just turned 18 and I had a chance to serve in the House of Representatives was honored to serve when I was in my early 20s and became the leader. And when we served, we served a maximum of three terms, which is six years. And you got back into the public, the public eye, instead of being in the public, excuse me, the private, instead of being in the public. And I guess out of all these members that are retiring, how many are in these targeted districts, these districts, which really would be majority making districts that both parties are

29:44really focusing on to, to win back. And also, how many are Republicans compared to Democrats? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, as of right now, I'm not seeing a lot of people in those targeted seats. Keep in mind, we have a couple more months before the deadline. I mean, we had an example this week. That was a big one that people were kind of waiting for. Sam saying he is the majority floor leader for the Senate Democrat. He's a person who, you know, people at home, maybe in Metro Detroit, don't know who he is, but people in government, around government, he's a big player here. He gets a lot of major pieces of legislation done. I would consider him a deal maker. He's kind of a fixture of state government. And he decided not to seek a third and final term in the state Senate under the new term limits that we have. And that's a big, big deal. And then there've been a couple others you had, Karen Whitsa, who I referenced earlier, who said she's not going to run again. And then Regina Weas, who is from Metro Detroit, a former teacher, a Democrat, big on education policy. She's not running

30:48again. So those three that have come out this week, those are all Democrats. I suspect maybe we'll hear a few more in the coming months. I have no insight information on that, but it's just a guess that these three won't be the only ones. No, I would probably concur with you. And I agree with you that Sam's saying, you know, I'm more conservative, but Sam Singh was at least respected by everyone that served with him. I guess any other breaking news, you've got 30 seconds. Any other breaking news or anything that you're covering up? Don't worry up at DetroitNews.com. Really the first negative campaign ad of this gubernatorial election cycle from a candidate, Perry Johnson's committee is putting out an ad where they're going after John James, the former, I mean, the current U.S. Republican who's running for governor. So it's a change in tone in this race for governor. And we'll see what it takes over the next few months. Thank you, Craig Mager, for bringing us up to speed on the stories out of Lansing and politics in our state. You're listening to focus on W.J.R. This is Rocky Rochkowski sitting in

31:49for the legendary Paul W Smith. It's always great to fill in for the great Paul W Smith on the show today. Hey, I am sitting here with Mike Parsons and Danielle Mason at the board, the queen of the board. Danielle Mason, queen of the switches, queen of the I'll get it right. I'll get it right soon. But Mike, I've been looking at this breaking news. There was a protester at a Senate hearing today. I'm not sure if you saw this, but the protester is actually a green party candidate named Brian McGinnis who served in the Marine Corps. Right. He was in full uniform. He dressed up in his full dress uniform. And that's the Marine Corps blues with with all his medals. And he was a sergeant. So he probably served about four to six years in the United States Marine Corps and created chaos during the Senate hearing. And they were having a real hard time getting him out of there. Yeah, there's like three or four police officers in a jet probably because he was a marine.

32:51Well, actually, it looks like there were even more than that trying to get him out of there. And finally, because this was a Senate hearing, a former Navy seal, but currently a US Senator, Tim Sheehy out of Montana, basically ran up to help them and took control of the situation escorted the veteran out. And shall I say that he escorted him out with physical force? Right. So they had to bring the Navy seal in to get rid of the Marine. Yeah. All they had to do is call in an army soldier and they would have been taken care of quickly. Yeah, too bad you weren't around. That's why I'm here. I'm here to keep you guys in line. Right. Look, you don't need a Marine to drag me out of room. All right. No kidding. No kidding. Hey, you know, we had some breaking news about what a year and a half ago with the crumbly case that was in front of Judge Cheryl Matthews and Oakland County precedent setting. Yeah, precedent setting that basically said that the crumblies because of what they did with their son and they allowed him to have a

33:56weapon knowing that he had a obviously an unstable mental illness and that he had all these inclinations to draw violent things in his notebook that they should have known. And instead of giving the kid a pistol, which they did, they should have basically helped the child with counseling and not giving him a weapon that created such destruction and terror and pain in the Oxford community and all of us here in Michigan. Well, a jury just yesterday found a father of a teenager boy charged with killing four people at a Georgia high school guilty of second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter as well. Right. Yeah. And that's why and obviously the Oxford case has been referenced heavily in connection with this case down in Georgia. And that's where they use precedent setting because the crumblies were the very first one and you know, obviously after

35:00that happened, we passed a whole bunch of safe storage laws here in Michigan. And it sounds like other states are following suit. Absolutely. But we have, I mean, we have some good jurists and judge Cheryl Matthews in Oakland County, though the judge that presided over that case is one of the greatest jurors, the jurists that we have in Michigan as well as in Oakland County. Also, listen, we're later on in the program, we're going to be talking about AI and how AI, the normal, your typical man and woman off the street can create AI and have AI work for you and help you make sure that your job is protected. We're building a rocky bot. And we're building a rocky bot. That's right. And we're going to do it live on air at 130. And hopefully you'll take over the rest of the program. And I could just sit back and drink ice tea. Of course. Lord, what have we unleashed on humanity? I love AI. Listen, it's it's got its positives and it's got its negatives. And

36:02we're going to talk about that around the 130 hour or point in the show. But there's other news about open AI and open AI was an anthropic. This is another company. There's a company called Anthropic that owns Claude, which is an AI system. Then there's open AI, which owns chat GPT. And then there's Google that owns Gemini. And then there's Firefox that owns Kiwi and the Chinese own this company called Quinn's Microsoft Copilot, I think. Yeah, there's quite a few. But the big three are Google open AI and anthropic and anthropic was was in the hot seat. And so it was open AI with the Pentagon because the Pentagon wanted them to release their tools to work on classified work. And basically the report said that Sam Aldman, the president and CEO and founder of open AI defended his decision publicly to allow the Pentagon to use its tools for classified work. Yeah, it seemed like once things went south between the Pentagon and anthropic,

37:07there was a deal between the Pentagon and open AI that got done pretty quickly. Very much so. And this is going to put open AI or I believe will shoot their stock price up quite significantly. Now there is a race. And we're going to talk about that at the 130 mark or after in the show about a race to what's called a 100% AGI. And AGI is is 100% of of this intelligence that surpasses mankind and can actually reason, feel and basically find answers that we as humans have no capability of doing using the eight or 10% of our brain that we use. This would be like a human with 100% brain power. Yikes. Yeah. How do you feel about that? That sounds like the it sounds very much like sky net to me. You know, I'm okay with it still. I

38:07still am as long as we make sure that our kids are being taught and not taught and put in jobs that are going to be extinct, but taught and prepared for a future with this. Yeah, that's going to be essential. Right. Exactly. Because you know, when the internet came around, it got rid of a lot of jobs, but it also sparked new industries like 40 years ago. Look, the people at Encyclopedia Britannica haven't fared well in the internet age, but back then there was no Google or Amazon either. So yeah, I feel like I feel like hopefully whatever jobs are eliminated are replaced with with other jobs specific to AI. That's right. And we're going to be talking with John Gizzy actually in the next segment about these hearings on Capitol Hill that are becoming less hearings and more political theater and political circuses. We've had Minnesota governor Tim Waltz in the Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison on the hot seat in Washington yesterday. And we also had hearings

39:11with Pam Bondi as well as hearings with Kristi Nome. And we're going to hear just straight from John Gizzy, who's the senior White House correspondent and a political reporter for Newsmax. And he is really tuned in to what's happening in Washington. He may be able to break down the fate of Kristi Nome. You know, that there's a lot of talk that Kristi Nome may actually be on the chopping block. Yeah, I mean, even even Republicans went after her. And at least the Senate hearing, I didn't hear much about the house, except they were talking about her love life in the house hearing, but they actually touched on it in the Senate hearing too. And now you're hearing the mainstream media. NBC News is talking about a potential affair and it's getting really raunchy. You know, you wouldn't think that raunchiness would come out of Washington DC. No, not Washington. No, they're always, you know, they're always most concerned. Nobody has an affair in Washington. And they're always

40:12concerned with our well-being. Right. Whatever is best for us. Yeah, they take everything under consideration. I hate when a politician says, I'll take your concern under consideration. That means it's going in the circular file. Right. We'll keep you in mind for a later opening. Absolutely. Hey, in this last study, Gen Z and millennials are drinking less. Did you hear this? No, drinking less. Yeah, well, I get, I get the gird so I really don't, I don't drink a whole lot because it gives me heartburn. And they're also turning away from marijuana and cigarette smoking. Yeah, we're all, we're all bunch of squares. No, I think that's great. Ah, good for us. I think, no, I think that's great. And when we get back to that AI thing, there was a report that said that if you are able to live another 10 years, Mike, 10 years, that's all I'm asking you to live. AI will allow us to live an average age of between 120 and 140. Yes, if it pleases the AI,

41:12I would like to live. I like that. I will let you live. Listen, I'm a man of faith and I strongly believe in our creator, my God, at least. And I got to tell you, I have mixed feelings. I don't know where I stand on that, but you know what? God bless us all. And hopefully we live a good life. This is Rocky Rich Kowski sitting in for Paul Debi Smith on Focus on WGR. We'll be right back with John Gizzy. We just heard the lead in for Kevin Deats' show All Talk. And he was talking about Washington DC. There's so much going on Washington DC that, you know, Congress people getting rich, leaving after a couple of years of service and coming in with, let's say, being worth $700,000 and leaving with multi-millions of dollars in their bank accounts. But there's also other things that have been happening. And that include hearings. For example, yesterday, we had the Minnesota

42:12governor, Tim Waltz and the Attorney General Keith Ellison testifying before a congressional panel under oath about the fraud that's been taking place in Minnesota. And also we've seen other hearings with Pam Bondy that have been very contentious. And yesterday also, we saw a hearing that was extremely contentious about Kristi Nome and her operations. So we thought we'd reach out to Washington DC's Misster of Truth and the Secretary of the Scoop, none other than John Gizzy. Newsmax's chief political economist and the senior White House correspondent. And John, the reason why we go to John is John is the man that knows everything and everyone in Washington. John, how are you today? Rocky, after an introduction like that about the only thing a gentleman could do is die. I hope you don't during the interview. We need you. No, thank you. John, what's going on with all these hearings? Especially, let's start off with the hearing of

43:15the Minnesota governor Tim Waltz and Attorney General Keith Ellison. By the way, Keith Ellison served in Congress and he left to run for Attorney General. And they were before a congressional panel about the fraud that's going on in Minnesota. What took place there? Well, what took place was that for many years, a charity was operating in the Gofer State. And it was getting federal dollars as well as money from state taxpayers. In other words, it was not just funded by private donations, the way charities are presumed to, but subsidized by the government. And in the process, executives with it, including a supporter of Congresswoman Omar, were becoming ostentatiously wealthy with vacation homes and new cars, among other things. All of this was reported and begun under the investigation of the U.S.

44:23Attorney before Donald Trump became president. And the investigation into the misuse of taxpayer funds in the name of charity surfaced later after President Biden was succeeded by President Trump. And the president, of course, is blamed for it. Well, I don't really care who gets the blame. This is misuse of taxpayers' money and they were getting to the bottom. Now, you mentioned Governor Walls and Attorney General Ellison coming to a hearing. They both suggested in no uncertain terms that the charity was being targeted because it involves working with immigrants and because there's a large Somali population involved. That's true. In fact, most of the people that the charity was dealing with, it's 75% according to Congressman Jim Jordan were Somalian.

45:27They have been an influential force in Minnesota and a growing force in Minneapolis. And so it is only natural that an investigation would look at them. Well, that makes sense. My guess would be that both Governor Walls and Attorney General Ellison, one who is not seeking re-election another who is, have not had their final time at the witness stands. And as prosecution mounts back in Minneapolis, we'll see a lot more of them taking the oath and testifying. You know, something interesting, John, and you have Michigan connections as well. I just got a text message from a dear friend who David Buckley, a former Blue and Field Township trustee, just shot me and reminded me that Attorney, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is originally from Detroit. Yeah, I think not even know that, but that is interesting. Oh, there's a lot of things you learn on this program. That's why we've got you on.

46:30Hey, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about Kristi Noem and Kristi Noem's fate because a lot of people are, I got to tell you, even around conservatives and liberals, people are just, there's, it seems like it's 50, 50. People want to see her gone. Some people want to see her stay, but I got to tell you she spent a lot of money on these ads that featured her speaking about what DHS is doing. And is that really what DHS is supposed to be doing and that is advertising what they what they are doing as a department? Well, the TSA, for example, that we all deal with in the airports. They regularly have a recorded statement about the work they're doing and why it's important that you can see it a monitor. And for a long time, Mr. Maris, the Homeland Security Secretary impeached Homeland Security Secretary under President Biden

47:36was seen in that broadcast and that film that ran over and over. Now there's a new sheriff in town, Secretary Noem, and she's seen, but she gets blamed for use of federal funds to engage in self-promotion. Look, any cabinet member knows he or she is a target when they travel, when they stay in a hotel or when they appear in public affairs spots. Everybody smells the scent of self-promotion there. But I would say two wrongs don't make a right, but in politics, two wrongs make a precedent. Well, listen, I'm coming to you as the guru, the secretary of the scoop, the minister of truth. Tell me, does in your perception and what's going on in Washington, D.C. In 30 seconds, does Christine Noem stay or is she out?

48:39In all likelihood, she'll be gone by the end of the year, but most likely sooner. Personally, I hear speculation that former Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a respected governor, former head of a major corporation, would be a likely candidate for the job if he wants it. You know, again, this watch game that we play on cabinet members and who'll be the first to go, it's usually protracted. It takes longer than one would expect, but I would say right now, Christine Noem is not in a strong position for a lot of reasons. Thank you, John Gizzy, the senior chief political columnist and senior White House correspondent for Newsmax Magazine, you're listening to WGR. Focus. I'm Rocky Rochkowski, sitting in for the legendary Paul W. Smith. Well, we promised a little discussion about AI and kind of open AI so that you really understand it a little bit better, because artificial intelligence AI is rapidly transforming society by

49:45shifting from a specialized tool to an integrated algorithmified, and that's a big word for me, system that influences daily life, economic structures, and industrial operations across all gametes. It's going to affect all of us, and it's moving at breakneck next speed. So I thought I'd reach out to a dear friend and a partner of mine that knows a little bit about this, and I've seen him kind of go through the machinations of being someone that really didn't know anything about AI to becoming kind of like an AI expert. In our next best guest, spend over two decades as a congressional chief of staff, statewide campaign manager and political spokesman. He's been involved with me for many years, and you may have even seen him on CNN, Fox News, and court TV. And now he's using AI and AI tools to transform his business and in his life in some ways. His name is Randall Thompson. He's the founder of Pulse Communications and the co-creator of one campaign AI that will be launching soon up. It's like platform

50:50bringing professional grade AI powered campaign tools to candidates as well as campaigns across our country. And Randall recently built, are you ready for this? He recently built a team of six artificial intelligence agents. These are like personal secretaries that do your work, an open claw, and he'll explain what open claw is in a moment here, but to transform how he does business and Randall, it is so great to be, to have you on the show. Hey, thanks, Rocky. Great to be here. Awesome. So Randall, AI has been moving at breakneck speed. What's happened in just the last month that people should be paying really close attention to? Well, I mean, in order to understand the last month, you guys can kind of understand the overall field, the playing field of what we're dealing with. You have three major companies out there. You have Anthropic, you have Open AI, and you have Google. And they're all in kind of this arms race, right? They're all trying to achieve what they call AGI, which is artificial general intelligence. It's kind of the hypothetical AI system that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across

51:55any intellectual task a human can do. So you kind of do that on a scale of one to a hundred, right? How close are we getting to AGI? And most of the industry professionals say that we'll probably get their early 2027 into 2028. There's 95% chance we'll hit 100% AGI by then. Elon Musk, you'll see that he talks a lot about it on Twitter. And he says that it's called singularity. Singularity is what happens after AGI arrives. It's the theoretical point where AGI and AI become smart enough to improve itself, which then triggers a runaway cycle of intelligence that game goes so fast that human civilization fundamentally changes in ways we can't predict or comprehend. And that's what freaks everybody out, right? So we're not there yet. But just within the last 30 days, when you go into chat GPT, or when you go into Claude, or when you go into Gemini, which are the main AI models that people use out there, most people all just use chat GPT. It's one single session.

52:57So you open it up, you ask it a question, it gives you an answer, you close it down. It doesn't remember what happened from session to session. And in the last month, there's this thing called OpenClaw that has an LLM, it's called a long language model, which means now you can have those sessions over and over and over and provide context about your life, about your goals, about your dreams, about your needs, about your wants, and it doesn't forget. It stays open from session to session to session to session and refers back and remembers and learns from itself. And that is the thing that has the AI industry up in arms right now about all the possibilities that are happening until we get to AGI of how this can be implemented both personally and in business. Listen, you just talked a little bit about the OpenClaw. So you've built something called OpenClaw, a multi agent AI system, kind of like personal secretaries, I guess, that do work that actually are doing work for you and running your political consulting

54:02from. What does that mean in plain English and layman's terms to the normal human being? And we've got about three, four minutes. Yeah, no, I'll go quick. So what it means is basically it becomes your own virtual assistant. Think of all the things that you do over and over again during your day. That's called a workflow. I have to bring this in. I have to decide about it. I have to route it to here, route it to there. I have to create an Excel spreadsheet. I have to write a document. I have to do those kind of things. But it's the same task over and over. So if you create that workflow and you give it rules, it's much like hiring a brand new employee. You onboard a brand new employee the first month or two, you're going to be very careful with them. You're going to overexplain. You're going to tell them what to do. And then pretty soon they learn how that process goes. And it becomes automated. I'm doing the exact same thing with just six different AI agents. One's a creative writer, one's a researcher, one's a salesperson, one's a quality control specialist. One is a second brain. So it never forgets anything. And then I have Max,

55:04my chief of staff who runs everything in operations. So you're basically saying that people can have these AI agents that they can give personalities or names to that will actually do their work for them when they're sleeping. And they never get sick. They never get tired. You don't have to pay social security on them. Correct. You're absolutely right. It's it's fascinating and it's amazing. And it's wonderful. And it's also a little scary scary. But it's not the it's not something that you just can build, you know, in 30 minutes. It takes a long time. And you pretty much or in the early days of this, you need to find somebody who can invest the amount of time to be able to build an AI agent for you. But once you have it, I'm telling you, it's amazing. So how do people get in touch with you and learn a little bit more and that boy, you've got a large listening audience. So how do people find out about this or how do people contact somebody that can help them kind of learn about how to set up their own agents if they want them?

56:04But certainly one of the best things that was ever advice that was given to me was help or use AI to help you learn about AI. Ask them questions. Ask about OpenClaw. Ask about what that means. How do you install it? How do you build it? How do you do those things? Otherwise, they can reach out to me postpolitical.com is my website. My email is Randall at postpolitical.com. I'm happy to help people with their AI questions. Randall Thompson educating us about AI and scaring the hell out of us about AI. Is that pretty good? It's pretty good. Hey, thank you very much Randall Thompson from Post Communications talking about AI and how it's shifting us these tools and these these what they call agents are able to do work for us while we're sleeping. An incredible fast pace and low cost, unbelievably incredible and unbelievably scary at the same time. We need to make sure that our our societies prepared and

57:08educated and our kids learn about this so that we can find better ways of making sure that everybody has a job because this is going to displace a lot of people from their work. You're listening to Rocky Rochkowski sitting in for Paul W. Smith on WJR. You're listening also to focus. About two segments ago, we were talking with John Gizzy regarding Christi Nome and her fate and John Gizzy, the senior political reporter and senior White House reporter actually forecasted that Christi Nome will be fired by President Trump within the year. Breaking news, President Trump just fired DHS Secretary Christi Nome and he is planning on replacing her with Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullins. So you've heard it here first breaking news that DHS secretary, Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Christi Nome who took a lot of heat on Capitol Hill over

58:14the last few days during her hearing from both Democrats and Republicans is now on her way out has been officially fired and being replaced with Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullins who will be taking the who will be nominated by the president. So boy, interesting way to start a segment, Mark Mike. Do you do you almost call me Mike Wayne Mullins? Yeah, I just almost did. I couldn't it's one of those things that you were kind of expecting, but you looked up at you looked up at the breaking news had her and you you had to do a double tag. Yep, that's very true. But listen, we've got to get to our next guest because time is of the essence and our next guest, you've probably heard that line that there are two things that you can escape. You can't escape once you're being born once you're born and it's death and taxes. Well, I'd also say probate courts. So we're really glad to be joined with our next guest and it's none other than Jessica Hallmark and experienced attorney and a candidate for Oakland County probate court with stories in the news every day right now about

59:18probate and estate law and discussions about how to navigate wills and trusts. There are some of the most important and most personal legal decisions people can make. So we thought we'd reach out to Jessica Hallmark who's here to help us understand these a little bit better that will help us protect our families for the future. Jessica, welcome to the program. Hi, thanks so much for having me. It's great to have you on and I apologize for the breaking news. I couldn't stop that. But let's get into the important questions. What is probate court and why is it so important to everyone here that that basically is here in the state of Michigan? Yeah, so probate court deals with a lot of different issues that are really important to families. It makes a lot of decisions about wills and trusts of people who pass away or people who pass away and don't have a will or a trust. It also makes decisions about cares for a lot of different vulnerable populations in our communities. So that would include minor children, people with disabilities and people with mental

1:00:20health issues. So when people think about our courts often they think about criminal matters or multi-million dollar lawsuits and obviously those are very important cases but those cases are less likely to affect the average person. Hopefully most of us are now out there committing crimes or being accused of crimes or we're not parties to multi-million dollar lawsuits. But unfortunately, as you said, all of us are going to pass away one day and all of us are part of a family of some kind of a family and we're connected to other people in some way. And we might need care one day, we might be close to someone who will need care one day and those are the things that bring people to probate court. Well, you mentioned just Karl Marxon with us. You mentioned wills and trusts. Which one should people have and why? So it's always good for people to think about what they want and to make a plan. So most of us don't like the idea of some stranger making major life decisions for us. So and most of us have strong opinions about what kind of care we'll

1:01:21receive if we get sick or if we become disabled or what will happen to our assets when we die. So making an estate plan is an important step. Generally, if someone has a will, the will will be administered by the probate court. So if they pass away and they have a will, their errors will have to come to the probate court and have the will probated. If they have a trust, generally the trust can be administered without going to probate court. So some people view that as a benefit of having a trust versus a will. That makes it really understandable. Boy, I'm glad we asked that question. I got to ask another one because we are seeing so many of these commercials online as well as on TV everywhere, you know, talking about get your will here, get your trust here with all these AI platforms and online resources. Do people really need to hire a lawyer to prepare a will or trust anymore? Well, I'll admit to some bias in answering that question being a lawyer myself, but I will say

1:02:24probate court or probate law is a complicated area of law and it's also a state specific area of law. So if a layperson is just googling on the internet and they find a form and they use it, they might not know that they're using the wrong form or they might not understand that that form was intended to be used in a different state where there might be different laws or different procedures. So it's always best to consult an attorney. Increasingly though, AI is something that's part of our lives and many attorneys are starting to find ways to incorporate AI into their practice. So ideally what that means is that it's a tool they use to help them work more effectively and more efficiently and usually for lawyers that means more inexpensively, but they shouldn't be using AI as a tool to replace their own judgment and their own expertise. I know I have a lot of teachers in my life and I've heard them complain about their students using AI to do their work for them and they'll tell me often they can tell when a student has

1:03:29done that. Judges often can tell as well and there have been lots of stories of lawyers who have gotten themselves into trouble that way trying to pass off AI's work as their own work product. Yeah, that's a very good point I guess and Jessica, we've got to run because of the breaking news, but how do people get in touch with you? I know that you're running for Oakland County probate court. How do people get in touch with you if they have more other questions? Yeah, so they can always reach me through my law firm at 248-540-7400. That's Add Kiss and Need Allen and RunTrap. They can also reach me through my campaign website, which is hallmarkforjudge.com. Thank you very much, Jessica Hallmark, also a candidate for Oakland County probate talking about the importance of being prepared legally. Also at the beginning of the segment we broke in with breaking news, the breaking news again, is that President Trump has fired

1:04:31Kristi Nome as the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security. Now the president is saying we are calling on Virginia Governor Abigail Spanzberg and Virginia's sanctuary politicians to commit to not releasing this murder. They were talking about a murder, releasing a murderer in Virginia and I guess Department of Homeland Security was participating in that. President Trump is going to appoint Senator Mark Wayne Mullin from Oklahoma. He serves with James Langford and preceded by someone that I knew very dearly and that was Senator Jim Inhoff, a great man. So hopefully we will see a change in DHS and the direction of Department of Homeland Security. This has been a great two hours. I really enjoyed it. Thank you Danielle. Thank you Mike. Thank you WGR for allowing me to sit in that great chair that Paul W. Smith occupies during the focus show. Great to be on with you and stay tuned for Ryan Armani, the best and smileiest and happiest

1:05:38next two hours here on WGR. Have a great day.