Category: Arizona

Free Tina Peters: The Battle for Honest Elections in America

You know, here’s the thing: if President Trump doesn’t get Tina Peters out of that Colorado prison, then everything we’ve fought for on election integrity is just theater. It’s all optics without substance. Because if you don’t control your election systems, you don’t control your government. And that’s the bottom line. People say, “There’s no evidence of fraud.” Really? Then why is Tina Peters sitting in a cell for nine years? She was the Mesa County Clerk, the one person in Colorado who had the guts to blow the whistle during the heaviest part of the 2020 election scandal. She saw irregularities, she reported them, and for that, they threw her in prison.

Let’s get the facts straight. Tina Peters was convicted in October 2024 on seven counts—four felonies and three misdemeanors—for allegedly breaching election systems during a 2021 update.¹ They said she conspired to commit criminal impersonation, attempted to influence a public servant, and violated her official duties. Nine years in state prison for trying to preserve election records? That’s not justice; that’s retaliation. And where is she now? La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado, locked away like a political prisoner.²

And don’t forget, she wasn’t alone in this fight. Mike Lindell—the MyPillow guy—stood shoulder to shoulder with her, pouring millions into exposing voting machine companies.³ Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro? They got four months each for contempt of Congress because they wouldn’t play ball with the January 6 narrative.⁴ Rudy Giuliani? Bankrupted for daring to question election results. This is a pattern: punish the whistleblowers, destroy the evidence, and control the narrative.

Now, here’s the legal reality: Trump can’t just sign a pardon and free Tina Peters. Article II of the Constitution gives the president the power to grant pardons for federal crimes, not for state convictions.⁵ Colorado prosecuted her under state law, and Governor Jared Polis isn’t about to hand Trump a win. So what do we do? Sit back and let her rot? Absolutely not. There are practical steps Trump can take, and they start with leverage—political, legal, and financial.

First, a pressure campaign. Trump needs to call out Polis and AG Phil Weiser by name, which he has been doing lately. Make it politically toxic for them to keep Peters locked up. Rallies, Truth Social posts, interviews—turn up the heat. When the public sees a grandmother rotting in prison for questioning election fraud, the optics shift fast.

Second, DOJ leverage. This is where it gets interesting. The Department of Justice can’t override a state conviction, but it can make life very uncomfortable for Colorado. How? Start with federal election law hooks. The 2020 election was a federal election. Peters’ actions were tied to preserving federal election records. File a federal habeas corpus petition arguing her imprisonment violates constitutional rights under federal election statutes like the Help America Vote Act. Force Colorado to defend its conviction in federal court.

Then there’s civil rights enforcement. Frame this as retaliation against a whistleblower exercising First Amendment rights. The DOJ Civil Rights Division can open an investigation into political persecution. Even if it doesn’t overturn her sentence immediately, it creates a legal basis for federal intervention and puts Colorado under a microscope.

Now, here’s the big one: federal funding leverage. Colorado gets millions in federal grants for election security and compliance under HAVA and EAC programs. Those funds are discretionary. Condition future funding on transparency and whistleblower protections. Announce that Colorado risks losing federal election security money because it retaliated against Peters. That’s constitutional under the Spending Clause, and it hits where it hurts—the budget.

Another angle: federal subpoenas and custody transfers. If Peters has evidence relevant to federal crimes—say, election tampering—the DOJ can subpoena her testimony. Request a temporary transfer to federal custody for questioning. That doesn’t erase her sentence, but it moves her out of state prison and into a federal process where deals can happen.

Finally, amplify public awareness. Trump should feature Peters’ case in speeches, rallies, and interviews. Get Mike Lindell, Steve Bannon, and the Warroom team hammering this story every day, give them some red meat. When people see the truth—that Peters was jailed to bury evidence of election fraud—the pressure becomes unbearable.  And Trump is naturally good at that kind of thing.  But if he’s waiting for help from other Republicans, they don’t have the guts.  It will have to come from him, and him alone.  The damage from this case will benefit other efforts around the country.  Allowing the radical left to control the discussion, as they have, will not help with the Midterms, where Democrats are planning to cheat, because it’s their only strategy.  This case could greatly frustrate those efforts. 

And let’s talk numbers because facts matter. The Heritage Foundation database lists 1,561 proven cases of election fraud over decades, with 20 cases in 2024 alone.⁶ Brookings says fraud rates are minuscule—0.0000845% in Arizona over 25 years—but those stats ignore systemic vulnerabilities in digital voting systems.⁷ Globally, we know electronic manipulation happens—Venezuela, China, Russia. You give people the illusion of choice, then flip the results. That’s the game. And it happened here in 2020.

So when they say, “There’s no evidence,” what they mean is, “We buried the evidence and jailed the people who had it.” Tina Peters had the proof. She tried to show it. They raided her home, seized her devices, and threw her in prison. That’s tyranny, plain and simple. And if Trump doesn’t act, it sends a message: whistleblowers will be crushed, and election integrity will remain a myth.

Here’s the bottom line: Trump has tools. He can’t wave a magic wand, but he can apply pressure—legal, financial, and political—until Colorado cracks. And he must. Because if we don’t fight for Peters, we don’t fight for honest elections. And without honest elections, we don’t have a republic.

Summary of Key Actions for President Trump

1. Launch a Pressure Campaign

    • Publicly call out Colorado Governor Jared Polis and AG Phil Weiser.

    • Mobilize grassroots and media to demand Tina Peters’ release.

2. Leverage DOJ Authority

    • File federal habeas corpus petitions citing election law violations.

    • Open a Civil Rights investigation into political retaliation.

3. Use Federal Funding Leverage

    • Condition Colorado’s federal election security funds on transparency and whistleblower protections.

    • Publicize potential funding cuts to increase pressure.

4. Subpoena Tina Peters for Federal Testimony

    • DOJ can request a temporary transfer to federal custody for testimony related to election integrity.

5. Amplify Public Awareness

    • Feature Peters’ case in speeches, rallies, and media appearances.

    • Encourage allies like Mike Lindell, Steve Bannon, and WarRoom to keep the story alive; they need red meat to pound away at the base.

This is one of the most critical agenda items for the Trump administration because much remains unsaid.  All the horrible things going on in the world with Hamas, China, Russia, Venezuela, and our own domestic money policy that is under siege are nothing compared to the villainy that occurred against Tina Peters.  If she is allowed to be held in jail by a corrupt, leftist Democrat government in Colorado, people will lose faith in fighting for an honest election in 2026.  And without an honest election, the radical left plans to capture enough seats to impeach Trump and give the government back to the Deep State.  So this is a critical time.  We need a very vicious pressure campaign that forces this issue on the nightly news, because so far, they have been able to ignore it.  Once Trump won the last election, all the hostile forces treated it as a concession to buy a little time.  And the Midterms were their target.  If Tina Peters is not freed, then Trump will have a hard time holding power, and those who will fight for him will become discouraged.  So freeing Tina from jail is a must-do occasion.  There is no other option. Yes, there was election fraud in the 2020 election, and those who committed it, numbering in the many thousands, have to be punished for what they did.  Otherwise, we don’t have a country. 

Bibliography (Chicago Style)

1. Colorado Judicial Branch. “People v. Tina Peters: Sentencing Order.” October 2024.

2. CBS News. “Tina Peters Sentenced to Nine Years in State Prison.” October 2024.

3. Fox News. “Mike Lindell Faces $1 Billion Lawsuit Over Election Claims.” 2023.

4. ABC News. “Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro Sentenced for Contempt of Congress.” 2024.

5. U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2.

6. Heritage Foundation. “Election Fraud Database.” 2024.

7. Brookings Institution. “Election Fraud Rates in U.S. Elections.” 2023.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Hidden Game: How Sports Betting is Giving Power to the Mob and the NFL

This is a story that quickly disappeared: the NBA gambling scandal.  However, one of the great things about money is that it reveals a lot about the people who want it. In the gambling world, where easy money is a prospect for those who are lazy, the character of all endeavors is relatively easy to reveal.  And it’s not just the NBA; I would say the rigged games in favor of betting odds are much worse in the NFL.  In the age of legalized sports betting, the question isn’t just who will win the game—it’s whether the game itself is being played fairly. As billions of dollars flow through betting platforms and fantasy leagues, the integrity of professional sports is under more scrutiny than ever. Recent scandals in the NBA and questionable officiating in the NFL have reignited concerns that games may be influenced not just by athletic performance, but by money, power, and even organized crime.

The NBA was rocked by a recent FBI investigation led by Kash Patel, which exposed a network of players and insiders allegedly involved in illegal gambling activities. The scandal implicated figures like Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier, and Damon Jones, who were accused of sharing confidential injury information to manipulate betting outcomes. The scheme reportedly involved rigged poker games backed by mafia families and the use of cheating technologies like altered shuffling machines and hidden cameras.

This wasn’t just a case of players making side bets—it resembled insider trading. Athletes and coaches acted as “tippers,” passing non-public information to bettors who profited from the edge. The FBI’s involvement underscores the seriousness of the issue and suggests that this may be just the beginning of a broader crackdown.

The idea that sports can be rigged isn’t new. The infamous 1919 Black Sox scandal involved eight Chicago White Sox players who were accused of throwing the World Series in exchange for money from gamblers. Pete Rose, one of baseball’s greatest hitters, was banned for betting on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds, even back then.  These days, it can only be thought to be much, much worse.

In the NBA, referee Tim Donaghy admitted to betting on games he officiated and providing inside information to mob-connected bookies. His case revealed how easily a single official could influence the outcome of a match through foul calls, clock management, and momentum shifts.

Organized crime families like the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, and Bonanno have long used sports betting as a tool for money laundering and manipulation. With the legalization of sports betting in many states, the opportunities for corruption have only grown.  And would a referee be inclined to rig a game through penalties to cover a margin?  I would think the answer is an emphatic yes, and that it’s a problem that the NFL itself has very little control over.  Players aren’t welcomingly encouraged to criticize the referees.  They may disagree with the calls, but if they want to play the game, they have to honor the game within the game—the sports betting that is the real fuel for the industry. 

While basketball and baseball have their own vulnerabilities, the NFL may be the most susceptible sport to manipulation. Why? Because of the nature of clock management and the subjective power of referees.

In football, a single penalty can stop the clock, reverse a touchdown, or shift field position dramatically. Referees have enormous discretion in calling holding, pass interference, and roughing the passer—penalties that can change the momentum of a game in seconds.

A recent study from the University of Texas at El Paso found that referees disproportionately favor teams with large fan bases, such as the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs. This bias isn’t necessarily intentional, but it reflects the subtle pressures officials face in high-stakes environments.

One of the most glaring examples of potential manipulation came during the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ matchup against the Detroit Lions. Tampa Bay, a team that had been gaining momentum and sitting at 4-1, faced a Detroit team also vying for NFC dominance.

The game was riddled with controversial calls:

• A missed tripping penalty on Baker Mayfield, who was clearly impeded while scrambling.

• A fourth-down catch by Cade Otton that was reviewed twice—despite NFL rules prohibiting double reviews.

• A reversal of a completed catch into a turnover on downs.

• Multiple missed defensive holding calls and phantom illegal contact penalties.

Mayfield, known for his competitive fire, publicly criticized the officiating, saying, “I work my ass off… when things I don’t deem are fair, I’m going to let somebody know.”

These calls didn’t just affect the scoreboard—they disrupted Tampa Bay’s rhythm, shifted momentum, and arguably changed the outcome of the game. For fans who know their team well, the inconsistencies were glaring.

The NFL is a multi-billion-dollar entertainment empire. When one team dominates the standings early in the season, it can lead to reduced viewer engagement and betting activity. A close, competitive playoff race keeps fans watching, betting, and spending.

If Tampa Bay had continued its winning streak, it could have created a lopsided picture in the NFC. By slowing their momentum—intentionally or not—the league maintains parity and keeps the narrative exciting. This benefits advertisers, sportsbooks, and the league itself.

Legalized betting has created a new layer of influence. Referees, who earn significantly less than star players, may be more susceptible to corruption. Even if the league itself isn’t orchestrating outcomes, individual officials could be incentivized to make calls that favor betting interests.

At some point, fans must ask: Is the NFL a sport or a scripted entertainment product?

Like professional wrestling, where outcomes are predetermined to maximize drama, the NFL may be leaning into narrative manipulation. Injuries, rivalries, and comeback stories make for compelling television—but when officiating inconsistencies align too neatly with betting odds, it raises eyebrows.

This doesn’t mean every game is rigged. Players still compete fiercely, and many games are decided by skill and strategy. However, the influence of money, media, and betting creates an environment where manipulation is not only possible but also profitable.

Legal sportsbooks have helped uncover scandals, such as the lifetime ban of NBA player Jontay Porter for betting violations. But they also create conflicts of interest. Integrity monitors like Sportradar and Genius Sports are financially tied to the leagues they’re supposed to oversee.

Betting is now embedded in broadcasts, apps, and team partnerships. Fans are encouraged to wager on everything from coin tosses to player stats. This normalization of gambling makes it increasingly difficult to distinguish between sport and speculation.

Despite these challenges, some teams still manage to win. Tampa Bay, led by Baker Mayfield and a strong coaching staff, has shown resilience. Even when calls go against them, they find ways to compete.

But it’s harder. When referees disrupt momentum, call phantom penalties, or ignore obvious infractions, it forces teams to play not just against their opponents—but against the system itself.

Professional sports are no longer just games—they’re entertainment products shaped by money, media, and betting interests. Fans must approach them with a critical eye, understanding that while the athleticism is real, the forces behind the scenes may not be.

The NBA scandal is a wake-up call. The NFL’s officiating inconsistencies are a warning. And the rise of legalized betting is a game-changer.

Enjoy the games. Cheer for your team. But remember: the real game is always happening off the field.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Impairment Playbook: One of the biggest threats to American infrastructure

One of my many roles is Vice President of Manufacturing, Facilities, and Program Management at CTL Aerospace. At Senator George Lang’s fundraiser on November 1st, 2025, everyone I spoke with was primarily interested in an update on the Chapter 11 filing for the company.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago when Vivek Ramaswamy came to CTL to announce his run for Governor, so there were lots of people cheering that the company would find a way through to the other side of a challenging financial situation.  And to make matters worse, our case was not one of not having customers or income, but rather part of a widespread suppression campaign by our bank that many privately owned Tier 2 suppliers have experienced over the last decade.  Only in the case of CTL Aerospace, the ownership has shown a very rigorous desire to hold ownership rather than to be pushed aside, essentially by pirates who just wanted to raid our ship and steal all the plunder for a quick flip on the market, as a turn and burn, as they like to say.  The context and legal positioning regarding CTL Aerospace’s Chapter 11 proceedings, specifically the compelling basis for equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. §510(c). The facts of our case, supported by documented creditor misconduct and predatory financial behavior, are now a very public matter, so the personalities involved are in the public record. 

CTL Aerospace—a 79-year-old aerospace manufacturer—has faced targeted financial suppression during a period of global supply chain instability. The aggressor in this case refused to extend forbearance, coupled with abrupt covenant enforcement and term manipulation, directly impaired our ability to procure raw materials and maintain operational continuity, resulting in massive damages for which everyone in the crowd I was speaking with was very interested. These actions were timed to coincide with industry-wide distress and reflect a pattern of bad faith and strategic impairment.  And the target against us was the “goodwill” of our business, the brand that we had built over a long period of time, the intangibles that are often overlooked in modern business because nobody prosecutes those kinds of cases anymore.  Even though they certainly should and would otherwise if the costs weren’t so prohibitively high.  Once you get into something like this, you see a real menace to the infrastructure of America that is determined to erode our manufacturing base by international banks, who, just like pirates, are seeking short-term plunder and quick sales on the hedge fund market.  When you attack a company’s “goodwill” through purposeful suppression techniques, which a bank can do since it is the mechanism through which all cash for a company flows, if it breaches that fiduciary trust, it can really wreck a business.  And as I found out during this process, it’s not just CTL Aerospace going through this kind of thing, but it’s common in the nation right now, as many private owners we know closely have had to step out of the game and get into the name change cycle every few years, which has caused all kinds of supply chain instability.  Again, much of this is now public record, and people have been following the case. They wanted me to provide an undercover perspective, as this is a very political problem, a matter of national security, which is undoubtedly the case at CTL Aerospace.

Case law supports our position, which is to fight back and seek damages for the massive financial impact on our company’s goodwill. In Citicorp Venture Capital, Ltd. v. Committee of Creditors Holding Unsecured Claims (In re Papercraft Corp.), 211 B.R. 813 (W.D. Pa. 1997), the court subordinated a creditor’s claim due to inequitable conduct that harmed other creditors and the debtor’s reorganization prospects. Similarly, In re Fabricators, Inc., 926 F.2d 1458 (5th Cir. 1991), emphasized that insider status and control over the debtor’s financial decisions can trigger subordination when used to the detriment of the estate.  And that was certainly the case at CTL Aerospace in really extraordinary ways.  But often, such defenses are never applied because by the time you go through the Chapter 11 process, a company doesn’t have the money to fight, which means you essentially have to hire $3000 per hour lawyers to run the case.  Because the banks certainly have those types on their side. In this case, the conduct—potentially documented in internal communications and covenant enforcement timelines—suggests a deliberate strategy to induce distress and position itself for asset acquisition or impairment accounting. We are actively pursuing discovery to uncover these records and may seek engagement with the DOJ or OCC for a lender liability review.  And based on the evidence we have and the timeline, which many have told us from an insider perspective is a classic case of “The Playbook,” would be an easy case to prosecute.  And likely a large settlement.  But that’s not where my mind is, or some of the people involved in this with me.  We want to see much deeper punishment for the entire financial industry, because this hasn’t just happened to us.  It’s a significant impediment to the economic backbone of the entire American manufacturing industry.  It’s not enough for us to survive, which we look poised to do.  However, to illustrate what was done. 

I explained it like this to many people at the fundraiser, and it was good to chat with Senator Bernie Moreno, who is doing a great job in D.C., and Congressman Warren Davidson who has been fantastic over the role of the Fed in government and is very cerebral in problem resolution, imagine you are a big deer with a full rack of antlers, a 10 pointer.  You have lived a long time, and it shows in the development of your antlers.  But one unfortunate day, you try to cross a road and you get hit by a car, breaking your hip or leg.  The driver keeps going.  You are lying there helpless.  Then a cringy pick-up truck comes along with a very loathsome character getting out, who sees an opportunity for a free mount on his cabin wall to brag about.  He sees the big deer with the whole rack and thinks it’s an excellent opportunity to kill the deer and hang the head on his wall for bragging rights.  He didn’t do the work of hunting the deer, but nobody will ever know.  Typically, in a business cycle, the deer would find a way to crawl away into the woods to heal and restore itself to life after such an accident.  In CTL’s business, a global supply chain issue put us under significant stress.  However, rather than helping CTL, the bank adopted a suppression strategy, essentially running the deer over with a car so they could hang the easy kill on their portfolio management wall for bragging rights and a path to easy money.  And from my perspective, based on the evidence, there is a prominent political position in all this, too, a hatred for the Trump administration and this notion of Making America Great Again.  Patriotic companies like CTL Aerospace, which are privately owned and conduct a significant amount of defense work, are prime targets.  They are the 10-point bucks that would look great on a very progressive trophy wall for financial institutions.  However, the facts of the case are sufficient.  It was a sloppy case on the opposition’s part; they made numerous mistakes that they thought they could hide behind expensive lawyers.  But the case law certainly doesn’t favor them. 

When everyone asked me what needs to happen in this case, I gave my point of view, which is prosecution on equitable subordination under 11 U.S.C. §510(c).  The attacker is demoted from a secured creditor, and their impairment play is wrapped up in a case law lesson.  However, the issue would have to be taken out of their control, as they currently hold a monopoly status in the courts and the financial mechanism.  At the very least, this is a case of predatory accounting that should serve as a cautionary lesson for similar cases.  And as long as it’s going on, it violates any notion that Ohio, or America, can sustain new business activity when these practices are hindering the behavior.  It’s a significant threat to our economy and national security.  Over the course of the last year, we spoke to a lot of people to get involved, and once they realized that CTL was in the squeeze play, they didn’t want to get wrapped up in the whole effort for fear of being sucked in themselves.  Like the deer example, they felt sorry for the deer but didn’t dare to help, fearing they would be poached themselves. 

I told the same story over and over, but it has a lot of details, so I wrote it down here, as most of the attendees are very interested in the topics I discuss.  This financial behavior is actually part of a larger collapse of political and social order that is occurring in most industries. This lack of respect for goodwill, for instance, is precisely why the Disney Company is struggling these days, as it owns intangibles such as movie rights, brand names, and amusement parks.  But they have, through woke corporate practices, destroyed the “goodwill” of the company that Uncle Walt built, and people wanted to be associated with.  Hedge fund people think in terms of tangibles, such as the head of a 10-point buck on their wall to brag about.  However, what truly adds value to the marketplace is the intangible of “goodwill.”  And that’s what the fight at CTL Aerospace is really about, and why so many people were interested in an update.  Most of these tier 2 companies don’t put up much of a fight.  Once wounded, they sell off to make the pain end as quickly as possible.  And that is what the opposition thought was going to happen here.  Only it didn’t, and the stand and fight part was not something they were quite ready for.  And that’s where the case is as of now. Significant reforms to the finance industry are needed, as this is certainly not the only example.  And suppose we really want to make America Great Again. In that case, we need to punish these predatory practices of fiduciary terrorism through “goodwill” destruction because it’s a real problem for virtually everyone whose lives are touched in terrifying ways by it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The Arrest of James Comey: It’s time for justice

Nobody should be surprised by the arrest of James Comey.  Of course, it was proper to let the statute of limitations run just short of 5 years, then arrest the old FBI director, letting him think he was going to get away with his crimes, of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice.  Comey purposely misled lawmakers during the Russian probe into Crossfire Hurricane, and it wasn’t forgivable.  You can’t have a law and order society if those who are supposed to be caretakers of that law and order are committing crimes, and James Comey clearly did.  And he’s not the only one.  But Comey started a lot of the Deep State activism against Trump, and the rest of us with a reckless disregard for the truth and he has to be punished for it.  And we knew that when Trump pushed Pam Bondi to move on some of these indictments, this was all going to go down.  It’s time.  The stall tactics of the career bureaucrats, who were expecting to wait out Trump’s term, have revealed an arrogance that needs to be broken up.  They can’t be allowed to conduct themselves as they have and resist justice.  With people we expect to run these investigations, such as Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, this unique window was only going to open up for a short time, and now is that time.  The expectation that people like Comey could commit crimes and stall the results and sit on a beach somewhere waiting out the previous administration until voters simply removed them is over.  As I have said, and this is key, from the beginning.  You can’t throw people like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon in jail without expecting punishment.  These people tried to destroy Trump’s life just for daring to be in politics, and now he has the authority of the American people behind him to set right all these many wrongs, starting with Jim Comey.

Scum bag

I will be talking about it a lot, my now-famous CNN segment where I said live on the air to Anderson Cooper’s audience that Comey had lied in his first testimony in May 2017, when Trump first fired him.  At that time, it was a very scandalous thing to say.  Not that I cared much, because I had my own media outlet that was much more popular than any of those mainstream ones.  So my punishment for saying what I did about Comey put me in the radical right-wing crazy column, and everyone stopped asking me to appear on television and radio shows after that CNN segment.  And all I said was that I thought Comey was more inclined to fiction when saying anything.  I was pretty nice about saying that the former FBI Director was a lying scum bag.  However, people had a hard time getting their minds around that idea because Comey projected a Boy Scout-like honesty that defied the reality of him.  And people wanted the illusion.  And the Deep State took note, figuring they could get away with anything.  And the arrogance of Comey continued to escalate.  And the career types who are in these jobs were cheerleading the demise of Trump from their way too comfortable jobs.  They conspired against the hand-picked administration and thought we were all fools as they manipulated the FISA courts, expecting us all to just sit on our hands and let it happen.  They thought we were suckers who would not fight back.  And they ended up stealing an election just a few short months after the testimony that got Comey in all the trouble he is in now.  These charges are not the only ones for which he is guilty.  But the trend was evident at the time, and now, in hindsight, there were a lot of crimes that were committed against Trump and the idea of an open election that is impossible to ignore.

This idea of stalling out investigations, as seen with Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice and Kash Patel, is reminiscent of what Comey used to do.  And people like Dan Bongino helping in the background, that the system was designed to hide people like Jim Comey from justice was going to be allowed to stand.  It was a dumb concept that was never going to work.  I have been very forgiving of Pam Bondi.  It takes a few months to learn some of these jobs, especially when all the employees who report to you are sandbagging.  You don’t want to prosecute unfairly, and Trump certainly didn’t want to win office and start throwing his political rivals in jail.  But, they asked for it.  And after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, after the attempted assassination of Trump, there simply is no other option.  We can point to the killers and send them to the firing squad.  But there is an entire system behind them of these career Deep Staters who are really causing all the trouble in the world, and justice has to point in their direction, starting with one of the worst of all, James Comey.  He lied and hid his malice behind a “golly gee” Tayler Swift façade, like he’s the dad in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, instead of a conniving villain trying to protect the pensions of career leeches off taxpayer dollars. 

And the public will reward Trump with the arrest of Jim Comey, and they’ll expect many more to be prosecuted as well.  The best way to undo the system is to crush it and let it collapse.  Let the media have a meltdown over what they thought was a protected class of criminals, the career bureaucrats, such as James Comey, who were protected by government unions into perpetual activism and could lie, cheat, and steal because all the laws were rigged to favor them.  And to get away with their crimes, all they had to do was outlast the elected office holders who would come and go.  They were protected by a media driven by the same labor union mentality, which led them not to criticize their brothers and sisters in government, but instead to criticize the elected representatives who send those people to Washington to work on their behalf, only to rotate out every four years or so.  Arresting Comey is the start of something truly outstanding and orderly.  No longer can career political figures hide in the background and get away with horrendous legal tampering, as we saw happen with the former FBI Director.  And he won’t be the last, but is just the first.  And that’s how it should be, given this long history.  It was eight years ago that I interviewed on CNN, where I stated that Comey was a liar.  It has taken this long to have him finally arrested for his crimes, and that is with someone like Trump in the White House.  These crimes are committed because there is an expectation of being too nice, and the criminals have been taking advantage of that gullibility for too long.  And they expected it to continue perpetually.  But we all have an obligation to a law and order society, and that starts by not letting these criminals get away with it, and to hide behind union cards and mass collectivism.  And with that in mind, James Comey is just the very first.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Trying to Make Padro Pascal the New Sexiest Man: But you can’t fake it

The new Fantastic Four movie was pretty fantastic.  I’ll do a review on it, which it deserves later.  However, for now, we must discuss the promotional activities taking place in Hollywood, so that people can understand how they are manipulated by mass PR culture, which is currently in transition and at the forefront of a rebellion.  Hollywood is distancing itself from woke culture, yet still trying to fulfill its former commitment to it, which lies at the heart of a fascinating problem that Hollywood has with leading men.  They do not have people like Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, and Clint Eastwood to drive box office numbers because they went woke a long time ago and have seen value into the Hollywood product decline ever since.  So they need a leading man, but it can’t be a white man from America, as is traditionally the case.  So Pedro Pascal as a Latino man kind of gives them that and they have been trying to milk him for all they can.  I think he was pretty good in the Star Wars television show, The Mandalorian.  And he’s been in other things since the success of that show launched him into fame.  But, he’s not quite the package that PR firms would like him to be.  He’s missing some things that normal “sexy” men usually have.  Hollywood would love Pedro to be the next Harrison Ford.  But in a kind of woke way, so it’s interesting to watch how the press handles him.  And that has certainly been the case, as Pedro Pascal has been doing press for The Fantastic Four alongside his co-star in the film, Vanessa Kirby.

You might have heard about how affectionate Kirby and Pascal have been with each other during interviews.  And I think much of it is natural.  As much as actors want to say “it’s just acting,” the truth is that actors fall in love with each other all the time.  Case in point, the recent discussion about Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson from The Naked Gun set, where they were spotted kissing at the movie premiere.  For years now, we have been told by Hollywood that men could be women, and women, men.  And that romance was overrated, and even showing romantic scenes in movies was a downward trend, because behind all this was a very anti-family agenda.  And it has cost Hollywood a lot, and continues to do so, because movie fans like romance and seeing the people they watch in movies like each other.  It has been quite interesting to see how Vanessa Kirby has been playing up her role in promoting Pedro Pascal as a romantic figure that women can’t keep their hands off.  Because Pedro is safe, because he’s not a white male, Hollywood thinks it’s OK to promote him as the new sexiest man, because it still checks off their woke box within the culture itself.  I believe there is some genuine affection between Kirby and Pascal, but with all the romantic touching that they have been doing, with her pregnant with another man’s baby and Pedro dating someone else, they are trying to start rumors of an affair so that people believe more in their film’s character’s relationship, and this is a new strategy for Hollywood, as they are trying to repair their anti-family, anti-romance reputation with a public that has decided to move on without them.  Despite these efforts by Kirby and Pascal, The Fantastic Four has been pretty flat at the box office.  Not because it’s a bad movie, but because the public has lost faith in Disney as a film producer.

I don’t think actors are ever really actors, and I’ve known quite a few very well.  I’ve shared a trailer on movie sets with a few and can report that they are very human people behind the PR stunts.  And I was personally invited to the home of Jennie Garth from Beverly Hills 90210 and her husband at the time, Peter Facinelli who was doing the Twilight movies then, and it’s a tough life to essentially be a 24/7 PR relations billboard.  The pressure that is put on relationships is crushing, and I don’t think any actor in that business ever really figures it out.  I believe Vanessa Kirby loves the guy she’s engaged to the best she can.  And I think Pedro Pascal loves everyone in a kind of metro sexual way.  But the MAGA loving public doesn’t like the woke stuff so there is no real way to dress it up.  My reference to Jennie Garth essentially is to point out that I think the PR people behind The Fantastic Four, and the agents involved have told these two to act in the press as they would in the movie, and if that means acting like they are sleeping together to get the public excited to see them in a film together, then do it.  Usually, actors are told to refrain from that kind of public affection.  But with Hollywood out of ideas and trying to win back a jaded public, they are trying everything.  And one thing that actors do is act.  It’s hard to tell when they are sincere about anything, including things to themselves.  They are often not very grounded in reality because they always serve someone’s PR machine. 

To explain it away, as people have been talking about the possible reality that Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby are cheating on their significant others with each other, it has been leaked to the press that Vanessa knows Pedro so well that she knows he suffers from anxiety and that he requires physical contact to maintain himself.  Well, that sounds like a cheesy pickup line to me, but it’s not very sexy.  So either way all this goes, it’s not the kind of appeal that audiences are looking for.  Right now, The Fantastic Four will be lucky to break even at the box office for a whole lot of reasons that Disney is unsure how to deal with.  It will take a lot more than rumors of affairs to win people over to their leading actors and actresses.  And when it comes to whether an actress would continue to act long after the cameras are off, well, of course, they would.  And I’m sure with Vanessa Kirby, she is acting when it comes to playing Pedro Pascal up as the next, sexiest, leading man in Hollywood.  I often feel sorry for actors because at the Hollywood level, the job never goes away.  I saw in Jennie and Peter a genuine attempt to be a real family, but the cracks were certainly there in trying to balance a private life with the pressures of PR needs for their entertainment projects.  People see romance between actors and want to believe it’s real.  As a last-ditch effort to save themselves, PR specialists and their agents are advising their clients to show affection for their co-stars in public, thereby fueling speculation and promoting film sales.  But what nobody has figured out is that what the public wants is authenticity, not more phony relationships.  Instead of fixing the problem, Hollywood is making it worse.  And woke is not going to work with the movie going public.  Hollywood can’t have a leading man who is also woke.  There are certain things that a sexy man is, and Hollywood won’t be able to define them for their use.  They either provide a product that people want.  Or they don’t.  The market is, and has always been, in charge.  Not the PR people. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

We Have To Teach People Why Capitalism is Good: The Vivek Ramaswamy approach to Zohran Mamdani

I think people misread Vivek Ramaswamy’s comments about Zohran Mamdani incorrectly, for the most part.  However, when Vivek placed an ad in New York challenging the socialist candidate for mayor to a debate, it raised several interesting questions that will undoubtedly be part of future discussions about politics.  Vivek, of course, is jumping into the conversation about New York politics because, as a capitalist who made a lot of money in New York and is now planning to be the governor of Ohio, he is uniquely positioned to have a debate with what the political left thinks of as a bright young star, in Mamdani.  But critics of communism and socialism expect a more visceral hatred of Mamdani than Vivek shows to people.  I’ve had the fortune of knowing Vivek personally, and this is true for most people: bright individuals who can debate any topic with anyone don’t have to get defensive every time a challenge arises to their belief system.  So Vivek can have a very cerebral discussion about Mamdani without getting too upset that the trend in Democrat politics is a radical leaning towards far-left, Marxist policies.  And most people have been taught, through years of Cold War policy from the over 50s crowd and onward, that we are to approach communists and socialists with anger, like they are the invaders we saw in the movie Red Dawn.  Vivek comes from a much younger generation, and that’s a good thing because, in the post-Trump years, many things are going to change.  People are realizing right now, and with Mamdani, just how dangerous all the socialist instruction in our public schools has been.  And most young people have had extensive exposure to it through public education. For too many voters, this issue has snuck up on them, evoking a lot of fear in people like Mamdani.

I have been warning everyone about the problems with socialism for many years.  And while public schools don’t overtly have classes teaching Marxism in general, it is implicit in the background of almost everything done in the teaching process, including in kindergarten, when the teacher instructs you to share your toys with your neighbor.  And that everyone is equal.  Vivek Ramaswamy’s approach to the communist problem is to debate it, because he can.  Not to fight them in the streets or call them names.  There are many young people, like Zohran Mamdani, who will be able to utilize social media to capture the attention of young voters who lack opportunities to surpass their parents’ achievements.  For many young people who can’t afford to buy their own home or have children, life seems unappealing and not worth fighting for.  While most MAGA supporters of today’s politics likely have their own car, their own home with lots of property, maybe even a boat.  Several kids.  A pretty good life, and something that they want to defend from people who want to take all that from them.  Vivek understands that the under-50 crowd has vastly different motivations and perspectives, and that they don’t feel the need to fight for anything, because, from their perspective, they don’t have much to fight for.  Their minds have mainly been rotted out by the public education experience that taught them all the wrong Marxist things about social equality and the value of private property ownership.  Therefore, portraying our political enemies as revolting figures will not win over new voters, because those new voters essentially share Mamdani’s perspective. 

That’s why the future of the MAGA movement needs to include people like Vivek Ramaswamy and J.D. Vance, who can debate any issue with anyone, anywhere.  And Vivek certainly can, and that is the way to win over the next generation of voters.  If, during the Trump years, the goal was to overcome all the lies that had been told to us by a government that sought global socialism as its governing principle, now the shoe is on the other foot.  It’s not enough to question the government of socialists and to run them out of office.  The problem that J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy will face with young people is that many of them have to be taught the virtues of capitalism from scratch.  We can’t just hold up Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and tell them to read it.  They need to understand it relative to their thoughts as young socialists who we have let get out of control, rob away their hopes and dreams.  Fighting socialism and communism with the kind of Cold War hatred that we have in the past won’t work on today’s social media.  Capitalism has to be sold to people all over again.  It will help to have a successful Trump administration to point to so that young socialists can see for themselves how much better a capitalist system is than their socialist and communist teachings.  In the world’s plans, they never thought a Trump character would ever hold a position of power, revealing just how powerful capitalism could be.  His election was crucial in many ways at this particular point in history.  But do not assume that the new generation will have a hatred for communism as previous generations in America have.  It’s quite the opposite.  Most young people will have to be taught from scratch why capitalism is so much better, because they certainly haven’t been taught why in school, or entertainment, or their social groups. 

The shock everyone has felt at hearing Mamdani utter outright communist sentiment, wanting to be the mayor of New York City, what many think of as the capitalist capital of the world, is the reality that this new generation of young people is more prone to accept elements of Marxism because it’s all they know.  And for many, this issue snuck up on them as they realized how much of modern-day social media is dominated by young people who are just like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and now Mamdani.  We say today they won’t and can’t win elections if this is what the Democrat Party is.  However, this is what the Democratic Party has been for quite some time.  They just hid it all behind a social mask, but it’s always been there, and now that people see it and hear them talk, the realization they have toward it is hatred.  However, be cautious not to demonize all these young socialists, as the goal is to win over that generation in a competitive race for the minds of a new generation.  And understand that capitalism has to be sold to them because they were not taught its value, and they do not have a natural love for it.  It will take someone like Vivek Ramaswamy to explain it to them and show them why it works.  They can’t expect just to read Adam Smith’s book and draw their conclusions.  They will have to be taught, with considerable debate.  And Vivek is just the right mind for all that.  He understands the problem all too well, even as many are just now waking up to it and have been caught off guard.  The next generation in America has to be mainly taught from scratch.  Their minds have been ruined.  And hating them won’t convince them to join you.  We have to earn them to our side person for person. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Re-elect Mark Welch to West Chester Trustee: The excitment about the future of air taxis

It began with a discussion about the new Trump executive order on air taxis and exploring how West Chester, Ohio, could become part of this exciting new trend.  But halfway through our conversation, it became apparent to me that Mark Welch was up for re-election, and it would be a good idea to continue the discussion on camera so that people could see how the spaghetti is made politically, because West Chester is at a critical time.  It has been very prosperous, and Mark, as a trustee, has been exceptionally effective in contributing to that success.  He is what remains of a long-standing government relationship that balanced power and innovation in just the right way over an extended period, resulting in great success.  I don’t think he will have a difficult time re-winning his seat.  However, there are challengers, and quite a few of them lean toward Democratic politics, and we all know what that means.  It’s a second-generation kind of thing, where the governing we do ends up being second-generation concerns.  They know they like the success, but they don’t know how to earn more of it for themselves.  And under the traditional campaign platform approach, there isn’t much opportunity for someone with extensive experience and success, like Mark Welch, to demonstrate why he is so much better than everyone else.  During our conversation, I suggested to Mark that we record the rest of our talk on camera so people could listen in and see what goes into being a good trustee.  These kinds of races cost a lot of money, because you have to buy print media, do the yard signs in a big district, and do radio and television to maintain a brand expectation that the public has for a front-running political figure.  However, the best thing Mark Welch has in his favor, campaign-wise, is his own experience, allowing people to hear it for themselves without interruption. 

One thing that Mark has always been good at is understanding the passions that business owners have and embracing a go-forward path toward fulfillment, which is why we were discussing flying cars and a vertiport in West Chester.  Over the last 14 years or so, there were numerous decisions made, including Mark’s election as a trustee, that contributed to West Chester, Ohio, becoming one of the best places to live in the world. Welch knows his stuff.  Every time I speak with him, he rattles off an enormous amount of detailed information about the subjects we’re discussing, and he finds a way to get along with just about everyone.  So he was undoubtedly the right guy to talk about an abandoned property that I had been thinking about that could use a repurpose to be a vertiport for the new Joby Air Taxi service which would take visitors to and from the local airports, CVG to the south, and Dayton International to the north, to avoid the heavy traffic that is typically associated with both routes.  Joby Aviation has relationships with Uber, Toyota, and Delta Airlines to advance personal transportation along these frontiers. All they needed was a presidential administration like Trump’s to sign an executive order allowing them to proceed, and FAA certification to advance.  Mark and I were talking about what a shame it was that Saudi Arabia and, specifically, Dubai, were going to be the first to market for this exciting new transportation system.  This is no longer science fiction, like the Jetsons cartoon or Back to the Future.  These vertical takeoff vehicles are real, very efficient, and can safely transport up to four passengers right now.  All they need at this point is the FAA certification, which they are expected to receive later in 2025.  Now was the time to discuss how West Chester, Ohio, could become part of this exciting new trend.

The reason West Chester would be a great place to start an American hub is that Joby Aviation has a manufacturing facility where it will build thousands of these sky cars in the Dayton area for many years.  And as it stands, Toyota has invested over $500 million in a partnership with Joby, which means that Japan will be using these sky cars soon, as will China.  It would be a real shame to have all these far-away places using something that was being built right down the road from West Chester.  I have people who come from all over the world to see me often, and their number one complaint is that it takes too long to get to the area airports from West Chester.  They’d rather not worry about renting a car once they get to Cincinnati to visit a business associate in West Chester.  They’d like to fly in on Delta, catch their direct shuttle service to the Joby air taxi at the Delta hub, and fly directly to West Chester, so they can walk to their hotel without worrying about traffic.  West Chester has a lot of hotels, but the other complaint is that they are always booked, so there is a genuine business need to solve this transportation problem.  It’s great to have such excellent highway access as West Chester does.  But the hour spent either to the north or the south getting to the airport could be used in a much better way, and these Joby Air Taxis are just the right thing. 

Air taxis will play a significant role in the future American economy.  The best way to deal with traffic is to fly over it; as a result, many parts of America will likely utilize air taxis after just visiting Washington D.C. I can say that they will be instrumental in flying people in and out of the city from many directions, as the traffic on the highways is always so thick.  People don’t travel long distances for business meetings only to sit in traffic.  And it happens all the time in West Chester: people from out of town want to go to a Reds game, but everyone has worked all day at their business and doesn’t have time to drive down to the stadium to sit in traffic for an hour and a half during rush hour.  If they could take a Joby air taxi to the stadium, they would do it without hesitation.  Mark and I were discussing that old building in West Chester that would make a great skyport for the southern Ohio region.  Because establishing those would be the very next problem that Joby Aviation would have to overcome, they had the technical parts worked out.  Now they had the political support.  Now, all they needed were vertiports to create a network of use that these flying cars could be a part of, so that commercial travel could begin.  But that was new information.  Mark has been down this kind of road before, with many thousands of similar enterprises that just needed a friendly place to set up shop, which is why West Chester became one of the best places in the world to live.  Mark Welch embodies the perfect politician, and if we want to protect what is so good about West Chester, Ohio, re-electing Mark Welch to his trustee position is crucial and a wise decision.  There is a lot of fun coming on the horizon for those bold enough to put their arm around innovation.  And when it comes to government leadership, Mark Welch excels at doing just that.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

The United Nations is Going Bankrupt: They never should have been created

I’m thrilled to hear it.  I used to go to meetings with my congressional representative, John Boehner, where he would do meet-and-greets, before he was Speaker of the House in 2010, and ask him to get the United States out of the United Nations.  Most of the time, he wasn’t there, but had assistants who would take notes for him, but they’d giggle about the crazy right-wing lunatic who they were embarrassed to have as a neighbor.  But I was serious.  I didn’t see anything good coming out of the United Nations.  Americans never wanted to be in the United Nations, even though President Woodrow Wilson wanted America to lead the League of Nations.  Americans finally caved after World War II because nobody wanted to see another Hitler in the world, so we ended up with the ridiculous United Nations, and things have gone downhill for America since then.  Americans want to be left alone and free from world problems.  But we have all these nosey politicians who like to drink tea with their pinky out, and sip wine of specific vintages, and they want to be respected by Europeans, so they have been trying to drag America into a marriage with the rest of the world for generations.  I would even argue that if not for sinister forces working in the background, we would never have had any World Wars, so it can be argued that the wars themselves were constructs meant to create a global government.  Not to prevent hostile characters that might plunge the world into war.  Hitler was a creation of a lot of bad people.  And the United Nations was never the solution. Instead, the solution to many of the world’s evils was more Bible reading and independence from the world’s villains. 

But finally, we have a President who gets it, and a political class that can at least understand what that President is up to and why.  People aren’t laughing when they say they want to be separated from the United Nations like it used to be.  Living in Liberty Township, Ohio, specifically Butler County, I think about the United Nations whenever I see a roundabout.  Most people don’t know it, but many of the sustainable living implements introduced socially have come from the United Nations Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 flowdown plans, and our colleges accepted these communist traps hook, line, and sinker for years.  When our township politicians hired people out of these colleges as community developers they brought Agenda 21 sustainable living priorities with them and we ended up with a bunch of sidewalks and roundabouts to adopt more European ideas of community building and environmental impact with the ultimate goal of keeping people in their homes more and driving cars less.  And the whole thing has made me sick every time I go through a roundabout, which are almost as common in Butler County, Ohio, these days as they are in socialist run Europe.  People argue about their worth; they say they are better at keeping cars moving, and they prevent accidents, which make insurance companies happy, who lobby politicians for ways to make society safer so that people will buy insurance but not have accidents to force payouts.  So for all the tyrannical micromanagers out there, Agenda 21 would make them a lot of money, but the goal was to limit freedoms so that stuffy bureaucrats could have an easy time at managing society with a growing centralized government and encourage through policy fewer people to leave their homes, but rather to take a sidewalk everywhere, and to ride bicycles instead of cars.  The roundabouts keep you moving, but also slow you down to go around those stupid circles.  I like long straightaways that we used to have in America, where you could go fast, and even quicker if you could beat the yellow light at an intersection.  Sure, there were more accidents, but life in general was better. 

And never forget that COVID was the ultimate creation of the United Nations to implement their Agenda 21 projects and to set the world on the same page with 2030 priorities.  And yes, COVID was a created virus meant to kill people to force acceptance of these ridiculous stay-at-home policies and conformity to centralized government rules.  If people didn’t die, nobody would listen to an overstuffed government, so through the World Health Organization, a division of the United Nations, a virus was created that would set the world on a Great Reset, much of which still hasn’t recovered.  COVID was planned and implemented using the Chinese system.  The virus was leaked out of a lab in China under very nefarious circumstances.  And immediately, the United Nations had the world on lockdown, micromanaging the economy globally, including America, and they thought that people would fall in line better than they did.  Instead, we had significant pushback and a world angry at the policies of the United Nations, and now we have a President willing to push back against them.  And to cut the money confiscated from Americans and redistribute it to the United Nations, to work against the nature of Americans themselves. Finally, we have politicians willing to stand up to that global tyranny and not play the game, which is great. 

What’s better is the recent report that the United Nations is running out of money because, without the United States, that motley band of socialists, communists, and Marxists has no money.  They can only loot cash from the only capitalist country in the world, America, to sustain themselves.  And now, because we elected Trump, they have essentially been cut off.  And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people.  So I’m pretty happy about their trajectory toward financial ruin.  I have never liked the United Nations.  I have never liked politicians who support them and wanted to join them.  And I would say that without their desire to be created in the first place, we never would have had a World War.  Those wars were created as a reaction to the globalist push that followed the Jekyll Island meetings that started the Federal Reserve, and if you trace all the money and influence to their sources, you will find that it all goes to centralized monetary policy, especially the banks of Europe.  So, there was never anything good about any of this, and what upset them the most was that even after all this time, they never found a way to get Americans to comply with the United Nations willingly.  Sure, we built some roundabouts and sidewalks.  However, people have never embraced the United Nations’ globalist priorities.  Instead, we elected people like President Trump to say no to the United Nations.  And now they struggle to survive because they have nothing without American money.  Because they are rotten, stinking, Marxist countries with bad leadership and horrible economic policies.  And micromanagers without a clue.  But they can name a wine from France in a dinner conversation.  And they will drink it with their pinky out.  I would say that the United Nations types and their supporters are worthless people in life, and I am glad to see them finally rejected for the losers they have always been.  And the more miserable they are, the happier I am. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

DeWine’s State of the State Speech: Lakota schools plots their own demise

Oddly enough, while I was in Columbus to attend the Governor’s State of the State speech, it was Lakota schools that everyone was talking about, and they wanted to join the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding lawsuit.  But in many ways, that wasn’t surprising, and it was confirmed again in Mike DeWine’s speech that day.  Years and years of kicking the can down the road in all these public schools were catching up to them, and the bill was due, and nobody knew what to do about it.  Governors like DeWine have done for decades what they were now doing at Lakota schools around 91 miles to the south in Butler County, Ohio, they were writing tax payer checks for a product and service that fewer and fewer people wanted, and now with Trump in the White House, the warnings I have been giving everyone about what was going to happen are coming true.  Instead of getting out in front of these funding problems, Lakota schools dug in and became more woke.  Senator Lang tried to tell them on a call later that day after the Governor’s speech, but the school system had dug in the opposite direction.  Others and I have tried to give Lakota conservative board members a chance to deal with this issue, and their response as a school board was to run them all off, and that extends beyond Darbi Boddy, the most recent that they found some way to push out of management.  And like things are where liberal types run things, everything costs too much money, and now Trump was cutting back the Department of Education and gubernatorial candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy was talking about significant reforms in education with merit pay, leaving schools like Lakota to join lawsuits with other schools having the same problem, hoping that some sixties flowerchild protest might recover for them a silly little 9 million dollar loss that has come out of their budget due to students utilizing Ed Choice vouchers that are now expanding under the Trump administration and flowing down through the states.  For perspective, Lakota schools in Butler County, Ohio, has a quarter of a billion dollar budget, and that’s still not enough money to fund education the way they want to.

And you know what makes me the angriest about all this? I didn’t get any of Fran’s cookies this year. Fran is Mike DeWine’s long-time and very dedicated wife, who typically gives them out to attendees of her husband’s speech in the rotunda.  This year, activists were there chanting for more money as they felt the pinch from a social disconnect from the standard old traditional funding model of public education.  To avoid the activists, DeWine was ushered away underground to safety, leaving the rest of us to watch their bizarre and out-of-touch rituals with curiosity. The Lakota situation was the topic of conversation because they are one of the largest districts in Ohio, and so went them, so went everyone.  And that was kind of a proper metaphor for DeWine’s State of the State speech.  A do-gooder Governor tosses money at public education and hopes that everything will work well for the kids.  But its these crazy labor unions with woke politics that have screwed up the funding model because people don’t like the product.  And school vouchers, much less restricted these days and growing more so, are giving parents the choice away from their zip code schools where they pay enormous property taxes to fund a political movement they hate essentially.  And Lakota schools were right in the middle of the spectacle leaving DeWine to give just another empty speech about the value of education, and sending books in the mail to students to help with literacy, when the real problem was significant and ominous, and far beyond at this point just passing out cookies in the Statehouse Rotunda to ease tempers.  Legislators were in the middle of the budgeting process for public education at the time of this speech, but the government unions want to cry and protest for money that just isn’t there and aren’t willing to deal with the reality of the coming changes.  And those legislators were mad at what Lakota was thinking of doing then, which they did later that evening.  So it wasn’t a good move by the Lakota School Board.  But I tried to warn everyone, and they didn’t listen.  Much more on that to come.

The main thing in DeWine’s speech was that the Governor came to the speech like an old grandpa that went out to dinner the night before to eat barbeque ribs and still had on a bib from that experience the next day when he thought he was showing up for dinner in a nice suit and tie.  DeWine was out of step and slightly behind the rest of the world for his sixth year in office, most of which had not been very good, especially during the COVID-19 years.  But watching him speak, I thought of him as a nice guy who has been constantly suckered by the same kind of losers who protest education funding, like the people who greeted him upon leaving the State of the State peech.  The old flowerchild strategy of crying like some baby bird until mother government drops a worm in its mouth has long been exhausted, and DeWine never understood it.  He’s a good man from a political generation that caused all these problems and doesn’t know what to do about it.  We have to wait another year or so before we get Vivek Ramaswamy and tackle some of these key issues because just throwing money at problems is not what voters will do in the future. 

The best thing about DeWine’s State of the State speech was the expansion of business enterprise in Ohio, specifically the Andruil factory just south of Columbus and the Intel facility to the north.  There was a lot to talk about, and for DeWine’s credit, many people have been working in the background to make Ohio a much more business-friendly state.  At least DeWine hasn’t stood in the way of those efforts; he’s been willing to tag along.  We’ll get a lot more with Vivek Ramaswamy as Governor, but since DeWine was able to part ways with Amy Acton, the stringy haired hippie who used to be the Health Director during Covid, Ohio has grown more business friendly to make up for their position of lockdown politics that so crippled just about everyone.  Over the last couple of years, DeWine has at least not shut the door to companies like Intel, even though it has largely been members of the Senate that paved the way.  That’s how government works, and it’s very fascinating.  But once the good news was talked about regarding Ohio and DeWine’s speech, the topic went back to the tired old view of the world, and the chants outside could be heard in the chamber, and the reality of places like Lakota schools was coming to fruition.  The days of easy money stolen from taxpayers to fund woke causes were over.  And many people at the State of the State speech in the Ohio Statehouse were struggling with the ramifications of decades of trying to appease the screams of the teacher union types.  But reality has a lot more in store for them than they realize.  The result will be more anger at the people running public education and politicians like Mike DeWine ending their terms dismayed while much more innovative people replace them with reforms that will change all the rules.  The Lakota School Board, in its current form, is just not prepared to deal with it.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Dave Yost Has No Chance: Calling me a fraud won’t make an unlikable person appealing

I support Vivek Ramaswamy for the Governor of Ohio in any way possible.  I was all in before I had a chance to talk to him the other day, and after spending some time with him, I’m more convinced than ever.  For me, he’s like getting Trump to run Ohio.  But Vivek is great on his own, and he is what I would call the next generation of MAGA political candidates.  I have liked Dave Yost, the current attorney general.  But there are a lot of reservations that put him in the clear RINO category.  In a head-to-head matchup between Yost and Ramaswamy, I see it coming out like it did in 2016 with Trump against Jeb Bush.  And in the end, I think a political fight with Vivek Ramaswamy will destroy the career of Dave Yost, and I didn’t want to see that, at least until they sent me a nasty letter the other day complaining about my support of Vivek through a video I did.  I usually get a lot of hate mail, and I never come close to answering them all, but this one was different due to the content of the political fight to come, and it changed any sympathy I had for Dave Yost into primal aggression and a desire to see him destroyed.  I have been keeping thoughts about Dave Yost and what he did to the former Butler County Auditor Roger Reynolds tucked away, and this whole event resurrected it for me as a primary concern.  I’m not running for office, so I don’t have to be as nice as Vivek wants to be to his political enemies.  And as good as he is, he’s going to win the governor race of Ohio without too much difficulty.  But as I have done in regard to Trump, reporting things in context so people can feel good about voting for Ramaswamy when critics say otherwise is something I will certainly do for the future Governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy.  

So the Yost Campaign insinuated that I’m some fraud for the video I did discussing the announcement of running for governor by Vivek Ramaswamy a day before the event occurred.  They thought that was a misleading tactic because I couldn’t have possibly known that the event would be packed with supporters on the day before the event occurred.  Now, I have a lot of experience with the media, and if I wasn’t good at so many other things, I would probably have carved out a career in media myself.  But to be truthful, and I know this from many friends in the media that I have who were major superstars, the pay isn’t that great.  So I do a lot of other things; media for me is for the good of it.  Not the pay of it.  But it’s common practice to pre-write articles before a deadline and even to shoot a promo video ahead of an event when you want the material to reach audiences near or right after the event you are discussing.  And that was the case here.  In West Chester, Ohio, at CTL Aerospace, we had a big announcement rally for Vivek Ramaswamy that ended around 6:30 PM.  My blog is read daily by many people who want to know my thoughts on the latest topic. It goes up every day at 7 PM.  So I had to have most of it ready to go to beat my deadline.  I could adjust any changes to the reporting beforehand.  But for that article and video, I talked about the things that I knew were going to be true.  And I would know because I was one of the organizers of the event.  

A pretty dumb idea on their part. But it’s a free world.

Before the weekend of Vivek’s announcement on the following Monday, the 24th of February, I knew that there were 1200 RSVPs who had gone online to indicate they were coming and to be put on the list.  I also knew the space we had set up for Vivek was only supposed to hold 500 people.  So, doing the video announcement I did for the event, I knew it would be very crowded.  And as it turned out, it was worse than I said.  There was a line down and around the building and as people were trying to get in I had more than 500 text messages and phone calls between the hour of 4 PM and 5 PM, which I couldn’t take, because I was talking to Vivek Ramaswamy along with a few other people about what was going to happen during his speech.  It took me two days after the rally to answer most of them.  I never got to some because I wasn’t sure who they all were. But the ones I did know, I eventually, at least, answered.  I was at the Dave Yost announcement for Governor when he did it at the Elks Club near my home in Liberty Township, and it was nothing like this.  Dave had difficulty getting more than seven or eight people to stand in line to get a picture with him.  There may have been a few hundred people who came; honestly, I felt sorry for him. To support him, which I planned to do until Vivek came along, I knew that Dave Yost would have a significant enthusiasm problem.  He just wasn’t very exciting.  He acted like an out-of-touch politician who put on a cowboy hat to appeal to the meat-and-potato people, but he had an assumption of doing the time and a pretention of entitlement that he deserved to be Governor and that the Republican party owed it to him.

Senator Lang, and Secretary of State Frank LaRose endorsing Vivek Ramaswamy at CTL Aerospace

There is a lot of good stuff to discuss regarding Vivek Ramaswamy, and I certainly will.  I’ve met him several times, and at this event, he had a good memory of some of our history together.  The reason he chose CTL Aerospace is because of a story he shares with me, and Nancy Nix, George Lang and a few others at the start of his decision to get into politics, which I knew before his speech, was why he was coming back to start his run for governor at that location.  So we had a good talk, and I got to know his wife a bit more than in the past, and let me say, she is solid goodness in every way you can imagine.  She is sharp and very friendly.  I like the Ramaswamys as a family and as people, and it is those kind of people, if they want to, who should be in tough jobs like the Governor of Ohio.  Vivek is the kind of political figure I have been looking for in these positions for years, so I’m going to get fully behind his campaign, and that’s why I was one of the event coordinators and venue providers.  I personally liked Vivek before his announcement, in a very personal way.  And I am more supportive after hearing his speech if possible.  And to my way of thinking, Vivek is a lot nicer than I am.  And I would say a lot more forgiving; anybody who gets in the way of him running Ohio must be destroyed.  And if Dave Yost wants to go there, or his not very smart people, then that’s on them.  They can deal with the aftermath. 

Not to get into personal details, I normally don’t talk about things I say in private with people, but this is probably important in regard to Vivek Ramaswamy.  When we were talking, he asked me, “Rich, what do you want from me?”  I said to him, “I want 16 years out of you.  8 years as governor of Ohio.  And 8 years as President of the United States.  And at the end of it, you won’t yet be 60.  That sounds like a pretty good life to me.”  And he said, “Yes it does, let’s see how all this goes.”  And to all that, I will do my part to help see that it all goes well.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707