For a little bit of a conversation our friend the fur Ball, Andy Furman, who is being chauffeured around tonight as he scouts for women on the streets of wherever, Florence or Kevington, wherever he's going. Andrew, how are you?
I'm not scouting. I found one, Oh, beautiful young lady. Vice president of the Point Douk Leslie Victis is kind enough to take me around. She has shuttle me around.
Now she's the vice president.
Head.
You're a head of pr How do you rate to have the vice president as your chauffeur?
Andy? She pities me, she feels for me, she does. She knows I'm helpless. You know me. I'm a helpless guy. But can we get on with this please? I got things to do with people to me.
Well, what do you want to talk about? You said you had things that you thought about.
I want to talk about the Bengals in a different sort of vein right now. Okay, the last several days all I hear about is t Higgins. Everybody feels sorry for because he's only going to make twenty six million dollars and he's been slammed with the tag. Okay, and here's my problem. I have a real, real problem with the public, especially media people. I'm gonna throw names out in a few minutes that go on the radio behind microphones that criticize Mike Brown about how much money he
should spend. You know what, no other business does the public tell anybody how much money they should spend. I think they should just back off. You know what, Mike Brown should spend as much or as little as he wants to spend, and that's it. Don't be criticized. And you know what, I'll mention the name Austin Elmore. I happen to tune him on the other day and I see him on Twitter or x whatever the hell you want to call it. He goes nothing to Mike Brown
because he's slapped T Higgins only twenty six mil. Hey, Austin, how much money do you make public with that? Okay? Not seriously, I'm tired of the public for rating not only my problem with every single owner in sports telling people how much they should spend. You know what, do you tell the owner of P and GP and GM CEO how much he should spend? No, it's only in sports, So just back off. I got it off my chest.
You know.
You know what's really ironic and funny about that whole thing. You're tuning into Austin Elmore and he's going nuts on how much Mike Brown is going to spend on T Higgins. And your original point, Andy, to that there is no one in the public that thinks Austin Elmore should get paid more.
Nobody right, you know, but Austin Elmore should be concerned how much he should make and then he should bang on the CEO's door for iHeartMedia to worry about himself and not T Higgins. T Higgins is going to look very nicely making twenty six million dollars. And you know what, here's the funny thing. I don't hear te Higgins upset. You know the fact that you've got slapped it with his head with a franchise head and obviously he's going to get it in a bout a week or so.
I don't hear him complaining. He's not complaining, really, Andy, six millions. He'll still be able to go to Arby's a couple of times a.
Week, Andy, cumulatively in your career and I don't work for the irs, how much do you think you've made possibly a total of twenty six million dollars in your entire adult work on life.
I don't know. I don't think I have. I mean, that's a good question. I'll look it up. Maybe I'll try to add that.
Maybe I think maybe I might have made over the course of forty years plus, I might have made a couple of million dollars total, really total over that time.
That's great that no one, no one cares, no one cares, and no one's complaining about it. But in sports, stay do and I don't look. I get it. You could. You could compare athletes saying that Joe Burrow should make more money than a quarterback or whatever. Okay, throw a name out there, and I get it, that's okay, he should make more money. But to go on and rant and rave and say, hey, Mike Brown, stick your hand in your while, Hey, that's book. That's wrong. I think
it's I think it's rude. I honestly think it's rude to tell somebody how much he suspends.
There is there is you spend.
More money, spend more money on your clothes. You buy your clothes at CVS. How's that.
You don't know where he buys his clothes.
The books like he bought at CVS.
Okay, so let's get off of Austin Elmore here for.
Just a moment, spiking of football, picking the football and contractual obligations. Here, Matthew Stafford was rumored to go to the Raiders because they had a kind of secretive meeting with Tom Brady, who basically is a Minori owner of the Raiders in Las Vegas, and then went back and all of a sudden, now Matthew Stafford's staying with the Rams, which obviously we knew who was a poy to get more money. But here's the deal with Matthew Stafford. Can you never hear from them? All I do is here
from Kelly Stafford, his wife. Well, you back off, Kelly. I want to hear from Matthew. Really, he must be whed pretty good at home. Now think about it. What was the last time you heard from Matthew Stafford. It's all Kelly Stafford. She's always complaining and seeing how you'd love to live here. When he left the Detroit Lions to go to la it was Kelly Stafford at the news conference. It was Kelly Stafford who's basically saying we can't wait to move to LA. I want to here
for Matthew. Matthew, come on, really, I mean so that I got that off my chest. Well here here.
Do you think that Matthew Stafford gets a word in edgewise at home effort?
Not?
No, it doesn't sound like maybe Kelly is secretly his agent. I mean that would be keeping it all in the family. That way they keep all the money.
They don't commerce with those beds, you know, with the with the heating thing where you could turn the matches up and threw them in the bed. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't say a word the commercial really, I mean coming you know what, let's just need to hear that. There's my take and take on it.
Do you say, do you think that Matthew Stafford is afraid of his wife Andy as you are afraid of yours?
And look, well I'm afraid of mine. But I know the way. Yeah it does, it really does. Okay, Yeah, that's amazing. Ufl comment on this. It's great. I love it.
Well, No, I'm taking it all in.
I'm absorbing like a sponge the information or the dissertations that you're throwing at me and I'm trying to come up with some kind of reason the big ward.
Stop using that. Don't impress me with the ten.
Words, And so what I what I gleaned? No, I didn't drop out of high school. I graduated classes seventy nine Hendersonville High School, Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Was honored to get out though.
No, no, no GRADU graduated on time. And then I then I attended a year of what I call thirteenth grade volunteer State Community College and got a fine higher education in that fine facility, which has expanded and grown.
Over the years.
Don't be so guilty about your education. It's okay.
I'm not guilty about it at all.
Right.
The defective run run rings around you in a spelling bee, Andy Furman, I'll tell you that right now.
Check on my computer. I don't need it, all right.
So I have a couple of responses to the two things you brought up. If you'd like to hear them, shut up. If you wouldn't, please continue to blather on. I like it when you blaw her on because it fills the time, and I don't have your work that hard. Go ahead, go all right. First thing, on people complaining about t. Higgins not getting signed to a bigger country. He's going to be the eleventh highest paid wide receiver in the NFL with the franchise tag of twenty six plus million.
Uh. Here's the other thing.
The only team where you could not make this argument in the entire National Football League is the green Bay Packers because the people of Green Bay own that team collectively, right, so.
They do they have no say Look they have you know what, it's just a thing that can hang on their walls saying they own stock in the club. They have they do.
They do own stock, They own stock, they own the team.
You're right, they own stuck. But they have no say so in personnel r But they should.
They should have every They have every reason to expect to say so. If you're a part owner in the franchise, Andy, and they would.
Have yeahs, Packers.
Fans actually should be in charge of what kind of cheese is sold at the concession stands of Green Bay games, and and maybe someone in the player salaries and management. But no, you're right, it's Mike Brown is the owner. The Brown family is the owner of the Bengals, and they will spend the money where they deem it best spent or they won't spend it at all.
Yeah, are their money?
Really?
I know?
I don't tell you to buy a new refrigerator, do I? I mean, really, if you own money, do what you want to do. If you want to put it in the bank, I'll put on your mattress. I don't care. I really, really, people kick off Mike Brown's money.
Andy, We really need a new refrigerator. The one we've got at the house is getting really old. Have you got a spare? I mean you probably have one of those. You probably have one of those fancy twelve thousand dollars Nancy Pelosi fridges filled with gourmet ice cream at your house.
I know how you live.
It's nasty Pelosi autograph too.
Really, that wouldn't surprise me either, So and and and the other thing that you brought up, which I forgot now.
Because we've been talking and talk, what was the second thing?
That's what happens at old days, That's what happens with old age. It really does you talk about Mike Brown's Green Bay package, the whole deal.
I remember what you said, Oh no, but I don't remember the second thing after the T Higgins rant that you went on and people at being.
There elems highest wide out in the National Football League. That's what you said.
That's that's why I know you remember what I said. I don't remember everything you said. That's my point. Listen, I need I need to collect myself for a moment. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and continue this, all right, I.
Don't want to continue. I got something new.
Well, you have this to do for the next few minutes. Hang on more more with the fur ball in just a moment on the abbreviated nightcap after Red's baseball on seven hundred w l W. I'm too recoup and regain my mental faculties. And remember that you were talking about how Matthew Stafford never speaks in public, whether it's about a contract to remove or anything to do with Matthew Stafford's career. His wife, Kelly Stafford, appears to be the de facto spokesperson for that family, and I think that
is perfectly fine. Women talk more than men anyway, generally, except it's except with you.
And I don't know, No.
I don't know any other wife speaking for their husband. But that's okay if he wanted that way. But I'm going to do you a favor because I do have a lot of respects to you. You're a good friend of mine. I am buying you a case this stuff called prevalence of the brain. Have you seen those commercials on TV? It helps your brain so you don't forget stuff, you know, So have you seen the commercials? Right?
My wife?
My wife actually ordered some prevagen to start and she said it didn't work, so just never mind.
Well, I'm sure it's a puny thing, but you know it's a mental thing that do you think it's good? So you'll be better? Eat carrots and some vegetables to be better. I've got something else here, all right?
What else? What else you got on the plate?
I can't be wasting the vice president's time. All right, here's the deal. Lebron James came out the other day and some lunatic reporter asked him, how does it feel to be the face of the NBA. He's been around twenty plus years, and I guess he is the face. I thought Steph Curry may have been the face, but I guess he's the face. So they said, I don't want to be the face, And they said, well, who's going to take your place after you retire as the face of the NBA. So he threw out the name
Anthony Edwards, the ant mass and the Minnesota Timberwolves. Okay, and they questioned the ant and he says, I don't want to be the face. And Bill Bron says, you know what, he's smart. You know why because all media people, people that cover the NBA are negative. Negative. Wait a minute, are you out of your freaking mind. Let me tell you something. I was an intern in the National Basketball
Social I worked with the Knicks nineteen seventy three. When they want to old these media people, not only are they're not negative, they're form. These players they look up and they kissed their rear end for fear of being eliminated and taking their press credentials away. That's why they do it. They just don't want to be just taken away from from the fund, the inside, the inner circle. Look,
he does another thing. Lebron doesn't seem to understand. Some of the media guys that do the most criticism are full of players to Quille O'Neal. Okay, Kenny the Jet, he does that too, and of course Charles Barkley. These guys that do it on that TV show Inside the NBA, they played the game, they're Hall of Famous. They criticized and I don't think there's anything wrong with criticizing a player on his play. Now you want to get personal,
I think that's wrong. Getting personal is wrong. I've heard some people talk about Lebron and know when his kid Browny, No, no, stay away from the personal stuff, or he would criticize how.
A guy plays, Or the fact that when Lebron was with the Cavs, his mother was allegedly sleeping with the teammate.
You know, don't We don't need to go into that.
You're right, I don't think that's the story. I mean, allegedly it happened. But I don't think it's just I don't think guys pertains to anything. I think the guys a hell of a player or one of the great Or.
The fact or the fact that Lebron was driving around a forty thousand dollars hummer when he was a senior in a high school in Akron before he signed a contract.
Would you see you you're a dirt slinger, You sling dirt. I would not do that. I would never I agree with you. It should.
It should be all about his play on the court and none of this parishial stuff.
I think the media people today have the tendency of hiding behind the microphone. What do I mean by that? You need to show your face. You want to criticize somebody, just all well and good. And I did that. I did. I remember one time I said something about Ken Griffy Junior that he wasn't playing. I didn't know he was hurt. I went down to the locker room. The next thing he got in my face. I had to eat a bowl of you know what, and you know what. We
made up after that. We were friends. Okay, it was okay, everything was good. You know, you gotta go and show your face. And Tom Browning, may he rest in peace. Tom Browning wrote a book and in the book he put him he put my name in. He put a little bit of a chapter in there saying that he respected me. He didn't like what I said time to time, many times, but he respected the fact that I always showed up in the locker room the clubhouse right after the next day, because I did that extra ding show
on seven hundred and the next day. I'd always go down to the locker room before the game, and I see the guys are good, better and different. You gotta face the music, you're gonna say it, you gotta show your face. Well, a lot of guys don't do that. They go what I call the microphone muscles now, hide behind the microphone. They're real tough, but they won't show
their face. Pretty tough to go out there in front of twenty five guys and need a bowl of you know, watch And I've done that many times at Rob bibble with Ken Griffy Jr. It happens, that's part of the deal.
One thing Andy I will say about you and knowing you for all these years, is you're a very brave guy. You will get out there and you'll stand behind your story no matter how it's received in the public.
I get all that.
And I think you're also very brave for being on the radio with me every week because we never know how this is going to turn out, and you know, it's like walking a tightrope without a net essentially for you.
Let me look at at this. I'm not brave by any means, but you know why I used to show up because I knew there would be confrontation. And I knew confrontation would lead to a story. And if I went down to the locker room and Ken Griffith gets in my face and a TV camera is there, it's a story, all right. So it's a double edged sword. I apologize, but at the same time I get some pub out of it. That's why I went all right, So.
You're just a pot storer. There's no question about that. And as far as you know, I say some controversial things on this program, I have and I you.
Know what, no one listens to your show, so it never happens. That's the problem. No one listens. If you have some ratings, you know, maybe people will know who the hell Gary Jeff Walker is. I'm doing you a favorite and.
Right and Andy, this show has ratings?
Really cool? Yeah, prove it, Uran, you'uran when most of America is sleeping, really they're getting ready for work tomorrow. I love you, I do firstus. You know what, you shouldn't be worried about Mike Brown's wallet. You should be worried about your future. I'll bang on the general manager's door and say you want a different time play.
Do you think I'm gonna do that? You think that will work, Andy really want, I'll.
Do it for you. Okay, just walking deserves better, You deserve better. Yeah, you can be done in the afternoon.
You've already you've already been fired once you go ahead and make that leap.
And we just already covered that. You're a brave guy.
So anybody at radio is anything gets fired you want to talk about.
You want to talk about being brave and showing your face and not having mic muscles. I am the poster child for that. I bartend in front of the public three days a week, sometimes four, and after I've said the things I've said on the radio, and yes, people do listen. And just because the shows on this time of night, the podcasts are well received. In fact, most people consume this program via podcast a little bit later
on when at their convenience, which is I am. I am there for everyone at their convenience.
I'm not.
I know you.
The Nightcap is not on from nine to midnight. It's on any time you want to listen at seven hundred WLW dot com or on iHeartRadio.
I know you're at Huddles in Newport, right, and there's going to be an anniversary there the.
Fifteenth of March March Saturday, March fifteenth. The group picture occurs at one o'clock. Make sure you're there and show your face.
Andy Furman, are you going to put me in the group picture?
Though?
I will?
I want you in the group picture. Last year you just did a drive by and you didn't stick around. But one o'clock we have We'll have Jim Lebarber there. We'll have last last year we had Dusty Rhoades of all people there at the and took the group picture. We had the gang from Ripley, Ohio, Doug and the Green Hornet Sherry. Donald Trump was there. In fact, I've still got this seven foot cardboard cutout in my living
room at home. It was a it was quite a group picture, Andy, and it wouldn't be complete without the fur face right there in the middle next to me.
Speaking of complete, it will be complete now.
I don't know, do you do? You feel complete? I do?
And I have to go to the restroom to be honest. You know, today.
Andy, you complete me. And by the way, thanks to Leslie, the vice president of the Point Arc, for chauffeuring you during this conversation.
I man, they.
Must really like that, so I do I love Andy.
I don't know where I would be with all the.
Well, stop it, he's amazing. Stop it.
All right, you got you go pee or do whatever you've got to do, Andy, and we will hopefully resurrect this conversation next week. I've got full shows next week without Red's Baseball, so I will expect you to come with your a game as you always do, next Tuesday night.
Andy.
People look forward to this. I mean they plan their days around this, or they just listen to the podcast whenever the heck they want to.
All right, I appreciate it.
All right, good day, Andy, love you too, Thank you.
Coming up, we have Todd Bensman from the Center for Immigration Studies and also Dave Hatter. Before midnight, as we trod on in abbreviated nightcap fashion after red Spring Training Baseball here at to the Home of the Reds seven hundred w l W, officially into our one hour nightcap after Reds Baseball on seven hundred WLW, the Home of the Reds. Gary Jeff with you and President Trump's speech just concluded here a little while ago, the address to
the Joint Session of Congress. I'm not going to get too far into that tonight, I will leave it to others to dissect and figure out everything that the President said and the reactions of the Democrats and the Republicans. I thought it was very entertaining, but will let everybody else suit their narrative. It is what it is. As my friend Tracy Jones used to say, there is more
news about the assassination attempt on President Trump. Back on July thirteenth, in Butler, Pennsylvania, a guy named Doug Hagman, who was a private investigator in Pennsylvania, says he doesn't think that the would be assassin was working alone. Instead, he alleges that the skinny crazy Kid was part of
an organized criminal network that may still be operational. And many of us have posed or positive that, Yeah, the assassination attempts on President Trump are certainly not over because the deep State and our enemies abroad really want him gone. Here's a quote from Hagman. We don't think he acted alone. This took a lot of coordination. In my view, Crooks was handled by more than one individual and was used
for this assassination attempt. And I wouldn't preclude the possibility that there were people at the rally itself helping him. Hagman was telling reporters that he and six other investigators have conducted over one hundred interviews since the July thirteenth shooting. Their conclusion the assassination attempt required significant coordination and planning, He says, I find it deeply troubling that this isn't front page news everywhere. But again, should we really be
surprised about this? When it comes to President Trump and the mainstream media, they seem allergic to any story that might validate conservative concerns about threats to our leadership in this country. This is a report from the Patriot Journal. I believe give the proper accreditation here to this story. An article by James Conrad. Anyway, the writer goes on
perhaps most disturbing as Hagman's claim about electronic evidence. Location data from devices geolocated with the shooter at multiple points leading up to the shooting do not add up. He said in their investigation, at least one device that was with the shooter that day is allegedly still pinging at a local high school.
Does that make sense to you? Now?
The FBI, for their part, so far, has been stonewalling this private investigation I'm sure they have their reasons, but Hagman claims the FBI may be deliberately withholding crucial information about the case. He said, one can assist in an operation like this by o missioners standing down. There are people still out there involved in this case that need
to be brought to justice. So Matthew Crooks, when he was lay dead on that roof after Secret Service finally took him out, he was only a piece of this puzzle. This guy also alleges that security personnel or federal agents repeatedly blocked his team's investigation efforts. This pattern of obstruction raises serious questions about what the FBI might be hiding.
I thought we were in a brand new era of transparency, right. Well, everything from the Trump administration has been abundantly clear, most of them fulfilling campaign promises that the President made on the trail. But the writer of this story says, we've seen this movie before, haven't we. The same FBI that chased Russian collusion fantasies for years suddenly has no interest in thoroughly investigating an actual assassination attempt against President Trump.
And there's a Republican reped down in Louisiana named Higgins, it's part of the story, who served on the bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt confirmed the FBI hindered his investigation though he believed that the shooter acted alone. And all this does is raise more questions and the
answer seemed more elusive than ever. But this Pennsylvania investigative team says there's no way that Matthew Crooks did this all by himself, and there may have been people assisting him there at the rally that day July thirteenth, when the president was almost taken out in front of the world. We shall see where it goes. Where are all the illegals going? A lot of them are going home to talk about this. Our friend Todd Bensman for the Center
for Immigration Studies is just ahead. We'll also have Dave Hatter before midnight. Thanks for being with us again after spring training baseball. Spring training been pretty exciting so far. There's cause for optimism, hope, springs eternal, and all of that. YadA YadA, YadA. We'll see what happens when the regular season begins, and the injury report will obviously as it does every year for every team play a significant role in what happens with your red legs. Anyway, Todd Bensman
coming up next on seven hundred WLW. Apparently having some troubles get a hold of Todd Bensman now from the Center for Immigration Studies. Todd Beniman joins us, we'll get next few minutes on this night conversation that you and I have been talking about immigration, and you've been doing it a lot longer than you and I've been talking
about it. But we've been doing this for about seven years, and guests, I've always been just the person that I look to to find the real story on what's going on with immigration in this country.
It's your job.
CIS dot org if anybody wants to check out Todd's work, and you'll see him pop up other places on Fox News or on any other TV outlet and in publications. But Todd, welcome back to the show. How are you doing in the era of Trump and the closed border?
Well, I have to admit that I'm a little wistful about losing my greatest story ever.
I mean, it feels kind of like.
My my favorite dog just died or something, right, But I know it's good for the country, and for sure the border is all but hermetically sealed. Now, nobody's coming across it in any kind of number. In fact, I think the numbers are of illegal crossings are down to about below three hundred a day border length, which we haven't seen since maybe the early nineteen sixties.
Yeah, in most places, in most places, from the stories I'm hearing, we're down ninety to ninety five percent along our southern border. Now the border with Canada, which Canada has made some promises to tidy up, is allowing some fentanyl and some illegal people to get through. They're circumventing their original trip. What's the situation at our northern border, Todd.
Well, the numbers are down there too.
The Canadians have put extra forces out there and extra you know, surveillance and technology. But most importantly is what happened on the US side, which is policies that that completely ban any sort of release of an illegal border crosser into the country. Nobody who is caught crossing is being released into the country under any circumstance, as far as I can tell them. That's really always been the
key two to the whole problem of illegal crossings. You're you're always going to have people trying to.
Run and hide.
Uh, you're you're you're never going to not have that. But the big question is what do we do with them when we catch them or if we do catch them in the interior. And the answer is we expel We detain all of them no matter what, and do not ever let them out and expel them quickly over the border if we can, and if not, put them into deportation proceedings and actually deport them physically deport them
to their home countries by error. So that's the big difference if you're a migrant and you're you're looking at that your staying home.
Well, plus the incentives have been removed, and uh on top of it, thanks thanks thanks to Doze and President Trump. What's going on with all of these handouts to illegals in this country, whether it be housing. They just closed the Roosevelt Hill Hotel in New York City today.
Right, all the spigots, all the federal bigots, that's all that's all shut down. And so you know, whatever is left in the pipeline, I'm sure it will get spent.
Uh.
But they're you know, they're the incentives to you know you're an immigrant. You we let you in at the border. You're in Chicago within a day or two taking selfies, and you know, you're in a a fancy hotel or you're being put up in a house, all your bills paid for, and you're sending those selfies and all that information back to the home village, and they're emptying out, of course to come get the same thing. It's like
an unbelievable thing that we did. It's like chumming the waters or throwing corn, throwing corn out in the field. Of course you're going to get the deer will come, you know. So that's all over all together, you know,
putting those things in place. It took about an hour to close the borders, quite unlike what we were hearing all throughout the campaign, which is we need this complex Senate bipartisan bill that Trump killed, and if only Trump hadn't killed that, we'd have we would have ended this thing.
We had that well, I mean, the great, the great Key Todd was not more legislation, not a new law. President Trump just followed the federal immigration law that was already on the books, which Joe Biden could have done at any time By Executive Order and Tom Holman, Man, what a bulldog this guy is. I mean, he is working with ICE all across the country to root out the criminal illegal aliens. And I have some problems by
just getting one subset as criminal criminal illegal aliens. If you've entered this country illegally, you are technically a criminal according to the law, regardless of whether you've committed crimes other than coming into our country illegally, breaking and entering basically as a foreign criminal trespasser. You have been on
the border, over the border. You've you've been to Central and South America in your quest to find out where these people were coming from and how they were getting here. You've interviewed coyotes and cartel members at some points. There is report now that they are I heard the report this morning that there are great convoys that are turning around at the Darien Gap and they're not crossing now because they know the border is closed. It's really simple, isn't it.
It's so simple, and it always was. It was always there.
We never needed a comprehensive immigration reform or don't you know, the border was never broken.
None of that stuff was ever true.
It was just that the prior administration wanted to bring in as many people as they possibly could, and they their policies were to just bring them in, you know, chum the waters, throw the corn as much as possible. We had the greatest mass migration crisis in American history, ten million at least. And now they are moving the other way, fleeing our border because nobody they're all stuck in Mexico.
Mexico doesn't want them.
They've made that clear, so so you know, the better voluntarily deport from Mexico. And that's what you're seeing now in the Darien Gap.
It's unbelievable.
In all the twenty years that I've been following the Dacreen Gap, I've never once seen thousands of people going the other way through it to get out to go home like they are now.
Because this is a four year thing.
I mean, as long as Trump's in office, simply abiding by the laws that are already on the books that Biden Harris could have done any time at any point in four years.
But they purposely under they purposely undead what Donald Trump had done in the first time. They did just because it was Donald Trump, or maybe more nefarious reasons, like we need new Democrat voters because people aren't buying what we're selling anymore in this country. I think that's probably more to the point of why they allowed this to go on.
That's right, and the point is is that it was all why what it would take, why it was happening that coming from the Democrats, Every single thing that they ever said was just a is now stands as completely revealed as a fabrication. All that was ever needed was detention, expulsion, deportation. Those three things all required by the Immigration and National Naturalization Law, the I n S the main law, and it's all there.
It says you shall do these things. So Trump's just doing those things.
It's amazing, isn't it.
That's all to find out more Todd Benjman, You're still working, right, You still.
Have a job?
I do, yeah, And you know, I mean, there's still plenty to write about and to cover.
You know.
I will be going down to the border.
Probably next week to observe the silence and peace and tranquility for but it'd be.
The first time, the first time, for first time you took a trip to the border and it was like peaceful and a place to get away from it.
All right.
I mean it was like the most insane thing ever. I mean, you couldn't believe it being in the middle of that. Every single time. I was always you know, just like I can't believe this is happening.
I get dated in a sea of people.
Yeah, that we're invited by the Biden administration Todd Bensman cis dot org to find out more.
Thank you so much, Sarah appreciate the talk. Thank you all right.
Of our conversation turns to the cyber world, the Internet of things world, the digital world, and what we should be looking out for and what we should be scared to death of when we go online or we have any association with the wider world web. Our friend Dave Hatter, who works for a for this wonderful company. He writes code for them and looks at cybersecurity all the time. That's his job. Now does a document dump every weekend. Dave does a document dump. That's my attempt at alliteration
or perhaps siblants. I'm not sure exactly which one those are grammatically, but Dave always sends me these stories in my email box, and some of them are just nuts. Some of them are just crazy, like this first story we're going to talk about. Here's the headline, and we'll let Dave explain.
Go into this.
For hackers stole this engineers one as in the numeral one password database. Could it happen to you? Obviously, Dave, he has not listened to any of our conversations. We've had loath these many years to understand that you not only should have a unique password, not only should change it all the time.
But you, I mean, come on, try a little bit.
One password is your password for your entire database?
What was this guy thinking, Dave, Yeah.
Gry Jeff. So, this is a crazy, crazy story, and it really is illustrative of where we're at and society today on several levels, not only the sophistication of attacks even against technology people who you would think would know. This guy was a software engineer at Disney. But I want to be clear, just because you're in it, or even a software engineer, does not make you a cybersecurity expert. While there's overlap between those disciplines, are not the same thing.
And the real reason why I think this story is so important is it strikes at the heart of this theory of why I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to steal, so I'm just going to dismiss all this stuff out of hand. It'll never happen to me. And even if it does, so, whether if they steal my family photos or whatever, this guy's whole life has been blown up and an enormous amount of information sensitive internal information about Disney was leaked as results of this.
So apparently, again this guy's a software engineer. He downloaded some software without fully vetting it, and that's the first mistake. So he thinks he's going to use this AI tool to do his job better. He went out and found this online and I'm you know, I can't say I've
never done something like this in the past. I would never do it now and have it for a long time because of my kinfoil hattery, you know, Gary, Jeff, I had to throw my periscope up and look outside the bunker to know if I could even talk to
you today. But put in all seriousness, you know, this guy down something without vetting it, thinking it was going to help him, and it had a keystroke lagger built into it, a type of malware that is extremely nefarious anything you download if it's not thoroughly vetted, if it's not coming from a legitimate app store. If you haven't done some vetting on it could have a keystroke lagger
built into it. And all a keystroke lagger does is sit there and samptitiously capture all of your keystrokes, which means then even if you have something like a strong unique password on all your accounts, it's capturing all that, which is one of the reasons why multi factor authentication
is so critical. Now, if you have to type in that code, it can capture that as well, and that's one of the reasons why a multi factor authentication app or a hardware token is better than the six digit code that you type in, because the keystroke clogger is catching that code and if they act fast enough, you know, there's codes typically inspiring thirty seconds, they could catch it. So it looks like what actually happened with this guy is he downloaded his AI software. It had malware built
into it. You know, it's like a back door. It was running surreptitiously on his work computer, capturing all of his keystrokes, which then allowed them to attack his one password password. Vault one Password is a great password manager, by the way, absolutely awesome product. I use it personally. I recommend it to people. We use it at Intrust. It's a powerful, great tool that it has some extra
security features. But if you don't have MFA turned on, if you don't have it configured correctly, and you get a keystroke clogger, it can theoretically capture all of that stuff, which then allows them to get all of his passwords.
Well obviously, so the point, the point you're making, Dave, is that even if you've got a unique password, if you if you download or you upload or linked to something that's a malware, it doesn't matter if they've got a keystroke lagger.
Right, Yes, if you get malware with a keystroke lagger built into it and you don't have some type of powerful technology, some sort of advanced anti virus software that can root out that keystroke lagger, And keep in mind, Gary, Jeff, you know they change these things around all the time to try to stay ahead of things like your anti virus slash endpoint protection software. The kind of thing that happened to this guy could happen to you. And again,
this is insane. So now they apparently have all his passwords which let him get into Disney's network. When he got wind that something was happening, he started changing all his passwords and apparently to retaliate against him, per this Wall Street Journal article, dumped forty four million messages from disney slack channel out on the internet to now, Disney has a problem and I'm reading I'm quoting to you.
According to Disney cybersecurity team, the dump included private customer information, employee passport numbers, and theme park and streaming revenue numbers to now, Disney is sucked into this mess and apparently to retaliate against this guy, they also published a lot of his personal information, including credit card numbers and his medical history, as well as all his one pass where a logins, Oh he lost his job, Yeah, he lost his job. He could potentially get sued by Disney. Who
knows where this is all going. Disney now has this huge problem on their hands, and all because I'm sure when he thought he was helping himself and potentially Disney by getting a tool that would help him be more effective, because it was not properly vetted and honestly, Gary Jeff, in a perfect world, you would have for businesses anyway, something known as an allow list, which is here's all the authorized software you as an employer are allowed to use,
and if it's not on that list, you cannot install it without permission. Because this is the kind of risk we have today. I know this sounds crazy to people, but again, and you know, details continue to come.
Out about this.
It has now been reported on extensively, but it really shows you how your entire life can be upended. In his case, totally blown up again. The guy lost his job, he might be getting sued. All his personal information is out there, so who knows what sort of identity staff that's being done in his name? Who knows if his bank accounts have been drained? I mean, you know, at total crisis for this guy. I feel absolutely terrible for
this guy. Yeah, but it just goes to show you what can happen if you don't do these basic things.
Here, here's a question for you.
Talking to Dave Hatter on the night Cap, the question is with the the greater prevalence of AI, and it's not going away. It's only going to become more and more ubiquitous in the online world, where people using it to help them and their jobs, like this guy was trying to when he accidentally stumbled upon the malware and his life came apart. But with AI, it is going to make the threat of this kind of thing even more prevalent if people aren't really watching out for it, wouldn't you think?
I think you're absolutely right, because even though this is sort of tangentially connected to AI, because he was trying to get an AI tool to help him code more productively. At least that's way it's been explained. Yes, because you now have ready access to advanced AI tools that can create texts that sounds perfect. They can even create you know, videos and audio of people. Again, for folks who haven't seen it, I know it's going to sound crazy, and
I know you and I've talked about it before. I've done at least two interviews with local media people Fox nineteen and WCPO where we cloned a reporter's voice on TV using free tools. This is very easy to do. And then people will say, well, Gary Jeff, I'm not a celebrity like you, Gary Jeff, how would you get my voice? And my simple answer is always, well, if I call your phone number, do you have a voicemail greeting? Because if the answer is yes, I can beat you
in less than an hour. Now, it may not be perfect, but it might be good enough to fool your family or to fool your coworkers. You know, if you're in any sort of executive position, I strongly encourage you to look into how prevalent these tools are. And you know the first time we did the voice cloning, it was with John Mattie, obviously a fairly well known person in this area.
Right.
I'm not exaggerating, Gary, Jeff when I tell you. He showed up and at less than an hour I found a free tool I'd never used before. I played around with a little bit before he showed up. He came over, he read the text they asked us to read so it could record his voice, and at less than an hour, you can watch me type in Hello, Grandma, this is John, I need your help, hit a button and his voice comes out my speakers. Well that was almost two years ago.
The technology is way better now, and there have been well documented scams, some successful, some not, where millions of dollars have been stolen because someone's boss authorized some sort of transaction or something. And apparently there's at least one documented case where it was done in a video so you know, these are people that are known to each other, These are people that trust each other. Their voices, their
likenesses are being cloned. And yes, So my long winded answer to your simple question is I believe these tools are going to only rapidly accelerate sure this type of fraud because people don't understand that they're real and how good they actually are already.
Well, think about all of the technology that we are talking about right now, as compared to five years ago. It has been so rapid is it is exponentially faster every year? It seems that the technology is advancing incredible rate. I mean, we have seen more technological changes in the last one hundred years around the world than we saw, yes, in the ten thousand years before that. And I'm not joking about that. I don't think I'm exaggerating. Do you think I'm exaggerating?
No, I think that's absolutely spot on, and I think the rate will continue. I mean, barring some sort of catastrophic event like a sun spot that wipes out all of our electrical grid because it's not hardened against that sort of thing, or we get hit by a media or something. I don't these things do come and fits in spurts, and AI in particular has had You know, it's not a new idea. It's been around for a
long time. There have been many cases in the past where there were rapid advancements and then it kind of peaked and kind of got stuck for a long period of time. Yeah, so I can't say for sure we won't see that sort of thing again. I don't think it's going to wipe us out anytime soon. But you know,
it continues to accelerate rapidly. And I mean, if you want to see for yourself, just go try like grock, which is the x musk Ai and how good it is, you know, and these things continue to leap frog each other. The more recent process said it's the best, something else will probably be the best tomorrow open ais chat, GPT.
But it's wild what these things can do. And you know, from a cybersecurity scam perspective, all the old school tells as well, I got an email and the grammar's bad and the punctuation is weird and the language just doesn't
seem right. That's all gone. The hackers can use these things to craft personalized text, especially thanks to all the data leaks and breaches that have your information in them, personalized text that can be used in the email, a text message, or whatever, and it won't have all those red flags because they're using these tools to create pros that make sense.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation once again with the warning about ransomware and the warning of dangerous ransomware attacks, which we know are increasing as well.
But what the FBI says.
And you would probably concur about this one, Dave, is if you've not backed up your stuff, do it. You need to have some kind of safe backup, whether it's in a cloud or whatever, everything, because everything you've got online in your computer or in your phone could be lost or locked up in an instant if you're a victim of a ransomware attack. So what is the best way to back up stuff so you can preserve it in case your phone or your other computer is hacked.
Yeah, this is also an especially important topic. You know, when you see that the federal government warning people about this sort of thing, you should take it seriously. I can tell you know, from talking to lots of businesses, they're not really taking this as serious as they should. I have firsthand knowledge of businesses in Cincinnati that after a ransomware attack were devastated, including at least one that
went out of business. Now, I can't guarantee you it was entirely because of the ransomware attack, but I can tell you it completely crippled them. They had no idea who they who owed the money, who they had money to, They couldn't do payroll, and it was absolutely crippling. So I again saw at firsthand with my own eyes ransomware. It can be extremely devastating. And then there's this other
angle that's off them overlooked too, Gary Jeff. In some cases, if your backup doesn't work for whatever reason, or you don't have a backup, and you decide, well, I'm going to go out of business if I don't pay the ransom. Depending on where that money's going, it might actually be illegal for you to pay the ransom. You know, there are certain countries you can't send money to. So there's
many wrinkles to this. And you know the first step for business in particular is to have strong defenses that reduce the likelihood of you getting a successful lampware a
ransomware attack. There are advanced there's nothing perfect, but you know, through defense and depths, multiple layers of defense and advanced anti virus flash input protection like senting to one, there's a good likelihood you will be able to either block it outright or significantly reduce the impact, so you don't have your whole business shutdown because everything's encrypted in none
of your systems work. But you know the second step and the most important step ultimately, because again I want to be clear, there is nothing you can do to make yourself absolutely bulletproof to this unless you're just you know, a luddite out in a cabin somewhere like Ted Kaczinski. The second thing is you have to have a business continuity plan. I'm going to come back to the personal thing if we have time, But as a business, there are there are advanced tools out there. Things like Dato
and other vendors make advanced tools. Think of it like an appliance, a special piece of hardware you bring into your business. It creates images of your servers while they're running. So whether it's a ransomware attack where the motherboard dies or the hard disks go bad or whatever, usually within minutes to hours at worst, you can run your business off of that appliance. It's also encrypting and snapshotting your
data out into their cloud. Now, again, Data is not the only provider we've had very good luck with it. There are others. In a worst case scenario, Gary Jeff, let's see you're building, it's sit by a tornado. You can run your servers out of their cloud for up to thirty days at no additional expense. Now, this is not an inexpensive solution. A lot of people won't use it because it's not inexpensive, but it's a real significant insurance policy to keep your business up or running because
it's not just making a backup of your data. A lot of people have a backup, but then in a crisis, will the backup restore If you're not testing that you can restore the backup, there's no guarantee to even work. And it may even if you have a cloud based backup. Right because there's something in the business called the backup rule of three two three copies of your data on two different media one off site backup rule of three
two one. You can look it up. Plenty of good explanations out there, and you know, for an individual, yes, some sort of cloud based backup. You need encryption. You need to make sure that you have a strong, unique password on that account, that you have multi factor authentication turned on, because in a case like this poor guy from Disney, once they had all his passwords and could get the MFA code, they could have potentially gone and
destroy his backups. I had a story. I don't know how much time we have left, but I can tell you a real quick story, and it's kind of mind blowing. I'm given a presentation about cybersecurity and someone in the audience raises their hand and this it just shows you how sophisticated and smart the bad guys are. They raise their hand like I got a story. I'm like, well,
it's here. It. Someone got into their environment, lurked around, because in many cases in a business environment, they're gonna lurk. It's called twell timed. They're gonna try to figure out where's the money. How can I get money out of use? I hate they Yeah, they figured out who they were using for backup this victim. They waited until right after
a billing cycle and then canceled the backup. So this company thinks their data is being backed up out of some cloud vendor somewhere and they basically then wait until right near the end of a month, so that now they've lost the whole month's worth of data, drop ransomware on them to increase the likelihood of pain because now they've lost a whole month's worth of their business data.
Wow.
And you know, some businesses can recover from that. Some businesses can operate in a manual fashion. Some businesses aren't that reliant on technology. But you know, I would just ask you to ask people listening to the show who isn't dependent on this stuff now. So the good news is there's never been more options for you as an individual to back your data up, whether it's something like
iCloud on your Apple phone or carbonite. You know, as a business, I can only tell you it's super critical to think about resiliency, to think about continuity as opposed to well, my brother as Alple's cousin, does my backup and they take a disk and swap it around or whatever. That might work, It might not who knows. In a crisis, even if it works, it could take hours, days or
weeks to put things back. Versus the advanced business continuity solutions like DATO that are out there again, not cheap, but can give you a very very high level of confidence that in a crisis, for whatever reason, you will at least be able to continue operating your business while you figure out what to do next.
I'm saying, just go back to a cash registered, cash only business, get yourself a landline, and leave the rest of the world alone.
It's the only way it's with save us all.
We're going to go back to plows and you know anyway plows years.
Uh will ink will and quill pens on.
Papyrus, all right, and real quickly as we finished, Dave Hatter, this is something we talked about a little bit on Saturday morning.
Just one more reminder for people.
If you get a text on your phone and it says that you own that you owe a fair or a fee or a toll, don't answer, just disregard it.
Wait for a letter in the mail.
Right, Yeah, you know, Gary, Jeff Wright. It's very easy to spoof a phone number, because the phone system was designed at a time where that wasn't a concern. Whether it's a voice call or a text message, it is very easy to spoof a phone number to make a call or send a text from a number that looks legitimate. Right, So, as a hacker, you can go online right now and find websites that we'll let you test this where you can make a phone call or send a text from
any phone number you want. You type in the number, so you know, even if you get a text that looks like it came from a legitimate number you recognize. And this is a feature Apple Who's built in which I think is very handy from a security perspective, and these toll things try to tell you how to get around it. You know, when you get a text on an app that has a link in it, something you're going to click to go pay your fee or whatever
it is, they're trying to social engineer you into. If it doesn't recognize that number and the number is not your context, the link will not be activated, right, And they tell you in the text, oh, you know, click hit yes to reply to this message and then reopen the message to click the link. They're actually trying to tell you how to get around the security features built into the Apple Phone to prevent the very thing they
want you to do. So, yeah, you know, whether it's a text from the IRS and you owe taxes or the handlin the county sheriff's coming to get you for unpaid parking fees, you a toll or whatever. Government agencies are not legitimate. Government agencies are not going to send you a text telling you to do something like this.
It's almost always a scam. These scammers are increasingly targeting phones because more and more people use text and it's very hard from the naked eye to look at a text and then whether it's legitimate or not, both the phone number and any links in it. So yeah, your best at is just delete it, don't reply to it, don't add the phone number to your contacts, because that creates more likelihood you might click on a bogus link.
Delete it, and then if you think it might be legit on your own, go to the web, look that organization up and go from there. You're going to see more and more of these text based scams, I believe.
All Right, Dave Patter, thank you as always for the conversation. It's very enlightening and very frightening all at the same time. There's Dave's document dumped from the weekend on the Nightcap on seven hundred WLW