Do you want to be an American?
All right, here we go Scott's Long Show, seven hundred world up in the snowy Monday morning.
Not the most ideal start to the week, for sure. Could be worse.
It could be in New York City. They're gonna hammered right now. All right, your price is your wallet. The Supreme Court just ruled on Friday on Trump's tariffs. What the hell does this all mean for what we pay at the store? That's the question. Tariffs. It's all confusing. Even the experts are confused by it. I'm confused by you are as well. Money's coming into the treasury through this thing where we're going to get two thousand dollars checks. So then why do we do this in the first
place if it's just going to be a rebate? And not only that, what does the future hold here when it comes to these tariffs. Michelle Schultz is with Schultz Trade Law in Dallas, an expert on such things, joining the show this morning. Michelle, how are you.
Well?
How are you five?
That's fine, everything's good except for tariffs.
So Friday Supreme Court rule six y three that the tariffs are legal, and the court said, look, This is not your job.
This is a job of Congress.
And we've collected some one hundred and seventy five billion in tariff revenue right now, it's all up in the air, and companies are all lined up going, hey, guess what give us our money back?
Here?
What the hell does this all mean? It would be the question. And then Trump hassigned a new executive order and we're going to go with fifteen percent tariffs now as a workaround of this whole thing. And everyone's head is spinning, going, Okay, I just want cheaper beef. I want to buy a Hamburger and not have to get a second mortgage. Let's jump into this whole thing, Michelle, and I guess the question is why do to take now until now for this to hit the Supreme Court?
This is a lot to spend on the books. What since nineteen seventy.
Seven, Yes, I mean, well nineteen seventy four, technically the Trade Act of nineteen seventy four, And I guess, well, that's the new one that we're using. The nineteen seventy seven would be the original one, and that's the one that was struck down. So yeah, we've been using the AEPA, which is known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act for many years, since nineteen seventy seven, that one, and we use it for things that are national emergencies, like
export controls. We don't want things, we don't want our goods and our technology getting in the hands of the wrong people so that they're used against us. But this one is being used for terrorists. So it's it's been the Supreme Court has really struggled with what to do with this.
One, obviously too, as split as they were. Trump not happy about it. But now he's got a workaround that. I guess another section of this law that says, well, now we can kick a fifteen percent trade allotment in for one hundred and fifty days till Congress extends them. And it seems like, if I'm reading this incorrectly, he can.
He's just transferred one terror for another and saying, all right, this one expires as an emergency in one hundred and fifty days, and I'll just come up with another reason why to extend another one hundred and fifty days. Is that what's going to happen?
That's what I expect.
Yes, I think you're right on with that this new tariff is going to be maxed.
Out at fifteen percent.
So there's some good news, but it's this one is the one that's nineteen seventy seven under Section one twenty two of the Trade.
Act, and.
This particular provision allows him a lot of authority to increase tariffs for one hundred and fifty days up to fifteen percent. And so where we had a baseline of ten percent with the AIPA tariffs, those are struck down.
We now at fifteen.
Yeah, so it's it's confusing and it's up and down, but they have figured it.
Out, well, I guess. But you know, the markets hate uncertainty, and we're uncertain af right now. That is the problem until maybe Congress sorts this out and we have some permanent guidance here. But I don't expect that to happen anytime soon, considering the partial shutdown and the problems Congress has obviously, Now, what happens with one hundred and seventy
five billion dollars that's in limbo right now. I'm sure you represent as a trade attorney, Michelle, interests that want to claw that money back on Well, if the Supreme Court rules against you you owe us the money we've been paying in tears how to And as a matter of fact, I think three justices, the three conservative justices, ruled against our ruled and wanted to keep this and said, listen, we get the argument, but this is going to be a master of the treasury.
That's going to be the biggest.
Question looming here is what do we do that one hundred and seventy five billion dollars.
That's really important, and I think that the justices were right said this is going to be a mess. But in my mind, that doesn't change what the law is. And the Constitution provides that Congress has to delegate this authority to the president. He can't use it on his own.
So technically refunds are due. Customs is ready somewhat because they use an electronic system for refunds, and we've been advising our clients, the importers in the United States, to get their electronic refund process ready if they're planning to claim refunds. It's not going to be so easy as a check in the mail. You will have to actually calculate what you're owed and why and request a refund through an automated system.
She is Michelle Schultz Schultz Trade Law. She's a trade attorney with the court striking down Trump's tariffs. And what this means because he's going to pivot and use a different section of that law that gives the one hundred and fifty days unless Congress extends them. And so we're just swapping one tear for another. But what does that mean to the bottom line? And you know, these companies that are filing protective lawsuits to preserve their refund claims,
how are you actually advising companies to protect themselves? Now, this is something you would have to start a while ago. And why it's important to get these suits filed because first in line gets the money right pretty much.
I mean, that's the way it should work. And these lawsuits that were filed basically they they they stayed liquidation, which means that they put on hold the ability of customs to finalize the amount owed on these particular entries. But now we've got a completely different set of rules in place, and we've got fifteen percent not to mention section three oh one for unfair trade practices in section two thirty two for national security, we're already in use.
And those don't go away. So we have some continued, some gone, we have new ones replacing the ones that are gone.
I tell you, it sound like you gout. You know, this is your job.
You're the smartest person in the room, Michelle, and you're like, still not one hundred percent true of what all this means.
Yeah, I mean we have meetings about it at least weekly with various trade groups. Everyone's confused, and everyone's advising the clients to get ready for electronic refunds. You're not going to just get a check. But on the other hand, we don't know what to expect, except that the administration
seems to be relying on these other provisions. And I think within the next one hundred and fifty days, while they have this authority to impose fifteen percent, they will investigate other options like Section two thirty two and three oh one, and they so they have it, they have it lined up.
Basically, it sounds to me like if you're counting on that two thousand dollars refund from this whole thing that Trump promised your way at the back of the line that.
Did that just get kicked down, going yeah, you're not going to get too grand.
That's what I would think. Yeah, I'm not counting on it.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure either.
Yeah, okay, I'm just just making sure to be like, damn it, I thought it was going to get two grand. Probably not.
I know.
If you're a shopper online shop for that bat. There's a wonky legal term called deminimus, and the deminimous loophole remains closed and that pack did what you buy online, that's still in the fact explain that, yes, correct.
So there used to be a deminimous amount of eight hundred dollars which required you to file a formal customs entry and pay duties. And if you didn't, if you were buying something pretty cheap under eight hundred dollars like I would normally do online, you did not have to file a formal customs entry, didn't have to pay duties.
This administration took away the dominimus, so that now we as importers or US consumers in the end, have to pay duties on every item, no matter how small it is, even if it's under eight hundred dollars.
And that was the workaround for a lot of Chinese companies undercutting American manufacturers and you know, the patent not in your area, but you know, patent theft and things like that. They turn around and crank out a cheaper product. Get on TIMU whatever and buy a four dollars sweater that would normally cost you, you know, seven hundred dollars in the store. I get a cheap and it may last two washings. But it's gon fallow our. They were
exempt from tax and now this still stands. So it makes them on level playing field with North American manufacturers and manufacturers.
Moreund the world.
I think that is a good.
That's the very positive way to look at it. Yeah, that the consumers, we do hear a lot of complaints about Dominimus because it ends up it ends up getting passed down to the consumer. And I'm also hearing now that if the cost was passed to the consumer, then there's no chance you'll get a refund because you've already gotten your refund from your consumer.
So this just gets more and more confusing.
Yeah, yeah, and the market take confusion. See the reaction is this week this section one twenty two part that he's now enacted. It can't be in the pass. It's been very country specific. You know, he had his big chart out as the point of the countries that are Gonnat nailed and what the percentages are, and then if he didn't like the person he was talking to, they
get hit with a higher tear. If this new section that he's using that expire one hundred and fifty days has to apply universally, does that complicate the trade deals the administration's already struck with countries like in the EU where they negotiated specific rates.
I believe it does, and I think that's what we'll see moving forward. It presents a new obstacle. So I have clients who, for example, already emailed me and said I was exempt before, but now I have fifteen percent.
So it's actually worse for me.
And I think under free trade agreements they're going to have to negotiate what they're going to allow. For example, under the US Canada Mexico agreement, see if there are any exemptions that we can apply. But it actually is going to present significant obstacles for negotiating with new countries we haven't been thinking about.
Michelle Schultz is a trade lawyer with Schultz Trade Lawn Dallas, on the show, talking and explaining what the after effects are of this decision by the Supreme courtA on Friday that's struck down Trump's terror of Trump has since come back and said, well, you know what, I'm going to find a work around here loophole, and we're discussing that that what's this basically means when you buy stuff or the price of goods going to come down, You're going
to be able to afford what is in stores these days.
You know, you go to the.
Store when I'm when I go to the store and I look at beef and go beef ground beef. That's too damn expensive. I'll stick to chicken thighs. That's me and millions of other Americans are felt by this whole thing too. We're looking for some sense and some guidance here bottom line for businesses and importers, which you deal with, what should they be doing right now? Given the legal uncertainty around refunds. You may go, well, I don't know, importers, exporters.
You know a lot of people have side hustles and and you know companies that are running out of their house or their basement or whatever or garage, and it's going to affect them as well.
So what's the advice.
Oh, yes, I mean they should be looking at all angles, maybe have a backup plan, be cautious about what you're spending because this is this does not mean that all the prices will go down. In fact, we're still seeing them go up because companies can't carry that burden any longer. They're having to pass on the amount to the consumers. And our clients are definitely doing that. Some folks are getting out of their business altogether and trying a new business.
We've seen that, especially in luxury items which people just aren't going to be buying anymore very much. And then you know, I was on a farm the other day and the guy was telling me, Hey, I get my own eggs, I make my own lettuce, I got my own tomatoes. I don't go to the grocery store anymore. And that's all by design. So not to say we should all get a farm, but people are just trying different things.
It is something to see. I don't know, and this is the first shoe to drop. Do you suspect more Supreme Court involvement is a very busy court session, for sure, Michelle. Do you expect more terror related issues coming out of the high coquarters.
That's it.
I think there could be more.
There have been other lawsuits filed, and we have companies interested in filing different types of lawsuits. So I think you'll continue to see resistant lawsuits. But it's going to play out over time. And in the meantime we've got that measures where every country is now at fifteen percent.
Yeah, yeah, we'll see how it plays out. She is Michelle Schultz at Schultz Trade Law in Dallas. Thanks again, Michelle, great inside, appreciate.
You, Thank you.
Scott's a pleasure, take care you know, hear this and go I just want a little closure maybe the good Okay, well they strike it down, I mean, prices are coming down. No, so we're just gonna replace those terrifts with others. But at what about all the deals you spend all this time working out with other countries in the EU and elsewhere.
What happens to that?
Just it's all kind of like up in the air right now, So you wonder if that adds more confusion to it. Of course, tomorrow nine, the President will deliver his State of the Union address. Will be really interesting to see how how hard he kicks the teeth into the high Court because his initial tweets on true Social we're essentially saying, you know, we've got Republicans name only the rhinos, We've got liberals taking over the High Court.
I'm not quite sure when two of the people on the High Court are people you've just appointed yourself in your first term, how they are somehow infiltrated in that you know, the conspiracy theory nonsense is out there. It's like now they pretty much swore to up all the Constitution. That's what this looks like. Now he's working around it with the fifteen percent trades. But I'm not quite sure. You know, at some point, and we're feeling it now.
You look at your buying power ands diminished significantly, how much more pain you can stand as a consumer, and what that looks like for Congress and everything else. And we're quickly closing in on midterms, and I'm sure there are a lot of Republicans that are nervous beyond description because they see some significant backlash coming from all this in the midterm elections. And that's how things are run. Speaking of the president, there was a breach at mar
A Lago yesterday. FBI investigating for I understanding he was a guy who came in to mar A Lago had a can of gas and a shotgun twenty year old that he had just purchased, and everyone that they spoke to, family members, friends and everything, because you know, the minute the guy's name is released, everybody starts doing a deep dive on who this person was.
Twenty years old. Cording's family.
He's like, well, you know, we're all we're all pretty heavy Trump supporters, so this was a shock to us.
And he's a very quiet individual.
Anytimes somebody goes in the shooting nut all the time, but shooting spret builda it's everyone going, well, I saw this coming.
It's always like he was so quiet. We did not He didn't even like guns. He was scared.
He didn't even know how to work a gun. Went and bought a shotgun, I guess, and showed up the box with the brand new shotgun, never been fired, was still in the original packaging, I guess, was still in this guy's car at mar A Lago, showed up with a can of gas and a shotgun, dropped the can of gas and leveled the pump action shotgun at law enforcement officers, which of course would be Secret Service agents and two of them, I guess are the I guess
their Sheriff's deputies. Two they are there fire the fatal shots, and the FBI is asking for help on the breach at mar Laga going. This guy wasn't even on the radar, which is pretty scary, you know, and uncertain times and
uncertainty like what we're talking about here. There people are clearly mentally unstable that are going to want to do things and take things in their own hands, which makes us all just kind of go, well, you know, if you're crazy people out there and they're triggered by this, you got some real problems going on. Speaking of problems, New York City, we got the Great Blizzard of twenty six.
You know, we had record snow here in Cincinnati was like, oh yeah, in Cincinnati, Ohio, I don't New York City. It's like all the network affiliates that I have under the monitors here, they're all doing like round the clock of non stuff coverage, Like okay, well, when we got hammered, you you know, we didn't have eight reporters on the scene. Grant the biggest city in the country. I understand that, but you know, those of us have lived through the last big snowstorm we had.
We got through ours.
Really don't give a damn, but hey, they got twenty four inches on the ground. There's like up to I think up to twenty four inch and some areas out there, and it's just coming down at three inches an hour. We had one inch an hour and as a crisis managed three inches an hour. I've seen that. That is a lot of snow. When you can't see a quarter mile, it is. It's frightening, is what it is. Because you
can get disoriented really quickly. I mean literally you walk out to your mailbox to go, wait, where'd the house go? It's that bad if you've ever been through that before. So twenty three twenty four inches in some areas out of New York City, there's over I think four or five thousand flight delays. I believe our seven thousand flight delays. So if you're flying to and from in that whole region,
you are in trouble today. If you're headed out to CBG or Indye, Columbus or Louisville, for sure, let me.
Get a news update in.
We'll get all that caught up with you very the latest on what's happening in and around the world. We have Reds Baseball that happened this weekend in Arizona, the spot all of the snow. The boys are playing baseball. The Boys this summer are back. I'll have Jeff Carr on from Lockdown Reds to talk about the first weekend of action and what you look for in the first week of spring training out in good Year. That's all
coming up on the show. Coming up next on the show though, Speaking of sports, how about the US men's hockey team. Double gold for the US Olympians in the sport of hockey, and forty six years ago it was miracle on ice? Do you believe in miracles? In twenty twenty six, it's do you believe in ghosts? What do ghosts have to do with the men winning gold in Milan? Details? Six minutes away slowly seven hundred w welwt.
All right, here we go.
It's baseball season. Olympics are over. We did pretty good. Actually, closing sermon yesterday, Hillary Knights, we captained team USA who gold medal and women's hockey led the delegation as a flag bearer and they've extinguished the medals and we ended up with thirty three altogether, second to just Norway and ahead of Italy, and the next site was just gonna kind of could throw the torch over to the French Alps just on the other side for the twenty thirty Winter Games.
So yeah, it was good showing by the United States. Second over all wacky events that only Norwegian teams are good at biathlon and things like that. It's all right, ski you shoot, and the new one is you're skiing and you're climbing mountains at the same time. I didn't see much of that.
It was a little bit crazy little figure skating, you know, we're good at I think second is good for the Americans. But I double gold if you will, double gold for the US women's team and the US men's national team. And I would think that if you're a fan of hockey and very I think four people listening besides myself
are another chance for the NHL to market. You know, you look at how modern professional sports or even college sports right now with the NIL stuff, how it thrives has done individual personalities and battles and things like that and rivalries, and man, you've got a great built in rival there. The US and Canada and other countries for that matter too. I don't know if that'll trend. It never has in the past, but every four years we care about hockey as a country. So in nineteen eighty,
it was do you believe in miracles? And the Kaul from Mala Michaels do you believe in miracles? Today it's do you believe in ghosts?
What?
So Team USA, if you watched that yesterday, beat Canada in overtime in the finals. So we have won gold medals in nineteen sixty, nineteen eighty, and forty six eight years later now in twenty twenty six, as a matter of fact, talking about all that was Ken Morrow, remember that nineteen eighty miracle on Ice Team US on my show Friday morning. If you want to go check out the podcast, and that always a great conversation with Kenny Morrow. Matt Bowley opened the scoring for Team USA six minutes in.
Late in the second period, Canada was able to tie it, and Canada, if you watched any of this, virtually dominated in every measurable way, shots, chances out, playing defense, all that stuff, and the ice team tilted in the on the side of the Canadians. But they could not solve Connor Hellibook unquestionably head and shoulders, the MVP of the tournament. You know, there were misshots and a Kennon missed an
open net. There were three top level chances late in the game, Celebrini, and they could not get the puck to go in. The question is why they just pummeled Connor Hellibuck and he was outstanding, but luck also factored in as well. And of course American Jack Hughes scored the winner a minute forty one into three on three overtime. And it's such a hockey thing too. We'll get to that in a second with Jack Hughes. But he scores the game winner, the bench empties. Everyone's crying there in tears.
Hella buck I said the the MVP by far. The Canadian side criticized the three on three overtime format. The head coach John Cooper was not pleased with it. McKinnon said, you'd be the judge who's a better team. They have no question about it. If the game were won on how teams look, Canada would have won that game yesterday.
But they did not.
And that's the that's the unquestionable part of the game. Right, you don't know which way the puck's going to bounce. But I mentioned nineteen eighty was do you believe in miracles? And this is do you believe in ghosts? I really do not. A big ufo guy, made very believer in the in spirits. I think they're all around us. So you may know his name. He played, of course, the superstar for the Columbus Blue Jackets, Johnny Goodrow, known as
Johnny Hockey in hockey circles. He and his brother Matthew killed by a drunk driver in August of twenty twenty four ride near Bike's home from their sister's wedding rehearsal dinner. Never got their chance, especially Johnny, to go to the Olympics and hockey. One of the cool things about hockey
is just the brotherhood that is involved in esport. It's not a lot of teams talk about their sports talk about that, but in hockey, it's a particular thing that you may have seen Johnny Gudro's number thirteen jersey hanging in the USA locker room after the game. After the initial picture was taken of the US players on the ice, they brought out Johnny Gudro's children, Johnny Junior, who's was his second birthday, and Noah, were on the ice for
the celebration. They took the kids out and held them up with their dad's jersey. Even though technically he didn't make the team, he probably most likely would have made the US men's squad and they played in his honor and it was just such a touching moment. I mean literally put a lump in the throat, if not made you full on ball like a baby. That's just how cool that was. And Johnny Hockey had died and they expected him to be on this team and did not.
And Dylan Larkin, who was a captain, spoke for the team after or captain the Detroit Red Wings. He believed that Johnny and Maddie were there somehow, that the puck not going in Canadace's net felt like Johnny Gudreaux and Mac Gidreaux were standing there doing something and they put like a spell around their net. He would have been never been back there on defense. But we missed him.
In love him, I thought, man, there's no other way to explain how miracle on Ice two happened, because you watch that game and went there's no way Canada is not going to score and win this game. And they played for I mean a solid most of the certainly second and third periods were dominated by the Canadians, and when they tied it up, it's like, okay, they got thirteen minutes right now to get the overtime, and they
did despite five and three power plays. I've just never seen anything like that as long as I watch hockey. That much of a dominant performance not resulting in a goal. I mean, that's really really hard to do. And Connor Hellbuck was amazing in goal. But also the look, I mean missing wide open I McKinnon missing a wide open shot and you watch it.
How is this possible?
Maybe if you do believe in ghosts and that that power did Johnny and Matthew Gudreau. Will the United States to win that gold medal? Forty six years to the date of the miracle on ice? Did we have another miracle and a high point for US hockey for that matter, with the women absolutely dominating to win their gold medal. I mean, there's no question who's going to win that gold and then the US men and another miracle of a differ, and that's holding off a very strong Canadian team.
It really is something I mentioned how hockey this is that you know, the most hockey thing in the world as you travel, if you you know travel hockey, If you travel four thousand miles to play your neighbor, that's essentially what why do we call this player neighbor? And Jack Hughes, who I mean really is in the NHL National Hockey League, really wasn't like, you know, crushing, He was like, he's like a fourth line guy. He scored I think one goal in his last twenty games, four goals,
three assistans. In Milan, he just absolutely flashed. And the best part was earlier in the game he got a high stick to the face, knocked out a bunch of teeth on the ice, and he looked down he said he saw his teeth there. They're talking to him after NBC's talking him after the game, and he's got the toothless, bloody smile. I mean it literally his blood in his mouth coming down. And it's so hockey because in other sports, I mean all about other sports, you knock your teeth out,
you're probably going to be sidelined for a while. In hockey, he didn' miss a shit. His teeth are on the ice, is like he's got to be in tremendous pain. And of course in hockey, true hockey fashion, he's the guy who scores the game winner a minute forty one to three on three overtime.
That was phenomenal.
And the best part was talking about the ghost element here the guy who passed him the puck, Zach Warinsky of the Columbus Blue Jackets, the best friend of the late Johnny Gudro. What incredible story. I believe in miracles. You also got to believe in ghosts. I believe Scott's loan on the Big one seven hundred WLW quick timeout. More to follow, including at the ten o six today on the show, it's Jason Philibaum, attorney at Law. Did
you see the story involving those at Fountain Square? Remember the shooting in front of City Ball at City Bird. I guess on Fountain Square October a lot of people are downtown, gunshots ring out and the violent summer of twenty twenty five exclamation point there with that shooting. The guy who pulled the trigger in the City Bird shooting that we saw in the video, guess what, he's a free man. He was not going to go to jail
for firing at the people inside Citybird. Why philibomb at the ten oh six on that more toar following about Foeman's here Sloane he seven hundred WW. Scott flown back on seven hundred WW. Trust you at a good weekend. Harder getting up this morning when there's that snow on the ground. So much for that, you know, little dusting. We're supposed to get up until noon yesterday. It was still snow in this morning when I got him. But yoh, not as hit as hard as New York City, for sure.
Some areas now at twenty five inches of snow in the Greater New York area. There you go, there you go. It's five one, three, seven, four, nine, seven thousand, the big one talk back iHeartRadio app philibam coming up at the ten oh seven our attorney friend, defense attorney. How a guy who shoots up Citybird at Fountain Square during a very popular time winds up with no time in jail?
How is that possible? How is that possible? To that coming up?
As I said, just after the top of the hour, news here on seven hundred WLW. Hey real quick, I heard a little bit about this over the weekend, and it's kind of funny that you know, New York City's involved in this big record snowstore the blizzard. If you will, and if you want to become an emergency snow shoulver for the New York City Department of Transportation or Sanitation, you have to show up in a flopply in person. I don't know how you're going to get there with
you know, two inches two feet of snow. It's so bad that even like door dashes, even door dashing anymore. If you can get there, you have to bring with you two one and a half inch square photos what do photos? And two original forms of IDA. You'll get fifteen to eighteen bucks an hour if you want to help move snow. Sounds like a job for the other part of the say like bills. Mof you'd be all over that. But I don't know about New York City.
So you have to you have to go, and uh they have alternate You can stop by the library and at a snow day a snowy day library card, which is also a valid ID for New York State residents.
Well, you probably would have to do that.
Imagine the libraries are closed now a little late, so
you got to do all this stuff. And one may ask the questions, well, wait a minute, what about the voter id Act that is that's causing all sorts of controversies among well, people who would support man done in New York City generally those and progressive and on the left going well, you know, we think it's wrong, and it's racist, and it's also punching down and it's also suppressing the vote to ask people to show up with a with an I d uh when they go and register,
every when they go and vote. So how can you how can you be for this and against proof of who you are and who you say you are when you show up to vote. I think it's again the political irony in the twists here or not lost on me, Like it's.
It's harder for you.
It's hard.
You're just shoveling some snow here. You know, you're not letting you into the Gracie manson or this is the stage. Just show up, here's here's eighteen. But we'll give you cash. Just show up and shovel. Do you really need what kind? Why do you need all that identification on you? If you're just shoveling snow. It's a street. You could be there anyway and shovel. You don't have to get paid. You could just out of the If you're looking to get a workout in, go shovel some damn snow. They're
not going to check your ID. Why do you have to go? And who the hell would go through all that to make fifteen eighteen bucks an hour in this kind of way and the kind of whether it happened. Now you may get a handful of people. You're gonna need tens of thousands of people to make a sniffing in debt in that snow. It's just kind of funny. Of course, the difference is I'd go, well, what it's the same. Well, you know, you have a constitutional right to vote, not necessarily to shovel snow or drive.
There's the difference. But that said, you wonder you know that.
The hills that these political types die on, whether they're right or in this case left, It just it makes your head hurt. Now it's different. You know you're voting God given alibar, but you still have to prove who you are. You know, in the context of the whole argument too, because the whole fact pattern tends to get
watered down when you have these polarizing arguments. Is quite simply there between anywhere since what twenty twenty four, anywhere between seven and seventeen cases documented cases where people who voted shouldn't have voted, and the bulk of those cases turns out to people that were given wrong information by the people the bowling plays like yeah, you're fine, go ahead and vote, and they do it, and they're like, well, you shouldn't have voted here, or you shouldn't voted at all,
and they just got bad intel. So, you know, the idea that somehow that the elections are being swung by these people who are not allowed to vote is you know, and again it's just more the hysteria which we live with in these in these times. Something else that's kind of getting buried here is the testimony from Adamisari and Mark Zuckerberg last week on the on the whole social
media trial. I want to sere this thing shakes out because the argument is by the state that those companies, social media companies deliberately target kids with social media's designed for future and the first time we've had social media executives testifying before a jury regarding the future of social media and what that looks like that they're deliberately charged. Attorney, I don't know how you cannot deny that you're deliberately targeting kids, because you are.
But that's the algorithm. It's not just kids, but you're also targeting adults.
Anyone who is on social media is swept up in the algorithm, and the whole idea is to get you to stay longer, to be engaged longer, which leads to more time, more clicks in, more ad revenue. That's how the system works. I mean, if you know that going in, I don't understand what's illegal about the Well they make it addictive. Well find me someone who makes any product for that matter that technically doesn't want you to use
the product. Here, we invented this thing called social media, but we really we don't want you.
To use it.
Well, it doesn't make any sense if you come up with an idea that everybody wants you could make that say, well they made it addictive. No, they just made something that's much much more engaging than anything in real life. So you know, what happens in real life has to be more engaging than social media now for kids, that's
not the case. I was making this argument last week is like, this is what school should look like if you just simply created a platform like social media using these same algorithms in the AA which we have an you worry about kids not being engaged in school, that's how you do it. You teach them on a phone as opposed to a teacher in front of a classroom. But we can't have that because that would upset the whole system. Then what do we need teachers? What do
we need administrators? What do we need all these buildings for the brick and mortar now goes away or it's significantly diminuted.
We can't have that. Not the disruptors with that as well.
If you really want to educate kids, you got to teach them on their level, which this would do, would it not. It seems like an argument for social media, or at least for that whole model of making something making learning addictive. Case they're just stuff the kids that want to do in the first place. It seems to me that that's what we should be focused on, But no one wants to do that because other forces that
be want to remain the forces that be. But the effects of this whole trial, and you know, whether it's addictive for kids for sure, I mean, is it addictive like drugs. No, it's it gives you maybe it gives you the same release of endorphins and everything else in your head it does anytime all of a sudden social media, But it reinforces a lot of negative things as well.
I would also say that everything I've read as far as the problems that young people have today, it's yeah, social has a lot to do with it, but there's pure pressure. There's bullying, there's academic pressure, there's all sorts of things coming at them that you could also say, well, this is why kids are in such an altered mental state right now. It's not just social media. It's modern life,
of which social media is a part. But you just can't single that out and say this is the reason why kids are higher suicide rates and previous generations and are generally more miserable. It certainly is a big factor in it, but it's not the only fact. I don't know how you separate that. We'll see how it plays out. We'll get a news update in audibly relizes whether when the snow is going to tape her off, and believe it or not, in just a couple of days, it's
going to be in the fifties again. You want to think this is it for old man Winter. We'll find out together. Jason Phillibaum coming up next. That's shooting in October at Citybird Chicken on Fountain Square. The guy who pulled the trigger, who had caught on video caught. The guy is not going to face charges on this. Why, he'll explain coming up after news on the Home of the Red seven hundred WWT.
Since no, do you want to be an American?
All right?
The man charge and the Fountain Square shooting goes free. What how does self defense trump illegal possession of a firearm?
Of course?
Talking about what happened outside of Citybird Restaurant on Fountain Square back in October twenty four year old she killed ferguson charge with the only sassault and proper discharge of a firearm and weapons under disability, meaning he was not allowed to have a gun because the previous fell in convictions, shot at two subjects inside Citybird right there in Fountain Square. We saw the video, and this guy's a free man.
Whiskey tango foxtrot on that. Jason Philibaum, defense attorney at a Butler County Jason, welcome back.
Are you good morning, doing well? Thank you good good good.
So to recap that that happened, I think October thirteenth, I want to say two people shot and survived. The individuals inside City Bird were six year old and a nineteen year old. The security footage from inside the restaurant show they drew their weapons first, that they're going to fire through the glass at this individual. Shaquille Ferguson and prosecutors revealed the internal Citybird security video. The charges were
dismissed with prejudice. So let's start with this. Ferguson's are already illegally prohibited from carrying a firearm that's weapon under disability. How does self defense override otherwise? What is a clear cut gun violation?
It doesn't.
And that's when you first told me about this, I was like, it doesn't make a lot of sense at all. I think the only reason that happened in this case is because he's facing five other counts from two days before. He's charged with allegedly shooting at a couple other people firing into a car into a house and having weapons wandered disability then and in fact, the shooting from the thirteenth, which happened at Times Square, he allegedly was using the
same gun. So when I first looked at this, I'm like, how is that even possible? A judge can't just dismiss the case because self defense is something that a try or fact should decide. It's not something a judge is
going to decide before trial starts. But actually what happened is the prosecution withdrew the charges, and then when they told the judge we're going to withdraw these charges, that's when the judge says, okay, I'll dismiss this case and then we're going to proceed a trial on the other case.
Yeah, because he's gonna wipep going to jail maybe on these other charges. But again, you know these people that get up and scream about how is she not not a maybe in these cases, but but you know, innocent Price, Oh my god, he was just he was fighting for his life and he's a young, upstanding citizen and we'll see a picture of him wearing his his cap and gown or Yeah, meanwhile, this guy's out committing very serious
felonies with a gun. It's kind of like Sincere Griggsby, by the way, who just arrested was arrested, is the guy that fled along with Ryan Hinton. He wasn't the one that shot. He and what four accomplices total, including Hinton. Sincere Griggsby just got re arrested for you know, another gun crime. And so typically the police target these individuals.
It's not profile, it's the fact that we you're known as someone who's a very dangerous, charactered individual out on the streets of Cincinnati, especially when it comes to what happened with Shaquille Ferguson. And so that's how self defense overrides the gun violation. And you know, to recap here, how does that work in Ohio? Because you look at it, go it doesn't make any sense he shouldn't have the
gun in the first place. But how does self defense law work in that character in that in that Calpaccy in Ohio.
Yeah, first of all, I think he might be found guilty or not guilty of the felonious assault, but you also be found guilty of having a weapons wonder disability. This is essentially what I tell clients imagine a police officer who carries a gun for a living, pulls guns for a living, ends up firing, and it may even be a justified shoot. What typically happens immediately is they're put on administrative leave while they're looking at whether this
was a good shooting. I recently defended a client happened to be white, who was charged immediately and also thrown in jail that night. He essentially was a uber driver or a frideshare driver. Some guy was tailgating him because he was driving the speed limit because if they speed they.
Get tagged for that.
And the guy jumps out of the car, charges him, He pulls his firearmiss back off, and then he's arrested. And it's not until three or four days later you get the video what shows exactly what happened. And then we still had to go to trial where a judge found him not guilty. So I tell people a police officer that fires a shot is going to have his life, you know, uprooted while they investigate this. Sometimes even nationally,
same goes for an individual. You have the right to carry, you have the right to defend yourself, but if you're going to be involved in a shooting, everyone is going to look at you very closely to make sure you did it correctly. And in this case, he might have justifiably shot in self defense. I think that's what the video shows. But he wasn't justified in carrying a firearm. So even in that case, he'd be found not guilty of felonius, but then guilty of weapons water disabilities.
It should be in this case.
I mean, you can defend yourself affirmatively as he did here, and you know, to try and protect his own well being, but he should at least be charged with the weapons violation, right Why not?
Yes?
I think that's exactly now.
I think at the end of the day, this was a strategic decision by the prosecution. They've got him on what they believe are five good charges, weapons under disability being one of them. And so if if they dismissed that case and then he turns around and try this other case, is found guilty, then the judge can still take care of him as this prosecutor sees fit. So
I think that's why strategically they dismissed this case. But if that was the only case he had, I would expect that this would have went to trial, he'd have been found not guilty of felonious assault, but then turn around and being found guilty of having a weapons wonder disability.
The key evidence here was the internal security footage from City Bird. How common is it for in this case exculpatory video to surface after those charges against Shaquille Ferguson already filed, and who's response is to find that footage?
It's the police officers.
But unfortunately, because of how investigations go, you could be sitting in jail three days before they get this video. Because imagine what happens. You know, I've got a place here, I've got videos up. I'm not a tech guy. So some guy comes in, there's a shooting, they find that I shot him, I get arrested, I get taken down there. No one has access to my video, so it takes three or four days before they get the it people
in here. Then they pull the video and go, oh, this is self defense, but I've already sat in jail for four days. That's what happens in a lot of these places where the police get to a scene, they see a guy holding a gun and a guy shot they arrest the guy with the gun.
They take him back to the station.
He says, I want to speak to an attorney because I just got arrested and I was having self defense and the only thing they have is a guy being shot. They try to get the video, they can't because of whatever reason. And then three or four days later now they get the whole story. But by that time there's already charges pending. So I tell people, you have the right to carry, you have the right to defend yourself, but do know that's not going to be a good day for you, even if it was justified.
Yeah, there's no question about it, because man, the scrutiny is definitely on you. And that's why attorneys like yourself and what I've ever spoken with about this, it is like, listen, if you defend yourself and you think it's affirmative defense, simple you tell the officer, I feel my life was in danger. Why did you have My life was into it? And that's it, and then you talk to your attorney and them sorted out. That's all you give them.
Yeah, exactly, because I mean, especially nowadays, when you're going to be firing a weapon.
Then also depending on what city you're in.
I mean, if you fire a weapon down in Houston versus you know, maybe a more conservative city, they're looking immediately, hey, you've got a gun. We don't like guns, and you're a bad guy. And then after everything gets settled in court they realize later, Okay, that was a justified self defense.
But it's just so I mean, it's scary, and that's why I think, you know, we got to give police some credibility sometimes where they don't want to fire their gun any more than we do, because the moment they fire their gun, they are going to be under scrutiny both nationally, locally and individually. Maybe not so much nationally except for unless it's Kyle Rittenhouse or someone like that.
But at the end of the day, you fire your weapon, that the police are going to be looking into your life as if you're a perp until you or an attorney kind of prove otherwise.
Defense attorney Jason phil Obama WA Sloane here is seven hundred WLW making some sense of the case. From back in October, remember the Fountain Square shooting at Citybird Chicken. We all saw the video of a twenty four old Shaquill Ferguson shooting at individuals dining inside that restaurant. He's charged with felonious assault, improper discharge of the firearm, and weapons under disability, meaning he's not allowed to have him
because he's previously convicted of a felony. He lost his right to handle a weapon, and yet the court has let him go free on this thing because of that self defense element that he chose to engage with. So he turned himself in immediately. He maintained self defense from the jump. How much is that in your opinion, Jason, to surrender voluntary and stick to the stories we're talking about. How much does that matter legally versus strategically. It does some extent.
I had a law school professor once tell me, he goes, remember this phrase, you run, you're done, And that kind of symbolizes what self defense is. If you're truly acting in self defense, you're going to stick around and talk to the police, or you're going to turn yourself in the moment you have the ability to do so, you start running. Usually that's a sign of guilt. It's a
sign of a guilty conscience at least. So if you start running, then all of a sudden, people are gonna look at you and be like, ah, I think you've done something wrong, or at least you think you did same thing with you know, when there's a situation like you've heard battered women syndrome, or you know someone that you know fired a shot, or there's an issue with you know, whether they're insane or not. You know, people that run typically show that they knew what they did
was wrong. So those are all things that the police look at. So if you're going to turn yourself in, you know, that's a sign that you you probably or at least you know, going with a self defense argument. You know, you asked the question earlier about having a weapons wondered disability. That's the key. You know, if you have you know, a drug offense, a crime of violence, or something like that in your history, you are not able to carry a firearm.
You know.
Let's say, for example, I'm gonna fight with a guy who has a gun. The gun drops off and I pick it up. Maybe I can defend myself saying that it was a duress. It was right there, I'm in the middle of a fight, but this guy allegedly had a you know, carry concealed when he walked into this place. I think if they want the trial, a court would have found him guilty of weapons wondered disability at least.
Yeah, and the tupulus shot him were armed themselves, and they drew first, and one was as young as sixteen years old. If you look at that age component too, because a lot of times the same defense people say, well, he sixteen, he is a kid, he couldn't do anything wrong. But again, if you're pointing a gun at someone, you better be damn sure that they're not armed. In the case of Shaquille Ferguson, he wasn't and that might even save his life.
Yeah, and you look at both the I think one was sixteen, one was nineteen. Either of them could legally kill concealed, so and I think that's another reason the police did or the prosecution did what they did, because you don't have very sympathetic victims here, or alleged victims, because both of them shouldn't have had a gun. No one there should have had a gun. And this was
essentially a shootout at the OK Corral. You know at the end they drew first, allegedly by this video, so that would justify in his mind saying well, I thought I was in fear for my life, so I fired back. But then you look at the fact no one should have had guns. So the jury'd be looking at this and go, what's going on here. There's a guy that shouldn't have a gun firing it to other people that shouldn't have a gun, and they want us to side guilt.
I mean, I think that's why the prosecution did what they did. Then they're going to focus on what they think the good case is.
From two days earlier, Jason, the judge dismissed this case with prejudice.
What does that mean?
That means that it can't be brought back. So when they dismissed the case without prejudice, that typically means you have some time to bring it back, depending on the situation and time constraints. When it's dismissed with prejudice, that's mean it's over. You know, they the prosecution couldn't bring
it back if they wanted. And so let's say, for example, they went to the trot, they go to trial on the one from the eleventh and they lose, then they're like, oh, I want to bring this other case back and at least get them on weapons won or ability.
They can't do that. It's it's over and done with.
And so I think that's that's another indication that there's probably some time considerations.
You know, he is in jail, he is being held.
They had trial ready to go, so the judge probably said, I'm not going to continue this. You know, if you want to dismiss it with prejudice you can. Otherwise we're going to trial. And then the prosecution strategically decided let's go ahead and you know, go after the hard, easy case that they have.
I think it goes to show you just how strong that video evidence was from inst or huh.
Yes, I mean, you know, people talk about video and bodycams. I find that's very helpful in court because you know, typically I can't tell you how many times, like in the case that I just tried that I told you about, if there was no video there. You know, the alleged victim in that case said that this guy got out of his car first and pulled a gun and pointed at him, and Mike I said, no, that didn't happen, and you would have had one person versus the other person, and.
Who knows what the judge would have done. Instead, you have video that clearly shows what happens.
This guy was tailgate and my client he pulls out a gun and in self defense, and I think that's what, you know, help help the judge decide that case. And so in these particular cases, video are very important, and that's why a good investigation you need to go do that. You need to look at video across the street, you need to look at video, you know, at the place
where this happened. You want to look at everything because even using this case as an example, if he walked in with his gun out and that was seen from another video or then his self defense may not be so easy because it looked like he was going in for a fight. But the fact that he walked in and then they pulled a gun first, and the video is very clear about that. That's the difference between sometimes guilt and not guilty.
Yeah, and let's not forget the fact that this is the case that costs Chief Terry Fiji her job and brought to interim Chief Adam any In at this thing. So there's a lot of political community weight and pressure here too. Does that change how the prosecutor handled this?
You know, I would hope not.
I think at the end of the day that the prosecution in their mind thinks, we got this guy who's carrying a firearm that shouldn't be carrying a firearm. He's now shot at or shot multiple people over different days. You know, in her mind, I want to make sure that this guy is held accountable, So I'm going to do what's strategically best for the case. That's what I
hope a prosecutor would decide. And since she's more of a county instead of a city, I would think that that's the decision that went into it is that's that's put all our eggs in the case that is going to be easier to prove instead of the one where you know, our guys shot at first or something of that nature. So I think I think that's probably what endo the mindset. And at the end of the day, if I'm a prosecutor, I'm thinking, you know, she got
she got let go because there's crime. Well, you still had a sick ten year old and a nineteen year old carrying gun pointing it out in the public area. I mean, that's stell problematic. So I'm thinking in her mind, you know, she would do what is best for the case, and I would hope that political part would not play a role in it.
All Right, this guy's name is Shaquille Ferguson, and he is exonerated from this crime, dismissed with prejudice, even though he shouldn't have a gun in the first place. And that's what we're talking about with Jason Philbaum right now. But as you mentioned at the jump, Ferguson's now facing
separate charges in a North Side shooting. This happened just days before what happened in Fountain Square, So can the prosecutors in that case use Fountain Square that that will listen against him, even though those charges were dismissed with prejudice.
Possibly, And the reason that's going to happen is there's a I think a report at least in the Bill of particulars that the gun that was used on the thirteenth was the same gun that was used on the eleventh. So they don't have the gun on the eleventh because he obviously took it with him, but they do have the gun from the thirteenth because he turned himself in and they have that gun, and according to I believe reports they were able to run ballistics and match those
guns up. If that's what comes out in evidence, then they will be able to link how they got the gun. And so the question to the the police officers, how did you get this gun? Oh, well, he brought it
to me after the second shooting at Fountain Square. You know, now that will be interesting because I would expect that his attorney will file some motions regarding whether or not comes in and so you're probably gonna see some hearings down the road about whether or not how they got that gun can be choosed.
In the.
Case on the eleventh, you had three individual Fountains squarecase, you have.
Three individuals here are twenty four, nineteen and sixteen. All of them shouldn't have had guns. These are bad dudes who shouldn't have guns in the first place, and either they're ganged up or they's some stupid street beef. But in that regard, would there be a civil liability here? I can't imagine too many folks like this are engaged
in civil suits against Shaquille Ferguson or vice versa. But does that self defense finding a criminal court And the fact that the judge dismissed the prevident with prejudice carry any weight in a potential civil suit.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean the best example was O. J. Simpson.
He was found not guilty in a criminal case and then turned around and sued for millions of dollars. So just because you're found not guilty in a criminal case, or just because the prosecutors side to dismiss the case, doesn't mean you can't turn around and sue. Now, again, the difference is in a criminal case, you look at the action of the defendant.
Did what he do? Was it a crime?
And it is not necessarily a defense to say two crimes don't make it right.
You know, two wrongs don't make it right. So that's what they look at.
In a civil case, there is some issue of well, did the you know, plaintiff in a civil case bring it on themselves? At what point do they have some liability and so the you know, not forgetting about whether they got money to go around, But the issue is going to be, you know, the fact that they had guns when they shouldn't be.
They're not the most sympathetic plaintiff in the civil case.
Now, this is a bloody summer. In closing, Jason phil Obama bloody summer in Cincinnati for share with the citybird shoe to mean, of course, what happened in January, or what happened last year with Alex Ttravinsky the suspect and the victim, and what happened in July twenty twenty five and right now and in January. Now in February, we had a witness last month failing to appear over safety concerns.
In this trial, Travinsky faces misdemeanor chargers. A lot of people believe those were misfiled and it was some sort of racial or administrative with the part administration, some sort of retribution. But nonetheless, this happened in July twenty twenty five. Here we are in February, about to be March, and still there's no movement here. As a matter of fact, that case was continued yet again, how many more continuances? What happened in the case like this and why do
they do that? Well, every judge runs are courted very a little differently. But one of the issues they're going to look at is, you know, is he in jail or not. If he's in jail, the court and the prosecution have to move quickly and the only way they wouldn't move quickly is if the defense asked for continuance. Now, according to court records, the continuance here was requested, you know, so they could have a bond here and on the third to see if he could get out of jail
while pending. And I'm guessing that if he does get out of jail, well the case is pending, they're going to kick this out as far as possible. If he's not going to be out of jail, then they're going to want the case sooner than later so they can at least have his day in court, because that's another thing. You don't want to be sitting in jail for two years, you know, waiting for a case, and then you're found not guilty.
I mean you've done your time.
Yeah, And this is gonna be interesting. And it just it feels like that this is justice delayed in a sense because this has gone on. It seems pretty clear cut and yet and the city certainly doesn't want any part of this. They'd rather just thing simply go away. He's defense attorney Jason Philibaum in private practice with Jonnison. Philibbam, Jason, thanks for jumping on this morning, all the best always
there you go. So that makes sense why a guy who shouldn't have a gun, who had a gun, who shot somebody at Found Square is off free today because of the way our gun laws work. It certainly can be maddening and frustrating, but that's how it is, and it protects us all to some degree, even if you are a felon. And this guy's going to get jammed up already on something else, so it doesn't take along much like a Sincere Grigsby, Ryan Hinton's running buddy, running mate,
ran from police and now back in trouble again. Most people go, well, why would you do that again if you got away the first time? And why make a thing work? But this is not how folks like that think. Scott's Loan Show seven hundred de Wuty Weld. Everyone needs help every now and then, and she'sier to help us get our heads right. This is Mental Health Monday with
mental health expert had Shire. So your brain on meditation looks a lot like your brain on medication on meditation that looks like psychedelic drugs, and how do you use that to improve your mental health?
Not the drug ugs but the meditation. Julie H. Welcome.
Hi.
How are you.
I'm doing fine.
I don't know if I like this topic because I just, you know, the meditation and thinking about stuff. I don't like myself enough to hang out that long with myself.
You don't want to hang out in your head No, no, I do not want to.
Head my headspace. I try to run from my headspace, not like lean into it and think more. I need to think less.
Well, meditation is not about thinking more, it's actually about thinking less.
But it's not easy for a lot.
Of people to do.
Many of us have a hard time with it. I don't do it well. I think it's a great practice and I try occasionally, but it's hard for me too.
Just the idea is kind of a turn off, I think for a lot of people because you think it's that touchy feely, you know, oat oat bran, granola crunch and tree hugging nonsense, and like, it's not my thing. But you know, I'd love to be able to lean into it because I heard it's like, if you can embrace it and do it and lean into it, it's wonderful.
Yeah, there are a lot of people I know who do it. And find it to be incredibly beneficial. But I think what's hard about it for most of us is that it takes us quite a while to get to the place where we can do it successfully, and
we're easily frustrated by it. There are some really wonderful apps out there that take you through guided meditations and get you into the practice of doing it in very small bites, like five minutes at a time or ten minutes at a time, and those are really successful for a lot of people. And then once you get into the habit of doing it. I know people who really don't like to start their day or in their day without doing it. This is how they sort of bookend their day. Becomes part of.
Like brushing their teeth, It becomes something.
They just do every day.
Yeah, all right, So the study finds that meditation can reshape your brain activity, kind of like psychedelics.
Do you know we heard.
We heard about people you experiment with mushrooms and things like that and getting into zen kind of feeling. So I guess the research scan the brains of some Buddhist monks that average fifteen thousand plus hours of meditation experience, and right there, I look at it as an asterisk, because well, if you're a Buddhist monk, your whole job is to just be chill. My job is to not
be chilled, Julie. If your job is to be a Buddhist monk and bzen, then you're probably really good at meditation anyway.
So it's kind of a dumb study, isn't it.
Well, it could be considered that. Yeah, I see why you say that, because that's not the way most of us live. But in order to study something this specific you need people who focus on it specifically, I think. And so the study was just twelve months, and they have averaged about fifteen thousand hours of meditation so far in their life, and they did two different kinds of meditation. They focused on two different kinds of meditation. One is samatha.
I'm not sure I'm saying that right, and the other is vipasana. I'm also not sure I'm saying that right. But basically what it means is samathas where you focus your attention on something like your breath or a candle flame, and vitasana is where you broaden your attention to anything that happens to flow through your brain, but you just let it flow through you don't attach to it, and so they're different in the way that they operate and
they're different in the impact they have. But in order to understand the impact that meditation will have on you know, as normal people, you need to understand what the impact could be and do using experts like this seems to make sense in order to gather that information.
Okay, Yeah, because the fifteen thousand hours, that's about five workdays. So if you work an eight hour day, that's five years of work of meditation.
Yeah, if it's your job, you know the.
Job, you know, they say it takes they say it takes ten thousand hours to get good at something. These guys are extraordinary.
Yeah, it's a whole different level right there.
So it's a whole different level.
What is the difference between meditation and mindfulness? Your mindfulness a lot these Hell, there's a app on your watch if you have an Apple watch, it's about mindfulness. What's the difference or is it the same thing?
So meditation is mindfulness, but not all mindfulness is meditation. So when you are meditating, you are being mindful. You are paying attention to or focusing on what's going on in your mind, and you're working to either hone your concentration to one thing, like the breath coming in or out, or a sound some people use own to meditate on,
or a candle flame. So that is mindfulness, but not all ways of being mindful our meditation, sitting and enjoying a really good meal, savoring every bite, sipping the wine, seeing the beautiful colors of whatever is in front of you on the plate, smelling the aromas, doing that, and actually not just eating while you're watching TV, but really fully embracing the total experience of a delicious meal. That's mindfulness.
Taking a walk in nature and paying attention to the sounds of the leaves and the birds and the crunch of the leaves under your feet, that's mindfulness. So we can be aware, which is what I think of mindfulness as being being aware of what's happening around you and within you. Meditation is a particular version of that.
Okay, just deeper, is what you're saying. Meditation is like shutting everything down, Yes, exactly.
And what this study found is that some of the changes that fifteen thousand hours of meditation made in these monks brains are similar to the changes that we see when people use psychedelic medication. And so I want to say that there is a growing and really robust body of evidence that psychedelic medications used in conjunction with therapy can really help people with some very difficult, sticky problems like PTSD and other trauma responses like intractable depression, like anxiety.
So the one that we're using most frequently in the.
State of Ohio is ketamine. And I realized we're not talking about psychedelics, but I just want to say that they are actually really beneficial in helping people with these deeply challenging mental health issues that nothing else seems to have made a big difference with. And so what they're noticing is that this level of meditation has similar kinds of effects on the actual brain wiring and the neurochemistry that psychedelic medications do.
All right, so does acatamine get me there quicker?
It won't take fifteen thousand hours, it's all Ketamine therapy does not take fifteen thousand hours.
I'm an American. It's like I got time for that.
I got five years to sit there in om They got their gongs, and they've got these bulls. They're making noise and crazy. I'm sitting there in this row, but I'm thinking about a million other things. Just give me the drugs. Let's go, right, the sooner doc. Let's go, let's go. Who typically is that written.
For ketamine prescriptions? People who have, as I said, people who have really paralyzing anxiety. It's great for anxiety, it's great for depression, it's great for bipolar disorder, it's great for stress, post traumatic stress disorder PTSD, and trauma responses. It really allows your brain to open some of the neural pathways that they may it may not have opened before and make connections that didn't make before. And in
conjunction with therapy. So ketymine itself can be a trippy experience, but ketamine assisted therapy is therapy using ketamine to help create connections that weren't there before and to help prune connections that no longer serve you. And it leads to
this concept called brain criticality. And this is what they found with the meditation study that they did, and the way I understand it, and this is a little beyond my I scope of expertise, but I did some reading, and the way I understand it is brain criticality is like this sweet spot when your brain can receive, process, and act on information optimally. So we know that receiving information is one set of skills that your brain does.
Processing it is another, and making decisions and acting on it is another.
And sometimes, particularly in.
Our world, we get so inundated with the stuff coming in that we have a hard time processing it or making any sense of it.
Okay, So the study found, if you're experienced, you know, fifteen thousand hours, your brains look I guess upon inspection with the CT look more meditative, even at rest. But what are the real world mental health implications of that kind of permanent shift and how long does that take?
Well?
I don't know how long it takes, because again, this was a study with people who meditate to the degree that no actual living person or a monk would, right, right, But it is promising that we could get of that benefit with less effort and fewer hours of meditation if we do it regularly, that it will help our brains figure out how.
Better to process the information.
Coming in and how better to use it to make choices and decisions and take action going forward. And the people that I know who meditate regularly say that they can tell the difference on days when they do and days when they don't, just by how they feel, how they operate in the world, how calm they are, how quickly they make decisions, how easily they process what's coming out them, how they kind of roll with the punches that life throws. They can tell the difference on days
they meditate in days they don't. So I think what we can extrapolate from this is that done regularly, even on a much smaller scale, like a more normal person scale, it can have long range benefits for our ability to optimally live in our world.
Julie hat To share a licensed metal health therapists from right here in Cincinnati and Clifton. It's Mental Health Monday with Julie. A new study comes out showing that if you meditate, it has the same effect as some psychedelic drugs like Academy, and you can use that to improve your mental state. And even something like mindfulness is a good start, which is a smaller version of smaller subset
of that. And my mindfulness has been commoditizer, it's been mainstream the corporate wellness programs and schools and everything else. Typically when somebody does it, or meditates for that matter. How many minutes a day are they devoting to it depends.
I mean, as I said, some of these apps give you five or ten minute guided meditations that get you started. Many people tend to do twenty or thirty minutes at the beginning at the end of their day if they have the time to do that. But even just a little bit of time kind of focusing your brain will allow you to have some.
Of the benefits.
And mindfulness can be as simple as taking a piece of chocolates and putting it in your mouth and paying attention to all of the sensations as it dissolves on your tongue, really focusing on how does it feel, how does it taste, where do you taste it on your tongue. But that level of attention and that level of focus can help you focus in later in the day because it trains your brain to show up in that way when you need it to. And don't we all need
times when we need to focus. I mean, don't we all have times when we need to shut out what's going on in the world and focus on what's in front of us.
Whatever that might be, No.
Question, I know, there's some books. I think the Bob
Rotell a book about this too. If you go all for play on play sports, it's like, okay, well I've had a bad experience or maybe you're starting to get that, you know, the yips are choking or whatever it is, and you can't hit a shot, and so they tell you it's like, all right, so what you need to do is take yourself out of that and you know, feel the grass under your feet and smell the you know, smell the fush gray to listen to the bird singing and uh, visually, what's it?
You know?
And it's distracting, is what it is. It's the same principle, Yeah, it is.
It takes your brain out of what it's hyper focused on, the isn't getting you where you want to get, and allows it to broaden its focus and to relax a little bit, thus allowing your body to remember what it's supposed to do when you address the ball. If you're playing golf, you see this a lot in basketball players.
I notice that when they get up to shoot free throws and they bounce the ball a couple of times, they twirl it in the hands, they set their feet, they bounce it again and they throw, and they do the same thing over and over again.
Every time they do a free throw.
This is their body and their brain telling each other, Okay, we know what we're doing. We're getting ourselves set, we're getting into our little zone there for just a moment, and we're going to shoot the free throw. And it's that kind of focus when you need it, and the ability to zoom out and see the larger picture, like same basketball player on the court, running up and down the court, taking in everything that's happening. It's that narrow
focus and broad focus that meditation facilitates. It makes it easier for you to zoom in when you need to and zoom out when you need to. Know which to do.
One gotcha, you can turn it on and turn it off, which is as you learn to do it through meditating. You learn how to turn it on turn it off.
That's all.
Like somebody like Tiger Woods talks about his mechanism. When he's ten feet away from the bald, he thinks about the next shew, he forgets what's going on. And I think most people and again it's a sports analogy or weekend golf or a weekend athlete kind of analogy. But for everybody else is you know, if you're constantly your body's constantly stress, that's PTSD. You're setting yourself up for a lot of bad things.
Yes, stress is not great for the body long term. Short term, it can be an energizer. And we talk about PTSD, we don't talk a whole lot about post traumatic stress growth, which may be a topic for another day. But there are good things that can come out of difficult time, and then we can also get stuck in the bad.
Stuff that comes out of difficult time.
Yeah, the ruminating meditation.
Yep, and meditation and mindfulness can help you move from the PTSD, the distress disorder, to post traumatic growth where you get something good and you move forward in a different way from the terrible thing that happened to you.
I'm sure for a lot of folks, and you're listening to this going, I don't know, it's like it feels new worldy, and you know, I don't know, it's hard to get past that, right. There's a stigma attached to this.
Well, I think there used to be. I don't know that there still is. I've read so many athletes and interviews with so many athletes where they talk about meditation, and so many business leaders where they talk about starting their day or ending their day with a brief meditation. So many people focus on mindfulness and training your brain, which is essentially what we're doing here, training our brain
to operate optimally. And I don't think that that is as punchy granola and hippie gippy trippy as it used to be. I think so many people who are in highly successful professions and highly successful fields are using this as one of the tools in their toolbox. Like training your body to operate optimally, meditation can help train your brain to do that.
I would say that, Julie, if this were to really take root in America, you would have a chain of meditation clinics or you can get a membership. Then somebody goes in and helps you meditate, as opposed to going seeing a doctor or a license, right, I mean when when that happens in America? For example, you know we have inside dog parks, We have places you could take your kid to go play inside for grand out a lot, we have doordat, we farm everything out. We would do ourselves,
you know, the easy stuff. You go and get your eyebrows threaded, whatever the hell that is. But there's a place to go get your eyebrows threaded. I can find all sorts off. I go to place. Okay, I want to stretch. No, we got there's actually a health center that will stretch you out. You can stretch yourself. No,
I need somebody to do it for me. When we have a chain of these and maybe you're the person who start at Julie Hatters here a chain of meditation slash mindfulness clinics, then this will take root in America. You've got to create that urgency and demand. You got to tell people what they're missing.
Yes percent, okay, okay.
Well then we need to get the meditation marketers on that. That's not my jam, but I totally think there's you know, maybe maybe there's a place for that.
You gotta sell people you go in. I mean the airport, you got the ones, the Christian Science reading Room.
It's something like that.
You a place where you just sit there and read. We call the library, but it's a Christian Science reading room. You gotta get on this. You got to make billions and billions of dollars. You gotta ligne your own pockets.
With us.
Julie, you know what I'm saying.
I totally hear you.
I'm not sure I'm the.
Girl for it.
You are.
You're too low, You're too meditative.
That's the problem, all right, So mindfulness meditation, there's apps out there. If you think there's something in a check into it. I mean, maybe actually be able to instead of farming this out and getting a drug for it, you can actually do this yourself. I know that's a novel concept. She's Julie had to share our licensed mental health therapist. It's mental health money in the Scott Sloan Show. Hey,
Julie at be connected. That care is her hand. If you want to reach out, email, question, concern or maybe future topic, she'd love to read it from you.
So Julie will talk next week. You have a good one. Thanks again, Thanks you too.
By all right, we've got record snow in New York City, over ten thousand delays cancels. Your concern is if you're flying out that way or someone is the next few days, it's going to be a problem for sure. So we're about ten thousand right now out in that quarter.
We'll get a.
News updated momentarily when I return Steve Goodness here, what about this ruling by the Supreme Court over Trump's tariffs? What does that mean in the long term? He's trying to Trump's trying to work around it, and of course it adds more costs. You know, we're talking about a two thousand dollars refund that looks like it's probably not going to happen for us. What does this mean for
the cost of goods and services here in America? That's next on the show seven hundred WW since now you want to be an American Indio Scott's folling back on this Monday morning here seven hundred WLW. Lots going on, including this developing on Friday, the Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs. So what's going to go on with prices? Could prices get worse? And what does all this mean?
Breaking down how this will play out? Is our buddy Steve Gooden, attorney at law, local attorney, and joins the show now to discuss because his mind is really good when it comes to constitutional law. A well minded constitutional attorney. Steve, how are you how you ben?
Brother? Fantastic?
Yeah, I'm not sure what that that intro meant, but they well minded, you know, yeah, but you know, constitutional lost kind of your kind of your thing. So, you know, rewinding the Supreme Court rule six three on Trump's terarifs are illegal, biggest defeat he's had in the second term. The Court said, Congress is the body that has to grant those major economic rules and those powers. Uh, they've collected one hundred and seventy five billion and tariff revenue, and now that money's up in the air.
Uh.
The conservatives, the three that dissented, Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito, said, well, that's a big thing, is how are you going to undo this? How are you going to refund this one hundred and seventy five billion dollars. So literally, we've had hundreds of companies in the last three days file protective lawsuits pro to to preserve refund claims because they want to want to get on the bus first in order to a few indeed get that money back. So, uh,
let's take it through what happened here. So the it's called the Major Questions Doctrine, Uh, to strike the tariffs down?
And what does that mean?
Yeah, I mean basically it means, you know, sort of what it says is that the Court can take up. The Supreme Court can take up cases that they feel. I mean, obviously a big, big part of Supreme Court litigation is what cases they take. They only take a small, small fraction of the cases that are sent there. Otherwise you know, they would never be able to function. And the Major Questions doctrine lets them take a look at the things that they think have overarching policy implications.
They go beyond just this case.
And here what you had was the situation that Trump asserted, really for the first time in modern history, that the president had the authority somewhere in the various laws that have been passed if you stitch them all together, but particularly relying on this something called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act will just passed back in the seventies that that somehow gave him the implicit power to unilaterally and
post tariffs without going to Congress. And if you remember from high school civics, you know, a tariff is generally considered to be a tax, and under our system, taxes really are to be imposed out of the legislature. How it's spending and taxing really comes from the legislature. That's how it's always been. The president makes proposals in his budget for taxing and spending and proposes bills. But the idea that he can bypass Congress and impose them without
that is a major question. It's a classic question, and it's one that they thought that were the importance of it, what beyond just the facts of this case, and had to be reviewed here. And as you can see that the majority of the court took the more traditionalist constitutional view. They said that, look, this International Emergency Economic Powers Act talks about the ability of the president to regulate trade. It doesn't explicitly give him the power to impose any
kind of taxation or tariffs. That's what they call cost You know, the construction of the interpretation of the statute. If you follow the basic laws of construction of statutes under the Ohio system or the US system, Sorry, it just doesn't work. So they did give Trump a very big rebuke, and it looks as though there's more rebukes coming, particularly you know, so you look at the oral arguments, you can kind of tell where some of the justices
are going. Particularly, I think they're going to take a similar tact on his unilateral effort to end birthright citizenship. So I think there are more cases like this coming the Trump administration.
Well, it's going to if that's true, it's going to be a rough well three years left now in his term. He did come back, in Trump fashion, fire back and
say they got it wrong. We're going to do this, and you know, without getting too wonky, because there's different sections of this Trade Act and your eyes will glaze over, but nonetheless he's going to kick this in, which is what a fifteen percent taff across the under that section because part of it that they did not strite down authorizes tariffs to address what they call large and serious balance of payment deficits, meaning there's another work around here.
The only limitation this expires one hundred and fifty days unless Congress votes to extend. And the Congress really doesn't look like they're doing much these days on anything, let alone tariffs, and so what's the consocial problems with that maneuver? Or he would declare a new emergency that the clock, he'd be on the clock for one hundred and fifty days and just go back and declare another emergency.
He could do that, could he, Well, we don't think so, you know, based on my reading, right, he's gone to another law now, something called the Trade Act in nineteen seventy two. There's something called section two oh three that does seem to give him some temporary emergency tariff powers up to fifteen percent, which is which is interesting because the average tariff under what he had done before, because it varied by industry, was about sixteen point three. So
he gets them back to roughly where he was. But as I read it, and as I think most people interpret that Act, it is only an emergency power, and it does expire at one hundred and fifty days. I don't know that he can declare another emergency. I think if he tried to to get another one hundred and fifty days on the clock, I think the court would strike that down. I think the language there is pretty
clear he's only got one hundred and fifty days. And then it has to go to Congress, and I think asking a bunch of congress menticularly congressional Republicans and narrowly held House with midterm elections coming to approve the tariffs is going to be pretty tough, because, you know, the Wall Street journals reported all along that you know, the tariffs shoa not take the economy the way a lot of people thought it would, but it has impacted American consumers.
Roughly ninety percent of the costs of the tariffs have been born by consumers exactly. You know, businesses are just passing them along. So you know that that is going to be a very politically fraught and difficult thing. And another thing I think it's kind of worth considering here, and the court doesn't delve into to it explicitly, but I think very much in everyone's mind is and it
also goes to this trade Act. For the first time in my lifetime or maybe longer, Trump is a president who isn't just using tariffs to correct trade and balances and deal with economic issues. Trump has been using tariffs to talk about foreign policy issues, to threaten regime change in certain countries. He's been using tariffs for reasons that they're non economic and to try to force behaviors otherwise. That is kind of outside of our tradition. Other countries
have done it for a long time. It used to be very common, you know, one hundred and fifty two hundred years ago, they called it mercantilism, where you would use your economic might get political things right. And I think that is another thing here because this Trade Act explicitly talks about trade and balances only, and Trump is looking to use tariffs in a much broad way it has, so I think that could also get him in some trouble with the court if that goes back to be litigated again.
Attorney Steve Good on the Scotsland Show seven hundred W l W Trumps tariff struck out on Friday. The big question is as a constitution element to this obviously and what comes next, But the other forecast is what about prices. I think that's our biggest concern. You know, we, as you rightly pointed out, we pay for all this stuff.
Could prices wind up getting worse if he moves forward with a fifteen percent across the board global tariff because he sees it as a workaround in retribution for what the Supreme Court is ruled.
Well, yeah, I mean, look, we already know the market's reaction to this is bad. I mean I looked at you know, the market opened about the Dow open about four hundred and fifty points down because there's just uncertain to hear, as you said, it was one hundred and seventy some billion dollars worth of tariffs that have been collected and they have not been that money has not been spent. So there's already litigations, you know, by companies trying to get their share back. It's uncertain as to
whether we finds will be issued. We also know from his public statement, and I think part of Trump's plan this year was to have a sort of what he was calling a tariff dividend where he was going to send individual taxpayers two thousand dollars checks, kind of which is reminiscent of some of the COVID bonuses also that election year. Yeah, I mean it's the same deal, and I don't know how that would have gone over. I mean,
I think that looks very cynical and bad. So I think there's going to be a scramble to hang on to that one hundred and seventy five billion. If I were a distributor or an importer, I would not be expecting any of these any refunds anytime soon. I would expect the Trump Justice Department to really put up a pretty robust fight there. But in terms of pricing, though a lot of people we talk about milk and eggs
and the mainfix, but it's really very tricky. Sometimes it's just components, electronic items and things the factor into otherwise American made goods. You know, it really has results in a very steady and slow increase of just of just physical goods and materials. Overall, everything just feels more expensive. But the job market stayed relatively good, the trade in
ballots has gone down somewhat. It's where it means to be seen though in my mind whether or not the tariffs have really succeeded in bringing him out of these political goals that the Trump administration has, and I think again that's what's something that's going to bite him in
the next wave of litigation. But it is very clear now that there's a block of six justices in the Supreme Court who are going to be taking a very more traditionalist view and say, look, if the if the if the our laws don't specifically give Trump the power, and I think that's going back to birthright citizenship and some of these other issues. If it's not specifically laid out, then we're gonna we're gonna, we're gonna clip his legs a bit here and and I think that's.
Going to be what happens.
And what what was remarkable to me was that Trump accepted it too. I mean, he grumbled and yelled, but this was one of the first times that Trump and again he did find another law and he's trying to work around it, but he did accept the decision, which I thought was a good day for the country. Yeah.
Yes, and no.
He says incorrect and basically on true social which you know how many people are looking at. But then again, the true social gets reported and reposted all over different platforms, and he says that, you know, it's corruption inside the Supreme Court, which undermines the whole process. He said, the
ruling is incorrect. You say, they'll find work around. So from a constitutional standpoint, Steve Gooden, when a president of public rejects the legitimacy of Supreme Court ruling in this case, what guardrails exist to enforce compliance?
Well, and there aren't any. And I think that's the really unfortunate thing about the way Trump has particularly pursued
his second term. And that's one of the things that you know that again not to sound like a high falutant lawyer, but it really is bad for the system when the president undermines the system, and you know, I think it would have been you know, much more you know, Reagan esque or even I got I mean Bill Clinton, even when he got some very tough rulings about the Monica Lewinsky situation and whether he could face liability for that while in office. I mean, they were respectful. I mean,
you can disagree with the decision and be respectful. And this really, actually Franklin kind of began under Obama when the Citizens United decision came down and he sort of rebuked the Supreme Court of the State of the Union address. A lot of folks forget that, but that was really one of the first times I need that a considing president instead of just disagreeing, said hey, you're really tearing
up the country. And I thought that was Even though Citizens United, I think it's certainly a decision that we argue about whether it was the right thing. That kind of rhetoric between the President of the Supreme Court I don't think is good. I mean, disagree with them or not. You know, they are the highest court in the land, and if you don't like it, you bring new cases, you try to relitigate, try to change the underlying laws.
We have ways in our system. We are a country of laws, and in terms of corruption at the court, I mean, I don't think there's any real indication of that. I mean, this was not a surprise to anybody who has set through cost the first year of constitutional law in law school. I mean, it's always been a you know, there's two guiding principles here. One is taxation comes out of the legislature. And number two, if the president is not explicitly given the power in the law, he doesn't
have it. And we've had president since Nixon who have tried to kind of flex and be creative in the gray areas to try to expand executive power. But this is one where if this were the if this is if Trump is right, then we're going to have presidents going forward who are just going to be able to oppose their own view in terms of economic trade policy without any kind of guardrails. And that's really outside of
our system. And when it comes to corruption. The thing that kind of bothers me here and not just me, but a lot of other observers is when you have a one stop shop in the executive for trade policy and tariffs, that's where the real opportunity for corruption to get right. That's where if you don't have to go to four hundred and thirty five members of Congress eternal lobby for the exceptions and make your case, if you just have to go to the Trump staff, that's a real problem.
Well that's how we got to where we are now.
You know, Article one of the Constitution gives Congress the power to lay and collect tariffs. That's what the curcuent course says, like, no, this is not in the executive branch. This is in the legislative branch. Let Congress figure this out. But we're at a point now where the president was unilaterally imposing trillions of dollars in tariffs, and the ruling which happened on Friday try to restore that constitutional balance. But we were at this point.
Now.
The question is how we got there, and you know, you pointed out Obama and how we last back and what happens is, you know, now you have Trump taking that to an extreme, and if it's a Democrat or Republican who wins in three years, they'll probably take it to the extreme again. I mean, you know, if we're at a point now where finally the Supreme Court is rulling against it, saying no, you've got to use Congress. Congress hasn't done anything since Trump was born in that's the problem right now.
I think that's right.
I think one of the problems that we have as a country right now is that we're living in this kind of age of extremes with opinion and you know, swings all the.
Way back with every uh election.
Administration, right I mean, you know, we have Biden essentially open borders of Biden. Now with with with Trump, we have not you know, not just a closed border, but these really aggressive ice actions in our cities. You know, with Biden, you know, the Democratic Party has become almost totally free traders. Obviously we had trade issues to work on. Now you know, Trump is trying to become almost protectionists. And our you know, our footprint in the world is
so large, both economically, politically and otherwise. You know, the idea that we keep swinging this way is causing us to lose a lot of respect on the world stage. We don't look like that, you know, the Shining City on the Hill anymore that Reagan talked about. It just looks like whoever's in power, you're going to have you're gonna have, you know, these giant swings and policy.
Uh.
And then particularly when it comes to trade issues and things that impact our homes. You know what we pay here, I don't think that's a good thing.
Uh.
And I do wish that they've taken a more measured approach here. There's no question in my mind that there needed to be some targeted tariffs to address trade and balances, particularly with countries like China that were taking advantage of our kind of blind allegiance to some of these free trade principles. But going this far in this sort of they almost seem random, they seem punitive, and they are clearly were being used for political goals, both domestic and international.
You know, that's just not what what our system is set up.
Well, you know the idea of a say, we love it all these taxes, tariffs so which we're paying for the consumer state ninety percent of them, and now we're going to take this money that the one hundred and seventy five billion collected in tariff revenue and give it back to the people. Then what we're just taking money from one hand and transwer to the other. Why are we suffering through all this pain would be the quizzing, oh wait a minute, I mean, oh, I get two
thousand dollars back. Well, so why do we do this in the first place? Would be a legitimate question here. And you know, you look at the federal deficit, which of course initially we got to do something about the deficit.
We're not doing anything about that. It's getting worse.
And this one hundred and seventy five billion represents about ten percent of the debt that we owe. You know, giving that, I could see taking the money and put it towards the bottom line and getting that down. But you know it's again, it's only ten percent of what we owe. And that's the scary part. He's Steve Gooden, Attorney at law, constitutional expert. But I appreciate the inside. Thanks again for come on.
Hey any jubscot, take care you care.
iHeart media in seven hundred WW salute Cincinnati's own Procter and gamble. If you got someone there you'd like for us to recognize on the air. Text there now to us at fifty one eight eighty one and be listening.
Run back Devin Atter WLW REDS Baseball is here.
You listen this weekend It sounded like summer, despite the snow and cold temps causing problems, commute problems today and of course what's going to New York City? Worse out east in Arizona and to a degree, Florida, much much sunnier, much much nicer. Reds kickoff Cactus League play on Saturday. I have played two games another one two and less than four weeks of spring training. I believe cord to my math is left before the team packs them heads
east when the games count. With a look ahead, you know, maybe a recap of the weekend, but also this week and what to expect the first week of for our Red Legs is Jeff Carr with Lockdown Reds, the only daily Reds podcast year round.
Jeff, welcome back.
How you been Tony. It's great to be back.
I know that we had snow, got snow, backed, lost snow, all the snow snow.
It's baseball time. It melts the snow.
Yeah, it was listening a little bit going. Man, It just it feels like summer already, despite its weird. I'm looking out the window and it's snowing outside, and yet the Reds are on, so everything looks set now. Health is always the asterisk for any team of course, in any sport for that matter. So we don't know, but I'm going to jump right in with player number one. That'd be Eli de la Cruz. Okay, he said, Hey, listen, you know what, I've got to really challenge myself this year.
I got to really lean into being the best version of myself. I can be two time All Star. It's still not good enough for him. Battle through a quad injury, some personal issues in the season with his sister, and he came out of the blocks looking pretty strong. How does he look so far in goodyear? I know he's reported back and they said, I guess he's in much better shape than he's ever been.
Yeah, he was one of the leading candidates between him and South Stewart of best shape of their life because he tacked on fifteen pounds of muscle at least, is what he said. And honestly, if you look at his biceps, which he hasn't worn sleeves all spring training, you really wouldn't dispute it because it looks like he could lift a car right now. He looks really strong and his first couple of the bats on Sunday afternoon really hit the ball well to the opposite field, had some good
line drives. We're talking like doubles power, not necessarily the crazy like we'll hit the ball into the river type swings. But he doesn't need to do that. He doesn't have to be the power in this lineup. He can go back to being the chaos in this lineup, and we saw exactly what he needs to be on Sunday.
It's really early in spring training, you know, obviously.
To get excited about anything, but he looked like he was good and ready to go.
You mentioned Sale Sewart at first base for the Reds looked it was just it was a pleasure to watch last year and how he delivered in the playoffs. He's only what twenty two years old, hen the kid can hit the ball, for sure, but coming back into training camp now looking like a different version, probably the most transformed player we've seen in a while.
I am very impressed with him because he shows up the camp having lost twenty six pounds And I know we talked a little bit about that back at Redsveest, but he lost twenty six pounds over the offseason, where you think, okay, guy got a cup of coffee. He played for a month in major leagues, Let's see what he really is. And he's like, no, I'm going to go ahead and make an adjustment already to my game.
I'm going to already take that next step physically. And I think that that just speaks volumes because it's easy for a guy to come in and say what he wants to do when you show it that way that early, where you barely have any playing time under you. As far as the major leagues are concerned, I'm very impressed by that. We'll see him at multiple positions, and he
started a Saturday's game at second base. I would expect we see him more at first base, but he has the ability to play some second base, and so they want to make sure that.
They use that.
But he'll definitely be a super valuable piece to this season.
Yeah, and if you drop twenty six pounds of maybe fat, you could be a better second baseman for sure, because a knock on him was, you know, footspeed, He's just not quick.
That's exactly what I needed to do. I need to drop twenty six pounds before I play second GA. Yes, it is sure, but no, no, And the thing for me too, slowly is like, that's twenty six pounds. We saw a lot of Spencer's year how quickly he could move to the ball at first base last season, and that was the strength of his Yeah, where scooping was kind of the hole in his game defensively if there was a hole. Obviously he was a Goal GLAF finalist.
But I think that south Stewart was a better scooper and if he could be quicker to the ball, have better reactions, that will just upgrade his defense for the Reds there first base. And I think that losing twenty six pounds certainly helps that.
Yeah.
Yeah, Now another guy out there too, speaking of first base, Nathaniel Lowe.
Yeah, and I think that that was a really sneaky move because there were some folks that were linking him to the Reds in the offseason as to be a smart move. Not necessarily that you know, there was a long well there won't they type rumor situation, but a lot of folks saying that if the Reds were to add Nathaniel so their lineup, that would kind of accomplish
some of the things that they want. He has had a good career, albeit a down twenty twenty five season, but where we talked a lot about JJ Blede in the fact that he had a good twenty twenty four but kind of a questionable every other year. Nathaniel Lowe is the exact opposite left handed first baseman who has
been a really solid hitter. At least according to the stat ops plus, he's sixteen percent above league average for his career, and so that's a much larger sample size being that he's played seven seasons in the major leagues for multiple different teams.
So I'm looking forward to what he can bring to this lineup.
I think that there's a chance that he's more of a bench bat, but the fact that you're getting that sort of a dude seven year vet on your bench where you probably would have had Christian Incarnacion Strand instead, it's a big upgrade.
Well, you put him at first base, you know mentioned Sale Stewart and think something happens there. You got a little depth anyway, which brings us to the the the bench itself. Santiago Espinal's no oner red, so you don't have that all around guy anymore. But it seems like at each position you got a little more depth.
Yeah, there's definitely a little bit more speciality rather than flexibility to the bench because you've got a couple of outfielders and Dane Myers, and then somebody's going to win the battle between JJ Bleday and Will Benson, who both looked good in the first weekend of the season. Will Benson uncorking a massive homer, JJ Bleday hitting two absolute streamers of extra base hits to the outfield. I think that I am going to watch that very closely. But
both of them have minor league options. Whoever loses out will just go to Louisville and will still be depth for the Reds as the season goes along.
And then you're probably looking at, uh.
Well, you got Jose Travino on the bench and with nathanielo that'll be your four spots.
Yeah, yeah, and you know you've got that option there and moving guys around, because you also have to talk about Matt McClain sale Stewart. Okay, if he's at second base, what does that mean for Matt Matt McLain isn't doing with Matt McClain's posted Now. Grant had very very small sample size, but he came out of the blocks sprinting this past weekend.
Lots of hard hit contact, it went the other way into the opposite outfield boat or all three times that he put the ball into play, one of them wasn't out.
But he was a fantastic sight to see because we know what happened last year where there was just a lot of disappointment at the play and if you can at least show this early on, and you know, everybody always says, well, you got to take this with the grain of salt, that with the grain of salt in spring in spring training, and while the Mariners weren't throwing out any pitcher that's going to make their opening day roster, that just ratchets up the pressure a little bit more
to actually get the thing done. And the Red lineup as a whole early on and on a Sunday's.
Game got the thing done.
So I was happy to see that from McClain because you're right, like he is a kind of lynch pin in this team where if he is all right and ready to go, everything else makes sense. If he's not, then you got to move sal over. You gotta playing a lot more. You got to play key Brian Hayes a lot more things like that it's going to be a very important position for the Reds if Matt McClain can get back to the way he was in twenty twenty three.
And you would think he would, I mean, because last year, you know, he had that shoulder injury and it seemed like he struggled with that a lot, and then he hit that funk where he couldn't hit the ball, and you wonder how much that is attributed to what's going on between his ears. It's a reset. It's a hard reset for him. And so is there any indication to think he won't get back to his twenty twenty three form.
None whatsoever.
I mean, he he had a great interview the other day with Charlie Goldsmith where he was talking about the fact that, you know, one of the biggest problems he ran into last season. Everybody keeps talking about the shoulder. He's like, mentally, he's like most guys, you know, we like to go out there, we like to compete to win. We want to focus on what we can do to help our team winning. But when you're in such a funk, you fall into this mechanical mindset where you're like, Okay,
I gotta worry about this. I worry about that, and when you're doing that at you're not thinking about how you can help your team wins. As selfish as that might sound, that's that's kind of the mindsets for ballplayers is what they fall into. And he says, I was far into the mechanical side of things on my mind much too much last season. He's like, I want to get back to winning. I want to get back to doing whatever I can to help this team get to
a division title. And I feel really good about being in that spot.
Okay, he is Jeff Carr with Lockdown Reds Only Daily Reds podcast, chopping up this past weekend as Ress Baseball kicks off at Goodyear and Cactus League action underway.
Reds a oh in two.
But the score really doesn't matter, obviously, because you're trying to get all these parts together and so far it seems really really exciting with the with the Suarez acquisition, for sure. Let's talk about the pitching. We talked about offense. Let's talk about the starting pitching, which has been a strong point for these Red Legs. So you got a big question, I guess it'd be in the number five
starter spot. It's kind of like, you know, you look at the hitters, Yeah, well but the all but the two looks like it's pretty sad for the top half of the lineup.
How's how's this rotation shaking out?
I love this fifth rotation battle slowly because it's not it's not a old boy you know, we're used to rotation battles in years past of okay, yeah, Joe A and you know, b whoever goes out there and throws you win. This is the kind of decision that you make when you look in the garage and you're like, I got a Lamborghini and I got a Ferrari. Which one we've taken out to that that's how this battle feels.
And we saw the two leading candidates in the battle pitch on Saturday got two innings out of both Chase Burns and Reet Lauder. And while one game isn't gonna make you think, you know, oh, this guy definitely had a has a leg up in the competition. It was great to see both those guys pitch back to back and there was immediately a question surround surrounding the Reds possibility of going to a six man rotation. Could they break camp with both guys in the starting rope, and
there's actually been some talk. Derek Johnson had revealed that during the offseason he and Tito talked about that briefly. I will note that, as far as I can tell, having watched it happen over the last five to ten years,
it's not the most successful thing. You see less of your top starting pitchers, which albeit when you're talking about some of the guys we got on our roster, where you're like you kind of would like to give them an extra day's rest, maybe that would work better for the Reds as opposed to teams with more veteran focused pitching stats. But I think that ultimately this spot's going to come down to either Chase Burns or Reht Louder.
We've heard some about Brandon Williamson, We've heard some about Julian Agyar, but I think that those guys, there's a little bit of a gap between Chase Burns, Ret Louder and those two guys. And I also think that Chase Burns is the favorite in this I would be I wouldn't be shocked, but I would be a little bit surprised if Opening Day were to happen and somebody not named Chase Burns would be there for.
The bullpen comes in pretty strong, as strong and the strongest as they've been in recent memory for sure, or maybe long memory. And if you know, you decide that maybe we're not going to go with six starters at that strengths and even more of the bullpen is going to be a huge asset again the season.
Absolutely, they spend a lot of money and a lot of time upgrading this bullpen. And it's not just about you know, guys who have done it before, because I'm one of the first people that will tell you relief pitching is a sickle thing.
Yeah, And I always point.
To Eric gangnie guy who set the record for most consecutive saves and then he stole off the table and nobody heard from him ever. Again, you can be like amazing one year and you could just absolutely fall off a cliff the next year. So it's not just about past productions, about like weapons and stuff and what guys have to throw. And I looked first and foremost at Pierce Johnson and the curve ball that most guys in
the Reds bullpen haven't had in a long time. Like we're usually talking about sinker spider type pitchers or guys with like electric fastballs, the touch, triple digits. Pierce Jackson's got a hook that breaks off the table, and hitters just aren't going to be ready for that sort of a change of pace. And I really feel like this bullpen has so many weapons for Terry frankcon to the call upon this year that they did a great job of bringing in these veterans to make this a strength.
And we saw on Sunday, and there might be some people that are like, well, Sunday, the bullpen really didn't look all that good. And and some of those names I heard last year. That's the reason why the Reds focused so much time on this group, where I might have thought they could have saved that money and spent it more on, you know, maybe getting a college forb
or something like that. I think we're seeing, at least early on in spring training that it's a good thing that the Reds have now pushed Zach, Maxwell, Connor, Phelips, and Luis May some more of a battle type position rather than guaranteed spots in this bullpen.
One other thing you're going to notice this year is the increase use of abs. The automatic automated ball strikes, and there was a lot, a lot of that being used in the first two games of the season, and I think that's going to be maybe we saved that for a later topic here and see how it plays out over it the next week or so.
So that was rather interesting.
And now the challenge is slowing the game now that we've sped up to some degree. Reds are off today and then pick it up tomorrow at three oh five against the Royals at Goodyear Ballpark. We'll have that for you over on your sister station, thirteen sixty. That's gonna be on thirteen sixty tomorrow. I believe it's Andrew Abbott tomorrow.
Yeah, I think I saw that.
Because we haven't seen any of the top guys, we're going to start seeing Abbot, Green, Midolo, those guys pitching over here, gotcha my next week because we got this weird off day today.
Yeah, you got a Monday off day already too. Hey, that's all right, you know, let's not let's not strain ourselves too much here.
Let's take it easy. To be long four weeks, come on, let's just take it easy. Take it easy.
Jeff Carr over at Lockdown Reds Only Daily Red Podcast brother appreciates.
We'll talk again soon.
Yeah, appreciate it. Just funny, go right, all right, with
A news update in just minutes here on seven one hundred wlw is Brian Combs, and then that Bill Conningham takes over twelve oh six today right after this on seven hundred www Cincinnati