Ep 774 ｜ Allie's Dad on Trump's Possible Arrest, Life Lessons & His New Book
Episode Stats
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Summary
Ron Simmons joins Betsy and Allie to talk about his life story and his new book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon. He talks about how he became a rancher, why he decided to write a book, and what it was like growing up in a broken family.
Transcript
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President Trump getting arrested? What in the world is going on? Well, to break this down,
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to tell us what is really happening is my dad, Ron Simmons. So we're going to talk about that
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at the end of the show. But we are also going to be talking about his new book, his first book,
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which I'm so excited about and so proud of. That is Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon. So
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he's going to be talking some about his life story today, which I just find fascinating as
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someone who has heard it many times. And I know you guys will too. But in it, he really expertly
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weaves in life lessons that can apply to all of us in any stage of life. You're going to
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love this interview. You're also going to love this book. This episode is brought to you by
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our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com. Use promo code Allie at checkout. That's
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Okay, before we get into this conversation with my dad, I just want to remind you guys,
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we've got a giveaway going on. Just go to my Instagram. It'll tell you exactly what the
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giveaway entails, how you can enter. You've got until Thursday evening, I think Thursday at midnight
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to enter. We've got amazing gift cards and merch and all kinds of stuff included in this giveaway.
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So make sure that you go check that out. Yesterday, we launched our new set. We revealed that for you.
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We also had a fun announcement and some fun things that we did. So go back and watch or listen to
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that episode to check all of that out. All right. Now, without further ado, here is my dad.
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Dad, thanks so much for joining for the third time.
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That's awesome. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
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Yes, you're my first guest on the new set, which is an honor.
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This is a great set. I really like it. That's good.
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And also, I get the first interview, which I think is fitting since I am your daughter,
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for your new book, your first book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon, 15 Ways to Take Charge
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and Create a Path to Success. I have not finished the book yet because my husband took the book with
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him, finished it in like a day on a work trip, and he said that he could not put it down because
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it's not just good lessons, but it's a really good life story. So before we get into all of it,
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tell me a little bit about what it was like just writing the book. It's been a few years in the
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making and how it was telling your life story and all that.
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Yeah, that was interesting. And, you know, you've written a book, so you understand this as well.
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But it's a lot harder than I thought it would be because you think when you're just kind of
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walking around thinking about it, that it's pretty easy just to kind of put stuff down.
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But and the way I did it is I had a partner, Don Yeager, who's one of the great storytellers of all
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time. He's written books for people like Jack Nicklaus and others. And so Don and I would spend
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an hour or so on the phone. I don't know, maybe once every couple of weeks or so. And he would
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just ask questions and it would kind of bring up stories and things. And there were things and
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obviously that I wanted to talk about as well. So it was an interesting journey. And y'all know one
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thing, you're always glad that when you've completed it. So I'm really excited about it coming
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out actually comes out today. Yeah. And was it difficult for you to kind of reach into parts
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of your past and your upbringing that were maybe not the most comfortable to talk about because
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you didn't necessarily have this perfect home with perfect parents and an easy go of it? Was that
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tough? Well, I think it was it's tough anytime you make yourself vulnerable. However, it's really
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the reason I did the book. Yeah. The reason I did the book was because I know there are a lot more
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people out there like me that have regular lives than the lives people see on Instagram or TikTok
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or whatever it is they're looking at these days. And I wanted to make sure that those people received
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encouragement from just a guy who had his ups and downs and, you know, parents had their ups and
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downs and and the things that we've dealt with in our own family, which you know about. And so that
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was really the reason for it. In order for that to be effective, I needed to be vulnerable.
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Yeah. So let's talk about a few of those things. Obviously, we want people to go out and get the
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book. And so we're not going to talk about all the details of his life or even all the lessons that he
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weaves in there. But just tell us a little bit about what kind of life you were born into and what
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that looked like and how you kind of started doing what you do. Yeah, well, that's it's an interesting
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it's really kind of the basis for the book is that, you know, my mom and dad were public school
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teachers. And so they were the first ones in their families to go to college. They met at college at a
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small college in Louisiana. And things were with four kids. They had four kids. I have, you know, two
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brothers and one sister. Things were tough financially. Not only is Louisiana and Arkansas kind of at the
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bottom of the education rankings in a lot of ways, they certainly are there for teacher salaries.
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And so not only did they pick a job that doesn't pay a lot anyway, but certainly in Arkansas and
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Louisiana where we grew up. So it was really a tough thing. And it always bothered me. It always bothered
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me that everything that we basically did revolved around money. And even as a little guy that bothered
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me. And so and I don't remember the exact time, but somewhere in my early life, probably before I was a
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teenager, it was in my mind that I did not want to grow up and live like that, that I wanted to have
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some type of financial security or wherewithal so that I didn't have to make every decision based on
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money. It was just stress. You felt like it was always on their minds and kind of weighing on their
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shoulders. Yeah, there's no question about it. One story I tell in there, which is kind of funny, is that
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we lived on what I called the Oreo diet. And my mom and dad got paid once a month as school teachers, not
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every couple of weeks like we're used to now. And we would go to the grocery store. And when she went to the
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grocery store once a month, you know, she'd buy everything that she could, mostly off brand stuff, but she
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would generally buy a pack of Oreos or something like that. And I knew that when we got to the end of the Oreos that
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the things were going to be pretty slim the rest of the month for as far as food was concerned. So I called it the
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Oreo diet that we lived on. And you said that you didn't like the stress that it caused and just
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the constant revolving around finances and what you guys didn't have. And as you said, getting to the
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end of the month and feeling like you didn't have enough. At the time, did you resent your parents?
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Were you angry about the circumstance that you were in? I don't know that I resented them personally,
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but I was very disappointed at the circumstance that we were in. I just didn't feel like it was,
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you know, at that stage, what do we say? It's not fair, right? I don't know if you ever said that
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when you were growing up. I've never said that. But I would say it was not fair, right? And I was a
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middle child, which has other issues that go along with that because you're always trying to make a
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name for yourself and differentiate yourself. And I just thought, man, I just got to get out of here so I
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could make my own way because the stress around and the stress developed, I believe that was a lot
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of reason my mom and dad ended up getting a divorce was part of the stress that was on top of that.
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Because, you know, when you have when you have that type of money stress so that you're thinking
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about that all the time, then you really the relationship that you had when you were dating
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goes away. Yeah. You don't really enjoy each other because you're having to come together and make
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very, very tough decisions. And you miss out on a lot of the enjoyment you should be having as a couple.
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And it's not just the financial stress that was weighing on the family. Tell me a little bit
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about your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your dad specifically. What
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was that like? Well, you know, my mom and dad, they're good people, okay? They are good people,
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so I don't want to say that they're not. And mom's passed away, as you know. But my dad was a good
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person, very outgoing, very talented musically and whatever. But he and I were, in some ways,
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our personalities were similar. But really, the way we look at the world was totally different.
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So, and my dad and mom divorced when I was in high school. And my dad basically left. And so,
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we didn't really have much of a relationship at all after about the time I was 16. And we still
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communicate today. But it's just a different relationship than I wanted or think it should be.
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And so, that was tough because I really never had, in my mind, a guide when we were having kids and
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raising kids. Okay, well, what's a dad supposed to do in this situation? What's a dad supposed to do
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in that situation? And so, I'm sure I made a lot more mistakes than I should have made. And again,
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I'm not trying to be the victim. But it's very, very difficult when you don't have that guide.
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Yeah. So, you're 16. And your dad basically leaves. You felt like you had to grow up really
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quickly and provide for yourself then, right? I did. I did. And in my senior year, by the time I
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was a senior in high school, which I graduated from high school when I was 17 because I started just a
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few months early, my mom and dad had divorced. And my dad had moved away. My mom had actually
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taken my younger sister and brother and moved about 50 miles away. So, my senior year, I spent
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most of the time all basically couch surfing, staying with friends. Sometimes I would go home
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and then drive back up to school early in the morning, 50 miles away. But it was a tough thing.
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So, I knew by the time I started my senior year that as soon as I graduated, I was going to be on my own.
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Yeah. And you worked at a grocery store starting when you were 15 or 16?
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I would have been probably 15 when I started working at a grocery store and then continued
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doing some of that, you know, while I was in school making money and doing other odd jobs and
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6 a.m. on Saturdays, unloading the produce truck. That's exactly right. We had to get up and
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unload the produce truck. And I'll never forget one night I was playing. I played high school football
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football and I happened to be on the sidelines for just a couple of plays because when I was
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a junior or senior, I didn't sit out very much. And the lady that owned the grocery store came
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over and pulled me off the sideline to remind me that we had the produce truck coming in the next
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morning. Don't stay out too late. Yeah. And, you know, focus on what's really important, right?
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Yeah. But that small town, that small town growing up, which I wouldn't have traded that for
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anything in the world. I love the fact that I grew up in a small town because there was a limit
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on the amount of mischievous that you could get into. And as a 16 to 17 year old without much
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parental guidance at the time, because they were focusing on their own issues, it could have gone
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off the rails pretty easily. And yet the Lord kept you busy, which you probably didn't like at the
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time. But that busyness and the need to provide for yourself probably kept you out of trouble too.
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I believe that's correct. Yeah. I obviously didn't see at the time. At the time I resented it
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because my friends, most of them didn't have to do that.
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Yeah. And so how did you make it to college? Cause you, cause you went to college, you squeezed,
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as you say, 10 or four years into 10, right? So that's talented. That's very talented. How many
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people can do that? So how did you even decide, no, I'm going to go to college? I think most people
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in your circumstances providing for themselves would just say, you know what? I just need to keep
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working. Even if it's at the grocery store, why'd you decide to go to Southern Arkansas?
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You know, I would give my mom and dad credit for that. It was never, there was never a time
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growing up that all four of us weren't going to go to college. It just was never something that we,
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I don't even think any four of us considered not going to college. So I just had to figure out how
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to go to college. It wasn't if I was going to college, it's how did I go to college? And I knew,
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um, I knew that, that my intellect would allow me to make it through college. I just had to figure out
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how I was going to get it done. And I reverted to kind of what ended up being the, the easiest or
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least expensive way to do it. And that was go to a local community, what we would call a community
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college right now. Then they called it junior college.
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So you went to junior college and you worked through college. You met mom. Yep. Tell us a
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little bit about that. Well, uh, actually, uh, I had met mom when I was a, I didn't remember this.
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She remembered it. Uh, when I was a senior in high school, I met her, she was in a beauty pageant
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and the girl I was dating at the time was in the same beauty pageant. And so the day of the beauty
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pageant, a friend of mine and I, who had both been injured the night before, or the maybe the week
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before in a football game, I had tore my ACL and he had injured his neck. We had gone up to see our
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girlfriends while they were practicing, getting ready for the pageant that night. And for whatever
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reason mom remembers this, that she came out and, and, uh, met me when I was talking to my, uh, the
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late, the girl I was dating at the time. And so mom remembered that. And she said, I asked you what
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happened to you. Did you have a car wreck? And I said, yeah, wrecked with strong and strong was the
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name of the town, the football team we were playing. And so I know that was, that was a line that got her
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didn't it? Got it. But when we started college, I met her again. Cause we, she went to the junior
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college as well. And we had a couple of classes together, biology and psychology.
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Okay. And mom says both of them worked over the long time.
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There you go. Okay. So take us a little bit further ahead. You worked your way through college.
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You started working at Murphy oil, correct? That was your first job. I mean, not out of college
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cause you still had to continue college later on, but that was your first real job after you and mom
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got married. Y'all lived first in a house and then in a mobile home, the mom says was infested with
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water bugs, which are cockroaches. If y'all don't know kinds of, she still, she has PTSD from that,
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from that mobile home. So tell us a little bit about the early marriage years, that stage of life.
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Cause I know that wasn't easy either. Yes. Well, the reason I went to work for Murphy oil,
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cause mom and I had planned after our first year of college, after we started dating and everything,
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we were going to go to Louisiana tech. We were big time in it, right? It was going to be a four
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year college. We're going to go down there, live on campus. You know, she would live in the girl's
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dorm. I would live in the boy's dorm, yada, yada, yada. We didn't really know how we're going to pay
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for it. You know, she didn't have a lot of money either, but we could get student loans and stuff
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at the time. But, um, a friend of mine said, Hey, they've got job openings at Murphy oil and Murphy oil.
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And the town we lived in was the big dog, right? I mean, they were a fortune 500 company in a very small town of
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20,000 people. And so I said, well, okay, I'm interested in that. And I said, where does it do?
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And it said, well, it's in the mail room, which I didn't even know really what that meant. I mean,
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I knew it had something to do with mail. Uh, but the key was, is that they would pay for two thirds
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of your college tuition and books. If you had, if you worked for them and you kept a, made a, a, a B
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or higher in grades, if your, if your grade would be your higher. And so I said, okay, that sounds like a
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good deal to me. So I went and applied for it and got the job literally at the bottom of the rung of
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the ladder. There's nothing lower than the mail room in a, in a group, in a organization like that.
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So I would go to the post office every day, pick up these huge bundles of mail. And then me and some
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other people would deliver them to the individual offices around the, uh, uh, around the building.
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But you didn't stay there. You didn't stay in the mail room.
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We were looking for different job openings, right?
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It was easy because at the time, you know how you have a job posting websites now.
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Well, back then before the internet, uh, they posted jobs same way, but it was physical posting
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on these bulletin boards. Okay. That were in departments and in the mail room, every job
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they posted was better than the one I had. So I would apply for almost anything that came up
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and I ended up getting a job in their HR department. And that's how I got involved in learning
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investments and retirement plans and things like that. And again, I didn't care about
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them one way or the other. I was just looking to make more money for my little family.
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And in the back of your mind, cause you, you and mom, y'all were, you were 19 when you got
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married, um, a few months away from 20. Mom was 20. Y'all were 21. You were almost 21, right?
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When Justin, when, uh, your oldest was born. And so in the back of your head too, you're not
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just thinking about mom and Justin. You're also thinking, I don't want to forever have
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to be beholden to financial stress. You were trying to find some freedom for your family
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so that you can make choices based on other things rather than how are we going to make
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ends meet? So is that part of, I mean, what's driving you to figure out all this stuff?
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That's the number one thing that's driving me. Absolutely. No question about it is how can
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I get to the point to get, to avoid financial mediocrity at that time? We certainly were
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still probably, it would be considered below middle income. You know, we weren't, I don't
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think we were at a middle income yet. Uh, but you know, living expenses were pretty small
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and all like that. But I also knew I need, it took almost everything we had to live off
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of. And so therefore I knew we really weren't getting ahead, right? We were treading water.
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And so I was constantly thinking about how do we, how do we break out of this? Right?
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What do we, what do we do? I don't have, Murphy's not my last name. So there's certainly a limit
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as to how far I could go in that company, although it was a great company to work for.
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And I didn't really have, again, I didn't have any mentors at the time that I, I could talk
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to. I didn't, you know, my, my dad wasn't in this situation that I could talk to him. Uh,
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my grandparents, my one grandfather was passed away and my mom's grandfather had had a stroke.
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So there wasn't really anybody to talk to about things like that. I didn't really know what to do.
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I mean, I call, I call you, I mean, sometimes daily, but definitely weekly, either to talk
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through a news story or to talk through a contract or to talk through an opportunity. I mean, that's
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invaluable to me. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without that. I can't even imagine being just
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trying to navigate it almost completely alone and having no one to look toward to say, okay,
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that's it. And really one piece of guidance that you got was that you needed new shoes, right?
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Oh, I need it. Well, yeah. My boss at Murphy, when I, you know, moved out of the mail room,
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was pretty casual up to where at the time you had to wear a coat and tie every day,
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you know, as guys and ladies wore skirts or, or, or, you know, slacks and things like that.
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And, and so we didn't have enough money and I probably didn't take care of my shoes as well
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as I should. And my boss would kind of make fun of me a little bit. Now I do think in his own way,
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he was trying to help, trying to help me, right? Mom didn't think so. She was mad. She was bitter,
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probably still bitter to this day. But I do think it helped me because I didn't have anybody doing
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that. I mean, that's something that you're, that you're, that your mentor might do, right?
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Yeah. And so I, at the end, I probably was embarrassed at the time, but I appreciate it
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very much. And Hey, you need to at least shine your shoes, right? So he told you basically that
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you need a new shoes. You called mom and you said, Lisa, I need new shoes. Mom says that she had to
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dig into the couch for coins and for extra money lying around and was like, how in the world am I
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going to be able to afford new shoes? That's right. And she did that, you know, and we were a team.
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I mean, from day one, we were a team and I don't think we ever, we didn't always agree on everything,
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but we've always been a team. And at the end of the day, we did things like that together for sure.
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Yeah. Okay. Before we transition to the next season of your life, I don't want to disregard the title
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of the book, which is about the red wagon and the different parts of the wagon and how that is really
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kind of a metaphor for your life. And some of the first few things that you talk about are the parts
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of the wagon, which we can get into, but also expecting the unexpected and taking the next
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comfortable step and also continuing to look forward. I mean, yes, that's true in all your
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stages of life, but when we look back to those early years, which are really the most fascinating
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to me because they're the most kind of foreign to me, I mean, you implemented all of those steps,
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expecting the unexpected, the next comfortable step, continuing to look forward. What does all that
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have to do with the red wagon? Well, when I, you know, when I, uh, the, I opened the book a little
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bit on a story about my own red wagon, when I was about six years old and an accident that I had in
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it. And I'll let people read that to find out what happened on that. But as I went, as I was thinking
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about, I wasn't thinking about it at the time. Okay. Or even at the time I was in my early twenties,
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but as I've matured, I've thought about just think about life, right? Like we all do and whatever.
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And as I think about the red wagon, the red wagon really is something that everybody can relate to
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at some point in time, all of us have, have had a toy wagon of some type. The most famous is the
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radio flyer, but the wagon has components and those components to me definitely have each of those
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components have a important part on how life is done. Like for example, if you're sitting in the
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wagon and the handle is just flopping around and you're start going down a hill, you don't know
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what direction you're going in. Wherever the wagon wagon takes you is where you're going, right?
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You have, you don't have any control over that because you don't have the handle.
00:21:45.460
If you have the handle, then you can guide the wagon anywhere you want it to go. However,
00:21:52.680
you may get to a point where it's too heavy to carry. Maybe the cargo in, it's too heavy.
00:21:57.520
And as a young, um, as a young father, sometimes the cargo in that wagon, which was mom and your
00:22:04.700
brother and, and, and your two brothers actually, uh, became very heavy. And I needed somebody to
00:22:10.520
help me push the wagon. And that's what people do. And those, sometimes those are your encouragers
00:22:14.620
or those are your mentors, or sometimes it's your faith, right? It's an invisible force that's
00:22:19.660
pushing the wagon. And for us, for people like myself and you who are people of faith that we
00:22:24.420
believe that's God helping us along in that. Yeah. So tell us about that. Tell us about
00:22:29.100
pulling, pushing, guiding the wagon along through what I know was a very turbulent time.
00:22:35.160
You know, mom's mom died, Justin and Daniel, they're young. Daniel was born 1985 and y'all are
00:22:41.680
about to move, take a big move from Arkansas, small town, Arkansas, which you just described
00:22:47.760
to Dallas, which Dallas back in 1985. Now we would consider it a small town, but that was big time.
00:22:53.840
That was big time then. So tell us a little bit about that. How in the world did you make that
00:22:58.400
decision? Well, I made the decision based on the financial mediocrity question we talked to earlier
00:23:03.760
in that I enjoyed my, what had happened is, is, um, I had, uh, the company had done a compensation
00:23:12.240
survey by an outside firm on how much money people should make in certain jobs. And it came out that I
00:23:18.720
was making quite a bit less than what I should have been making based on the job they were asking me to do.
00:23:22.960
But they wouldn't raise my pay up to that level all at one time. They wanted to do it gradually.
00:23:28.840
And that bothered me because I, I want to get paid for everything I was worth. And they were like,
00:23:35.300
well, you know, you're too young. You don't have a degree. I know what they were thinking. They were
00:23:39.020
thinking he's not going to go anywhere. Well, because you didn't, they thought, well, you don't
00:23:42.820
have a better opportunity. You don't even have a degree. Well, you know me well enough to know
00:23:46.240
that's when I start looking. Yeah. So I started looking for a job. I had a lady that used to work
00:23:51.580
with us in the HR department that had moved to Dallas because she was from that area. And I asked
00:23:56.220
her to start sending me the Dallas morning news, the Sunday paper. And she would send that to me
00:24:01.700
and we would just look for jobs. And, and then I applied for a couple of jobs and, you know,
00:24:06.960
was able to get one. And then Murphy tried to keep me there, wanted to match the pay. And I said,
00:24:12.200
no, I'm not doing that. If I'm worth that today, I was worth that yesterday. And mom was not very
00:24:18.560
happy about that because she was used to living where she was and her mom had not passed away yet.
00:24:23.460
And we had the two babies and all that, but I just, I just knew that I needed to move on. And I
00:24:30.040
probably didn't handle it with her as respectfully or as gently as I could have. So I don't feel good
00:24:36.680
about that, but I do, I never questioned whether it was the right thing to do. And I think that's where,
00:24:41.860
you know, that's, I mean, God was just kind of saying, okay, man, I, you know, I'm, I'm going
00:24:46.900
to have to be your mentor right now. Yeah. Cause you didn't have anyone telling you what you need
00:24:51.400
to do. Okay. So you moved to Dallas and that did prove to be the right thing. I don't think your
00:24:57.720
life would have turned out the same if y'all had stayed back in Arkansas, even though it was really
00:25:01.340
hard, I think in a lot of ways. So. And that's what I tell people a lot in the book too. The big thing
00:25:07.020
in the book, one of the big messages is take the next uncomfortable step. Yeah. You know, a lot of
00:25:11.800
times, especially, especially I will talk to my friends that are friends that have a faith is that
00:25:17.040
they'll say, well, I'm just going to wait. I'm just waiting on God. Right. I'm waiting. I'm waiting.
00:25:22.620
I'm waiting. Right. And sometimes that's absolutely the right thing to do. But sometimes God might be
00:25:28.980
saying, Hey, you know what? I need you to move. I need to see what decisions you are going to make.
00:25:34.760
Where is your faith? I need to test your faith here. And, and I don't, cause I, if you think
00:25:39.760
about, if you think about God being a loving father, okay, then a loving father isn't sitting,
00:25:46.560
waiting for you to make the wrong move so he can bop you on the head. Even if you make the wrong move,
00:25:51.560
he wants to gently move you back in the right direction. So I always needed in my mind to have
00:25:58.820
that picture of how God was now. It's, I hope that's the truth. It's the truth to me. And so
00:26:05.720
I just knew that that was the right thing to do. And the confirmation that happened after we moved
00:26:13.520
were just incredible. And we talk about a lot of those in the book, uh, because the people that we
00:26:19.140
are close to today are some of the very first people we've met when we moved here, which is
00:26:23.220
phenomenal. Cause that's been 37 years ago. And you and mom were always really good about
00:26:40.640
helping my brothers and me think through that. Like when I was thinking through college,
00:26:45.220
I had some teachers say the same thing, but definitely today, I think it's more popular
00:26:50.300
for my age people to say, well, to be paralyzed by overthinking, paralyzed by over analysis,
00:26:55.920
paralyzed even sometimes by prayer, just getting stuck in the spiritualism of it. But I do remember
00:27:01.580
you and mom saying, you know, college isn't jail. You can make a decision. That's what mom said.
00:27:06.080
College isn't jail. You can make a decision to leave and to move. And as long as the decision that
00:27:11.360
you're making, is it sin? You know, that it's not sin, you know, it's not disobedient to God.
00:27:15.800
Like it's going to be okay. Um, the Holy spirit will guide you. And thankfully God is the one who's
00:27:22.900
perfect. We're not. And I think I've always said that God honors righteous action. So if you have
00:27:28.920
a righteous heart or a heart that you, you believe, like you said, doing the right thing,
00:27:32.760
then even if it's a mistake, you're going to get gently loved back into the right area. Um, and you
00:27:39.860
know, if I'm doing it out of pride or something like that, it might be a little more harsh and
00:27:43.220
certainly I've experienced those things as well, but it was a good, it was a good move. And, uh,
00:27:48.440
the Lord really blessed us with having, with meeting some really good friends here. And for me,
00:27:52.940
some business people that kind of helped me move to take, move on and realize a bigger picture
00:27:58.800
about what might be available to me. So what you learned at Murphy oil, because you took
00:28:04.120
the next uncomfortable steps, you learned about investments, retirements. And again, you said,
00:28:08.540
this is not something that you were, Oh my gosh, I'm so passionate about this, but you saw this as a
00:28:13.700
way to make good financial decisions for your family. You move to Dallas, you get into investments,
00:28:19.700
you get into retirements, and then eventually you take over your own retirement investment company.
00:28:26.140
This is early nineties, right? Yep. And tell me about some, one time you told me a funny story. You sat
00:28:32.560
down with one of your colleagues with two guys. I think that you maybe wanted to invest in your
00:28:36.800
company and you said something along the lines to them, you know, we can make you rich or something
00:28:42.820
if you invest. Oh yeah. Let me tell you. Yeah. This is a, yeah. Tell us how you were kind of,
00:28:46.600
cause you're confident. You've already said that you're confident, but these people kind of put
00:28:50.040
you in your place, which is something that a lot of people experience. You heard the adage,
00:28:53.000
pride cometh before the fall. Yeah. Well, here's a perfect example of that. Okay. News alert.
00:28:58.600
So actually these were our chief investors in our company. They had helped us get the company
00:29:02.780
started. Is this, is this RAA? This is RAA. First it was PHNH. No, first it was First Southern
00:29:08.660
Trust. And then it was Retirement Advisors of America, which was RAA. Okay. And RAA, the RAA
00:29:15.240
was the company that a couple of us put together and started in late 1990, early 1991. And things
00:29:23.800
were going pretty well, probably a year or two into it. I don't remember exactly when it was.
00:29:29.100
And we were having a board of directors meeting. It was myself, my partner, and three outside
00:29:35.420
people that put the money up to start the company. Cause we didn't have enough money to start the
00:29:40.120
company. They had to help get us going until we made a profit. Right. And it was pretty expensive.
00:29:45.120
They had probably put at the time, they'd probably put a couple million dollars into the company. So it
00:29:50.440
wasn't a small amount. Yeah. And we don't, we don't have time to get into it, but you had to like
00:29:54.560
find these investors and convince them to invest in a company. So that's a whole skill that, yeah,
00:29:59.560
I guess you just naturally had. And they, I mean, I mean, obviously I think those were God things that
00:30:04.660
he helped along the way. But so anyway, we had this board meeting and my partner and I already
00:30:08.080
decided, look, this thing's going pretty well. We don't really own as much of this company as we'd
00:30:12.340
like to. So really we're going to keep making them rich. That's all we're doing. And so we had a
00:30:18.020
whole game plan, what we're going to say when they came in and we got started and my partner was
00:30:22.680
going to start it. So you didn't think it was fair, just to reiterate, you didn't think it was
00:30:25.740
fair. You thought that you and this guy should own more of the companies than these guys that
00:30:29.680
you're about to talk to. And therefore get more of the profits, right? Yeah. And so my colleague was
00:30:36.680
going to get it started and everything. He kind of fumbled around. So I thought, okay, I got to get
00:30:39.960
this going. So I said, Jim and Rick and Bill, that were their names. I said, you know, things are
00:30:45.200
going well. Appreciate all you'll do for us. But you know, we just, we're just tired of making y'all
00:30:49.380
richer. We want to be rich too. And I'll never forget Jim, who was the senior guy who had a
00:30:56.860
large stake in Morgan Stanley and was many times wealthy over, never looked up. He said, we're
00:31:02.940
already rich. Next question. What did you say? Oh man, we just, it was, I had nothing to say. It
00:31:09.520
was, I just like, okay, okay, move on. Yes, let's do that. So that was, we definitely didn't handle
00:31:16.420
that one correctly. Although I will give them credit. They didn't just, you know, boot us out
00:31:20.220
the door either. And the investment was a good investment for them. And it was a good investment
00:31:24.560
for us too. Yeah. Tell us maybe a little bit about the beginning of starting that company,
00:31:30.120
some mistakes you made and some lessons learned, because this was another risk, another uncomfortable
00:31:34.520
step that you took in starting something that you didn't know originally would be successful.
00:31:39.060
Yeah. And I don't really know, Allie, if I know the answer to this particular thing I'm going to
00:31:45.300
talk about is that my, the, the other guy that helped me start, we had both worked at the same
00:31:52.040
company before and we came over this new company. He and I were different personality wise. And there
00:31:57.920
were some things in his personality that, that made me wonder, you know, and, and mom also, you know,
00:32:09.700
kind of had a, you know, a little bit of a, as women's intuition, which I believe is a real thing,
00:32:13.840
you know, or something, something's not a hundred percent right. Although, but for me,
00:32:19.500
I wanted to make this move so bad. I think I probably overlooked some things about his character
00:32:26.700
that, you know, probably shouldn't have, it ended up working out. Okay. But I tell you what it did
00:32:33.360
cause is it caused an event that was hugely stressful because about three years into the deal,
00:32:38.960
the board members I was telling you about, Jim, Bill, and Rick came down to the office and they
00:32:44.300
said, Ron, you're going to be CEO in about five minutes cause we're firing your partner.
00:32:50.600
And it was a, it was a tough, I had no idea that was going to happen. I knew that they had had some
00:32:55.380
problems working with him and he, you know, wasn't very responsive to him and all that and what have
00:33:00.920
been, he probably wasn't doing everything he was supposed to be doing. And, uh, and it was tough
00:33:07.760
cause it really, really hurt my relationship with him. He thought I was part, I was in on it.
00:33:13.180
Yeah. And, uh, that was very tough. And I think the, the lessons that I learned in that is you really,
00:33:19.740
and I talk about this the other day to somebody is that you really have to be slow in picking your
00:33:25.840
partners. Take your time in picking your partners in all realms of life, in all realms of life.
00:33:32.140
That's exactly right. Because once you do it, you do need to stay committed to them. And I think I
00:33:37.580
made that certainly made that mistake of not being as deliberate as I should have been in that process.
00:33:46.300
Yeah. And there's so much more we could talk about with your business life and what was motivating
00:33:52.100
you, but you talk a lot about personal life too, which I'm sure was even harder to talk about.
00:33:57.900
Cause like you said, in the beginning, it is vulnerable. You talk a lot about being a dad.
00:34:01.760
You talk a lot about us kids. And so we know that you were motivated by, you wanted your family to be
00:34:07.820
financially free. You worked really hard. A lot of times you worked long hours, especially nineties,
00:34:13.320
early two thousands. You're building this business. You become CEO. Um, tell us what it was like
00:34:19.020
also being a dad at this point, Justin's, you know, in high school, Daniel's around there. I'm young,
00:34:27.160
I'm little, um, tell us about this time. Once y'all got to Texas, what it was like working that hard
00:34:33.580
and trying to be a more present dad than your dad was. Yeah. You know, it was something that was in my
00:34:38.900
mind all the time. Um, I felt like that I was gone a lot, but it is interesting because, and I don't
00:34:49.920
remember how long ago this was, but it wasn't that long ago that Justin said, or either wrote
00:34:58.440
something somewhere that I read your oldest brother, uh, said, you know, dad, I don't ever remember you
00:35:04.540
missing one of my games. And I don't think I did very much because it was really a high priority
00:35:09.880
for me that I was present for things that were important to y'all. And so I think I probably
00:35:15.560
did a little better job of that than I felt at the time. Cause I do remember feeling it was constant
00:35:20.660
stress, right? Constant stress of, I need to be doing this to help this business grow, but I also have
00:35:27.520
these obligations. And I'll tell you, if, if you don't really have a strong partner in, I'm talking
00:35:36.920
about Lisa now, my wife, you know, your mom and that relationship, if that isn't strong, and if you
00:35:43.060
don't have a, a wife or a spouse, it's totally sold out on what y'all are doing as a family team,
00:35:49.620
then you're with me doing what I was doing. There's no way that marriage was going to stay together.
00:35:55.640
Yeah. One hundred percent. And I don't take much credit for that. Most of that credit goes to mom
00:36:01.800
because she was dealing with, you know, all of the stuff, uh, that goes on day to day in a young
00:36:08.900
family. While I was focusing most of my attention on a day to day basis on the, on the business, I
00:36:15.300
would definitely try to be present as much as I could be. And I think I did as good a job of that
00:36:19.960
as I could. Um, but without mom there, uh, a lot of those marriages end up split just because of
00:36:26.880
that right there. But she, you know, she said, um, she said this more than once to people. I've
00:36:31.740
heard her say it when they would say, you know, what do you, cause I would, you know, take these
00:36:36.000
business risks and other things. And she would say, what people would say, what do you think
00:36:39.340
about that? Lisa, are you not, does that bother you? Says, yep, it bothers me. And I don't know
00:36:44.000
about that, but I believe in him and that's really what was important and, and why, you
00:36:49.820
know, things, and, and the fact that, you know, my mom lived with us for a while when you were
00:36:53.440
little, she lived with us for a long time and she was a big help in that. And I think that
00:36:57.780
Lisa and her had such a good relationship. And I give most of the credit to Lisa because
00:37:02.220
it's sometimes hard to get along with your mother-in-law, but she had a, she had a true
00:37:06.520
love for mom and mom loved her. And that, that really worked out to be a good partnership
00:37:11.080
there too. Not for me. My mother-in-law is listening to this. I have a great relationship
00:37:16.640
with my mother-in-law and she makes it, she makes it very easy. But that's, that's true. I mean,
00:37:21.140
I had a great relationship with grandma and also really close relationship with mom. And of course,
00:37:26.920
the most important thing for me, when I was growing up, I was a basketball star and you somehow made it
00:37:31.960
to my basketball games. That's sarcasm. That's not true. I was mostly thinking about where we were
00:37:38.320
going to go to lunch after. Yeah. And, and you would, you would ask those questions in very
00:37:42.260
important timeouts when coach Bart was trying to get you to focus on the game. I wasn't interested
00:37:47.600
at all. Where were we going to eat? That was your number one thing. Social hour. I'm ready for it.
00:37:52.480
But I remember you saying, so you made it to all these games, even though, I mean, I do remember,
00:37:57.560
and I think I carry a lot of these characteristics that you have. Like I enjoy working. I feel like I can
00:38:03.260
carry the stress of doing all that. We can never do it as perfectly as we think that we're doing it.
00:38:08.480
But I, I mean, I remember you being busy. I remember you staying up late. I remember you
00:38:12.440
working a lot, but I also remember you telling the story that you have a memory of your dad,
00:38:18.980
not showing up to some important events and important meets in your life. Right. I'm sure
00:38:24.180
that whether you realized it or not, that was in the back of your mind. It probably was. I'm sure it
00:38:29.040
was. And I was not going to, cause I, plus I enjoyed being a part of those important times.
00:38:33.180
You never know when your kids are at an, doing an event, whatever that happens to be, whether that's
00:38:39.860
a, you know, Bible memory verse at their Sunday school class for church or, or their sports event
00:38:45.560
or their play or whatever, you never know when one of those events is going to be, have a lifelong,
00:38:52.820
life lasting effect on them. And you want to be there when that happens.
00:38:56.580
Um, tell us a little bit about, I mean, you talk about the challenges with one of my brothers,
00:39:02.840
my, my middle brother, who we know is special in so many ways and beats us in a lot of ways,
00:39:10.920
whether it comes to memory, being able to find things, creativity, good ideas, innovation,
00:39:15.740
but there were struggles there growing up. It's not always easy finding the right school and
00:39:19.940
opportunities for someone who doesn't necessarily fit the mold. And he does it.
00:39:24.720
Yeah. Yeah. Well, certainly Daniel was a square peg and a lot of round holes and, uh, you know,
00:39:31.600
with it, we didn't know what it was at the time. Lisa with her, uh, teaching background knew he wasn't
00:39:37.240
developing properly and trying to find the right education scenario for him and getting told by your
00:39:43.380
Christian education school at the time, uh, that he didn't have the gray matter to go to their school
00:39:50.380
and you need to get him out before the end of the first six weeks when he was in first grade.
00:39:53.840
Basically if people don't understand his, he's just not, his brain doesn't work enough.
00:39:57.880
That's what they thought. That's what they thought. Yeah. Which was probably to this day,
00:40:03.020
the most difficult thing I've ever had to hear and hurtful, especially coming from your church school.
00:40:09.820
Right. It was just like, seriously. Anyway. So, but I will tell you what, it put us to work,
00:40:14.520
uh, on, on knowing that we needed to lead his wagon. And, and the biggest challenge that when
00:40:21.340
you have, uh, someone like Daniel who, who obviously we love dearly is the way life works
00:40:28.880
is that having your kids in your wagon as cargo, carrying them along is something that you plan
00:40:37.420
on doing. That's part of life. But when they get to college and beyond, you expect them to get out
00:40:41.880
of the wagon, kind of go on their own. Occasionally may have to jump back in for a little help and
00:40:46.340
whatever, but mostly go on their own. When you have, uh, someone that has a disability like that,
00:40:52.360
they're going to be in your wagon the entire time. And that is, that's something you have to
00:40:58.880
almost, you have to reorganize yourself to accept that and plan around that. And so that's the things
00:41:07.600
that Lisa and I have, you know, had to figure out over time. And now he's, you know, well into his
00:41:13.560
thirties and, and, uh, you know, it's just, it's just something that we as a family have to deal with.
00:41:18.840
And it was, it was definitely hard. There's no question about it. Uh, but you know what, it was
00:41:24.060
hard on us, but it was hard on him too. Yeah. It was hard on y'all. And so we have to, I have to
00:41:29.920
remember that to whatever it is that I'm complaining about, because I don't have, you know, the flexibility
00:41:34.820
maybe that I want to, because of the things we have to think about with him. It's nothing
00:41:39.440
compared. He, he would trade all of that to be like us. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of
00:41:56.300
parents out there, either you've got a special needs child, whatever it is, whether it's on the
00:42:00.300
autism spectrum or they just learn a little bit differently, whether they have down syndrome,
00:42:03.720
there's a whole range of special needs. And it can be, I mean, especially today, a lot of people
00:42:08.880
are like, you know what, public school, I don't know if that's the best option for my kids. That's
00:42:12.580
how y'all felt for us. You wanted us to get a Christian education. Sometimes Christian education
00:42:16.960
isn't an option for, for these kinds of kids. And a lot of these parents are stressed with that.
00:42:23.660
And then they're thinking, oh my gosh, I'm never going to have the retirement or the, you know,
00:42:28.960
the later years that I thought that I was going to have, because I'm going to always be
00:42:32.340
taking care of, of my child. And so I just really encourage, especially those of you who fall into
00:42:36.880
that camp to read this book, because that is an unexpected challenge that you guys just didn't know
00:42:43.820
that has turned into a blessing in a lot of ways. Yeah. It's an unexpected challenge and
00:42:47.260
unexpected benefit, because I will tell you it, it, the one thing that Daniel, I think
00:42:52.060
has done for me is it's also made me slow down and it's made me have perspective on things that I
00:43:00.760
probably wouldn't have had the perspective on. Yeah. Okay. Gosh, I could talk for another hour
00:43:05.800
about your story. I do just, I want to read people the lessons. So you're going to get an amazing story
00:43:12.020
when you read this and it'll, you know, go chronologically through his life in a lot of ways.
00:43:16.640
My husband said that he couldn't put this down because it's just a really, really good story.
00:43:21.600
And also my, my grandpa, my mom's dad also, who is not a big reader, he doesn't really read,
00:43:27.120
but he called and you know, we don't have time for the story, but for whatever reason, my dad and my
00:43:32.060
grandpa call each other, George, neither of them are named George, but he said that George's book
00:43:38.200
was one that he also couldn't put down. So there are a few lessons that are learned,
00:43:42.320
finding your place in the red wagon. So that'll talk more about what the metaphor is and what all
00:43:46.500
the parts of the wagon represent. Expect the unexpected, the next uncomfortable step, continue
00:43:51.940
looking forward, finding your place on the team, the fear of failure, create your opportunity.
00:43:56.740
Yes, isn't always easy. Seek out mentors and get unstuck. Change your method, not your message.
00:44:03.140
Are you a participant or a crusader? Get out of your comfort zone. Either you're a show pony,
00:44:08.220
a plow horse or workhorse, victory after despair, and then dreams of a better tomorrow. And in all of
00:44:14.340
those, you have an action. So something that's happening, all of those, you have something to
00:44:18.880
consider, a lesson to learn, and then a takeaway. So it's a story, but interwoven are three really,
00:44:25.220
really clear steps. And I mean, you can read this book in like a day and learn a lot about it. So.
00:44:31.400
I hope so. I hope so. I hope it comes out there. And you know, the other, the last thing I guess I
00:44:35.620
would say about the book is that it also talks about my life in public service as being a state
00:44:42.420
representative and all of that, because it was a total change. I had to, I, you know, at the,
00:44:46.780
in the, in the investment deal, I was the guy holding the handle, right? Well, when I totally
00:44:51.580
changed and went into public service, I didn't know anything about that. So I had to crawl back
00:44:56.460
in the wagon and be the cargo for a while and let other people pull the wagon for me until I learned
00:45:02.500
what I was doing. And I think you have to realize that sometimes in your life, you're not always
00:45:07.660
going to be on the handle. Sometimes you got to, you got to get your right spot. If you're supposed
00:45:12.460
to be the cargo and you've got the handle, then that's going to be trouble. That's going to be
00:45:18.200
trouble because then you definitely are going to be stuck. It's going to be stuck. That's exactly right.
00:45:21.900
Well, actually the last, the last thing I do want to talk about, because this is an epilogue,
00:45:25.720
you were just saying how there's a long epilogue in here because talk about a curve ball and talk about not
00:45:30.400
knowing, you know, how you're going to navigate this wagon. You and mom in the past year were both
00:45:35.920
diagnosed with cancer. You didn't know that when you were writing this book. So tell us a little
00:45:40.240
bit about that and what's, what has that been like over the past year? Yeah, that's really been,
00:45:44.720
you know, as interesting, almost a fact, we're doing this podcast almost a year to the day that we found
00:45:49.460
out about Lisa's breast cancer. And we're rocking along like everybody else does. I think we're in pretty
00:45:55.660
good health. We don't really have cancer in our family history, in our background. So we don't
00:46:00.560
have that. So it's not something we really think about, but you know, Lisa got diagnosed with breast
00:46:06.060
cancer last March and that sent us in a, you know, just a little bit of a spin. Okay, what's this mean?
00:46:14.120
What are we going to do? You know, we're always thinking about, okay, we got our life already
00:46:17.000
planned out. We don't need this one. And, but I will, I tell you what it does. First of all,
00:46:22.500
it makes you figure out what's really important. You know, it makes you reflect, which we should
00:46:27.760
be doing more anyway. And then it makes you make a decision of how determined are you to do what you
00:46:34.840
can to take care of this and, and, and, and become healthy, do what you can. And, and Lisa went
00:46:42.620
headlong into research, which is her. Well, she does. She does. That's her deal. She's always done that.
00:46:48.040
Maybe it's her teacher background. She likes learning. Great. And reader, comprehends
00:46:52.600
everything she reads. Yeah, she's very, very good at that. And so she really started looking at
00:46:57.700
nutritional ways that would help her be more healthy. She went ahead and did the surgery
00:47:05.160
to have the tumor removed. And thank goodness it was small. And, and she had a few rounds of radiation,
00:47:11.540
but I don't think any of that would have gone as well had she not got involved in this nutrition
00:47:18.040
scenario. Which I've had the guy on my show that she followed Chris Wark, Chris beat cancer. And so
00:47:24.580
mom went, and I know I'm not saying that this is necessarily the path that everyone takes, but
00:47:28.840
my mom went full vegan, which was hard for her because that meant she had to give up coffee because
00:47:33.660
she doesn't like coffee without milk in it. And so, I mean, this has been maybe one of the most
00:47:40.260
disciplined things. I mean, in addition to how, how you got so fit when I was in college, but also
00:47:47.160
just mom being so disciplined in this and being so committed to her health. Incredible. She's just
00:47:52.640
been incredible. And, and little did we know that while she's going through this, I'm going to my
00:47:58.920
doctor for my normal checkup. And he says, well, Ron, your PSA is a little bit high. So I need you to
00:48:04.940
go see a urologist. And so I went to the urologist and he says, well, let's, let's give it up. Yeah.
00:48:12.420
It's a little high. Let's do an MRI. And so, uh, I hadn't really told Lisa much about this during the
00:48:19.220
time. Cause she's kind of going through her deal. I just said, Hey, made a little bit, but it's
00:48:22.140
probably nothing. Cause mine had kind of gone up and down. And, uh, and so I did the MRI and the MRI
00:48:29.240
noticed that there was something on my prostate that was not normal, but you still don't know
00:48:35.520
at the time as to whether or not it's cancer, it could be a non-malignant. Right. And so I told the
00:48:41.620
guy, I said, look, I'm not going to do anything until Lisa's through with her radiation. Uh, cause
00:48:46.940
at the time she was getting ready to go through radiation. I just, we just didn't need all of that.
00:48:50.920
Okay. Uh, and so she got through that and then we had my biopsy where they take some of the cells
00:48:56.600
and sure enough, it was, uh, it was prostate cancer. Now we are still in the area right now
00:49:02.980
for me of monitoring it, uh, based on how there's had this scale and based on where you're on the
00:49:09.960
scale, you can either monitor it or you need to go ahead and have something done. And right now
00:49:14.860
we're still in the monitoring phase. Hopefully we can stay in that phase. I've, I've, uh, tried to do
00:49:20.700
what Lisa's doing on the nutritional side, not as disciplined as her for sure. Uh, but, uh,
00:49:26.600
but you know, I think it, I already think that has helped as well because the last time I had it
00:49:31.080
checked is actually was down a little bit. So, uh, so you never know. So yeah, but it threw us a
00:49:36.560
curve ball, the C word, you know, uh, sometime, you know, we talk about, I say in there that
00:49:40.500
you think that, well, if one's good, two's great. Well, not with the C word, but I will tell you,
00:49:45.520
it also makes you realize that, that at the end of the day, who is in control. And if you don't have
00:49:52.740
the faith to know that whatever happens, that God is still in control, then I could see where
00:49:59.260
you could get into a tailspin, you know, pretty quickly because no matter whatever happens to me
00:50:04.880
or mom, uh, he, he's been faithful. He's been faithful and I can't look back and complain no
00:50:12.480
matter what. Amen. Well, everyone needs to go out and get this book. It has ringing endorsements.
00:50:18.200
Also, this just speaks to like the reputation that you've built over the years, the kinds
00:50:23.760
of endorsements that he has in this book from some of the most influential people, both in
00:50:27.960
the private and the public sector. It's really incredible. So you can go on Amazon, um, wherever
00:50:33.380
books are sold. I think hopefully it's in physical bookstores. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So it
00:50:38.420
should be. It's distributed by Simon and Schuster. So it should be. Yeah. Life lessons from the
00:50:42.240
little red wagon. And Hey, if you also, if you're out there, I know I got other podcasters and
00:50:47.000
other media people that listen to this podcast. Like there's so many aspects of this book that
00:50:51.620
could be good for your audience, whether it's business leaders, it's entrepreneurs, whether
00:50:55.880
it's people that are in public service, um, whether, you know, it's just parents, parents
00:51:01.140
of people with, uh, with, of kids with special needs, like just men in general, like how to
00:51:07.200
be a good man. I encourage you reach out to us. We'll connect you to my dad. He would be a
00:51:11.880
really, really good guest on any of your shows. Okay. We got a little bit of time left, a little
00:51:29.960
bit of time. Let's talk real quickly, just about news. Cause I haven't talked about this
00:51:34.320
yet. Oh yeah. Good. Okay. So this would be, this would be like, you can, you can pretend
00:51:39.240
like you're listening in on a phone call with me and my dad. So when there is a story out there
00:51:43.300
or I'll send him an article and I'll say, what do you think about this dad? What's going on here?
00:51:47.600
So I haven't been totally following everything that's happened with Trump announcing on truth
00:51:51.440
social that he's going to be arrested by a Manhattan DA because of a, uh, misdemeanor,
00:51:58.580
alleged misdemeanor, uh, campaign finance rule and giving money to stormy Daniels. You remember
00:52:05.060
this? This is a story from several years ago. He's saying that he's going to be arrested for
00:52:09.240
this. And he also urged his supporters to go out and mass protest in his defense while Twitter is
00:52:18.460
lit up with all kinds of disagreement about what is going on. So as we're recording this,
00:52:23.060
this hasn't happened yet. So we don't even know Tuesday morning, if this is actually come to
00:52:27.140
fruition, dad, what do you think is going to happen? And what is really going on here?
00:52:31.620
Well, he's not going to be perp walked. You don't think? No, no. Because that's what the
00:52:36.060
left wants. They would love that. He's not going to be perp walked. Uh, the secret service is not
00:52:40.720
going to allow the local DA or local police in New York to do that. And so that's not going to happen.
00:52:49.060
Um, really? The secret service can say no. They're just not going to allow it to happen.
00:52:53.660
That's, that's the word that I've got as early as this morning. That's not going to happen.
00:52:57.140
And, uh, he is not going to be forced to go back to New York. He is in Florida. Now he could go to
00:53:03.720
New York if he wanted to, but he's not going to be forced to do that. Now they may end up doing the
00:53:08.060
arraignment over zoom or something like that, but there's not going to be a display. Uh, unless I
00:53:15.260
guess president Trump wanted to display for other, for other reasons. So I don't see that now, by the
00:53:20.740
time this comes out, this all may have happened by the end of, by the end of the day, it's a
00:53:24.900
misdemeanor, which by the way, even on this misdemeanor, the statute of limitations has
00:53:30.100
expired. Yeah. And that's why the guy's trying to get it to be a felony, which is, I just don't
00:53:34.700
know how you get there. I don't know how you get there. Cause first of all, it's not illegal
00:53:38.280
to pay somebody hush money. If I wanted to say, Hey, I want to, I'm going to pay you X number of
00:53:43.340
dollars, not to tell the story about whatever, then that's okay to do that. It is illegal if he used
00:53:49.760
campaign funds, which he, which as far as we know, he did not do that. He says he did. Yeah. He says he
00:53:53.940
didn't. And so, uh, it's just a show. It's all a show. And I think it's going to end up backfiring
00:53:59.880
on the Democrats. I mean, there's only been one other president in the history of America that's
00:54:05.380
been arrested and that's Ulysses S Grant. He was arrested for driving his carriage too fast in
00:54:11.540
Washington DC and got a $20 fine. So if indicted, Trump will be the first former president in U S
00:54:17.920
history to face, well, it's, this says to face criminal charges, but you're saying that Ulysses
00:54:22.820
S Grant, but maybe that wasn't criminal at the time. Maybe, maybe it was a little different.
00:54:28.040
So this is not the first DA to try to do something like this. And it's really sad when you think about
00:54:32.360
what should be the priorities of the DA in Manhattan, which is not a particularly safe place
00:54:37.820
right now. Obviously crime has soared in a lot of these cities. People are getting murdered. People
00:54:41.980
are being let out of jail based on so-called equity standards. And so, and they are wasting
00:54:47.640
their time on something just because they want a few minutes of fame on MSNBC when people are
00:54:53.220
suffering in his actual district. And 50% of the people that are arrested there for felonies,
00:54:58.380
he bumps them down to a misdemeanor. He's trying to bump this misdemeanor up to a felony. I mean,
00:55:02.460
it's just, it's totally George Soros backed. I guarantee you this guy had to make the promise to
00:55:06.980
somebody that he was going to do this. And so he's, he's checking the box. He's just like
00:55:11.200
President Biden. He's checking the box. Yeah. I can't believe George Soros still has American
00:55:15.540
citizenship. It should be something we should be able to do about that. Okay. People are also upset
00:55:20.920
with Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, I guess, because Trump is in Florida. They think that
00:55:25.760
Governor DeSantis should say, should be the one to say, no, you're not going to arrest him. You're
00:55:32.320
not going to perp walk him, which you said is not going to happen. But he said yesterday,
00:55:36.760
he said in a speech, I have no interest in getting involved in some manufactured circus by
00:55:41.140
some Soros DA. He's trying to do a political spectacle, which we agree with. He's trying
00:55:45.600
to virtue signal for his base. I've got real issues I got to deal with here in the state
00:55:51.980
of Florida. Now, some people are upset about that. Some people are also pointing out that
00:55:56.400
a Trump PAC in Florida tried to file an ethics complaint recently against DeSantis to try to get
00:56:04.500
at him because Trump obviously sees him as some kind of threat to his presidential campaign.
00:56:12.420
So I don't know. Do you see this as DeSantis trying to get back at Trump for that? Or do you think he's
00:56:17.660
just being genuine? There's really nothing he can do. Well, first of all, every state has extradition
00:56:22.660
rights. Okay. So he can't stop. If there's been a crime committed in New York, okay, Ron DeSantis can't
00:56:30.500
stop the New York authorities from coming to Florida if they choose to, just like New York
00:56:35.780
couldn't stop Florida authorities. Okay. There's, there's, there's, uh, I guess it would be called
00:56:40.780
inter-commerce, you know, interstate commerce that allows those types of things to happen. So it's
00:56:45.120
probably not much he could do other than, you know, put a barrier up there of, you know, the state
00:56:49.020
troopers or something like that. Also, I think that he doesn't want to add to the circus that just
00:56:53.740
keeps it going in the media cycle. And I would actually agree with him on that. Uh, president Trump's a big
00:56:59.760
boy. He can handle that on his own. Uh, Ron DeSantis wasn't a part of any of that to start with.
00:57:05.180
And, uh, it, it, it, it's, it's likely to cause again, it to be a bigger story than it should be
00:57:12.720
if he gets involved in it. Wow. This is going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I agree
00:57:18.360
with you about governor DeSantis, that there's not much he can do. And it does sound like he is saying
00:57:22.880
what you just said, that he doesn't want to add to a circus. So he's obviously against what's
00:57:27.160
happening. It's not like he said nothing, but he's like, you know what, if I am a part of this,
00:57:31.760
then it just turns into a whole big thing. That's exactly what Alvin Bragg wants.
00:57:35.780
No question about it. Absolutely. And so he's not going to, he's not going to go along with that.
00:57:39.400
This is a little scary. I mean, are you concerned about the state of the country,
00:57:43.080
that this is something that's happening? Have we seen this kind of witch hunt in the past before?
00:57:47.500
We have not. As a matter of fact, you know, Hillary Clinton's campaign had to pay a hundred
00:57:52.220
thousand dollar fine for using campaign money to pay for that steel dossier. Okay. And was she
00:57:59.840
arrested? Did anybody hear about it? Most people don't even know that happened. Right. And so,
00:58:05.140
no, this is all, uh, it's, it's, it's, it's what Trump derangement syndrome. I think people call it
00:58:11.260
that. And I've never seen it. And I think it hurts. It absolutely hurts our country. Now,
00:58:15.040
unfortunately there are Republicans that also hate Trump so much that they, they don't say
00:58:20.980
anything about this either. And I get it. I did not vote for president Trump in the primary. I voted
00:58:25.000
for him in both general elections. And, uh, do I think he should have, uh, done differently in the
00:58:31.360
way he communicated and whatever? Absolutely. But I will not take away from the actual policies that
00:58:37.080
were implemented during his time, the judges that were selected and all that. I mean, as far as
00:58:41.700
consequentialness for the longterm, I think he probably had more of an effect on this country
00:58:48.660
than a lot of two-term presidents in the past. Which is, that's really why they hate him. That's
00:58:53.960
really why they're going after him. It's not because of his tweets. It's not because of anything
00:58:57.380
that he said. They don't like what he did. That's a good point. They don't like that. And they saw
00:59:01.520
all of those judges that got appointed that they know are going to be strict constitutionalists,
00:59:06.400
which they do not want. They want to legislate from the bench. That is the number one thing they want
00:59:10.780
to do. They want to do what Soros is doing in the DA offices and use prosecutorial discretion.
00:59:15.500
And they want to, they want to legislate from the bench because they know they can't get
00:59:19.240
laws passed through Congress. They know they can't do that. And so they want to legislate from the
00:59:24.320
bench. Yep. And speaking of Congress, Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House, said that he,
00:59:29.600
they're directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to
00:59:33.660
subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.
00:59:37.580
We'll see what happens there. It sounds like there's not too much Congress can really do
00:59:41.180
besides just investigate and see what's going on. We'll see what actually happens.
00:59:45.960
And the other thing to remember is that all this, every time the other people are talking about
00:59:49.440
Trump, they're avoiding talking about Biden and the recent stuff that they found all that. So
00:59:56.460
they're going to keep that going as long as it's the shiny object over here, right? That's what
01:00:00.100
a lot of the strategy is. Yeah. A lot of it's coming out right now about Biden and China that even
01:00:05.360
the leftist media are talking about. So this is a nice distraction for him.
01:00:08.560
Yeah, absolutely. 100%. Okay. Thanks so much, Dad. I really appreciate you coming back on.
01:00:12.920
Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I had a good time.