The Great America Show - February 19, 2025


BLAGOJEVICH： WEAPONIZED GOVERNMENT STARTED WITH ME


Episode Stats

Length

52 minutes

Words per Minute

195.1992

Word Count

10,230

Sentence Count

726

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

Former Governor Rod Blagojevich joins us to talk about his corruption conviction and the ongoing appeal process. Rob Bogdanovich is a former federal prosecutor who served as the mayor of Chicago and served as Governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2011.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Great America Show.
00:00:05.320 It's great to have you with us.
00:00:06.480 Thanks so much for joining us.
00:00:08.020 Happy Wednesday.
00:00:09.540 Folks, today's show is going to be a little bit different.
00:00:11.700 In just a few moments, I'm going to be joined by the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich.
00:00:17.120 You may have heard his name in the news over the last few weeks, over the last few years,
00:00:21.940 over the last 10 plus years.
00:00:24.200 He's the former governor of Illinois, a man who was brought down by none other than Barack Obama.
00:00:32.080 On August 17th of 2010, he was convicted on one of 24 federal charges, a charge of lying to the FBI,
00:00:40.140 and the jury was hung on 23 other counts.
00:00:43.440 Now, these 23 other counts all stemmed from what they alleged was bribery of him trying to sell Barack Hussein Obama's Senate seat
00:00:50.880 once Barack went to the White House.
00:00:54.780 Now, his defense didn't call a single witness, claiming the prosecutors had to prove their case.
00:00:59.640 They had to prove that he was guilty of what they accused him of.
00:01:02.860 Within 15 minutes of the mistrial on those 23 other counts,
00:01:07.620 the prosecution's team announced they would definitely pursue a retrial on 23 mistrial counts.
00:01:13.900 Post-verdict court date was set for August 23rd of 2010.
00:01:17.120 Then, federal prosecutors reduced the number of counts on Brogoyevich's retrial,
00:01:21.740 and on June 27th of 2011, he was found guilty on 17 of the remaining 20 charges,
00:01:28.560 and not guilty on one.
00:01:30.040 No verdict was rendered by the jury on two counts.
00:01:33.260 He was found guilty on all charges pertaining to the Senate seat,
00:01:35.840 as well as what they called extortion,
00:01:38.760 relating to state funds being directed towards a children's hospital and a racetrack.
00:01:42.840 Now, sort of interesting, right?
00:01:44.600 You may say, oh, okay, well, this man did some bad things.
00:01:48.960 But it gets a little bit more interesting than that.
00:01:52.060 The prosecutors had claimed that they had hours and hours of wiretaps.
00:01:58.160 They wiretapped him, they wiretapped his phone,
00:02:00.320 and monitored him for a very long time.
00:02:03.360 So they had hours and hours of wiretapping.
00:02:06.200 The interesting part was they only released a few minutes of it for the jury to follow along.
00:02:12.240 So this is a man now who is facing corruption charges, will ruin his life.
00:02:17.760 But you withhold hours and hours of wiretapping, accusing this man of things he allegedly did.
00:02:26.120 Why wouldn't you just release the tapes, right?
00:02:29.320 Release the tapes.
00:02:30.120 In July of 2013, Bogdanovich filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago,
00:02:37.400 challenging the corruption conviction and the length of his prison term.
00:02:41.060 Three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court heard the arguments in the case.
00:02:44.700 In July of 2015, two years later, the court unanimously vacated five of the corruption convictions,
00:02:50.620 including his convictions, for attempting to sell Barack Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat after he was elected president.
00:02:57.000 But they affirmed the rest.
00:02:58.440 So the underlying charge of what they accused this man of was dismissed.
00:03:02.840 It was thrown out by the appeals court.
00:03:04.680 Yet all the other cases, the other charges stuck.
00:03:07.880 So the premise of this case, dismissed, but everything else stays?
00:03:12.760 Make that one make sense.
00:03:15.480 In 2016, a resentencing hearing was held because some charges were thrown out in the district court.
00:03:22.480 Judge Zagel, who was the judge in this case, reimposed the same 14-year sentence that he had imposed in 2011.
00:03:29.580 So you have five counts thrown out, including the one of him trying to sell, allegedly sell Barack Obama's seat, thrown out, but still a 14-year sentence.
00:03:39.480 To me, this sounds highly political, like a case of someone trying to get Rob Bogdanovich for something that they didn't like.
00:03:48.960 Rob Bogdanovich joins us now.
00:03:50.560 Folks, as promised, the former governor of Illinois, Rob Bogdanovich.
00:03:55.320 Rob, I've been following your case since I'm a kid, obviously a little bit younger than you.
00:03:59.280 But I remember very well what went on, everything that transpired.
00:04:03.940 And over the last few days, I went back over it to just refresh myself on what exactly went on.
00:04:10.100 Unbelievable.
00:04:10.980 For the folks who don't know what happened, Rob was initially only found guilty on one count of 24 counts.
00:04:17.460 Jury hung on 23 counts.
00:04:19.300 Within 15 minutes, the prosecutors went back and said, we're retrying and dropped a whole bunch of different cases.
00:04:26.320 They restructured the whole thing.
00:04:28.140 Lo and behold, they come back and they find him guilty of 17 of the 20 charges.
00:04:33.060 The process plays out.
00:04:34.460 Rod comes back.
00:04:35.100 He appeals this conviction.
00:04:37.620 Now, for everyone who doesn't know, an appeal is extremely hard to get in America, in this country, where he appealed, the Seventh Circuit in Illinois, in Chicago, has among the highest reversal rating in the country at just over 11 percent.
00:04:54.060 The national average is 8 percent.
00:04:55.220 So it makes you wonder, what's going on in this corrupt city?
00:04:58.600 Rod, I want to begin with your case.
00:05:01.240 I'll argue that you're Trump before Trump was Trump with what they've done to you.
00:05:06.580 If you will, from the inception, what possessed these folks to come after you?
00:05:11.900 You know, it's a question I keep asking myself, and I am asking myself this question a lot recently because I'm writing a book about the whole experience, and that book should be out this year.
00:05:22.540 And it's a story that starts with one President Obama, ends with another Trump.
00:05:25.680 And a lot of the stories about a governor in prison with Crips and Bloods and gangster disciples and seeing a little cartel drug dealers who look up to the drug lord, Al Chapa, the way my daughters look up to Taylor Swift.
00:05:36.360 Went from a 50,000 square foot governor's mansion to a six foot by eight foot prison cell in a real prison, like in the movies.
00:05:44.320 There were murders in there, 950 guys.
00:05:47.900 And I spent my first nearly three years in that higher prison.
00:05:50.500 They were squeezing me.
00:05:51.380 And why it happened, why they did it to me, you know, the day before I was arrested, I took on the Bank of America.
00:05:58.240 If you remember, you were so young back then, but, you know, we had a financial eclipse.
00:06:03.500 And as a result, the economy tanked, and people lost their 401ks, and Congress decided to pass a law called the TARP bailout, which bailed out the big financial institutions just a month before they were arrested me.
00:06:16.060 And the deal was that if they would use taxpayer dollars, these banks and financial institutions like Lehman Brothers and Bank of America and others, that they would provide lines of credits to companies to keep them in business or companies who are going out of business to give them the resources so they can provide severance pay to employees who are about to lose their jobs.
00:06:34.800 And we had a test case in Chicago.
00:06:37.320 It was a place called Republic Windows.
00:06:39.740 And the day before I was arrested, I had announced that I was going to suspend the state of Illinois doing business with the Bank of America, $2 billion worth of deposits in their bank, unless they did what they were supposed to do under the new federal law where they were using taxpayer dollars to bail them out.
00:06:56.540 And they should now help this company, keep those workers, not employed, but give them the severance pay that the law said they're entitled to for the next two months.
00:07:04.860 And this was before Christmas that could help their families and all the rest.
00:07:08.460 And no one challenged the Bank of America or these companies to actually fulfill their obligation under that TARP law.
00:07:15.580 But I did.
00:07:16.980 And it worked.
00:07:18.840 They recognized that they better do right by that company.
00:07:22.000 The threat of taking that money away from them woke them up.
00:07:25.800 And I went to bed that night feeling great because I thought we just did something real good for workers, which we did.
00:07:31.060 But I didn't have a chance to really celebrate it much because six o'clock in the morning had the FBI, 24 members of a SWAT team and a hostage negotiator around the house of the governor of the sitting of the fifth largest, the sitting governor of the fifth largest state in America to arrest me.
00:07:46.700 And so maybe they did it because of that.
00:07:49.020 I think there's more sinister motivations.
00:07:52.700 I think I took on the system down in Illinois, the state government.
00:07:56.960 I fought a guy by the name of Madigan, who was the sort of the Caesar of Illinois politics.
00:08:01.640 He was the chairman of my party, the Democrat Party.
00:08:04.320 He was the longest held speakership in American history.
00:08:07.520 Been there since 1983.
00:08:09.140 He presided over a system that I challenged and fought him all the time.
00:08:14.680 And I have reason to believe that he had something to do with this Patrick Fitzgerald and them arresting me when they did like they did.
00:08:23.320 And it didn't take long for them to throw me out of office when that happened.
00:08:25.920 So, you know, I don't know.
00:08:27.480 It's a lot of it's speculation, but I feel like I can make a very strong circumstantial case on what it was exactly that motivated them to come and do it to me.
00:08:35.240 And the great irony is that they taped all my telephone calls and they used only 2 percent of the calls selected selected snippets out of conversations that were inflammatory and not very flattering.
00:08:46.860 But none of them were illegal by themselves, but they won't allow is the rest of those conversations to be played so the full context could be heard.
00:08:54.120 And to this day, those night, those tapes, 98 percent of them, they were not allowed to be heard in court.
00:08:59.080 I can't play them in the court of public opinion, haven't been and still can't.
00:09:02.720 They're covering them up and they're covering up Barack Obama's FBI interview, which I think is very interesting as well.
00:09:08.300 I want to get to Barack Obama, who's been a central figure, Rod, you know, perhaps better than Donald Trump, because, as I said, this happened before Donald Trump.
00:09:15.860 The power that this man has, and it's sort of like he came from from nowhere to somewhere.
00:09:22.300 You were more powerful at one given point than Barack Obama.
00:09:25.760 And then there was some sort of falling out.
00:09:28.920 What was it that that happened between Obama and yourself that made Obama clearly what happened to you wasn't something at the field level of the FBI or the DOJ?
00:09:40.840 This is something that Barack Hussein Obama called in, as he did for Donald Trump.
00:09:46.560 What was it, do you believe, that geared Obama towards weaponizing a system against you?
00:09:53.260 Well, you know, what I think happened was once he had the power and he became president, he, well, I should say this, once he got elected president, he still didn't have the power.
00:10:05.020 But he had a period between Election Day, the first Tuesday of November and the 20th of January to put his administration together.
00:10:12.640 And every new president changes the U.S. attorneys, the United States attorneys, and they put the members of their own party there.
00:10:21.360 See, these were George Bush appointed U.S. attorneys that did to me what they did.
00:10:25.340 But they're part of that unit party that exists in Washington.
00:10:28.840 They're insiders.
00:10:30.020 And what they've done over the years is they've weaponized the Department of Justice for targeted political reasons.
00:10:38.620 And they started, I believe, with me at the AAA level to a Democrat governor, took it to the next level to do to President Trump, a president, a Republican president at the major league level.
00:10:47.000 What I think happened with Obama was that when they came after me and as they were coming after me, Obama and his team, because Obama had all kinds of issues with a guy by the name of Tony Resko, who bought him a lot next to a mansion that Obama bought.
00:11:02.040 Obama didn't, the Obamas didn't have enough money to pay for that mansion.
00:11:05.420 So they, and he wanted the adjoining lot.
00:11:07.520 So they asked this guy who was very friendly to both me and Obama, the guy who introduced me to Obama in 1995, his name is Tony Resko.
00:11:13.920 And Tony had purchased this lot for $750,000 for the Obamas.
00:11:19.940 And Obama had a problem, political and potentially criminal problem with that.
00:11:25.180 And so I think what they did was they basically, the Obama campaign and his people around him and the media was so madly in love with Obama.
00:11:33.160 And the idea of Obama was at the time, it was just convenient to move everything in my direction.
00:11:38.500 And I think what they did was pretty much laid it on me to protect Obama and save him.
00:11:44.760 And so when they arrested me, and I should say, I was arrested because I talked about making political deals with Obama.
00:11:51.360 The conversation began with Obama.
00:11:53.980 He sent someone to me on election night and the guy said, Balanov's his name, labor boss, supporter of both of us.
00:12:00.980 Barack called me last night.
00:12:02.440 He wants Valerie Jarrett to be the senator.
00:12:04.760 He told me to come and see you and find out what you want.
00:12:07.340 And so that began these conversations that they taped where we were talking, me, my staff, my lawyers, top political consultants for six weeks about all kinds of ideas on what kind of a political deal we can make on the Senate seat.
00:12:20.420 A thousand percent legal.
00:12:21.880 They criminalized it against me.
00:12:24.000 Obama then walked.
00:12:25.100 And Obama, when the heat came on, ran.
00:12:27.780 And he made a deal with those people, I believe, to keep them in office because he was going to replace them.
00:12:33.060 But to keep those Republican prosecutors in office until they eventually got me, and the deal was he would do nothing to lift a finger, nothing to help me, nothing to do justice or even tell the truth about what happened.
00:12:43.780 He made a political calculation.
00:12:45.800 And so I think that's how it all began.
00:12:49.020 And that was his role in it.
00:12:50.480 And he's been pretty steadfast about not just avoiding me, but they've taken that playbook that was used against me.
00:13:01.580 Obama's Department of Justice took it to a whole new level and then applied it and used it against President Trump.
00:13:07.840 You know, Rod, if you think about it, it's insane.
00:13:10.120 I'm from New York.
00:13:11.060 They tried the mafia here in New York.
00:13:12.460 They wiretapped all these guys, and they used every bit against it in trials.
00:13:18.520 John Gotti, they wiretapped every single one of these guys' calls, and we heard it.
00:13:22.260 You can go watch Netflix documentaries, Rod, and hear all the wiretapping conversations.
00:13:27.520 Yet you're sitting here.
00:13:29.140 They sentence you to 14 years in jail.
00:13:31.320 Now, this is 14 years.
00:13:32.740 You appeal.
00:13:33.740 You have some of these charges overturned.
00:13:36.540 You go back to the judge.
00:13:37.360 He says, it's still 14 years.
00:13:39.200 It doesn't matter what you're going to.
00:13:40.400 That in itself should tell you that this is highly politicized.
00:13:44.280 You go back, still 14 years.
00:13:47.040 You can't use – I've never heard of this in my life.
00:13:49.780 Is that conventional?
00:13:51.020 You're an attorney.
00:13:52.040 Is that conventional that you can't, you know, face your accuser, the U.S. government?
00:13:57.300 Tell me what I said.
00:13:58.640 You have to prove your case against me that I'm guilty.
00:14:01.320 What did I say that was illegal?
00:14:02.960 Deals are made all the time for seats.
00:14:05.000 It happens – you know, it's not – it's ethical, but, you know, it's, you know,
00:14:09.560 not the greatest circumstances, but it is what it is.
00:14:12.180 You put in the guy that you want to put in.
00:14:14.020 The predecessor usually has a say in it.
00:14:16.200 We look at the seat in Florida.
00:14:17.660 Ashley Moody just took over for Marco Rubio.
00:14:19.680 Probably wasn't President Trump's pick.
00:14:21.200 DeSantis got his pick.
00:14:22.300 It is what it is.
00:14:23.140 That's business as usual, Rod.
00:14:25.280 How common is that in practice of law that you don't get to listen to what they've got you on?
00:14:30.200 Well, it's illegal to not allow that.
00:14:34.760 It's unconstitutional to not allow that.
00:14:36.860 It's the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to confront your witnesses
00:14:39.920 and to be able to present evidence that proves your innocence.
00:14:43.340 And the fact that they make the tapes, this is really important to know.
00:14:46.460 These are their tapes.
00:14:47.700 They're not mine.
00:14:48.740 I'm not asking them to cover up tapes.
00:14:51.100 I'm not – if John Gotti has tapes that he thinks are harmful to him,
00:14:55.400 he would like to keep those things covered up, wouldn't he?
00:14:57.760 But the prosecutors against Gotti want to use those tapes.
00:15:01.460 It's the opposite in my case.
00:15:03.880 They made those tapes, and they, to this day, have covered up and continue to cover up 98% of them.
00:15:09.340 I was led to believe by the judge in the second trial, because you're right,
00:15:13.260 they didn't commit me at the first trial on any of their fake corruption charges.
00:15:17.120 They got one conviction on lying to the FBI, and I didn't lie.
00:15:20.940 They lied.
00:15:22.100 But, you know, if their word against yours and the jury, what do they know?
00:15:24.880 So, having said all of that, I was told by the judge, if I testify,
00:15:31.980 I could play the tapes to corroborate my testimony.
00:15:35.020 I thought for sure – and I'll tell you the day that was.
00:15:36.940 It was May 20, 2011.
00:15:38.560 I thought for sure that's the day I'll be vindicated,
00:15:41.700 because they're going to hear all these tapes.
00:15:43.360 They're going to see what I'm about to do.
00:15:44.920 It was about to be a political deal for the people of Illinois.
00:15:48.120 Jobs, health care, no tax increase.
00:15:50.640 I was with the nemesis, Madigan, and I was going to make his daughter Rahm Emanuel – it's on the tapes –
00:15:57.020 was going to be the guy to be the go-between to make that deal happen.
00:16:00.340 Harry Reid is on those tapes.
00:16:02.040 Menendez, Senator Menendez, who now has his own corruption issues – and that's real corruption, by the way.
00:16:06.960 Menendez was the head of the Senate Democratic Campaign Congressional Committee.
00:16:10.340 He's on those tapes talking to me.
00:16:12.240 Durbin, our senator, was talking to me about this deal.
00:16:15.460 So it's all covered up.
00:16:17.460 They arrest me the next day, and he makes this big lie saying he's stopping a crime spree before it happened.
00:16:21.800 Now about the appellate court.
00:16:23.340 They could never uphold the centerpiece of the case, the sale of the Senate seat,
00:16:26.960 because if they did that, horse trading and government would shut down.
00:16:30.940 Right.
00:16:31.160 Because everything is done by political deals.
00:16:33.660 Right.
00:16:34.140 I'll vote for your bridge.
00:16:35.620 You vote for my school.
00:16:37.200 Abraham Lincoln got the 13th Amendment passed and freed the slaves,
00:16:39.920 because he made deals with those senators to get them to vote for passage.
00:16:45.620 That's how the system works.
00:16:46.840 It may not be, you know, pristine, but unfortunately, that's a democracy.
00:16:50.480 That's how it works.
00:16:51.520 In my case, they criminalized it.
00:16:53.380 The Supreme Court, after I'm sitting in prison for four and a half years, recognized that.
00:16:57.280 They reversed it.
00:16:58.260 They called it nothing more than routine political log rolling.
00:17:01.220 They held me there for three fundraising requests where there was no quid pro quo.
00:17:05.900 So that was even those were legal, but they got convictions because they used unlawful jury
00:17:11.300 instructions to tell the jury the law was something that it wasn't.
00:17:14.800 They custom tailored them to fit the conversation, to criminalize it.
00:17:18.200 So in other words, this conversation we're having, if the prosecutors want to get you
00:17:23.020 and get a jury to convict you for free speech, they just write a jury instruction that takes
00:17:28.740 the specific nature of what we're talking about and they tell the jury it's a crime.
00:17:32.960 Right.
00:17:33.060 And so the jury makes the right decision because they're being told that's criminal.
00:17:37.180 So one more thing.
00:17:39.040 So they vacate my sentence.
00:17:40.600 The appellate court vacates my 14 year sentence from 14 years to nothing.
00:17:44.760 I'm already in there for four and a half years.
00:17:48.280 Five and a half years into it.
00:17:50.260 I waited another year to go to the judge to try to get my sentence to get resentenced,
00:17:55.820 thinking I'm certainly going to go home because no governor, no politician has ever done
00:18:00.360 a single day in prison for fundraising violations, assuming they were even fundraising violations
00:18:05.740 and they weren't.
00:18:07.380 And the judge puts me back to 14 years because he was a political hack chosen by those prosecutors
00:18:13.760 at a rig trial.
00:18:16.320 All of this a prelude to what the Democrats would do to President Trump in those rig trials
00:18:20.260 in New York and in Washington, D.C. and in Atlanta and those other places.
00:18:24.920 The crazy thing is, is you knew President Trump long before this even happened.
00:18:28.860 And it was almost like it would be nice if you could have sent him a warning.
00:18:32.900 But you didn't see what was happening.
00:18:35.160 You had mentioned Bob Menendez.
00:18:37.460 Elon Musk wants to go check the stockpile at Fort Knox and see if there's any gold down
00:18:41.160 there.
00:18:41.380 And I said today, there's probably half the amount of gold down there if Bob Menendez was
00:18:45.480 down there checking it out.
00:18:47.540 Rob, I want to take a quick break here.
00:18:49.620 We're talking with Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, a man who was done so
00:18:54.740 wrong before Donald Trump was done wrong.
00:18:57.220 And it still goes on.
00:18:59.040 When we return, I want to take up Obama, go further.
00:19:02.400 How this man, Donald Trump's a Teflon Don, but it seems like Obama time and time again just
00:19:07.940 gets a free pass.
00:19:09.000 He gets to do whatever he wants, this was his administration, this former one we saw
00:19:14.100 the last four years, continuing to do what he wants from behind the curtain.
00:19:18.360 When does it end?
00:19:19.400 We're coming right back with Rod Blagojevich, folks.
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00:20:23.100 Folks, we're back.
00:20:26.400 We're talking with the former governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, back when Illinois was a safe place to live.
00:20:31.620 It's no longer a habitable place, in my opinion.
00:20:34.960 Rod, I want to turn to what we were speaking about before the break, Obama and his weaponization.
00:20:39.680 I worked for a man named Michael Grimm.
00:20:41.620 He's a former congressman from New York City.
00:20:44.040 He was the only Republican congressman in New York City at the time, New York 11.
00:20:48.040 He represents Staten Island and Brooklyn.
00:20:50.280 Michael owned a health food shop in Manhattan in 2008, 2009, just like every other business.
00:20:56.520 And I say this every day.
00:20:57.460 I don't agree with it.
00:20:58.580 They hire illegal workers, delivery boys, dishwashers, things like that, like any business you go into.
00:21:04.600 Michael is in Congress, and he's stepping on people's toes.
00:21:08.440 He's working both sides of the aisle.
00:21:10.680 As you said, it's horse trading.
00:21:12.920 He's fighting with people to get.
00:21:14.680 We had Hurricane Sandy here in New York.
00:21:16.160 It completely wiped out Staten Island.
00:21:17.700 He's working both sides of the aisle to get funding for Hurricane Sandy.
00:21:21.960 John Boehner at the time did not like it.
00:21:24.180 Eric Cantor at the time did not like it.
00:21:25.800 They said, Mike, you better stand your ground.
00:21:27.500 Michael said, pretty much go after yourselves.
00:21:29.500 I was sent here by the people of Staten Island, and that's who I'm going to work for.
00:21:32.940 Lo and behold, Obama comes in 2008, 2009.
00:21:35.960 Loretta Lynch is up for attorney general.
00:21:38.440 They tell Loretta Lynch, if you can get this guy Michael Grimm on something, you'll become the next attorney general.
00:21:43.880 You probably remember the famous tarmac meeting.
00:21:46.060 Apparently, Michael was disgusted at that tarmac meeting.
00:21:49.420 Lo and behold, they get Michael Grimm on the same thing, you know, wire fraud, mail fraud, this and that,
00:21:54.580 and it was from hiring two off-the-books workers' delivery drivers from 10 years before.
00:21:59.440 This man goes to jail.
00:22:00.740 Former special agent in the FBI, a former Marine, goes to jail for a year, Rod, in a deal which sent Loretta Lynch to be the next attorney general of the United States.
00:22:12.220 This was another Obama deal.
00:22:14.160 How many lives does this guy have?
00:22:16.680 How many lives does he have to ruin, Rod, before his time, his day of reckoning comes?
00:22:22.040 Well, I don't know the answer to that.
00:22:26.000 When you tell me that story, and I knew a little bit about it, so much of it is so recognizable to me because I've experienced versions of that myself.
00:22:36.440 And the common denominator, of course, is Barack Obama's involvement.
00:22:39.780 But this, you know, this goes to the larger problem our country is facing.
00:22:44.720 You know, the Democrats talk a big game about saving democracy, but what they've done is how they've picked up the cudgel of weaponization of prosecutors.
00:22:54.340 They're the ones who are the threat to our democracy.
00:22:57.380 They're the ones who are destroying our democracy.
00:22:59.600 The disgraceful behavior of these Democratic prosecutors against Trump in this last election, this isn't a threat to democracy.
00:23:05.320 They're taking, they're butchering the democracy in a presidential election right before our eyes.
00:23:11.680 That's what they were doing.
00:23:13.140 And the scary part is that too many Americans are so caught up in their own political party that they refuse to see the larger problem.
00:23:21.060 This isn't a Republican versus Democrat issue.
00:23:22.960 It's an American issue.
00:23:24.220 It's about our right to choose our leaders in elections that are free and fair and not have them undone by weaponized prosecutors trumping up fake charges to get someone politically who they don't like.
00:23:34.060 Whether it's Michael Grimm shaking things up over there in Washington or me down in Springfield or Trump at the largest level right now doing what he's doing.
00:23:41.640 Menendez, however, is an example of the kinds of guys in politics you ought to go after.
00:23:46.500 You find gold bars in a senator's house and a whole bunch of cash and he can't explain it.
00:23:52.040 That's more than probable cause.
00:23:53.420 I think that that's money gotten from Hill Cotton Gaines.
00:23:56.320 That's the kind of corruption they should focus on, not inventing crimes out of non-crimes so they can persecute someone because they can't beat them in elections and they want to get rid of them.
00:24:09.000 How do you make an example, though?
00:24:11.620 Watching Bob Menendez go to jail.
00:24:13.380 The crazy thing is he's another one.
00:24:15.340 He thought he had nine lives.
00:24:17.020 He gets acquitted on a hung jury one time and the man goes back.
00:24:20.160 It's like an addict.
00:24:21.260 You can't kick your habits of being a crook.
00:24:24.360 And the man was a crook.
00:24:25.460 Like you said, how many senators and politicians deal in gold bars?
00:24:31.400 Untraceable is what he thought.
00:24:32.580 It turns out it wasn't exactly so untraceable because he's on his way to jail, as he should be.
00:24:37.380 But what is it with these people, you know, coming after them to politicize a Justice Department instead of going after the crooks of the world, the people who are really doing real crimes?
00:24:50.020 It undermines democracy.
00:24:51.700 See, the Democrats, and it's not just the Democrats, I should rephrase that.
00:24:55.420 It's the Republicans, too.
00:24:56.520 Some of them are just as bad, no better than what the Democrats do.
00:25:01.320 Yet they worried about Donald Trump.
00:25:03.300 They're worried about Elon Musk.
00:25:04.940 What are they so terrified about Elon Musk going to the IRS and looking at tax documents?
00:25:09.480 Are they worried that some politicians who never showed their tax returns, there's going to be something on there getting a payment from somewhere that they maybe shouldn't have?
00:25:18.780 What are they so worried about, Rod, if they're just good citizens?
00:25:22.500 Well, they're worried about the truth being exposed.
00:25:25.800 And now that President Trump is in power and the Republicans are in power and this new Republican Party is the Trump Party.
00:25:31.940 It's not that old corporate country club.
00:25:33.960 Mitt Romney, John McCain, Washington Insider, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Lynn Cheney, Liz Cheney Party.
00:25:40.200 It's a different Republican Party.
00:25:41.440 They're afraid that the truth is going to be exposed and all the corruption and how they corrupted the institutions of our country and the different agencies and what they've done to the Department of Justice and how they politicized everything.
00:25:53.340 The IRS, and I'm sure they're going to find all kinds of corrupt behavior and and how they twisted the IRS for political purposes.
00:26:00.340 This stuff is going to get exposed.
00:26:01.720 So they're worried about it being exposed and their dirty actions being revealed.
00:26:07.260 And you're probably right with the implications that you're providing.
00:26:11.800 And that is that you'll probably see, you know, Obama's fingerprints all over the place on some of this stuff, because this didn't just happen, you know, in one week.
00:26:20.060 This has been gradually happening, you know, since he's been president, even before he's been president.
00:26:24.780 I would argue he took it to a whole new level and it's been a continuation, you know, with Hillary Clinton and all the different things that they were doing to President Trump after he was elected.
00:26:34.540 So, no, they're afraid of the truth being exposed.
00:26:36.640 And it's about time.
00:26:37.980 And I do think that President Trump is destined to be the most consequential president in American history since Franklin Roosevelt, since Abraham Lincoln, maybe even more so Franklin Roosevelt, because what he's saving us from is the corruption from within.
00:26:52.620 And that's how America is destroyed, not from without, but from within.
00:26:57.360 And when our institutions are corrupt and the people can no longer believe or trust in the system, when they butcher the rule of law and just completely disrespect the Constitution with all kinds of stuff they've been doing, including their fake impeachments.
00:27:11.480 These are the things that are going to steal from the people the freedom that America offers.
00:27:16.000 And we will no longer be America, the America we've loved and believed in.
00:27:19.340 We're going to be a third world country will be the Soviet Union.
00:27:23.420 We're literally at war with ourselves right now.
00:27:25.540 I spoke to Mark Mitchell, leading pollster for Rasmussen yesterday for hours, and we're literally at a civil war with ourselves.
00:27:31.800 The infighting between Americans, between left and between right.
00:27:35.880 Rod, answer me a question.
00:27:37.860 There was never any sort of payment that the government proved against you, right, that you received any sort of monetary, right?
00:27:43.280 OK, so no.
00:27:44.200 So there was never any sort of payment that was provided to you, 14 years in jail.
00:27:49.640 Explain to me this, because this must eat you alive inside, because it eats me alive inside, watching it happen.
00:27:54.980 You've got members of Congress who go there and make $174,000 a year.
00:27:59.480 On their tax returns, some of them are making $20 million a year, $15 million a year.
00:28:04.480 The spouses, the trading or this or that, what does that, how does that make you feel, Rod, as a human being, knowing you never accepted a dollar, you never made a dollar from this alleged deal, this alleged bribery deal, which landed you in jail for a 14-year sentence?
00:28:20.640 How does it make you feel, watching someone like Nancy Pelosi, providing 150, 200% returns on her investment, sitting in Congress, knowing damn well this woman's a criminal?
00:28:35.820 Look, you're right.
00:28:37.300 I never took a single penny.
00:28:38.580 No one even accused me of that.
00:28:40.420 None of it was about personal corruption.
00:28:42.180 It was about campaign fundraising.
00:28:43.960 I never took a campaign dollar from any of the allegations I went to prison for.
00:28:47.380 There was never a quid pro quo.
00:28:48.900 The judge wouldn't even allow us to say quid pro quo in court to show that you've got to prove a quid pro quo for it to be illegal.
00:28:56.140 It's a First Amendment right to ask for campaign contributions.
00:28:59.300 The Supreme Court has said so repeatedly.
00:29:01.880 And so they put me in prison for proper requests by third parties I'd even make up with no promise, no threat.
00:29:07.580 That's First Amendment free speech.
00:29:10.900 And, you know, I think I was like the only guy in Illinois government who didn't get rich in the business because they all go down to state government.
00:29:16.240 They wanted to get rich. And now there's Nancy Pelosi having that 100 percent success rate on her stocks.
00:29:21.740 Oh, my God. I didn't know about that when I was in Congress.
00:29:24.340 Had I known about that, maybe I should have been nicer to her.
00:29:26.980 But, you know, I feel like a chump.
00:29:28.820 You're making me feel like a chump.
00:29:30.120 Like I could totally miss the opportunity to, you know, play ball with the system.
00:29:35.480 But, of course, I'm glad I didn't because it is dirty.
00:29:38.020 It's rotten. It's corrupt.
00:29:39.240 And it's among the reasons why the American people correctly despise politicians and don't trust them.
00:29:44.440 Yeah. And there's a reason why, Rod, Donald Trump had that decisive victory on November 5th.
00:29:50.240 There's a reason why you're seeing approval polls.
00:29:52.980 You know a little bit about approval polls.
00:29:54.920 You know, you're in politics most of your life.
00:29:57.460 There's a reason why Donald Trump's approval rating is through the roof.
00:30:00.340 There's a reason why millions and millions of Americans supported this man through and through from 2016 all the way through to 2024.
00:30:09.560 There's a reason why Donald Trump was almost assassinated twice.
00:30:13.460 There's a reason why he was impeached.
00:30:15.320 There's a reason why they tried to do to him what they did to you.
00:30:20.540 At what point does it stop?
00:30:22.480 Do you think the buck has finally stopped with two assassination attempts trying to ruin this man's life?
00:30:28.320 Do you think that it's over?
00:30:29.380 Or do you think that this country can be on its way to greatness again?
00:30:34.080 I don't think it's over.
00:30:35.300 I think that the persecution of President Trump by the Democrats and by those who oppose him will continue to the best of their ability to continue to do what they can to obstruct him,
00:30:44.600 to stop him from being successful, to get in the way of the reforms that President Trump and his administration are trying to do,
00:30:50.320 whether it be in the Doge efforts to reduce the size of government, get rid of the waste, which is very much real in government, in every place of government.
00:30:59.240 I know this for a fact.
00:31:00.580 Having been the Democratic governor in Illinois for six years, there's all kinds of waste in different places protected by the politicians.
00:31:07.140 So, no, he's going to have obstacles every step of the way, but he's up to it.
00:31:11.420 He's a fighter and he's strong and tough and he's smarter today than he was eight years ago, the first time he did it.
00:31:16.720 He's learned the ways of Washington.
00:31:18.140 And you can see by his appointments, the people that he's putting in place.
00:31:21.220 So, he'll have opposition.
00:31:23.920 They're going to try to do what they've been doing to him, of course, because that's what they're about, unfortunately.
00:31:28.860 They're not interested in solving problems or working together to make our country better.
00:31:32.860 It's all about stopping him now from fundamentally reforming the system and destroying the deep state.
00:31:39.560 Having said that, am I optimistic about our chances, of President Trump's chances to be successful?
00:31:45.260 I am very much so.
00:31:46.540 And part of it is because of who he is, the kind of fighter he is and his determination and his skill.
00:31:53.300 But I'm also optimistic because the American people are growing increasingly, learning about how corrupt the system is and are starting to believe how true it is.
00:32:03.540 And this isn't happened overnight either.
00:32:05.860 It's a gradual thing.
00:32:06.780 And you can even see the percentage of the vote that Trump got in 2016 compared to what he just got in 2024.
00:32:12.700 As Bill Clinton said back in the 1990s, the American people almost always get it right.
00:32:18.820 And they're getting it right.
00:32:20.280 That's my Clinton impersonation.
00:32:23.800 For anyone who's been to the White House or President Trump, speaking of Bill Clinton, I've been there far too many times.
00:32:29.400 I've gotten to see the Bill Clinton rooms.
00:32:31.700 I say rooms.
00:32:33.240 One of them, the Bill Clinton rooms in the White House, it's just off the Oval Office, houses all the Trump memorabilia.
00:32:38.700 And it's where President Trump has his markers that he infirmously signs bills with.
00:32:42.440 So if you ever get a chance to go on a White House tour or are so lucky, you should ask to see that room.
00:32:49.040 Isn't that the room that Bill Clinton had his cigars in?
00:32:52.280 Yes, exactly.
00:32:53.480 At least one.
00:32:55.140 Something like that.
00:32:56.660 Rod, I want to take one more quick break here.
00:32:58.740 When we return, I want to ask you a few questions of which the audience are probably wondering.
00:33:03.000 What's next for you?
00:33:04.100 You know, you're seemingly starting a new life now over and over.
00:33:08.360 The Justice Department has probably drained you of every dollar that you had saved up, as they do to everybody, or at least try to do.
00:33:15.280 And what's next for you?
00:33:16.540 So we're coming right back with Rod Blagojevich.
00:33:18.300 Folks, stay with us.
00:33:19.780 And Rod's going to tell us what's next for him, what he's got in store.
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00:34:23.760 Folks, we're back with the former governor of Illinois, the once great state of Illinois,
00:34:30.320 Rod Blagojevich.
00:34:31.660 Rod, I'm sure a lot of people are wondering right now what your plans are next.
00:34:36.400 Before we get to that, I got just a simple question.
00:34:39.640 As a man who knows the courts very well, we're hearing some blowback and some pushback from
00:34:43.460 the courts who are trying to stop Trump at every turn, whether it be the Doge Committee,
00:34:47.400 Elon Musk accessing the IRS directory.
00:34:49.680 He had tweeted something out the other day.
00:34:51.500 It was pretty funny.
00:34:52.300 He said, you know, if I was so worried about going through people's private records, I
00:34:55.780 could have done that when I was at PayPal with how many people use it.
00:34:58.960 You know, I don't care about that.
00:35:00.180 I really want to get to the root of the problem.
00:35:02.500 President Trump doesn't seem to be caring about what these courts are saying.
00:35:06.540 Are there any repercussions legally?
00:35:09.040 Can they go in the White House and arrest them once again and fingerprint them once again
00:35:12.460 if he says to these courts, you know, go to hell.
00:35:14.760 I'm doing what's right for the American people.
00:35:16.540 Well, I think he's following the courts to the best of his ability, but he's not necessarily
00:35:21.840 taking no for an answer because he's got a responsibility to the American people and
00:35:26.140 to keep the promises that he made.
00:35:27.780 And so he's going to try to take as many of those cases to the ultimate court, the Supreme
00:35:31.860 Court, to resolve the differences.
00:35:34.020 But there are times in our history when great leaders have had to recognize that the national
00:35:38.600 interest requires something larger than just accepting, you know, a decree by a judge.
00:35:43.400 Abraham Lincoln famously did it when he began the process of saving our country, saving the
00:35:48.740 union, when he suspended habeas corpus.
00:35:51.480 And there were all kinds of different court orders that came down his way that he respectfully
00:35:55.200 acknowledged, but chose to do what he felt was right to keep the country together.
00:35:59.880 So those are decisions and judgments that leaders have to make.
00:36:03.120 That's why we elect certain people.
00:36:04.760 And we've chosen President Trump to make those judgments and those decisions.
00:36:07.640 The best part of it is he's the kind of guy who's going to keep fighting to get things
00:36:12.280 done and solve problems and fight through the gridlock.
00:36:15.820 It's a democracy we live in, and it's frustrating.
00:36:19.920 Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst system ever devised by a man except for
00:36:23.580 all the rest.
00:36:24.760 So you can't just wave a wand and get things done.
00:36:27.780 But I think among the reasons why President Trump is going to be as successful as he's going
00:36:31.060 to be in keeping those promises is because he thinks outside the box and he governs in a way
00:36:36.680 very different from traditional presidents, just bringing Elon Musk into this process and the
00:36:42.440 bully pulpit the two of them have, being able to marshal a public opinion in a way that's never been
00:36:48.880 done before because of the new forms of media that we have.
00:36:53.900 This is a powerful force.
00:36:55.940 And the one thing I know about politicians, there's two things.
00:36:58.900 If hypocrisy was a crime, professional politicians would be going to jail and they'd probably get
00:37:04.480 life sentences because they're so effing hypocritical.
00:37:07.460 But the other part I know is they're mostly scared.
00:37:10.560 They run scared.
00:37:12.180 They don't trust the people because they're not being honest with the people.
00:37:15.460 And therefore, if there's enough pressure from the American people to get behind the president
00:37:20.320 to fulfill his mandate, those politicians, even the Democrats, are going to recognize that
00:37:26.340 and they're going to step back and allow it to happen.
00:37:28.900 So we, the people, have a responsibility to help President Trump govern.
00:37:33.160 And that is what I think is we're already beginning to see.
00:37:36.400 And the more engaged we are and the more we get engaged by Trump and by Elon Musk and others,
00:37:42.180 you with your program and your show, the stronger their efforts going to be, the more successful
00:37:47.420 they'll be in reforming our system and making America great again.
00:37:51.640 And by the way, as a Democrat, I don't understand why these Democrats, my fellow Democrats, I'm a
00:37:56.020 Trumpocrat, by the way, but I'm still sort of a Democrat, right?
00:37:59.280 Yeah.
00:37:59.500 What's wrong with making America great again?
00:38:02.000 And by the way, we have been great.
00:38:04.520 We've never been perfect, but we've been great.
00:38:07.120 Yeah.
00:38:07.320 And a lot of the Democrats don't believe that.
00:38:09.640 They don't even like our country.
00:38:11.380 Yeah.
00:38:11.680 By the way, I've got to be honest.
00:38:13.180 You're the first Democrat I've had on the show since taking it over from the great Lou
00:38:16.100 Dobbs in July.
00:38:16.920 And, you know, I speak to a lot of Democrats off the show, off air, and most of them are
00:38:22.500 extremely unhinged, Rod.
00:38:23.840 There's not very many folks who are like you, who are level-headed, who can understand
00:38:28.800 an issue from both sides.
00:38:32.020 In your 20, over 20 years in politics, Rod, have you ever seen a time, now they told us
00:38:38.340 Donald Trump in 2016 was a divider in chief.
00:38:41.080 He hated Mexicans.
00:38:42.060 He hated women.
00:38:43.020 He hated Hispanics.
00:38:44.160 He hated anyone who wasn't a white male.
00:38:46.040 We know that's not true, and the people don't fall for it.
00:38:48.840 The people, you and I were both at the MSG rally when Tony Hinchcliffe made the joke about
00:38:54.220 Puerto Rico.
00:38:54.740 They told us it was done.
00:38:56.300 Donald Trump had lost a Hispanic vote.
00:38:57.880 He was a dead man walking.
00:38:59.460 I got into an argument with Peter Navarro over, a friend of mine who works for Donald
00:39:03.500 Trump, and I told him, Peter, it was a joke.
00:39:05.820 You know, it is what it is.
00:39:06.960 It turns out Donald Trump had gotten the most Hispanic votes of any Republican candidate
00:39:11.060 in history, in particular Puerto Ricans.
00:39:13.800 Have you ever seen a man be able to unite Americans, both Republicans and Democrats?
00:39:19.840 He's got more Democrats working in his administration than perhaps anybody before.
00:39:23.960 Have you ever seen a man who had this power to do what he's done?
00:39:28.520 No.
00:39:29.000 And Donald Trump has become an iconic figure because of the travails and the hard journey
00:39:36.980 he's been on since he got into politics.
00:39:40.140 And most significantly, what's happened to him this past year with all those fake charges
00:39:45.220 and then him getting shot at and then the other assassination attempt.
00:39:51.340 And that first shooting, the iconic moment when he turned his head and he hit his ear and
00:39:57.320 he stood up there and he said, fight, fight, fight.
00:39:59.900 See, that's going to be forever in the history books if the history books are fair.
00:40:04.380 And so Trump has transcended your typical political figure and your typical president.
00:40:11.160 He's very, very different.
00:40:12.560 And he embodies a lot of what we want to believe America can be and what we expect our leaders
00:40:17.340 to be.
00:40:17.840 And that is being brave and being strong and being someone who doesn't give up and someone
00:40:22.920 who keeps fighting.
00:40:23.940 And that kind of fight isn't for him.
00:40:27.000 It's for us.
00:40:27.880 Because if you're Donald Trump and you're a billionaire like that and you live that lifestyle
00:40:31.860 and he loves to golf and you can golf all the time, why the heck would you take this job
00:40:36.780 on and subject yourself to all of this that he has to go through unless you truly, deeply
00:40:42.520 love the country and love the people in it?
00:40:45.420 And he is those things.
00:40:47.400 But a lot of these politicians don't.
00:40:48.840 I'll tell you something else.
00:40:49.800 Obama, I know this guy, has no feel for the people.
00:40:53.500 He gives a good speech.
00:40:54.480 He reads off the teleprompter.
00:40:55.860 They got a great slogan, hope and change.
00:40:58.540 He gave us hope, no change.
00:41:00.280 He became just basically another one of the guys on the inside, taking orders from the
00:41:04.980 establishment and doing their bidding and screwing the American people again, over and
00:41:10.660 over again with fake promises.
00:41:12.380 Trump is authentic.
00:41:13.400 He's real, truly loves the people.
00:41:15.320 That's why he puts himself through the stuff he puts himself through.
00:41:17.760 And you look at the tail rot of the three last three presidents we've had.
00:41:21.220 I mean, I don't even know if you can consider Joe Biden a president.
00:41:24.120 Joe Biden, he comes out of office a week later.
00:41:26.980 He signs with CAA artist agencies, getting ready to do his next gig and make a million
00:41:31.320 bucks a speaking gig.
00:41:32.580 Obama leaves office, buys a house in Martha's Vineyard for $20 million, gets a book deal for
00:41:37.540 this much money.
00:41:38.360 Before you know it, this man who's never made more than whatever presidential salary is,
00:41:42.240 $479,000 a year, is living large, multiple houses, Hawaii, this, that.
00:41:47.960 And then you go look at Donald Trump, the only man who lost money in the presidency.
00:41:52.060 You'd hit the nail on the head.
00:41:54.480 He was already president once.
00:41:56.320 He's a billionaire.
00:41:57.420 He's got a house.
00:41:58.160 He's got a supermodel wife.
00:41:59.300 He's got a beautiful family, a successful family.
00:42:01.540 All of them have jobs.
00:42:02.760 All of them are highly successful, married with kids.
00:42:05.520 He doesn't need this nonsense.
00:42:07.060 He doesn't need this BS from the Democrats trying to get this man killed.
00:42:11.380 Why does he do it?
00:42:12.800 You know, it makes you wonder what is in it for this man.
00:42:17.380 There's literally no gain.
00:42:19.180 You're already a president in the history books, Mr. President.
00:42:21.500 There's nothing else for you here.
00:42:23.620 Does he love this country that much?
00:42:26.400 I think the answer is obvious.
00:42:28.280 And I'll say again, you know, he's an instrument for something higher.
00:42:31.500 I think I believe deeply my faith in God, my Christian faith, which was I always had it.
00:42:36.900 But during those eight years in prison, I had an opportunity to draw closer to God by reading the Bible every day and being so alone.
00:42:43.800 But I believe in destiny.
00:42:45.320 I believe there are from time to time God chooses certain people to serve larger purposes.
00:42:50.140 I think he chose Lincoln for a purpose to save this union and what Lincoln called the last best hope on earth.
00:42:55.680 This new country that was created by the will of the people.
00:42:58.460 No other country before that was created this way.
00:43:01.900 I think Trump was chosen.
00:43:03.200 I do believe this.
00:43:04.260 To save him.
00:43:05.560 This guy that doesn't fit the mold and is different.
00:43:09.040 And he has to go through all the different things that he's going through.
00:43:11.960 So, yes, I think he very much believes and loves this country.
00:43:16.360 And I would say this, but based on my experience, six years as a member of Congress, six years as governor of the fifth largest state in America at the time.
00:43:23.220 The divide in our country is less about Democrats and Republicans and the things that the two parties traditionally have stood for.
00:43:33.400 It's more about we the people fighting up against the ruling class, the establishment in Washington, the establishment in state capitals like ours here in Springfield.
00:43:43.820 It's the governing establishment that co-ops people of both parties.
00:43:48.840 They become part of a club.
00:43:50.500 They're part of that club in Washington, Democrats and Republicans together.
00:43:54.240 And they agree to disagree within certain parameters.
00:43:57.080 And when you get a guy coming in from the outside who basically says, you know what, we're going to change this.
00:44:03.080 It's no longer going to be the people of America working to preserve the establishment.
00:44:08.060 It's going to be the establishment working to represent the people.
00:44:12.340 You see, that's the big change.
00:44:14.260 And that's why they hate Trump so much.
00:44:16.900 They've been trying to destroy him because they like the gig they have, which is basically we the people work for them.
00:44:22.840 Yeah, they don't work for us.
00:44:24.720 You feel what I'm saying?
00:44:26.040 Absolutely.
00:44:26.780 And you know what?
00:44:27.320 The other thing that I often say on the show is Donald Trump.
00:44:30.100 I love the man.
00:44:31.200 I absolutely adore the man.
00:44:32.660 But he doesn't look like a president.
00:44:33.880 He doesn't look like your typical president.
00:44:35.280 He doesn't have the comb over.
00:44:37.040 You know, he doesn't have the he doesn't.
00:44:38.440 Mitt Romney looked like a president.
00:44:40.020 Was he ever a president?
00:44:40.900 No, he never will be.
00:44:41.740 George Bush looked like a president.
00:44:43.740 You know, he he doesn't look the part, but he certainly plays the part and has done a hell of a job.
00:44:49.200 And I think that's what kills these people, Rod, because, you know, very well how the political business works.
00:44:54.540 It works like that here in New York.
00:44:56.240 And I'm sure it works in like that in Illinois.
00:44:58.600 You become a chief of staff or a member of a city council or whatever.
00:45:03.180 They turn women out.
00:45:04.480 You become the next member.
00:45:05.920 And then guess what?
00:45:06.480 You turn women out there, Rod, and you go to the state Senate for states that are on the state Senate.
00:45:11.200 Then you go to the next level and you go do your legislator.
00:45:13.480 You kiss as much ass as you possibly can on the way from the bottom to the top.
00:45:17.620 And then one day somebody calls you on the phone and says, hey, I want you to run for Congress.
00:45:22.600 You've just hit your next level up in the system.
00:45:25.220 And it's exactly what it is.
00:45:27.040 Someone who's an outsider, Rod, you can't get the money.
00:45:29.480 You can't get the funding from the party.
00:45:31.240 It's the whole thing's a huge circle jerk.
00:45:32.720 And if you're not part of the boys club, you never will be.
00:45:36.980 Kiss your chances goodbye unless you've got millions of dollars.
00:45:39.720 Your thoughts?
00:45:40.880 You hit it on the head.
00:45:42.040 You're exactly right.
00:45:43.000 That's precisely what it is.
00:45:44.280 And that is changing now with President Trump and Elon Musk.
00:45:48.260 And what's great about him is you've got the wealthiest guy in the whole world.
00:45:51.360 He doesn't have to do this unless he really believes there's something wrong there.
00:45:54.540 And you know what?
00:45:55.620 I've learned from my experience when I had power as the governor.
00:45:58.780 It's a rough job.
00:45:59.800 It's tough.
00:46:00.220 And when you're really shaking it up and you don't play ball, but you challenge the system
00:46:04.080 like I did, like Trump does at a much larger level and a far more important level, there's
00:46:08.980 joy in that.
00:46:10.260 Because if your heart is right and you really think you're on the side of the people and
00:46:13.100 then you achieve certain things around that or through those obstacles, there's a real
00:46:18.940 sense of joy.
00:46:20.960 And I think Elon Musk is starting to taste that too.
00:46:24.980 And I think the combination of Trump and him and the other people that he's put in his
00:46:29.940 administration offers a real great hope for the American people that we're going to see
00:46:34.460 real meaningful change and actually have a government that serves us as opposed to us
00:46:39.600 serving it.
00:46:41.020 Rod, it's been excellent talking with you today.
00:46:43.080 I hope you'll come back soon, especially after you get that book out so we can help you sell
00:46:46.480 some copies.
00:46:47.640 Before we go, I've got to ask you a question that the audience is probably saying, what the
00:46:51.320 hell is he waiting for?
00:46:52.180 We want to know, what's next for Rod Blagojevich?
00:46:55.540 Do you have any political aspirations?
00:46:58.760 You know, what's next for you?
00:47:00.980 You know, I'm writing the book that's going to come out this year.
00:47:03.980 I've got 190,000 words written.
00:47:05.740 I've got to bring it down to about 100,000.
00:47:08.120 And I'm getting close to doing that.
00:47:11.200 And so that book's important because it tells, you know, a very unique story that I explained
00:47:16.300 a little bit earlier, you know, there's been some talk about ambassadorships and stuff like
00:47:21.920 that, because I went to Serbia a couple of weeks ago where my father came from, and I
00:47:26.300 met with the president there, President Vucic, who's doing a great job in Serbia, bringing
00:47:29.520 back a country that was wrongfully bombed by us in 1999.
00:47:33.360 They've got the second greatest economic growth in all of Europe, real wages for working people
00:47:39.060 under President Vucic is up 270 percent and other kinds of things that they're developing
00:47:43.540 there.
00:47:43.860 And so people are suggesting that maybe I might, you know, be interested in being an
00:47:47.720 ambassador to Serbia.
00:47:48.620 But I have to tell you, John, I haven't asked President Trump for anything.
00:47:52.640 I didn't even ask for the pardon that he gave me.
00:47:54.420 That's how good a guy he is.
00:47:56.260 I felt like when he brought me home from prison and gave five years ago on this day, in fact,
00:48:01.440 and gave my young daughters their father back.
00:48:03.340 It's the greatest gift my daughters would ever receive in their life came from President
00:48:06.180 Trump that he did more than I could ever hope for.
00:48:09.460 And so all these other things that have come my way and what he just did for me a week
00:48:13.540 ago, a little over a week ago, pardoning me, cleaning my record because there were no
00:48:17.340 crimes there.
00:48:18.020 But he didn't have to do that either.
00:48:20.460 I'm just grateful to him.
00:48:21.580 So if he asked me to do anything to help him, I would drop everything to help him and to
00:48:26.840 do something I can to serve my country in some way.
00:48:29.480 But I'm not asking for anything.
00:48:31.420 I'm just grateful for this new beginning.
00:48:33.080 I'm very hopeful for my book.
00:48:34.280 And I got to tell you one last thing, John, and this will never happen to you, but one
00:48:39.080 advantage of being in prison for eight years, even if you didn't do it, but you're there
00:48:42.720 for 2,897 days, you know what it is?
00:48:46.000 It's when it's over.
00:48:47.680 It's like you've been dead and you've come back and you've been given a new life.
00:48:51.760 And even the smallest things are great.
00:48:55.300 The simplest things are great.
00:48:57.920 Talking to you, it's fantastic.
00:49:00.000 It would have been even if I had never gone to prison, but I bet you it's a lot better
00:49:03.520 now.
00:49:04.440 I can appreciate moments like this than before.
00:49:07.200 And so in so many ways, I feel blessed and lucky.
00:49:10.120 I've got a great wife.
00:49:11.320 She's the best person I've ever known.
00:49:12.760 I love my daughters.
00:49:13.540 They're great girls.
00:49:14.520 My wife, Patty, raised them great.
00:49:16.240 They're honest.
00:49:16.820 They're good.
00:49:17.220 They do great in school.
00:49:18.220 They're like their mother.
00:49:19.620 I've got all kinds of blessings and I'm so grateful in the future.
00:49:24.160 Whatever it is, it's a new beginning.
00:49:25.780 And I think the odds were years ago, I would never have this new beginning.
00:49:30.120 And I have it.
00:49:31.040 And I thank God for it because I do believe it's a miracle.
00:49:33.940 Yeah.
00:49:34.160 And we thank God for it.
00:49:35.740 I mean, it's truly sickening.
00:49:37.960 You know, you go through life, you go to college, you student loans, you go to law school,
00:49:42.400 you come out, you're an upstanding citizen.
00:49:43.960 You think you're doing what's right for the country.
00:49:46.140 And then one day the knock comes at your door and, you know, it's you got the right to
00:49:51.480 remain silent.
00:49:52.120 And, you know, it's the craziest thing in the world.
00:49:54.600 And hopefully I never have to go through it.
00:49:56.120 But with how weaponized things have become, Rod, you never really know what's going to
00:50:00.920 happen.
00:50:01.740 You know, as you know, and like I said, we're thankful to President Trump for granting you
00:50:06.200 that.
00:50:06.580 And, you know, that was something I failed to mention before that I had written down that,
00:50:09.840 you know, you didn't ask for anything.
00:50:11.840 You didn't ask for a pardon.
00:50:12.720 You didn't ask for a commutation.
00:50:13.940 It's President Trump.
00:50:14.720 And for anyone who doesn't know President Trump, he doesn't do anything he doesn't
00:50:18.940 want to do.
00:50:20.060 Right.
00:50:20.260 There's nobody in his ear telling you have to do this because that doesn't work with
00:50:24.140 the man.
00:50:24.460 He does what he wants to do.
00:50:26.340 And you're you're you know, you're pardoning your commutation.
00:50:29.040 I'm almost positive it came directly from President Trump, not somebody else here.
00:50:33.420 Rod, you get the last word here.
00:50:34.800 It was amazing talking with you today.
00:50:36.200 I hope you'll come back soon.
00:50:38.240 No, thanks, John.
00:50:38.900 Thanks for having me.
00:50:39.520 You know, I I'm going to wish these words for you and for your audience is a few lines
00:50:43.380 from a timeless Irish prayer.
00:50:44.660 May the road rise up to meet you.
00:50:45.860 May the wind be always at your back.
00:50:47.680 May the sunshine warm upon your face.
00:50:49.500 The rain fall soft upon your fields.
00:50:51.540 And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.
00:50:56.720 Thanks for having me.
00:50:58.160 Thank you, Rod.
00:50:58.920 Thank you so much for joining us.
00:51:00.300 You're a great American and keep up the fight.
00:51:03.400 Appreciate you.
00:51:04.120 Thank you.
00:51:04.540 You too, John.
00:51:05.720 Thanks to former Governor Rod Blagojevich.
00:51:08.220 Folks, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did speaking with him.
00:51:12.320 It's really wrong what they did to him.
00:51:14.400 A weaponized Justice Department.
00:51:16.200 They can get anybody they want and they will get you if they want you.
00:51:19.560 That's just the truth of the matter of it.
00:51:21.260 Sad that this is what it's come to in America, but it's the new reality.
00:51:25.860 And we've got to all be cognizant on what can be done to us and how they can do it.
00:51:30.520 So we've got to keep our guards up and keep on the fight, fight, fight, fight for this country
00:51:35.780 and fight for the values that it was built on, the fabric of the values that it was built on.
00:51:42.320 Folks, we hope to see you right back here tomorrow for The Great America Show,
00:51:45.160 where our quest for truth, justice, and the American way continues.
00:51:48.540 Until then, may God bless you, may God bless America, and may God bless the great, Lou Dobbs.
00:51:53.620 We'll see you tomorrow, folks.
00:51:54.500 We'll see you tomorrow, folks.