0:00
Relationships matter because people buy people. And that’s why I buy Eddie Zarrin Insurance of the Zarrin Insurance Agency in Pensacola, Florida—a family-owned business with over 50 years in the business, and they treat people the right way. From homeowners insurance to contractor’s insurance, condo insurance, commercial insurance, all the different coverages that are out there, and of course, auto insurance. They’ve got you covered. They worry about you first. You’re more than a policy number; you’re a person who they’re watching out for—not when the sun is shining, but after the hurricane has left. If you want real service with real savings, contact Eddie Zarrin at the Eddie Zarrin Insurance Agency: www.zarrininsurance.com. Give them a call today. You’ll be glad you did when you do.

1:11
Well, it is that time of the day on Friday that myself and thousands of other people look forward to, and that’s to open the front door and welcome in our good friend, the “Velvet Hammer,” Gene Valentino. Good morning, Gene!

1:26
With a nice tailwind at my back, gliding into Studio A.

1:28
I tell you what, for you people who might not know, Gene is a pilot as well, and you have a seaplane. I was kind of joking with him before: if he had come up here and picked me up, we could fly to Knoxville, land in the Tennessee River, watch Tennessee and Texas, and we could sit with President Trump up there in one of those suites. That would be sweet.

1:50
Oh, you just give me a thousand feet of clear waterway that I can get that plane down on, that’s doable, Ted. That would be a fun trip.

2:00
Wouldn’t that be nice? You know, some years back, Tennessee—they’re located on the Tennessee River right there—and big-time games like the Tennessee-Alabama game, when they play there, Alabama boats meet Tennessee boats there, and the river is just full of tailgating on the water. That’s a little different than up in The Grove in Oxford when Ole Miss plays LSU.

But I got one for you that I heard coming in this morning, Gene, and I had to… I was listening to *The News Forum* coming into the radio station. We got Brian Kilmeade, Sean Hannity, and some others on the air during the day in between times when you can enjoy myself along with Gene. And he said that there is a lesbian communist bar in America. Now I thought, “Now that’s the most unusual thing I ever heard.” And as my wife tells me every time I say, “Do you know anything?”, she says, “Google it.” Well, I did Google it. It’s in Greenfield, Massachusetts. It’s called The Last Ditch, and it’s a lesbian communist socialist bar. I don’t think that’s on my bucket list though, Gene.

3:04
No, it’s not on mine either. And it’s one of the reasons why 35, 36 years ago my wife and I moved to Florida. It was first visiting Florida on business, and we just got settled in here way back when. I’ll never forget, I came home that night to Connecticut—and I was much younger at the time, trying to get my business off the ground like most people getting established—and Governor Weicker, formerly Senator Weicker from Connecticut, now Governor Weicker, a Republican, announces on the 10:00 news the new Connecticut state income tax.

I slam my hand down on the table and say, “That’s it. I’m out of here.”

My wife’s got tears in her eyes. I said, “What’s the matter with you?”

She says, “You’re leaving me?”

“Hell no,” I said, “you’re coming with me.”

She said, “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe Florida, but I’ll tell you what, we’re not staying up here with these crazies. They’re just about to impose a new state income tax.”

And just a generation later, they’re talking about crazy commentary at wayward bars or liquor establishments. And it was a good friend I interviewed just a week and a half ago, Alan Dershowitz, a nationally known legal scholar and Harvard Law professor who’s now very famous in his own right nationwide, talking to me about how the Democrats in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island—you can throw New York in, but New York is a different animal—Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire in particular, 100% of the elected people are Democrats. But the registration rolls show between 35% and 50% registered Republicans.

The registered Republicans in those New England states have literally no say at all. And the consequence of a bar the way you just described it is just one of the many crazy consequences of what’s going on in New England, which must change.

5:47
Which is unusual. We’ll get to our program in just a second, but doing a little Chamber of Commerce pitch for Hattiesburg: the three biggest industries here are medical, military, and educational with our two universities, Camp Shelby, and the big medical sector around here. And we have a lot of people who retire from up north that don’t go to Florida; they come to South Mississippi. The weather’s part of it, but they live in that area up there where they can take a home that’s valued at a million dollars up there that they’ve been paying for, sell it, come down here and replace that home for somewhere around $250,000 to $300,000, and then they take a capital gain or whatever—I’m not an accountant on this—but they come out so much better living down here for so many reasons more than just the weather. And they play golf most every day. It’s nice.

6:35
Well, the transition is unbelievable. I was talking to a guy who was servicing something here at the house yesterday, and he came down from Michigan. “Oh, I got rid of the cold, I got rid of an extra $400, $500 a month in the oil bill.” He had an oil furnace at his house to heat the house during the Michigan winters, the gray skies, the gloomier environment. He says, “Man, they just don’t realize how lucky they are in the South.”

And I said, “Well, they are lucky in the South, but they respect it and they appreciate it.” Something the northern blue sanctuary cities and blue sanctuary states need to do is to develop a more refined appreciation for who they are, what they are, and making their lifestyle more affordable and appreciative up there. They’re driving off others and themselves. And the suicide rate for people in such depression is just unbelievable.

7:52
Wow. Before we lose our time here, tell us about your conversation with Alan. I’ve always enjoyed his presentation, and I feel pretty good to know somebody who had a conversation with him.

8:05
Oh, yeah. He was my guest last week on the *Grassroots TruthCast*. Folks, my only little plug would be: go to www.genevalentino.com or www.grassrootstruthcast.com. Please subscribe. There you’ll find all the WMXI episodes that formerly Mike Poll and I did, and now Ted Tibbett and I do weekly. It’s really a good home for that.

One of the shows I did was with legal scholar Alan Dershowitz. Well, going back to the 1970s, early ’80s, I was a news reporter, a cub reporter on the local TV station in New Haven, Connecticut—WTNH-TV in New Haven, an ABC affiliate. Whalley Avenue was the main drag going through town, and to one side of the road was all of Yale University. Now, I didn’t know Alan Dershowitz at the time, but he’s known today as Yale University’s youngest legal scholar, who then after his degree went to Harvard University, where he became the youngest tenured professor. He wrote a book recently entitled *Why I Quit the Dems and So Should You: Confessions of a Reluctant Republican*.

Now, what’s going on here? Alan Dershowitz, a legal scholar, a liberal… I wouldn’t call him extreme left the way we would today, but he was clearly liberal left at the time. He was involved in the Patty Hearst case, he was involved in the O.J. Simpson case, he had notoriety with several presidents going way back—Clinton, Nixon even, and more recently Donald Trump, who I talked about in the interview with him.

He discusses the weaponization of the justice system with me and the role of the political parties today as opposed to back then. You know, the political parties, Democrat and Republican, going back 30 to 50 years, were just a home. You went to one side or another, and yeah, you registered Democrat or Republican based on a general persuasion or way of life. It wasn’t so absolute; there was diversity within each of the two parties where you could express your political specifics, policies, and platforms, and get them on the party platform locally at your city and town councils or county commissioners, or nationally towards Congress.

But it wasn’t where you ganged up. It wasn’t known that the Republicans ganged up against Democrats or the Democrats ganged up against Republicans. Now it has become that. That’s what this two-party system turned into, which is abhorrent and has caused most of our problems today.

Dershowitz says, “There’s simply no place for me in this Democratic Party anymore.” He needed a place where he said, “Well, at least with the Republicans, I can express myself. Even though the majority may go in a different direction, in the Democratic Party, if you try to do that, if you’re not assassinated, you’re excommunicated and just removed as a factor from within the party.”

That’s not what our Founding Fathers intended the two-party system to be. That’s not what our Founding Fathers wanted the deliberation process to be. The two-party system was created so that your thoughts and my thoughts could get aired and brought to the table to try to figure out how to make it happen. How about—we’ve talked about it on the show—term limits, a balanced budget, protecting the border, and the rules related to immigration? These are issues we need to vet and bring forward.

Congress tries to do it in subcommittees today, but look at the stupidity of what’s happened just this last week in the subcommittees: no Democrat shows up in a Judiciary subcommittee when the Republicans are trying to come to some issue regarding transgender issues or what to do with Title IX on men and women’s sports. They just abandon the conversation and disappear. That’s not a deliberative process!

And that’s what Alan Dershowitz was talking about in his book, *Why I Quit the Dems and So Should You*. He even went on my show and said, “Listen, Republicans aren’t perfect either, but register Republican and vote Republican.” Not because every Republican is perfect, but the Democrats are off the rails. They’re bringing communism to the United States now.

14:09
Jean, we got about a minute left. And that’s the beginning of the end.

14:14
Ted, that was a fascinating conversation with him.

14:18
And you know, I agree with you. I was just looking: they had a War Powers Act vote in the Senate. The Democrats were trying to do something against Republicans and couldn’t get it passed. It was a 49 to 50 vote. Four Republicans voted with the Democrats. But you know who voted with the Republicans? John Fetterman. Just John Fetterman. John Fetterman’s been a little squirrely lately though, but admittedly, he is the only one that has stood out to get on board on the issue, not on the political party. And that’s what we have to get back to: the issues, not party politics.

Gene, I hope you have a great weekend and watch that Tennessee-Texas game, and watch the President wave to us up there—he might be looking out in that water for your plane. So be ready for that.

15:12
I’ll call you later. Maybe I’ll fly her into the Tennessee River and we’ll go see the game.

15:17
I’ll tell you what, we’ll fly Valentino Airlines! Looking forward to it, buddy.

15:21
You bet. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

15:25
You, too. Bye-bye.

15:26
Relationships matter because people buy people. And that’s why I buy Eddie Zarrin Insurance of the Zarrin Insurance Agency in Pensacola, Florida—a family-owned business with over 50 years in the business, and they treat people the right way. From homeowners insurance to contractor’s insurance, condo insurance, commercial insurance, all the different coverages that are out there, and of course, auto insurance. They’ve got you covered. They worry about you first. You’re more than a policy number; you’re a person who they’re watching out for—not when the sun is shining, but after the hurricane has left. If you want real service with real savings, contact Eddie Zarrin at the Eddie Zarrin Insurance Agency: www.zarrininsurance.com. Give them a call today. You’ll be glad you did when you do.