- [Announcer 1] This week on "A Lively Experiment," newly released video shows a lot of concrete from the soon to be demolished Washington Bridge on the bottom of the Seekonk River.

And Federal cuts continue to have major ramifications for agencies across the country.

We talk with the head of one here in Rhode Island to see the effects on their work with refugees.

"A Lively Experiment" is generously underwritten by... - Hi, I'm John Hazen White, Jr. For over 30 years, "A Lively Experiment" has provided insight and analysis of the political issues that face Rhode Islanders.

I'm a proud supporter of this great program, and Rhode Island PBS.

Joining us on the panel, Sue Cienki, national committee woman for the Rhode Island Republican Party.

Steph Machado, "Boston Globe," reporter, and contributor for "Rhode Island PBS Weekly," and Political Contributor, Bob Walsh.

- Welcome to this week's "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel, and we appreciate you spending part of your weekend with us.

You may have seen a video a couple of months ago showing huge portions of the Washington Bridge hitting barges below during demolition, and some spelling into the Seekonk River.

DOT Director, Peter Alviti was quick to respond at the time, saying that everything went according to plan.

Now, new video shows that more concrete may have gone into the water than we first thought.

So this, let me set the stage here if you don't know, Casey Jones, engineer from Kansas, he's been keeping his eye on Rhode Island.

He went out with an underwater camera.

Seems to show a lot of concrete.

So you've watched that video I'm sure.

- I have watched that video.

You know what's interesting is, you have to look at the contract specifications of what they're supposed to do with demolition.

Yes, demolition can be messy, but what are they supposed to do with the debris?

I don't think in the contract it says, "We're gonna leave it in the Seekonk River."

There's probably asbestos in there.

It could be an environmental disaster.

Also in that video, what was interesting is they're transporting some of the construction debris over to East Providence.

I don't think that that was included in the contract specifications.

So you're gonna have a landfill problem over in East Providence, and I think the people in East Providence have probably suffered enough with this bridge problem.

So it's another impending fiasco.

- I disagree.

Sometimes we disagree on the show.

- Oh, Good.

- The most interesting part of the story is - I think that's why it's called life.

- I like that we have an engineer named Casey Jones because that is an interesting part of this story.

But people simultaneously want the bridge to come down as quickly as possible.

A few weeks ago we had coverage where, oh, we're not supposed to drop debris into barges.

Yes, we are.

Now we have coverage that some of the debris missed the barges, and it's in the river.

Yes, apparently it is.

And apparently we're gonna get it out of there.

I don't know if it's hazardous, I don't think it is.

But we'll find that out.

They'll clean up what they're supposed to, they won't clean up what they can leave behind.

I assume they're gonna have to get most of it out.

The goal is to get the bridge down as quickly as possible, get a new bridge built as quickly as possible.

The right decision was made as soon as the bridge turned out to be a hazard.

Like the banking crisis was a hazard for different reasons, they closed it.

Now we have to move as quickly as possible.

I get things get a little slow sometimes in the news.

National news is making up for that.

So the bridge becomes a big story.

The bridge will come down, a new bridge will be built, and life will go on in Rhode Island.

- I think regardless of whether the debris is supposed to be in the river or not supposed to be in the river, I'm noticing just a pattern of the DOT is constantly sort of on the back foot having to defend what's going on with the demolition rather than having been upfront about exactly what was going to happen from the beginning.

Because it is confusing.

How do you, how do you demolish a bridge that's over a body of water?

And I tried to interview the demolition company, Aetna Bridge before they started the demo.

I thought it was interesting that they had built the bridge, and now, you know, the grandfather, and then the new generation was gonna demolish the bridge.

And I wanted to know exactly how they were gonna do it.

- And they wouldn't talk to you.

- And they wouldn't talk to me.

And they said, talk to the DOT.

The DOT also won't talk to "The Globe."

And so, and we tried to sit down with Director, Alviti last fall before the demolition really got started, and one of our questions we would have asked him had he not declined, was to talk about the environmental concerns about taking down a bridge that is over a body of water.

And so I have not done the reporting on this.

The story was in the journal.

It may be that it is fine that there's debris in the river, and they're going to take it out.

But I think the lack of transparency, and the questions around what exactly is going on, is why like an engineer from Kansas showing up to look at the river is gaining a little bit of traction.

It's because we're not getting a, we didn't get a ton of information about how exactly it was going to work ahead of time.

- They're not getting the benefit of the doubt.

- Right.

That's right.

- They're not being transparent about it.

- Well, I think we're- - And I think, Bob, - Go ahead.

- you're overly optimistic.

- Well, I think it will come down, and then a new bridge will go up.

- Yeah, and I know- - I think, you know, it's- - it will come down- - It's not optimism, it's... - and it will go up.

(group laughs) - No, you're, you're optimistic that it's not gonna create another problem.

And I agree with Stephanie that there's no transparency.

Instead of being proactive with their approach, they're very reactive, and then they, you know, get back on their heels.

Like, "Why are you questioning us?

"We're taking down the bridge.

"Isn't this what you wanted?"

Yes, it's what everybody wanted.

But we don't want problems to arise from taking down the bridge, and the concrete in the river.

- Well, I will- - Now, it may turn out to be the best thing ever.

I mean, it could be an oyster bed if you left the coffee.

- Well, well they often do that with- - Yeah, they often do that, so- - old bridges, they do that.

- So it could be, it could be great.

- But I will absolutely say, talk your Steph Machado, answer all our questions.

Let's make this a celebration.

Let's teach, let's make it part of our STEM education, the engineering part of teaching kids how engineering works.

Explain exactly what's happening with the bridge, how it's going.

Turn it into a series of lessons so people understand that maybe we'll create some future engineers.

God knows, remember when we blew up the Jamestown Bridge on purpose?

- I was just- - It was a big public thing.

- I was just gonna say that.

And they created- - If you're old like us, you'll remember.

- Well they created a reef.

Now that was a different story.

I was trying to think of that, 'cause if you ever rode over the Jamestown Bridge on a motorcycle, - Ooh.

- you look down, it was that steel grating, and you never do it again.

And so I think it was a little bit different, but I don't know what the environmental concerns were back then.

But we covered that when I was at channel six.

The whole thing came down, and then they made a reef out of it.

A little bit different here.

I will say, and we should, we should be clear that Peter Alviti did his weekly hit on WPRO, and he said, "We're taping this on a Thursday."

He said this morning that, he didn't address the amount of concrete, what he said was, "We are following what the permits allow us to do, "and it's CRMC that will be patrolling this."

So I don't, and again, Steph, it goes to your point, that doesn't give me much calm.

I mean, he didn't say, "No, it's not the concrete that should be in there."

He's putting it off on CRMC, and honestly at this point, I'm not sure that you wanna stake your future in CRMC given all the controversy that they've had.

- Yeah.

- That's just personal opinion.

- I Just don't think it's a dramatic story that when you take down a bridge that is very close to another bridge, some of the pieces are gonna fall in the water, and they're gonna have to deal with- - Yeah, but these are not just like small- - That was my take on the barge thing.

I kind of felt that way about the barge thing.

I said, "Oh, it looks like, "looks like they took down part "of the bridge."

- Right.

- And it landed on a barge.

- But the answer to Steph Machado from "The Globe" would be, "Okay, we know this looks like a lot "on this underwater camera.

"I've watched this video.

"Here is our plan to either leave it in the river, "or take it out."

And when we take it out, we'll let you know, because we are gonna bring the heavy equipment.

- Oh, I see.

- And I haven't reported on this particular story, but in general, journalists have been having a hard time getting information out of the DOT, and that's where these other people, social media, a guy from Kansas sort of have an opportunity to get a full- - [Jim] To fill the vacuum.

- To fill the vacuum.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Sure.

- We'll do a final word on this.

- Yeah.

He does a weekly show with Gene Valicenti.

Right.

He doesn't, - Peter Alviti.

- Peter Alviti - Not Casey Jones.

- Not Casey, not yet.

Maybe that's coming up next.

And just answer the questions.

Let everybody know what your plan is.

And then I think it would be, everybody would be happy.

But the CRMC, I only thought that they cared about country club walls, and they're not really interested.

And the problem with that board is it's so politically stacked with people that really don't have the knowledge that is necessary to deal with coastal resource management.

They just don't.

So put people on it that actually know what they're talking about, and the public would be happy.

- Okay.

We have been talking a lot the first two months of, has it been two months of the Trump Administration?

- Mm-hmm.

- Seems like two years at times.

We talk every show about the federal cuts, how it's affecting locally.

We'll get to a story that Steph did momentarily.

Bob, let me begin with you, because the breaking news on Wednesday, and again, we're taping this on a Thursday, was the tariffs.

So how, you know, the stock market's way, way down at this point, Trump seems to have a vision of how this is gonna help in the long run.

But I also wonder the people who voted for him hoping that he would bring inflation down and other things, I'm not sure they're in for the long game on this.

- I'm still shocked they were as extensive as they were.

Tariffs, first of all are attacks.

They're attacks on goods coming into the country.

The Trump Administration put together a fairly convoluted formula that not only addressed tariffs in other countries, it tried to do some calculation of trade imbalances in other countries.

So you get all sorts of absurd results.

These, the country in Africa called Lesotho, very small, very impoverished country has the highest level of tariffs imposed upon it because they happen to produce diamonds.

Diamonds come to America, they don't have any money to buy American goods.

So now there's going to be a tariff imposed on goods from that country that are 80 or 90%.

The other thing they produce, apparently in a factory there are denim jeans.

So, we're gonna have a huge tariff on those two products.

And there is no way that very poor country is going to buy a commensurate amount of American goods.

That's just one of a myriad number of examples of the- - I don't know.

- absurdity of this.

- I don't think I've ever seen you in a pair of jeans.

Is that a problem for you?

- No, no.

I could theoretically wear them, I could be wearing them now people, 'cause you can't- - You never know.

- True.

- I'm not, but I could be.

- I was looking for the diamonds.

- I think, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(everyone laughs) Diamond earrings, right?

So, we'll address that later.

It is absurd.

You know, I said to somebody, you know, we have a, we have a war powers act where the president can act unilaterally.

We have to have a trade war powers act where the president can't act unilaterally.

And I'm told, breaking news today, that a Republican senator is gonna put something in, saying these all expire in 60 days unless Congress approves them individually, which is how this should work.

This is, this makes no sense.

Canada is our friend.

We should not be not only putting tariffs on Canada, but putting them on Canada on false information, and suggesting the solution is it become a 51st state.

- Yeah.

- This guy, what did I call him last time, "Caligula?"

I might have been being nice.

- Well, Trump, Trump talked about tariffs, but I'm not sure that that, I'm not an economist.

I've gotta read up on tariffs.

Truth be told.

I'm not sure a lot of the people who voted for him knew exactly what he was talking about during the election.

- Yeah.

And I think, I think what's interesting, is that people do have that knowledge, that people are talking about tariffs now.

And the other interesting point is that it hasn't been a fair trade war that we've had here, that the tariffs that have been placed on American goods in Europe, and all over the place, are just not fair and equal.

What is gonna happen?

Well, I think the next two months we're gonna find out whether Trump's strategy works or whether it is a disaster.

We just do know yet.

- Do you think it's negotiating tactic or not?

- I personally believe that it is a negotiating tactic to say, "Hey listen, you know, "you can make your products here.

"Let's, let's take care of our blue collar workers."

Which were a vast majority people that were voting for President Trump.

He wants to be able to give them jobs and bring them back here.

We're getting ripped off.

- But that's gonna be years to get plants built here.

- Right.

- And move- - It's gonna take a while.

- It's gonna be beyond his, - He wiped out their 401K.

- That's gonna be beyond his in the meantime.

And people are going to retire.

- It is just bad economic analysis.

If you put a tariff on foreign cars, the price of foreign cars will in fact go up.

This does not mean that domestically made car prices will go down, 'cause they're not suddenly in the short term gonna produce more.

They're gonna say, "Hey, if that Mercedes now "costs $10,000 more, "I'm gonna sell my Ford for $5,000 more, "and still make more money."

And who suffers?

The consumer.

- You know, I read a "Wall Street," I read a "Wall Street Journal" editorial this morning, you know, of course not a liberal bastion, the "Wall Street Journal."

And they said, " Mr. Trump is saying "there will be no tariff exemptions.

"But watch that promise vanish as politicians, "including Mr. Trump, see exemptions as a way "to leverage campaign contributions from business.

"Liberation Day is 'Buy Another Yacht Day" from the swamp."

That's what the "Wall- - Yeah, yeah.

The King Street lobbyists - That's what the "Wall Street Journal" - are rejoicing in this.

- That's, so anyhow.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I think what I'm watching is, we obviously heard from a lot of voters who said they voted for Trump because the price of groceries, the price of eggs, the price of everything was going up.

And so I wonder if some of those voters have buyer's remorse.

There's been some reporting about that on the national level.

And how will that shake out in the mid-terms, and, you know, special elections and things that happen between now and then.

If the prices do indeed go up from the tariffs.

Is this gonna be something that benefits the Democrats in the mid-terms?

- Yeah, - I don't know.

They're polling at 27% nationally, so I don't know if the Democrats are doing themselves any favor.

And we'll see.

- All we have to do- - But again, - is have your team polling at 25 and we're good.

(group laughs) - It's a race to the bottom here or what?

- Yeah.

What's that?

- That's how elections often work.

- Let's talk about how, let's talk about how the federal cuts have affected here locally.

There's a lot going on.

We've had some court action.

Steph had a great piece for "Rhode Island PBS Weekly," a couple of weeks ago she talked to Kathy Cloutier, who is the executive director of Dorcas International, who works with a lot of refugees.

Here's some of that interview from Steph and Kathy.

- Well, we're not necessarily seeing any mass deportations.

We are seeing a lot of fear.

We're seeing a lot of immigrants.

Even those who are here legally, even those who have legal status, are just fearful of, "What does that mean?"

"What does that mean for me?"

Again, we're seeing where humanitarian parolees are having their status ended, temporary status for Haitians.

And the, the Venezuelans have been stopped, or the extensions have been revoked.

Where we're seeing the "stop work" order for the refugees where the travel for refugees was stopped immediately.

So all of these changes are creating uncertainty.

- And you can see Steph's entire interview on Weekly's website.

It's ripbs.org/weekly.

This is a nine minute piece and you cover a lot of ground.

Now you did this a couple of weeks ago.

You have some updates.

- Yeah, I mean a lot of things have changed even just since that interview.

That was before the Brown University professor was deported, the Tufts student was detained.

Both of those people had Visas.

And so I think what she was saying was that people who have legal status were worried about being able to stay in the U.S., is starting to bare out.

Which I think is really interesting because we expected the Trump Administration to target undocumented immigrants, which is what they said they, you know, what he said he would do during the election.

But even people who have legal status are now worried that they shouldn't travel.

Brown University has recommended to international students that they not travel.

And so Dorcas, which helps refugees after they come to the United States, has had funding cut from the Trump Administration.

And I checked in with Kathy yesterday, and she said they had some additional funding cut, which was money that is for legal representation for unaccompanied minors in their, you know, immigration cases that they're no longer gonna receive.

So they've done even more layoffs since that story.

And they're down to, I think she said 88 employees when they used to have more than a hundred.

- So the focus shifts to the courts now.

We've had our own Judge McConnell here has ruled.

It's gone up to the First Circuit.

I think it's, a lot of these are gonna eventually wind up in the Supreme Court.

I guess the main question, Bob, is will the administration pay attention to the judges?

'Cause they painted them as the bad guy, both Republican and Democrat appointed judges in this scenario.

- This is going to be the defining question at this moment in our history.

"Will the administration pay attention to the judges?"

And I think Justice Robertson, the Supreme Court was courageous to call the president of the United States out for trying to pick on a judge who was originally a Bush appointee for a decision he made.

If they refuse to pay attention to the judges, we are in a constitutional crisis.

We are in a potential nation splitting constitutional crisis.

You know, over history, things have ebbed and flowed, where the courts had power, greater and lesser power.

And you know, things are fairly divided.

You can certainly pick your, pick your form to some extent now.

But overall, there was that final stop gap at the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court is not on my side, generally on the issue.

So majority of the Supreme Court has been appointed by folks who I generally disagree with from judicial philosophy.

Nonetheless, if they're making decisions contrary to the Trump Administration, and the Trump Administration ignores them, we're in an unprecedented crisis.

- But the Supreme Court- - We're already the laughing- - stock of the world- - The Supreme Court- - right now.

- will surprise you sometimes.

- No, no.

They often surprised you.

- Amy Coney Barrett surprised some people.

Just like Sandra Day O'Connor.

Nixon thought she was gonna be a stalwart Republican, and, - And David Suitor.

- Broke.

So.

- Yeah.

And I think what's interesting, people focus in on one or two cases that the Supreme Court reviews, and there's a lot of controversy, or attempted controversy on it, but most of the judges, they're a vast majority of their rulings are 9-0.

I mean, if you go back historically and look, there are so many of them where they come together, they use the constitution - And that the law is clear to them.

- And the law is clear.

You know, so we'll see what happens.

- Or they make allowances, and even if philosophically someone's on the other side, they're not gonna break precedent, and it'll be a- - Well, - 5-4, or 6-3 decision against what you would've predicted.

- Right.

And you have the ability to write a concurring or a dissenting opinion with the Supreme Court.

- Right.

- But it's- - Well, that's really, future action comes from- - Your successor, Joe Power was sitting in your, - Powers, was sitting in your seat last week.

You're a lawyer.

And I'll ask you the same question I asked him.

You have Mike Johnson, who's the speaker of the House in your party, calling for impeachment of judges, be solely based on the decision.

Hasn't even made its way up to the Supreme Court yet.

- Yeah, I think- - Do you agree with that?

- You've gotta let the process work, you've gotta let the process work.

- Does that disturb you at all to see leaders of the Republican Party saying that?

- Well, because I think you have to let the process work.

You know that, I am a constitutionalist.

I think you have to let the process work.

You disagree.

I mean, I've been in court where judges have, you know, left their footprints on my back.

I'm not happy with the decision, but you let the process work.

That's why we have the constitution.

So I firmly believe let the, let the process work.

And if it doesn't work, you don't like the law, there's another process.

You go to the Congress, you let them fix the law that you just don't like.

- Yeah, I thought it was interesting that, that Supreme Court Justice, Chief Justice Roberts- - Roberts, yeah.

- You know, criticized the impeachment conversation, saying if you want to criticize a judge, the way to do that is to appeal their decision through the appellate process.

And it, and he used to be, you know, at one point, way to the right on the court, and now the chief justice is in the middle.

And so I think that things are shifting a lot, and he doesn't speak out that often.

So for him to speak out against that was interesting.

And I mean one of Rhode Island's judges, Jack McConnell is, is being targeted by those, you know, impeachment talks and allegations because of his ruling in the funding freeze case.

But it's happening all over the country.

And a lot of the cases have originated in New England, which I think is interesting.

It's honestly hard to keep track of them all.

But a lot of judges seem to be blocking a lot of the Trump Administration's decisions.

- Because their forum shopping.

And that's another thing that I- - You go to a circuit- - that I object to.

- that you think is- - and not as friendly.

- Yeah.

And then- - Yeah, on both sides.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- And that's irritating.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- You know.

That is really irritating to me that you would forum shop.

If you actually believe in your case, you will take it before any judge.

- It'll hold up.

- And, it should hold up.

- You know, it's funny how the politics seeps in though, Bob, because we had the, we had the elections this week.

the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Democrats held on, Elon Musk put a lot of resources into it.

And now we're hearing- - As did George Soros, and Reed Fox.

- Not nearly as much.

- Not nearly as much, - Oh, yes.

They outspent him- - and not first.

- Like (indistinct).

- They, yeah.

They outspent him.

- No, no.

But the point is- - They outspent him.

- that Elon Musk now, now we're hearing he's maybe gonna step back.

Maybe that was, you know, are the two connected?

But it's interesting to me, that I don't know what, whether it's soured a little bit with Trump, or he is kind of keeping him close.

What is your view on that?

- Yeah, for the three elections that occurred, my team's doing better.

We won the judiciary in Wisconsin by 10 points.

- Shocker.

- And we- - That's not a shocker.

- only lost the two congressional races in districts that Trump won by 30 points, by 15 points.

- Were there buttons that said "Team Walsh" down there, or what?

"Your team?"

- The team.

My team.

The Democratic team.

- He's such a good supporter- - As opposed to Sue's team, - Yeah.

as you know.

- Yeah.

- Well we're both about as good as as each other for our respective teams.

Although you didn't come right out and say that the speaker of the House nationally shouldn't have said what he said.

But you came close, and I was proud of you for that.

He's proud of you.

- Musk- - Dad's so proud of you.

- Musk is- - He's proud of you.

- Musk is gonna out stay his welcome.

Of course he is, because he has to be the star of the show, and Trump wants to be the star of his own show.

Eventually those two things had to collide.

That was just a natural tension.

I mean- - He's got a company.

- Musk, I hope, you know, from a- - A lot of his people eventually.

- Yeah.

- That has been a pattern.

It was a pattern in the first storm administration.

- Well, I think in the first administration, he didn't know who to trust, who to ask, who to go.

I think that his hiring of Susie Wiles as his chief of staff has completely transformed how business is done.

- She's the adult in the room, right?

- She is the adult in the room.

- Yeah.

- She has really buttoned down the thing.

As far as Elon Musk, he's got a company to run.

I mean he's- - He's got five companies.

- Yeah, I was gonna say, one?

How many?

- And let's give him credit, he brought those astronauts home.

I think we should be talking about that.

That was tremendous.

- Though not personally.

He was in Washington, but yeah, his- - Yeah, but that was tremendous.

- his company did that.

- But, what you need to know about the race in Wisconsin is that my team - Wasn't a shocker.

- My team talked extensively about Musk backing the Republican.

The Republican side talked about Trump backing the Republican.

So Musk was the bet noir of that election, not Trump, Musk.

- Yeah, and I think that anytime that you are trying to flip a judiciary, I mean that was months ago considered a democratic win.

So the fact that they even got within that 10 percentage points is a win.

The two in Florida, you know, well it could have been the- - Equally divided.

- But at least they, now they have a little breathing room, 'cause didn't, didn't Trump pull Elise Stefanik?

She was gonna be the- - Right.

- [Bob] Yeah, yeah.

- Right?

She wanted her to be the ambassador and she said, "Sorry, we, need your vote in Congress."

- Well, and I think that there's- - This gives a little more breathing room.

- Well, and there's a lot of reasons for doing that.

I mean, the governor of New York, Kathleen Hochul was playing with the election timeline.

And you had a number of Republicans that wanted to jump into that race.

And when that happens, you kind of can get a divided primary, and you get people that don't show up to vote.

- The interesting question about Musk, - Yeah.

- is when he's gone, and his threat of money is gone, 'cause he breaks with Trump, will Republicans in Congress become more courageous to standing up against the excesses of the Trump Administration?

- Well already, the cabinet, it's clear the cabinet's not, the cabinet's happy to see him go.

- Right.

- A lot of the people that, - But that'll be because with his money out of the game, will four, or five or six Republican congressmen say, "These tariffs are killing my people."

- All right.

Let's do, I do have a couple of local things, but let's go to outrageous and or kudos.

So let's begin with you this week.

- Okay.

I think that, you know, final four, I wanna give a shout out to Bryant for actually making it.

They were the one team left.

- To the tournament.

Yep.

- In the tournament.

So that's great.

And opening day tomorrow for the Red Sox.

Let's hope that they have a good, good enough season.

- Let's keep Rafae Devers.

He got two hits yesterday.

Let's keep him going.

- But I'm a Yankees fan, and- - Oh you are?

- Yeah.

I'm a Yankees fan.

- Why did we let you on the set?

- I'm sorry.

- Come on.

You didn't disclose this to me before the show.

- Yes.

Sorry.

- She didn't let me know.

- Yeah.

- Bob, what do- - And what are they gonna do with, in talking about baseball?

The NIL money that's coming in?

- Yeah, - Because has it created more havoc than it was worth for college sports?

- College sports has sports ruined in my opinion.

But, Bob, what do you got?

- Well, all kudos, in fact.

But I'll tie it into something quickly.

If you want to beat the diamond tariff, already be engaged.

So I've got one nephew, (group laughing) so, I've got one- - Well that's a simple solution.

- I got one nephew I just found out today got engaged.

- Oh congratulations.

- Nice.

- But I was originally on the list.

My nephew and godson, Mike, is getting married to his fiance Jenna this weekend.

I'm also, you know, and I'm also the godfather, which for me was, Rhode Island- - [Jim] Uncle Bob.

- Yeah.

But no-show job for me because starting with my late mother and many family members did a much better job in the religious education than I ever would.

And my brother Bill was such a great father to my nephew Mike.

He's also the best man in the wedding.

So this is all wedding weekend kudos to Mike and Jenna getting married this weekend.

No matter what nonsense politically is going on in this world, there are happy things going on in the day.

- I hear your, - And that's gonna be one of 'em.

- I hear your team is pretty good at no-show jobs.

Is that true over the years?

- No, no, don't ruin the, don't ruin it.

But, I will tell you- - Don't wait on Mike today.

- I will tell you that our newest family member is in fact an NEA member.

- And Bob is- - Is he a Yankees fan too?

- No, no, the fiance.

His fiance.

- Bob, I'm gonna give them one piece of advice.

You can get lab grown diamonds.

(Bob laughs) - Yeah.

- Those are, there's a tariff on those too.

- In the United States.

- People are doing different stones.

- Stones.

- There's tariff fund.

Almost all of them come from other country.

- Steph, what do you got?

- Jim prefers that I am outraged.

- You can do whatever you want.

I'm not, I'm not, I have to influencing.

- So, this is like a, you know, kind of a week old at this point, but the signal group chat, and the thing that I'm outraged about, obviously I'm not taking a stance on what occurred, but the blaming of the journalist.

- Yeah, right.

- He broke into the chat - For being in the group chat that they added him to where they were talking about attack plans.

Like let's at least be living on the same plane of reality, where he was accidentally added to the group chat.

And we can all debate on whether or not it was appropriate for them to be using it, and what they were talking about.

But to attack the journalist for just existing essentially and being added to this chat, and then reporting on what happened, I thought was inappropriate.

- We had some people say he should have immediately gotten out, but as reporters, one, he's not sure whether it's real.

And two, you're inquisitive.

Why would you- - Yeah.

- Why would you- - And you might not even have been seeing the things come in at the time.

I mean, there's all sorts of it.

You could have an entire thread coming your way, and not have been active.

- I get alot of, like- - You get like 865 text messages and you don't look at them immediately.

- Yeah, like I got a WhatsApp yesterday from a strange number.

I didn't even click on it.

I didn't recognize it.

I don't care.

Like I don't not blame him for not getting out of the group chat faster.

That's a weird thing.

- 15 seconds.

You wanna weigh in on that?

- No, I think that it's important to find out who did add him.

- Yeah.

- Because that's- - We haven't found that out yet.

- And who did they think they were adding?

- But also, - Because lemme tell you- - Mike Waltz, is he a little closer with, with Goldberg than we know?

- Let me put it to you this way.

- Or he hadn't- - Things don't happen in Washington by accident.

- Right.

- That was intentional.

And why was- - Ooh, conspiracy theory.

Ooh.

- No, it was intentional.

So who did it?

- Who's the traitor in the- - Why did they do it?

- Republican midst?

- And what was the purpose of it?

- It was either intentional, or he had his number on his phone, and he clicked it by accident.

- Alright, we gotta continue this after the show.

This will be out in the hall conversation.

All right.

Because it's only 30 minutes this week.

Folks at us all the time.

- Look at that.

- We appreciate you joining us.

We hope you come back here next week.

Bob and Sue and Steph, thank you.

Come back next week as "A Lively Experiment" continues.

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