Ring of Fire Radio with Farron Cousins

This week on Ring of Fire!

There are still a few House races that have yet to be called, but Republicans have already secured enough wins to maintain a majority of seats in the US House. With their flipping of the Senate and the White House, along with their control over the Supreme Court, this means that Republicans will control EVERY single branch of the federal government for at least the next two years.

According to Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump may already be breaking the law by refusing to sign an ethics pledge that was part of a legislative effort that Warren herself got through the Senate. The pledge is required by law, and it is intended to prevent conflicts of interest and profiteering off the presidency, something that became a hallmark of Trump’s first term in office.

With every pick announced for Donald Trump’s cabinet, a lot of people are thinking “it can’t get any worse than that.” And then the next pick comes along shattering that idea. Trump is managing to pick worse and worse people with each passing day, from a Fox News host that was labeled an extremist to the world’s richest and most immature man, Trump’s picks are scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast.

This week on Ring of Fire!

Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, shocking most of the country by tearing down the “Blue Wall” that was supposed to keep him from returning to power. But unlike 2016, Trump actually won the popular vote (as of right now) and he officially got his mandate to return to power. To make things worse, Republicans also retook control of the Senate, giving Trump a blank check on judicial appointments.

From Elon Musk to Alina Habba, some of the dumbest and biggest crackpots in the country are going to wield a lot of power. In fact, Trump made sure to point that out during his victory speech on Tuesday evening. This is going to be a rough time for people with common sense, but this is what the people voted for.

Donald Trump has been far more incoherent and unintelligible during this year’s campaign, and now that he’s heading back to The White House, one has to wonder what is going to happen to his mental faculties. The man was already unstable, but his increasing cognitive decline is going to present very real problems that he’s not prepared to face – and those around him aren’t prepared to handle. This is going to be rough.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

Donald Trump is falling apart with less than a week to go before the election. His Madison Square Garden hate rally is obviously getting most of the attention, but both before and after that his campaign was already descending into madness. He has called America a “garbage can,” fantasized about Marjorie Taylor Greene blowing up in a car accident, and even got called out by Joe Rogan for his lies. This is a campaign that is fumbling at the goal line.

A financial analyst for Fox News said on the air this week that the idea of people investing in Donald Trump’s media company was “laughable.” Even the stock price has rebounded after bottoming out in the teens just a few weeks ago, the analyst believes that the company is still headed towards disaster because there is no real way for it to sustain itself. The revenue stream for the company is virtually non-existent, and their expenses are through the roof.

During his rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Donald Trump teased that he and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had a “Secret” that they can’t share, but they would reveal it after the election. This led many to believe that Trump was suggesting that Johnson was going to vote to NOT certify the election results if Trump loses. Johnson is now in damage control mode, and he insists that this “secret” is just a “get out the vote effort.” That seems highly unbelievable.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

Cities across the country are struggling to pay their own bills after ponying up tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of dollars to cover the added costs that Donald Trump’s rallies bring to their cities. And since Trump’s campaign is still refusing to pay the bills that they owe, these cities are often left with few options other than to just cut their losses and hope they can survive.

The administration of Ron DeSantis was slammed during a recent hearing with a federal judge over their attempts to silence a political opposition group that was running ads on local TV stations across Florida. The judge told the defendants from the DeSantis administration, “It’s the First Amendment, stupid,” as he blasted their attempts to silence political opposition. This came as an official for the administration resigned last week and through DeSantis’s underlings under the bus as directing him to threaten the TV stations.

A leaked “spoof” video that was sent out to workers with Elon Musk’s America PAC tells door knockers how they can get around the system and “fake” their jobs. In the video, that allegedly made its way to hundreds of PAC workers, they are shown how to use a GPS spoofing app to fool the door-knocking app they use, and then they were told how to fake the responses on the survey (but to make sure that they varied the responses so that they each seem unique.) Elon has a lot of answers to give about what’s happening at his group.

During a recent interview, Donald Trump falsely claimed that “nobody” has ever been treated worse in this country than the hundreds of people that have been convicted for storming the Capitol on January 6th. He then amended that to say that MAYBE Japanese Americans that were forced into internment camps during WWII were treated as bad. This comment drew immediate backlash from people who understand the history of the United States.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

According to a new report from The New York Times, the Trump campaign colluded with Elon Musk to suppress the release of information that had been hacked from the Trump campaign. This is what led to the Twitter ban of investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein (who has since been reinstated on the platform.) But this is EXACTLY what Republicans accused the Biden campaign of doing four years ago, and now they are the ones who actually worked with social media companies to remove unflattering content.

During a recent interview with The New York Times, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance was asked five times in a row to admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and every time he deferred and changed the subject, or he engaged in attacks to deflect the question. This type of denial is incredibly dangerous to the safety of our elections, and it is further evidence of why Trump picked Vance to begin with.

Ted Cruz went on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News on Monday evening to beg viewers for more money. This pitch for cash was timed perfectly with the release of internal polling from a Republican Super PAC that shows that Cruz is flailing in his Senate race against Democrat Colin Allred, and the two remain in a statistical dead heat with three weeks to go before the election. Cruz is getting desperate, and his pitch for cash is proof of that.

And Majorie Taylor Greene has spent more than a week trying to convince America that the government is creating hurricanes and sending them to attack Republican areas of the country. That’s why her recent post on social media made everyone laugh at her. Greene posted a picture of a man in a giant tinfoil hat that had the caption “everyone in America right now,” to which Greene added “Yep.” She didn’t realize the irony of her post and got immediately roasted by the internet.

All that, and more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

The release of special prosecutor Jack Smith’s new evidence against Donald Trump made one thing absolutely clear: Rudy Giuliani’s incompetence may have been what saved the country. Giuliani, while working on Trump’s behalf to get Congress to NOT certify the election results, accidentally texted his plan for Congress to the wrong number, which then prevented Congress from getting the plan. Had this not happened, January 6th could have turned out very differently.

Not long ago, Donald Trump promised to release his full medical records to prove that being the oldest presidential nominee in history wasn’t that big of a deal. And now that we’re a month away from the election, the media is calling him out for failing to do so. Voters have enormous concerns about Trump’s fitness – both physical and mental – and releasing those records could go a long way to easing fears – or confirming them.

Tim Walz, without even doing anything, has managed to drive Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer insane. Comer is abusing his power to launch an investigation into Walz’s connections to China, and right before the recent Vice Presidential Debate Comer sent a subpoena to the Department of Homeland Security for information about Walz. This investigation will end the same way that all of Comer’s other investigations ended, which means he’ll look like a complete fool again.

Donald Trump’s dumpster fire of a campaign is now burning through cash faster than money can come in. For the past two months, the campaign has spent more than it brought in, dropping Trump’s total amount of cash on hand to a little over $230 million (which is still a lot, but not nearly as much as the Harris campaign has.) The biggest problem, however, is that Republicans have no idea where Trump is spending the money.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

Republican Senator JD Vance likely didn’t do himself any favors in the vice-presidential debate against Governor Tim Walz on Tuesday evening. Vance repeatedly refused to answer questions and lied throughout most of the debate. At one point, he was so angry about being fact checked that he attacked the moderators before they ended up cutting his microphone. But it was his refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 election that really raised eyebrows

Donald Trump is getting absolutely trashed for spreading lies about the Biden Administration’s response to Hurricane Helene. And it isn’t just the Left that’s going after him – Republicans are having to come out and debunk his lies, too. Trump has claimed that the Biden administration is doing nothing and not even taking calls from Republican-controlled states, but the truth is that Biden has been on the phone constantly and offering whatever aid is needed for ALL states impacted.

Sometimes it isn’t exactly clear if Kellyanne Conway wants Donald Trump to win the election or not. During an interview on Fox News this week, Conway said that she tried to taunt Trump into doing another debate with Kamala Harris, even though he completely botched it the first time. But if Trump can’t even convince his friends that he’s not a coward, then he has no hope of convincing the public.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

Republicans in the House are growing increasingly concerned that Donald Trump’s demands of them are going to lead to “galactically stupid” consequences for them in November’s election. Trump is still demanding that they shut down the government, and if they don’t, they fear that he’s going to go on the rampage against them – which could be just as costly in November!

Republican Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sunk to a new level during a recent interview on Fox News when he decided to go into an attack on Tim Walz’s family, including his children. Comer attacked the children as part of the justification for his investigation into Walz, whom Comer believes is being “groomed” by China. These kinds of attacks used to be completely off limits, but this one wasn’t even a blip on the media’s radar.

Donald Trump only has a few days left before he can sell his shares of Truth Social (officially the Trump Media & Technology Group stock), but the whole thing could end up being completely worthless by Friday. The stock closed a little over $13 per share last week, then dropped even further during trading on Monday to close to $12. This is a sinking ship, and Trump won’t be the one left without a life preserver.

All that, and much more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

There is absolutely no winning with Donald Trump. Following the incident at his golf course on Sunday, Trump told a rally crowd this week that both President Biden and Vice President Harris called him and were very nice, and then he said he wished that they hadn’t been so nice to him – apparently it makes him feel bad to be a jerk to them after that. But he continued on with his jerkish behavior nevertheless.

Republican Senator John Kennedy made headlines this week when he went into a massively racist line of questioning with a Muslim woman who was testifying before a Senate Committee on racism on college campuses. Kennedy appeared to prove her point about rampant racism by repeatedly implying that she supported terrorist organizations, but he shocked the entire room and drew audible gasps from the audience when he concluded his time by telling the woman to “hide your head in a bag.”

Republicans in the House failed to get a budget bill passed on Wednesday evening because they wouldn’t remove the SAVE Act that Donald Trump has been pushing for. Now Trump has gone ballistic and is demanding that Republicans shut down the federal government at the end of the month. Mitch McConnell had previously said that doing so would be “politically stupid,” but Trump is telling Republicans that now is the time to be stupid.

All that, and more, on this week’s Ring of Fire Podcast!

This week on Ring of Fire!

Donald Trump had a major meltdown early Sunday morning about mail-in voting. He immediately got on Truth Social to complain about the US Mail service admitting that they are running way behind on getting mail-in ballots delivered, which Trump immediately claimed was election interference. The irony is that HE created this mess four years ago on purpose, and he seems to have forgotten about that.

Rudy Giuliani got blasted by a federal judge in New Hampshire on Monday when the judge dismissed Giuliani’s defamation lawsuit against President Biden. Giuliani was suing the president for claiming that Giuliani was pushing out talking points from Russia last year, and he sued in New Hampshire because he thought it would be a friendlier jurisdiction. The judge saw right through it, and said in the ruling that Giuliani “utterly failed” to prove that the case should take place in that state.

The “affidavit” from an alleged ABC staffer has been released, and it is filled with problems related to its credibility. But while the media and politicians attempt to determine what’s real and what isn’t, they are all missing the biggest point: The conspiracy theory itself makes no sense. ABC stood to gain absolutely nothing, but potentially lose millions, by helping Kamala Harris.

All that, and more, on this week’s Ring of Fire podcast!