Fani Willis Sickens Me | Living the American Dream with Wilbur Ross

it's time assaulting The Narrative I destroying the LI John Gordon unearthing the truth you can't handle the truth live from West Palm Beach Florida heard coast to coast and all around the world John Gordon High news with John Gordon welcome everyone this is John Gordon you're listening to the truth we've got former Secretary of the Commerce Wilbur Ross is our guest today he'll be on at about 12:20 so you don't want to miss that interview I know that you're going to enjoy it and um we're going to take a deep dive now into the antics of none other than fonnie Willis who won reelection this week by a staggering victory over her opponent and it just reinforces the notion that for me that the voters are completely uninformed or they just don't care and that race is more important than ethics it is uh astounding to me and so discouraging to me I just don't know what the endgame is but a whistleblower appeared before the Georgia State Senate committee investigating fonnie Willis and um here's what she had to say Amanda timson um and so Michael cuffy who is the new um Chief programs officer um invited myself and my colleague who also co-wrote the grant um into a meeting just to so he could understand the scope of the grant um in this meeting he this was the first time that he kind of mentioned that what he wanted to spend the Grant on and he uh articulated that he wanted to spend the Grant on um um computers uh travel and swag and at the time we were saying swag swag because it there was a lot of rebranding going on um and so like each unit now had their own sweaters and their own mugs and stuff um and there was a complete and total rehaul of the building and stuff so this idea of having swag was was like a big thing so he those are the three things these are pins and coffee cups and t-shirts and exactly TT things promoting the new district attorney correct um and so um I quickly kind of interjected and let him know that those were not things that we could do with the grant um at that point it seemed as if he hadn't read the grant narrative um and so I just wanted to educate him um I was a bit concerned but at that point it was the first time I had heard of it I just tried to kind of set him straight and tell him like oh you know we can't do that it's really specific um and it's specific to programming we can't buy any equipment um and that was a huge thing because in the grant narrative in the grant budget um it says specifically no equipment um and so his idea for wanting to get um computers and even pay for travel like those are completely out of the scope of the Grant and you know that because you wrote the grant correct and in the grant plan you tell how the money is going to be spent correct and in the budget you identify how it's intended to be spent correct did any of those documents provide for spending money on swag no did any of those documents provide for spending money on computers or other equipment no sir swag really I mean when you hear that does it spark a reaction in you like it does in me I mean it just infuriates me you know I work hard I work really hard and and I obey the law I have no points on my driver's license it's the only time I've ever had an a um encounter with the police is when I've been driving over the speed limit and somewhere around the age of 50 I think I got um 15 points on my driver's license uhoh so I had to go to court and you know 15 points points is that magical number where you lose your driver's license and so I hired a lawyer just a really good guy and uh I walked into the into the courthouse in um it's not duth what what's the little town where uh the uh GM plant used to be I'm having a moment I have a few moments these days uh but you know where I'm talking about right on 285 in pach Street Industrial and it's a speed trap they've got one mile of inter State on 285 and it was Saturday morning there there was me and two other people on the road it's not an excuse I'm just setting the scene I'm not making an excuse for my lawbreaking behavior but yeah I was going probably 80 mil an hour in at 65 and I looked up and there's the police there's the popo and I'm like oh shoot I'm in trouble so I pulled over I got a ticket then I called uh this lawyer that I know that used to be a municipal court judge and um so I went and to the courthouse and I met him there and uh Jackie Patterson I don't know if any of you know Jackie Patterson in in our Atlanta Market Jackie has represented some very um famous uh been involved in some very famous cases but he was a motorcycle cop then he became a um Magistrate Judge and then he became a state court judge and um Jackie is just one of the most enthusiastic really nice people that I've ever known I I really love this guy as a brother and so I walk in the courthouse and he's there greeting me and he said oh John he said we got your worst nightmare I said what do you mean he said well we've got what you call a conscientious bureaucrat and he's looked up your driver record and sees that you have got a string of speeding tickets and he wants blood and I said oh gosh what does that mean he said well he wants a to suspend your driver's license for six months or a year I can't remember and uh for you to pay a a $5,000 fine I said well Jackie you know you've got to go in there and work your magic that's not what I paid you for for you've got to do something so he went back in and talked to the conscientious bureaucrat and came back out and said okay John here's the deal $500 and you have to go to a defensive driver's course I said okay I'll take the deal so I go to the um defensive driver's course on what may have been the most beautiful Saturday morning of my entire lifetime in Atlanta not a cloud in the sky 74 degrees the leaves were just starting to turn four people it invited me to play golf that morning which never happened I mean he usually I'd play golf but I didn't usually get four invitations I might get one I was lucky four people called me that week and said you want to play golf no I'm going to be in my defensive driver's class I think I was 50 okay so it would have been 20 years ago the second oldest person in the defensive driver's course I think was like 22 years old I sat there from 9 in the morning until 4: in the afternoon thoroughly pissed off at me well I've got that's the bad news but you know this criminal justice system does change people's behavior and I want you to know that I haven't gotten a a speeding ticket or a traffic ticket since then ever so I got no points on my driver's license and I pay my taxes and I expect our public servants to respect me as a citizen and respect the county coffers because that money that we pay does not come e easy we have to work for it we have to risk for it we have to save to pay our taxes and when we pay our taxes I have the expectation that people in public office are going to be good stewards of the money that we have worked hard for and here is fonnie Willis using my tax dollars and and yours by the way for swag coffee cups sweatshirts t-shirts with her name and picture on it it is an inappropriate use of taxpayer funded money and in addition to that and worse okay do I like that no can I stomach it yes but worse than that the game is that they apply for federal grant money I I wish we would reform that whole Pro program that whole system all it does is grow government by an order of magnitude because what happens is we pay our federal taxes and then our local and County officials write grants and get the money that we send up to Washington back into the local community as a grant so that our Congress and Senators can look like the benevolent people that they are to take our money and then give it back to us and then you get fonnie Willis who takes the money and diverts it to purposes other than for which the grant was intended it is a violation of the law so we have a whistleblower Amanda tempson you just heard her and she testified before the state senate committee this week and she said that not only was the money misappropriate but when she brought it to miss Willis's attention not in a way of being critical she did not go to Miss Willis or W uh fonny Willis with the intention of being critical she went there with the intention of informing her so that she would know that this was going on behind her back well she thought it was going on behind Miss Willis's back back little did she know that maybe it wasn't going on behind her back go to clip the next clip please q and so Michael cuffy who is the new um Chief programs officer um invited myself and my colleague who also co-wrote the grant um into a meeting just to so he could understand the scope of the grant um in this meeting he this was the first time that he kind of mentioned that what he wanted to spend the Grant on and he uh articulated that he wanted to spend the Grant on um computers uh travel and swag and at the time we were saying swag swag because it there was a lot of rebranding going on um and so like each unit now had their own sweaters and their own mugs and stuff um and there was a complete and total rehaul of the building and stuff so this idea of having swag was was like a big thing so he those are the three things these are pin and coffee cups and t-shirts and exctly sweatshirts things promoting the new district attorney correct um and so um I quickly kind of interjected and let him know that those were not things that we could do with the grant um at that point it seemed as if he hadn't read the grant narrative um and so I just wanted to educ him um I was a bit concerned but at that point it was the first time I had heard of it I just tried to kind of set him straight and tell him like oh you know we can't do that it's really specific um and it's specific to programming we can't buy any equipment um and that was a huge thing because in the grant narrative in the grant budget um it says specifically no equipment um and so his idea for wanting to get um computers and even pay for travel like those are completely out of the scope of the grant okay and you know that because you wrote the grant correct and in the grant plan you tell how the money is going to be spent correct and in the budget you identify how it's intended to be spent correct did any of those documents provide for spending money on swag no did any of those documents provide for spending money on computers or other equipment no sir so there you have it not only did they misappropriate the misappropriate the money but they did it knowingly and intentionally I think that they should be prosecuted I really do I I honestly believe they should be prosecuted for an intentional violation of federal law they have destroyed the public trust but 77% of Fon County voted her in as the Democratic nominee for district attorney in Fon County just this past week it is so offensive to me and so frustrating it just leaves me speechless here's what the chairman of the state senate committee had to say about it she said as recently as this mourning that nobody is above the law she's saying that out of one side of her mouth and out of the other side she's saying I am above the law yeah she's above the law that's all that that's exactly what she is saying and um then here's she had a an interview uh with Ms NBS the other day and um oh I feel so bad for her I feel so bad for her she is now the victim here's what she had to say here's Miss apparently we now need daddy to tell us how to do our job that's her answer to the state senate committee and to Jim Jordan now how does that come across to you who is Daddy does that have a tinge of racism embedded in it it sounds racist to me she's calling the chairman of the Senate Georgia Senate committee on oversight judicial oversight for these District Attorneys Daddy and I guess she's return referring to Jim Jordan as Daddy you know what it is I don't know whether it's racist or not I and you know I I I get so tired of hearing about racism racism racism it's all one big manipulation to me and so I don't really want to be disingenuous or hypocritical and accuse somebody else of being racist when they're constantly talking about them being the victim of racism like Miss Willis she thinks it's just a race a racial issue that because she's black and she's a woman she thinks she's being somehow targeted no no let me set you straight Miss Willis it has nothing to do with your gender it has nothing to do with your authenticity or race it has everything to do with the fact that you are a home wrecker you had an affair an admitted affair with a married man and you know marriages go through ups and downs I don't know anyone who's been married or is married that doesn't have highs and lows and ups and downs and sometime you're sometimes most of the time you're even able to work out the loaves but if there's someone standing in the wings ready to take your place and brush you aside then there's not much of a chance to reconcile this marriage I have no insight into Nathan Wade and his wife's domestic turmoil other than the fact that he was sleeping with Ms Willis now let's don't even go to the fact that she promised when she was running for office the first time that she would never have an affair with somebody that was working for her as a subordinate it's on tape it's on video that was a campaign promise she broke it and she broke Nathan Wade's home she contributed to breaking up his home she is a perjurer she lied under oath in judge McAfee's courtroom and judge McAfee gives her a little an odor of mendacity there's an odor of mendacity really judge [Music] please have a backbone you punted you didn't do your job but you gave the defendants the opportunity to file for an interlocutory appeal to the court of appeals in other words you knew that she lied and you didn't have the guts to hold her accountable because you too have an election you are opposed in your election now I know you just won the Primary I and and and I judges win U or or run uh with without party affiliation so I'm thinking that judge McAfee has been reelected to the bench I think it's a disgrace I would I I would not vote for him I would not vote for him under any circumstances because he displayed nothing but cowardice he failed to do his job and hold this person accountable and she made a mockery of her of his courtroom a mockery of him and a mockery of our justice system she is also an embezzler there is more than ample evidence that she paid Nathan Wade an exorbitant amount of money that he took the money and took her on E extravagant trips to Napa Valley to the Bahamas to Miami living a good life and I just read this week that he may be on the verge of declaring bankruptcy he spent it and his wife's going to clean his clo clock because I think he lied in in that Court proceeding as well so home wrecker liar embezzler and someone who abuses their Authority because she has brought a fictitious lawsuit against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants most of whom I know most of whom I know to be Honorable Men most of whom I know have been married for many many many many years who have good families good careers have been good citizens and have served our state and our nation many of them have served in the armed services many of them have worked in government at low pay collateral damage who cares that's just they just happen to be in the way of Miss Willis and her political ambition and Joe oiden and his corrupt justice department look at Alvin Bragg his star witness his whole case wrote on wrote on the backs of Michael Cohen and did you see what happened in that case this week not only did he is he relying on a convicted perjurer a liar a confessed liar but Michael kohen under cross examination this week in New York in Alvin Bragg's case being orchestrated by the Joe oiden corrupt Department of Justice admitted to stealing $60,000 from the Trump organization $60,000 so add Thief to the list Stormy Daniels came into court 3 weeks ago and admitted just admitted that she had made Millions off of Donald Trump and as much as said that she was continuing to make money and that that's why she was in court it wasn't out of moral outrage it wasn't because she was a victim and and I I did say last week folks if you missed it that I was reversing my earlier uh judgment which we shouldn't do causes me to learn a lesson I I made the statement and nobody's called me out on it this is my conscience talking this isn't the result of of blowback this is just me telling the truth and that's what I want to bring you every Saturday at High Noon I want to bring you the truth well that requires me to be truthful and I said yeah I think Donald Trump probably had a romantic relationship with Stormy Daniels now I've changed my mind he denies it Stormy Daniels in 2018 denied it twice in writing and Michael Cohen we now know in a memor in a email memorandum said that he did not believe that there was a romantic relationship between Trump and stormmy Daniels so there's actually just no evidence of it there is no credible evidence that Donald Trump slept with Stormy Daniels Mr President I apologize I made a mistake because a friend of mine saidwell you know he had a he slept with Stormy Daniels and I sort of went with it I said yeah of course he did wrong I don't think he did there's no credible evidence after having listened to Stormy Daniels listened to Cohen listen to the evidence listen to the people who were close to the case pontificate about what they actually know as fact I just don't think there's credible evidence of a romantic relationship the only evidence is Stormy Daniels so sold her story for hundreds of thousands of dollars and she found a gravy train and now she wants to keep writing it and the only way that she can write it is to be a witness in Alvin Bragg's persecution of Donald Trump so there there so there now you have it that's what I think and so um as I as reported a few weeks ago I said you know what if and you know I do believe in karma I I really do and I do believe that truth has a very unique way of working itself out that the truth eventually emerges so I just said you know about a month ago or six weeks ago I said what if Donald Trump stuck in New York under a court order to be in the courtroom instead of out campaigning what if he would make stops on the way into work and on the way out of work I mean work being in the courtroom what if he would go make campaign appearances what if he started campaigning in New York the worst thing that's going to happen is he would get media coverage boy is he got media coverage and probably raise some pretty serious bucks for the campaign and maybe maybe even put New York in [Laughter] play oh don't you love it oh don't you love it Revenge Revenge oh sweet how re how sweet is Revenge because he went to the Bronx day before yesterday the Bronx one of the Burrows of the city of New York where the persecution is taking place the Bronx has a population of 1, 379,000 people 3.9% are Asian 28% are black 56% are Hispanic and 8% are white and the uh median income is $20,000 it is a dark blue as you can get I think 85% voted for Biden in 2020 and boy it sure didn't feel that way two days ago in the Bronx When Donald Trump went there and held a rally there were 25,000 people either in the venue or trying to get in and you know what o AOC said I I swear it just it just it makes me [Music] angry and it makes me sad that the Democrats when they can't compete on ideas just resort to lies you know what AOC said she said that Donald Trump was broke that Donald Trump was out of money that Donald Trump was just doing this rally to try and raise money to pay his legal bills and the guy that's broke and doesn't have money and can't afford paid people to come to his rally yeah those 25,000 people they were paid they just they Donald Trump just paid him he did I mean how much how much did he pay him well here is what a newfound Trump supporter had to say about that this moment this epic I have nothing to lose so I can stand up here and I can say this none of you here are paid to be here she got on color TV this morning and said that we that Trump bust in these people and paid everyone out here who are who here got paid to be here today or you here because you know that this is the time in history that you in the right place at the right time and you need to be here [Applause] today we don't want the Republicans to take our vote for granted like the Democrats did for 50 years boy oh boy oh boy there were no buses seen at the rally nobody was busted in there uh there were not one person admitted to having been paid and the fact of the matter is that crowd was as as enthusiastic as you can get and they all were for Donald J Trump all right now look one last thing and then I want to get to our interview with secretary Ross this guy is do you secretary Ross is recognized as one of the 50 most influential business persons in the world and he lives just two miles from where I'm sitting right now a wonderful guy I have the honor and privilege of knowing him and and and my admiration for him is is just incredible um and and so we're going to go to the interview in in just one second but I want to remind you few housekeeping notes you can watch us on getter every Saturday get.com and log on there you have to register it's not a big deal nobody's going to email you aestria but they they they would like you to register with an email and then you can watch us and you can interact with us on get.com every Saturday at noon you can also follow us on X at John Gordon truth you can watch us uh interact with us on Facebook rumble.com youtube.com and patreon so if you like the show I would just like to ask you one small teeny little favor please go on there and subscribe on one or more of those platforms getter Rumble x Facebook YouTube patreon you can subscribe it'll take you about two seconds on each one and then we move up in the algorithm we get more viewers we get better reach and we get to talk to more people every Saturday of course we're on the John Fredericks media Network in Atlanta Richmond Northfolk Nashville Pittsburgh Philadelphia in the state of West Virginia welcome to all of our radio listeners as always and last week we had on an Frost it was probably one of the most listened to broadcasts that we have and folks I love to hear from our listeners and thank you to each of you who chose to to take the time and write emails to me I have not gotten as many emails and since we've done this show as I did this week and I would like to hear from you as well email John Gordon truth atgmailcom and I will read every email and I will respond to every email and that ladies and gentlemen is the truth now here is our interview with our special guest today the former Secretary of Commerce The Honorable Wilbur Ross today we are honored to have the former Secretary of Commerce under the Trump Administration The Honorable wilburt Ross is our guest today secretary Ross welcome to the truth thank you for having me on it is an honor and a privilege to be in your midst as always tell us a little bit about I mean I I read your bio and if if I were to read your bio there would be no time left for the interview so I'm going to skip reading it but invite you to tell us about your early life you have lived the American dream as well as anyone on that tell us about your Beginnings well grew up in a little town in New Jersey called North Bergen halfway between the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge my father was a local lawyer local elected official and my mother was a third grade school teacher at the public school that I attended well in those days being a public school teacher was a real uh position of esteem and um a a real service I remember every teacher I ever had mostly fondly well in those days it was interesting the union dues the teachers were unionized just as they are now but in those days most of the dues went through their pension fund over the years the union has offloaded the pensions onto the localities and the states so now a very very large portion of the dues goes for politics so you grew up in a small town in New Jersey you your your parents you were you were privileged to have two loving parents good role models and then that took you to Yale for your undergraduate degree and then you went to Harvard and got an NBA yes correct and so how did your how did you launch your career after that because I I I've I've noted that uh you have been recognized as one of the 50 most influential people in finance globally in the world so how how did you um you had a great Foundation to Spring from but how how did you enter your your business career and what what was the big break for you well I had been RC at Yale and I got deferral to go to business school then I had to go serve in the Army as an officer and that got me extended from 6 months to 18 months because it was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis so the employer a very go-o money manager called emry de that had hired me out of school let me have the deferral but then one week before I was scheduled to join him died and on his deathbed sold the firm to Bob Winford Robert Winford from the mf's family who had been a very good client so I changed jobs before before I even got there at least the tile winr decided after some sessions with our clients that he liked better being a client than being a manager so he sold the firm to wood strubs in Winford so now in my first month I changed jobs the second time didn't even change my seat but change jobs again and that turned out to be a great great Break um one of the things that we had had at D was a venture capital fund woodr is a very conservative firm didn't want that so they fired the people and made me an officer of it and my task for the next two years was to get them out of the fund so some of the companies were very good we sold them for a big price a lot of them needed workout and that's where I first learned a little bit about how you do distress workouts so it was a horrible beginning and that it was kind of frightening to have all that Chang in the beginning but it turned out to be a very good launching pth so for our audience you um were instrumental in the reorganization and the restructuring of PanAm Ewa Texico right these are some big names in iconic names in American Business what a phenomenal career so the thing that as I was reading about your your experiences you know you you took on some very big risk I mean if I understand it correctly you would identify a company that was in trouble and then you would go and buy a controlling interest maybe all of it not sure and then turn the company around yes that that was the latter phase in my early phase I was simply advising participants in the bankruptcy I see because what had happened in the 70s and very early 80s Mike milin invented the idea of creating deliberately highrisk high yield bonds and un could figure out that that was definitely going to lead to more bankruptcy so started organizing institutional investors to deal with that problem as a group rather than let themselves get picked off one by one but but the question that kept coming back to my mind was that when you talk about restructuring Vis companies as largest they have some really smart people working here sure what how could you develop a vision that would make this company sustainable when the current management was unable to do so well as companies have protracted problems they generally develop what I would call a losers mentality and when you go talk to them about well what's the nature of your problems they always point to some external factor C action litig against the union the Chinese whatever rather than focusing on what they can fix what's within their own domain so that's one thing is simply changing the attitude and looking at it with new eyes the second thing most of the times when people go bad it's because they overexpanded and overexpanded using debt as the financing once that has crystallized and made them a bankrupt company very hard for them to admit that that big decision was really grievously wrong and has to be reversed so often it's more a question of peeling away bits of the onion that never should have been there um and getting back to an original core now not every business is fixable but not a lot of them are did you ever buy any that you determined were not fixable did you take a b some some had to liquidate Drex buron itself was not fixable financial service companies are very very fragile businesses because they totally depend on investors is being confident in them so when Drexel went bad uh as a result of too many defaults in its jump B portfolio it was pretty clear it would have to be liquidated problem was most of the Securities that were in its multibillion dollar portfolio were Securities where it was was the main Market maker so now you no longer had the principal Market maker and that had very bad implications for the values so we had to figure out a way to keep an entity alive for long enough to let the bonds work out and find a decent level so once in a while as in the drexal case they're just not fixable so what was your crowning Miss achievement what what was the best when you look back over your career what are you most proud of in counil financial results the best deal was when I bought the business I had founded from rothr I worked for the Roth family for over 25 years and that's where I did most of the restructuring advisory where I I was in charge of global restructurings for the Roth TR group so uh in the latter part of the 25 years decided also to start a fund called the Rothchild Recovery Fund which would invest in in distress companies mostly in ones that we were not wanting to be the advisor because you couldn't be both the advisor and an investor that would be conflicts so any so we started this Fund in 1997 and by uh early 200000 for a lot of reasons I decided I didn't want to keep doing both The Advisory work and the investing that I preferred the investing um so I I ranged to buy the business from Roth I'd already owned a third of it my team owned a third they owned a third so it was really just buying out there third and that was a launch as an entrepreneur at 863 which was a brand when most people were getting ready to retire um but this was the opposite of retirement so the entire team joined me with we obviously had to change the name we couldn't use the Roth name so I modestly called The W Ross inco and the funds were called wlr recovery this wlr recovery that and over the years we about every 18 months would raise a new fund and eventually in 2006 I sold the business to invest a trillion doll uh money manager that had not been very much in alternative Investments so they wanted to broaden their Horizon of products that they offered to their clients so at WL Ross what was your crowning achievement what what what business did you buy turn around and the was that I think we had the most success with first of all was the steel industry bought be steel and a bunch of others and we created by far the lowest cost American producer we took the number of manh hours to make a ton of Steel down from six to 1 and a half so you can imagine how that transformed amazing the income statement the other thing and did you know that going into it was that your plan all oh yeah it was what happened the steel industry is a very cyclical business and was then just as happened again later very vulnerable to China China has had chronic overc capacity in the metals and invariably uses the export markets to absorb its excess well China's excess in those days was equal to the total steel production in the US 100 million tons so it was a huge complicating Factor but meanwhile because wages are so low in China and because there was such feather betting in the Union contract I called Leo Gerard who was the head of the United Steel Workers and said Leo these companies are operating within weeks or months of being liquidated and I'm willing to take them on put in some new capital but we need a nonconforming contract namely a contract will leave the wages the same that's not anything I'm going to fuss with because he fuss with wages to create morale problems so what we did do was do away with some of the work gr they had very very restrictive work R it was practically you can only pick up a red shovel and this other F can only pick up a white shovel they were pretty extreme so we did away with those and we did away with many of the job classifications job classification it means that's all you can have the fell do you can't have them do a task that's not detailed within the job classification so what did that mean steel making equipment is very huge in size can be half a billion dollars for one machine and can be a mile mile and a half long big heavy equipment and the usually doesn't need to be repaired because it's wellb built but the maintainers and The Operators each knew how to do the other's job however they weren't permitted to so for months the maintainers would sit around playing Pino and then the M Equipment would go out and then the operators would start playing pinle while the maintain fixed it so we did away with that and Al together we took 32 job classifications down to five W so there were only five different categories of workers and we excluded from the union the people who had nothing to do with steel the back office people people like that uh who were essential jobs but they didn't have to be Steel Workers with the steel worker contract so it worked out very very well so how many companies did you did you purchase and put five all together International skill U we did LTV we did willing Pittsburgh U we did acne we did bethleem so we did quite a few Bethlehem was the big one and um and how many for how many years did you then operate these companies operated that from for about three years and then merged it into metel steel MOX me metel had done in overseas markets pretty much what we had done in the US market and so we were both Outsiders into the industry both had built big businesses and we put the two together now we the more biggest Steel company except we have one missing link which was Western Europe so we then bought arcelor uh and that made arcelor theel and then we were the the main company so are are you following Ai and Robotics oh absolutely and and do you have a a sense of what that might do to the labor market and to the the global yes um it reminds me of 19th century England when you had the Le that was when the Brits were automating the textile industry at that point textiles were gigantic industry in in and the Lites were afraid of losing their jobs so they would go around to factories that might and destroy the equipment well turned out to be wrong idea the net effect of automation the net effect of increasing productivity has always been It ultimately creates more jobs than our loss the the definition of the jobs is what changes think about it when electronic data processing came in people were afraid of the same thing my God there'll be no more clerical workers well there are now more than there ever were it's just now they do coding they do other tasks it's a different kind of Labor a higher intellectual value added and I think that's what will be the ultimate outcome of AR so we're talking to secretary Wilber Ross who is an American entrepreneur and business person and he also served in president Trump's cabinet which we're going to get to in just a moment but he has authored a new book called risk and returns creating success in business and life so that is available in Amazon starting in August available on Amazon right now but it will will Beed I have ordered my copy be delivered to 10 10 so what what advice would you have for young people starting out today you know the this world is is a lot different than the one I grew up in and I have three sons and I watch them as they're trying to get a foothold and the traditional Paths of going to work for a company learning a craft learning a skill set and then building your career based on that seems to have the model has changed and I I watch a lot of young men really struggling and getting their career going and launch what if if you were a young man today how would you do it well I think several things first of all I think young people have to realize the only person who ultimately can hold them back in their career as themselves uh and it's time to come out of the safe [Music] room work hard take a few risks and try to turn hurdles into opportunities too many people now I think because of some failures in the school system which is probably different topic we should talk about but in any EV I think we are creating a generation of people with very very fragile personalities um some adversity comes and they run to a safe room and hide that that's not the way to build I totally agree with you I you know I remember growing up as a kid um life was hard and my dad served in World War II and his all of his relatives were farmers and I I just remember thinking that you know all my relatives were were farmers and and they were really tough guys sweet guys but tough guys and my wife and I I think to a fault wanted to make life for our children bur easier than maybe we had it and our ancestors had it I'm not sure it works I don't think you can protect people from life no you can't and um I think the other problem is we're not teaching kids the same fundamentals that we used to when I was in in public school and grammar school Reading Writing and arithmetic and and history and geography all those very fundamental things were the curriculum there wasn't all the sociological experimentation there wasn't a whole lot of stuff that has now come in and as a result it used to be the American educational system was a model for the whole world now in many categories we're 30th in the whole world 30th how can you be the number one country going forward if you're 30th in educational standing in fundamentals well I would predict that we won't be and that that leads us to the next chapter and that is your life in public service yeah how did you get the call well um Strangely I started out Life as a Democrat my my mother was a Democrat atic County committee women in New Jersey for I guess our whole anal life and my father was a local elected official so when I first started working in New York uh I naturally gravitated for Democratic politics and in fact when I was 29 I became the treasur of the New York state democratic committee so I was quite involved in the you were a credential Democrat well I don't know about credential credential a tricky word nowadays so what what changed your mind well over time I think what really happened is the Democratic party that existed then is not the Democratic party that exists today uh it's gotten off into a lot of Direction that I totally disagree with and principally the direction that they had seen to be taking is the solution to all problems is government I don't feel that way I feel instead that the cause of a lot of problems is actually government so I think their whole bias toward only looking at governmental Solutions was simply wrong so how did you get the call for president Trump to be what what led you to that well one of the big bankruptcies that we did when I was doing the advisory side was the Trump Taj Mahal bankruptcy um Merl lynchin bar sterin had underwritten $800 million of bonds for the construction of the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City uh their client was Donald Trump he was the main partner in the Venture and it was at enormous cost overruns and in fact never paid a coupon as you know in public bonds coupons are payable every six months well they never paid the first coupon so the bond holders hired me to be their advisor to try to straighten this out and get them recovery and so that's when I met Donald Trump so it was under very adverse circumstances but we developed a very healthy respect for each other and interestingly at the time the biggest Bond holder was Carl icon and both Carl and I came out of it sufficiently impressed with Trump that we later supported him in his presidential candidacy so it started from an adversarial position became one of a degree of respect and then uh active participation in his campaign I I wrote quite a few editorials during his campaign and um had quite a few debates that leftwing think tanks public debates with the other side um my big interest was in the commercial aspects of it of of government and of the economy so uh that was what ultimately LED them to select me so you were talking about paying the coupon on the bonds for the Taj Mahal and as you were talking about that the thought raced into my brain that I worry about our ability as a country to pay the coupon on us treasuries I I had breakfast with the president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve a few years ago and I asked him about the national debt and the the my concern was that there seems to be no resolve to stop the Absurd out of control spending then or now and what he said to me was don't worry as long as the national debt does not exceed 75% of GDP we'll be fine and that was about 10 years ago and correct me if I'm wrong but I think the national debt today is like 113% yes of our GDP it's like it exceeds the G so you're a bankruptcy specialist you're an economist are we in trouble and when when do we get the toing point well there's an old saying about bankruptcy how long does it take bankruptcy to develop and it goes very very slowly at first and then it happens all of a sudden the key is no government actually ever really repays its debt there's no government in the world almost every government operates at a deficit and that's been true I think anybody who describes himself or herself as being self-made is flattering themselves everybody has had help on the way up it's a question of how do you get people to help you how how do you benefit from the knowledge that they have and the relationships that they have but mostly in my case it's been as you face obstacles how do you overcome them and how do you turn them into opportunities and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't work that's the other thing people have to understand that just because something didn't work out doesn't mean you're a failure it just means you better learn something from it go on to do something that works better the next time and I think that resiliency is something that used to be very characteristic of the American persona and I feel we've lost some of it so as I said at the very beginning I think people have to realize the only person who ultimately can keep you from success is yourself and on that note thank you so much for coming on the truth today thank you joh it's been a complete pleasure and privilege good to talk with you John thank you