transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hello, and welcome back to The Signal Sitdown. I'm your host, Bradley Devlin. And I know we've been gone a few weeks creating a new look for the show, and a whole bunch of other exciting things we're very excited to show you. But we haven't missed much, right? Not much has happened in Washington for the past few weeks. And that's not a joke about the Senate's Easter vacation either. Even when they're on vacation, our elected officials find wonderful ways to make their way into the headlines. Just ask Lindsey Graham and his bubble wand. But the last two weeks have been especially crazy for the House of Representatives, as three different members have announced their resignations. First, it was Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat of California, who, because of pretty heinous sexual assault and misconduct allegations, went from the frontrunner among the Democrats in the California gubernatorial primary to resigning his House seat in the span of a single weekend. Then there was Congressman Tony Gonzalez, a Republican from Texas, who resigned his seat while under an Ethics Committee investigation involving an alleged sexual relationship between himself and a former staffer. And that former staffer tragically committed suicide. And then on Tuesday, Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned her seat just hours before the Ethics Committee was expected to render a recommendation on her expulsion from Congress. Without her resignation, an expulsion vote was expected to be brought to the floor later this week. And the Ethics Committee investigation wasn't even her biggest problem. Last year, the DOJ indicted the now former Congresswoman. And the criminal indictment accused McCormick of stealing $5 million of FEMA funds from the American taxpayer. And frankly, her resignation shocked me. Under the threat of the Ethics Committee and the DOJ, she spent a long time sticking it out. She had subjected herself to a public hearing on her alleged misdeeds. The committee found her guilty of 25 different ethics violations. And when things get this hot for a member of Congress, they typically pack it up and go home. Former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. comes to mind, right? So McCormick was fighting this and she was fighting it hard. And the answer is why? Maybe she was hoping that she could at least hold her seat after the Ethics Committee fallout because it takes a vote of two-thirds on the House floor to expel a member, but we can't say that for sure. And that doesn't address the other 500-bound gorilla in the room, the DOJ's criminal indictment. The fight she mounted, years long, dating back to when this all began in like 2023, isn't the only thing that makes her resignation more interesting, in my opinion, than Swalwell's or Gonzalez's. What public documents allege, from the Office of Congressional Ethics to the House Ethics Committee to the DOJ, is a fraud scheme that takes advantage of the federal and state bureaucracy and its DEI policies to attain and then prop up people with political power. It's not your run-of-the-mill sex scandal or like used to those at this point. This is something bigger. So what McCormick is accused of doing is worth some reflection and it's worth getting to the bottom of exactly what this is and then wondering how widespread it might be through all levels of government. So, let's get back to the beginning. Sheila McCormick ran in a 2022 special election to replace the deceased Congressman Alcee Hastings. She tried and failed to primary Hastings in 2018 and 2020, but when Hastings died in early April 2021, McCormick had another opportunity and won in that special election race. She's re-elected in the 2022 midterms later that year, but before the end of her first term, she's already in hot water with the Office of Congressional Conduct. In September of 2023, the Office unanimously submitted a referral to the House Ethics Committee to more thoroughly investigate McCormick. The report has expanded since the initial 2023 release, but you can go read it. It's 45 pages with over 500 pages of exhibits following the money trail, where it was going, where it came from. They had been working on that report since April of 2023. One explosive allegation in the report is that McCormick routed nearly $270,000 through a state political action committee to her campaign apparatus. According to the referral, McCormick set up a Florida-limited liability company, SCM Consulting Group, LLC, in March of 2021. She was the sole owner and registered agent of SCM Consulting, the referral says, and that in SMC's articles of an organization, McCormick represented that the purpose of SCM Consulting Group, LLC, is for business and health care counseling. The referral claims that between May 3rd, 2021 and November 12th, 2021, SCM Consulting made 30 reported payments totaling $269,424.69 to Leadership in Action, a state PAC registered with the State of Florida's Division of Elections. While Leadership in Action PAC had someone named Maria Isabel Garcia Del Rio listed as its leader, the investigation claimed that a man named Mark Goodrich was functionally responsible for the PAC. And from the inception of the PAC in 2019, up until that point, Goodrich had received payments, quote, totaling nearly $300,000, end quote. At the same time, Goodrich was also the head honcho of McCormick's campaigns. This is what it says, quote, Although an individual named Willis P. Howard officially held the title of Campaign Manager with respect to Rep McCormick's campaigns, Mark Goodrich appears to have actually managed the campaigns, end quote. The referral claimed this according to multiple witnesses, and leadership in action allegedly went on to provide McCormick's campaigns with goods and services. And these goods and services ranged from campaign banners to studio rentals, all sorts of stuff. But the report couldn't nail down if this was personal funds coming from McCormick and then therefore subject to federal campaign contribution limits, or if this was an entity providing that money. Right before all of this money is sloshing around McCormick's political apparatus, by the way, McCormick got a whole lot richer. Here's what the report says, In 2020, Rep. Cherfilus McCormick earned a self-reported $86,000 salary from Trinity Healthcare Services, a company started by her parents in 1994. Her earned income in 2020 consisted of this salary as well as her husband's salary from McCormick Law Firm, LLC. Rep. Cherfilus McCormick reported liabilities during this time, student loan debt, amounted to $150,002 to $350,000. But between 2020 and 2021, McCormick's income increased by more than $6 million. She still got the $86,000 from Trinity Health Care Services, but her self-reported income showed her raking in cash from a bunch of different entities owned by herself and her family. She said she made over $5.7 million from SCM Consulting for consulting fees and profit sharing fees received for work for Trinity Health Care Services, Inc. She also got $500,000 from EC Firm LLC for consulting fees and profit sharing fees received for work for Trinity Health Care Services, Inc. EC Firm LLC is based in Florida, and the representative, the former representative, owns a 50% interest in that LLC, but the manager and registered agent of EC Firm LLC is Edwin Cherfilus, Rep Cherfilus-McCormick's brother. Then she got another $111,720 from Trinity Health Care Services for consulting fees. At the time, the Sun Sentinel reported that McCormick quote, has said that almost all of that money represented years of profit sharing that she was owed by the company, Trinity Health Care Services, end quote. And so there's these allegations and there's so much more in the Office of Congressional Conduct's referral to the Ethics Committee. And the Ethics Committee gets this referral and starts to go about its work in late 2023 and into 2024 and 2025. It keeps going because the Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics continues to find more potential violations. So we have money from SCM Consulting going to Leadership and Action Pact, the de facto manager of the PAC and McCormick's campaign is the same guy. And so then we have McCormick's wealth, self-reportedly, exploding from 2020 to 2021 with more than $6 million coming in from Trinity Health Care Services, an EC firm and all these other firms that her family owns. And then in November, the DOJ indictment, after it's presented to a grand jury in Miami, drops. And here's part of what the press release announcing the indictment said. Quote, a federal grand jury in Miami has returned an indictment charging Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and several co-defendants with stealing federal disaster funds, laundering the proceeds and using the money to support her 2021 congressional campaign. According to the indictment, Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, 51, both of Miramar worked through their family health care company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021. In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds. The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to steal that $5 million and routed it through multiple accounts to disguise its source. Prosecutors allege that a substantial portion of the misappropriated funds was used as campaign contributions to Cherfilus-McCormick's 2021 congressional campaign and for the personal benefit of the defendants. The release also said that if convicted, she could face 53 years in prison. Now, let's get into detail. The Statement of Alleged Violations released by the House Ethics Committee in December 2025, a month after the indictment, does a great job of laying all this out. So, McCormick self-reports as the CEO of Trinity Health Care Services LLC from 2010 until January 18, 2022, when she enters Congress. On November 30th of 2020, McCormick created Essential Community Health, Inc. ECH. The Articles of Incorporation claim ECH is a, quote, coalition of women dedicated to combating health inequality through service and advocacy, end quote. The Ethics Committee report adds that, quote, despite publicly portraying itself as a non-profit, ECH did not obtain tax-absent status from the Internal Revenue Service, end quote. The report goes on to claim that on February 24th, 2021, McCormick submitted a proposal for ECH to join Florida's COVID vaccination registration program run by the Florida Division of Emergency Management, FDEM. Here's part of what the letter says. It says ECH has a partnership with its parent company, Trinity Healthcare Services, and that, quote, both entities are owned and operated by black women and seat more than 12 women of color on their board of directors, end quote. The letter also adds, quote, we have access to a diverse pool of employees, 1,200 to 2,000 employees throughout Broward and Dade counties, end quote. FDEM accepts McCormick's pitch on March 4th, 2021, and shortly thereafter, on March 11th, Edwin Cherfilus, Sheila's brother, starts EC firm, LLC, you know, the firm that gave Sheila McCormick $500,000, and then on March 12th, Sheila registers SCM consulting. Over the course of FDEM's partnership with Trinity, it overpaid by $5.7 million. With the overpayments, it paid out $14.3 million to Trinity and ECH, but they were paying it directly to Trinity. The largest single overpayment to Trinity was approximately $5 million. The invoice was for $50,578.50. FDEM sent Trinity $5,057,850. Little bit of an overpayment. A hundred times more, actually. The report says, quote, ...more than half of the funds that were received by Trinity pursuant to the FDEM contract were disbursed to respondent and her family members, end quote, respondent being Representative McCormick. The report adds, quote, ...Trinity's payroll records for the FDEM contract indicate that in 2021 SCM Consulting was paid $6,399,936.96. EC Firm received $800,894.91, end quote. And additionally, McCormick was paid $111,720 directly. You know, the exact amount that she got from that additional Trinity Consulting money in 2021 when she submitted her massively increased income. The Statement of Alleged Violations released by the Investigation Subcommittee in late January 2026 brought 27 counts of alleged violations against McCormick. The counts included campaign finance-related violations, disclosure violations, and violations relating to the use of official resources. And we've done a deep dive on McCormick's income, allegedly stemming heavily from the contract Trinity had with FDEM and the LLCs that were allegedly used as pass-throughs to send money to campaigns. And Count 15 in the report describes this activity as, quote, money laundering. Here's what it says, quote, Trinity received millions of dollars in funds from FDEM, to which it was not entitled. Respondent and Mr. Cherfilus caused those funds to be transferred to various bank accounts at Financial Institution 1 and Financial Institution 2 in their names and their company's names. Those funds were then transferred to Respondent's campaign bank accounts at Financial Institution 1 or used by Respondent and Mr. Cherfilus on personal or campaign expenses. By engaging in the conduct described above, Respondent failed to uphold the laws and regulations of the United States. In late March, the Ethics Committee found McCormick guilty of 25 of the 27 counts, including count number 15, which we just read. While McCormick resigned, and so she won't be expelled from Congress by a vote, she still has that indictment from the DOJ to deal with, and a trial is set for early next year. But what's laid out in these accusations, these documents from the House Ethics Committee, the Office of Congressional Conduct, and the DOJ is a pretty compelling picture of what happened. It's a plot that took advantage of DEI policies at the federal and state bureaucracy level to attain and then prop up people with political power. Congressman Greg Steube was one of the primary drivers for pushing for transparency and accountability in McCormick's case. And if McCormick didn't resign, this congressman was going to force a vote on McCormick's expulsion on the House floor come hell or high water. He joined The Signal Sitdown on Tuesday, not 10 minutes after McCormick announced she was resigning. And he takes us inside the saga that led to McCormick's downfall. We hope you enjoy. Before we get into this week's interview on The Signal Sitdown, ring that bell to get notifications on future Signal Sitdown content. Hit that like and subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever you may be joining us. And then while you're at it, please leave us a five-star review and comment who you'd like to see on a future episode of The Signal Sitdown. Remember, it's your government, it's your country, and together, we're taking it back. Without further ado, here's the interview. Congressman Greg Steube, welcome to The Signal Sitdown.

Speaker 2:
[17:59] Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
[18:00] So we have some breaking news. We're recording this Tuesday, and I'm so glad I'm talking to you. I'm gonna read this statement from Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick. She has resigned upon a big reveal from the House Ethics Committee, and she seems like she's getting out ahead of what they were gonna drop. So she says, this was not a fair process. The Ethics Committee refused my new attorney's reasonable request for time to prepare my defense. By going forward with this process, while a criminal indictment is pending, the committee prevented me from defending myself. I will not stand by and pretend that this has been anything other than a witch hunt. I simply cannot stand by and allow my due process rights to be trampled on and my good name be tarnished. Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away so that I can devote my time to fighting for my neighbors in Florida's 20th District. I hereby resign from the 119th Congress effective immediately. There's still more to that statement. But your response?

Speaker 2:
[18:57] Well, my response is what a lie. She actually had the opportunity to go through a trial unlike Santos did. She's had two years. For two years, the Ethics Committee hasn't been investigating her. She was indicted on 15 felony charges in December, which is when I filed the resolution to have her expelled. For her to say that she has not gotten due process, for her to say she hasn't had a fair trial is just complete and absolute lie. She's had all of that. They had a trial. Mind you, the Ethics Committee is the only truly bipartisan committee in Congress. There's five Republicans and five Democrats. For her to say that, it's just a slap in the face to the institution. She needs to be reflective of the crimes that she's been, 25 ethics violations she's been found guilty of, and the 15 felonies that she's been charged with. I think it's smart for her to resign. She should have done it after the indictment. She put, I think, in the amount of work that the Ethics Committee had to do to go through this process, and the time that was consumed from it. But that's just completely not accurate. I'm glad she's not in the house anymore. She doesn't deserve to be here. And hopefully now, she will now be tried by a jury of her peers in the Southern District of Florida.

Speaker 1:
[20:09] Okay, so this is where people get a little confused. There is the ethics side of this, and then the actual criminal side of this. And this is all, both sides, had been going on for over a year. Years, years, from at least the first ethics complaints emerge in mid to late 2023. So you were one of the main voices in the House saying, this person is a crook, she should not be in the House of Representatives, and she probably shouldn't even be on the street, she might as well, she might deserve a jail cell. When did you first, you said you became aware of this after the indictment, but when you looked into this, what did you find from the ethics side and from the criminal side?

Speaker 2:
[20:49] Here's what's so offensive as a Floridian. My district's been hit by six hurricanes in two years, and my constituents rely upon FEMA funds to be able to just restore their livelihood after their entire house was destroyed in a hurricane. And to have a member of the Florida delegation steal $5 million from FEMA, from the taxpayers in the great state of Florida is truly offensive to not just the American people, but to Floridians in general. So after the indictment hit, alleging and detailing the evidence of these 15 counts, which is significant, in my opinion, as a lawyer, and her refusal to resign, I immediately filed the resolution to have her expelled. The Ethics Committee told me that they've been investigating her for two years. Shortly after the indictment, they released their report that detailed not just the felonious activity as it relates to the FEMA funds, but the ethics violations that she has committed. 27 were alleged, 25 she was found guilty on through the process. I've been very respective of the process, which is why her allegation that she didn't get due process is complete and absolute absurdity because she was afforded all of that. They had a trial, she was represented by counsel, she even had delays in the trial that she had requested. And this is, she resigned five minutes before the last hearing that was going to determine and recommend to the full house what her punishment should be.

Speaker 1:
[22:13] And it seemed like she was really committed to sticking it out. And that was, I think, surprised to a lot of people, right? There's folks like Duncan Hunter and Jesse Jackson Jr., they decided to resign before the House Ethics Committee. Yeah, because it's very rare, like there's this partial process where you're really close, days away potentially, from a vote on the house floor to expel you for then someone to throw up their hand.

Speaker 2:
[22:36] Yeah, because in most instances, if you resign, the House Ethics Committee loses jurisdiction of you because you are no longer a member of the House, and then you can deal with whatever on the criminal side that she has to deal with. But you would, yeah, most people would have resigned after the indictment. But here we are, and five minutes before the final hearing, she decided to resign. But I think she just didn't want to put her Democratic colleagues who were having to decide between voting for her expulsion, which is what the American people support, or that could be a real challenging political issue in the midterms.

Speaker 1:
[23:13] And you've been up here for a few years. What type of training do members of Congress receive to avoid these types of campaign violations? I mean, I imagine every single political outfit has a dozen lawyers making sure you're staying on the up and up. Is this an oversight? Or is this something that happens intentionally? That there has to be people turning the other way?

Speaker 2:
[23:37] Yes. I mean, she stole $5 million. I mean, this isn't something that you even needed training on to know that it's illegal to steal money from the American people. And yeah, we have extensive ethics training when you first get elected. For myself personally, when we file financial reports, which a lot of the crimes was, she stole the $5 million, laundered the money through different LLCs affiliated with her family, and then put $2 million into her campaign account, which is a significant fraud. And you know that you can't do that. And so we have, like when I go through my process, I have, we pay accountants to go through it and file the report for us so that it's kind of separate. You know, they can advise us if something doesn't look right or if there's an issue that needs to be resolved. But you can't tell me that she didn't know that stealing $5 million from FEMA wasn't a crime.

Speaker 1:
[24:24] Right. And especially the three-card Monte, the shell game that she was playing to make sure that she hid it.

Speaker 2:
[24:29] To hide it, yeah. To hide the money.

Speaker 1:
[24:31] How, I mean, obviously fraud has really been in the news for the last six months now. How widespread do you think this is in Washington? Do you think she's alone or do you think there's more people?

Speaker 2:
[24:41] Well, as it relates to this, she's definitely alone. I mean, there's never been in the history of our country a member of Congress stealing $5 million in FEMA. But you have other instances, Henry Cuellar was indicted and then Trump pardoned him. You have what I think you're going to see based on what's being reported on Swalwell with the allegations in that. That's criminal in nature. I guess the Manhattan DA is going to be investigating that and the LA DA is going to be investigating the allegations there. But at least he resigned as soon as those allegations came out. I just, you know, the good thing in the Constitution is we're beholden to our voters every two years. And it's not fun having to run for re-election every two years, but it's the opportunity for the voters to hold us accountable. And if we're not doing our job, or we're not doing what we should be doing, or we're violating ethics rules, then people have the ability to kick us out.

Speaker 1:
[25:34] Some of your colleagues were a little bit more skeptical on pushing this really hard. Saying, oh, you know, let's not rock the boat, let's not do anything bold. You were out there saying, I actually do not care where we end up with the House Ethics Committee. I want to make sure that this comes to the floor and we get a vote on that. Why was that so important?

Speaker 2:
[25:55] Even today, you know, even today with the hearing happening today, I had reporters asking me, well, let's say the ethics doesn't come back with expulsion, they come back with censorship, are you still going to ask for expulsion? I said, absolutely, because she was found guilty of 25 different ethics violations. And then you have the indictments of the stealing $5 million in FEMA funds. Absolutely, I'm going to bring the expulsion forward regardless of what ethics does. But I respected the process. I let it work itself out. It's just unfortunate that she clearly intentionally delayed this for as long as humanly possible.

Speaker 1:
[26:29] If if we were in a different situation where she didn't resign and that vote came to the floor.

Speaker 2:
[26:36] It was going to come tomorrow.

Speaker 1:
[26:37] It was going to come tomorrow.

Speaker 2:
[26:39] All right.

Speaker 1:
[26:39] That's good. What do you think Democrats do?

Speaker 2:
[26:42] What do you think the vote tally is? I think so you need to two thirds to cut somebody out. I think we easily would have gotten that. Even AOC was on video saying she needed to be expelled. I think maybe a handful of people that just are friends with her, that they wouldn't or they'd vote present. I bet you'd see a lot of that on their side. But at the end of the day, if someone with this type of behavior who did have due process, who had a trial, who was found guilty on 25 different ethics violations, if they are not held accountable and expelled from this institution, then we shouldn't have an ethics committee in Congress because there's no freaking point in having them. If there's no actual resolution for the investigations that they do.

Speaker 1:
[27:25] So if you were in a situation where Democrats actually joined on to this, what does that say about the internal dynamics of the Democrat Party right now? Do you think the Democrat Party is loaded with these types of grifters who see how the left-wing money network's worth and they want, how the left-wing money network works and wants to take a bite out of this and decide that up here is the place to do it? I mean, what does that say about the internal dynamics of the Democrat Party?

Speaker 2:
[27:55] Well, ultimately, it'd become a political issue for them. I mean, if you're a Democrat in a Trump district and you voted not to kick her out after all of the evidence and all of the trial and all of the information that's before the American people, I have a feeling that Republicans are gonna make that an election issue for you in your prime or in your general election in November. And that could be very problematic for people in tough races. And so if they start losing Democrats in tough races, voting to expel if we were brought to a vote, I think the majority of their conference would have voted for it.

Speaker 1:
[28:27] Of course, she isn't the only member of Congress who's resigned recently. Representative Gonzalez recently resigned. Representative Swalwell resigned, as you mentioned. Is this, do you think this is a new era of accountability from the House GOP? What precedent do you think these resignations set moving forward?

Speaker 2:
[28:45] Yeah, I mean, I bet if you look in the history of Congress, there's never been a time where three members of Congress resigned within two weeks, well, within a week of each other. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot more accountability to what's going on. And then, based on how quick news moves now through social media and platforms like yours, there's a lot of accountability because the information is out there very quickly. Unlike, you know, whether The Wall Street Journal is going to choose to report on X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 1:
[29:13] Right. The statement can drop and we can be on a podcast ten minutes later.

Speaker 2:
[29:17] Yeah. So things move much quicker in today's political world. So yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:23] Okay. Changing topics, because we're less than 60 days away from a really big deal. It's bragging rights for the whole year. It's the congressional baseball.

Speaker 2:
[29:32] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[29:33] You're less than 60 days away. Republicans are on a five-year win streak. I think five games in a row, we've won. Correct me if I'm wrong. How are we feeling 60 days out?

Speaker 2:
[29:41] Feeling good. I got a scrimmage tonight against the cops. We always play the Capitol Police, which is good because they're quite frankly better than the Democrats. So it's a good opportunity to flex some batting skills and to pitch against other people. So yeah. I mean, the team's the same. We don't have any changes. I think the approach from a baseball perspective will be the same. We'll pitch probably five and three-quarter innings. And then Flu Girl come in, he usually relieves. And Pat Harrigan relieved for I think one inning last year too. Last year was a blowout. It was like 31 to something. So instead of having a mercy rule, the Nats have told us at 10 o'clock, we're turning the lights off. So whatever the score is when we turn the lights off is what it's going to be. But last year we finished before them because it was so lopsided. That's a lot of fun, you know, 250 years of our country.

Speaker 1:
[30:37] That's what I want to ask, like, what's it like?

Speaker 2:
[30:38] Last year was 34,000 people. Most major leaguers will probably never have an opportunity to play baseball from 34,000 people in a professional stadium. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:
[30:49] And there's a lot of history to it, too. This is not just an advent.

Speaker 2:
[30:52] Since 1908, I think, is the date that they started playing.

Speaker 1:
[30:54] So you get out there with the signed MAGA hat, out on the bump.

Speaker 2:
[30:58] Yeah. So last year, we all had MAGA hats. Previously, I was the only one that would wear it on the field.

Speaker 1:
[31:05] Well, now it's a litmus test, right?

Speaker 2:
[31:07] Now, with Trump in office, we all had MAGA hats. We had special MAGA hats that they created. So we were all wearing.

Speaker 1:
[31:13] Booger is the real deal.

Speaker 2:
[31:14] I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:
[31:14] This guy is the real deal.

Speaker 2:
[31:16] Starting pitcher. Yeah, there's another baseball player.

Speaker 1:
[31:18] Are you playing this year? And you're playing the police tonight? And you're playing the police?

Speaker 2:
[31:24] All right.

Speaker 1:
[31:25] That's Senator Schmidt.

Speaker 2:
[31:26] Yeah, Schmidt can hit the ball.

Speaker 1:
[31:27] Yeah, I was sitting next to a few of Schmidt's family members and a few Flugers' family members last year, and the kids were just heckling as the Democrats hard. It was awesome. And I saw you hit a dinger in Nats Park a few years ago. It was two years ago now?

Speaker 2:
[31:43] Yeah, the only person in the history of the game to hit one out of a Major League Stadium. Well, you know, when it happens, you're just kind of like, did that really just happen? Last year, I hit one on a ground rule double out center. So it bounced and went over and I got a second base. I was like, did that go out? And he's like, no. It hit the warning track and then went out. I was like, oh, man. But there's a lot of pressure because they won't pitch to me anymore. They don't throw me anything anywhere near the zone. Last year, I think I had three walks. I was hit by a pitch. So you don't even get the opportunity to really hit, which is unfortunate because that's what people want to see.

Speaker 1:
[32:14] That's what people want to see.

Speaker 2:
[32:17] Next year, we'll have Mark Teixeira, former MLB New York Yankee World Series champ. So the Democrats probably won't even pitch to him. They'll just intentionally walk him to first base every time he's at bat. But it's for charity, we raised a record amount last year. I think it was like 3 million for charities in the DC metro area. And it's a lot of fun. So if you can't make it up to the game, you can watch on Fox Sports June 10th.

Speaker 1:
[32:39] Definitely worth watching. Always a ton of fun. Final question for you. Score prediction.

Speaker 2:
[32:45] This year? Well, that's tough. Last year was like 31 to 11. Let's say, I'll say 21. Well, let's shut them out this year. We had a shutout two years ago. I got the mantra, shutout Stoobie. So let's do a shutout. Let's say 21 to nothing. All right. That's what we're calling it.

Speaker 1:
[33:00] Shutout Stoobie. Thanks for joining The Signal Sitdown.

Speaker 2:
[33:02] Anytime.

Speaker 1:
[33:07] Thank you so much for tuning in to The Signal Sitdown. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to hit like and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever before you go. And we love your feedback. It really does help the show. So please remember to leave us a review and comment who you'd like to see on future episodes of The Signal Sitdown. It's because of your support and your interest and your engagement that allows us to continue this incredibly fun work. And together, we'll continue to expose how Washington really works and affect real change. We'll see you next time on The Signal Sitdown.