Weird News Weekend Around KC and the Country, Callers React and BIG Payout for Resigned Police Chief | 9-28-26

Mundo in the Morning - KCMO Talk Radio 95.7FM & 710 AM

The episode covers a wide range of regional and national news, primarily focusing on the intense political battle in Kansas between Adam Hamil

Key takeaways

• Adam Hamilton's campaign released an ad alleging Roger Marshall profited from medical debt, which hosts describe as effective but factually nuanced.
• Former Independence Police Chief Adam Dustman has received approximately $192,000 in severance pay following his resignation.

Main topics

• Kansas Senate Race
• Political Advertising Controversy

Notable quotes

Do you want to live in a state, in a country where you can just be absolved of all of your debt?

Conclusion

The episode highlights the growing tension between political campaigni

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) What a weird and busy weekend. You know, it's one of those Mondays I come in here and I've talked about this with Keatsman privately. I don't love Mondays because I'm never exactly sure where to start because sometimes the weekends are just dead. Well, this is the opposite kind of Monday. I'm sitting here at 6.04 in Kansas City thinking, where do I Speaker 1 (0:25) want to start? Where can we go? Do we go to the Missouri maps finally Speaker 4 (0:29) getting shot down? You're going to be voting in the 2022 maps. Do you talk about what was a weird weekend for the Republican Party? The Chiefs win. The Royals get a win on their final game of the season. Congrats to Denny Matthews on his 8,000th Royals broadcast on Friday night. Speaker 4 (0:47) But we got to start with the lightning rod right now in the regional news cycle. And that is none other than. Pastor Adam Hamilton, who dropped an explosive 30-second commercial on Friday that you may have seen. Maybe you didn't. I saw it over the weekend. I saw it first on social media. Then I saw it over the weekend, and I was like, okay, okay, I see where this is going. He's all in, man. Take a listen. I'm Adam Speaker 8 (1:15) Hamilton, and I approve this message. Speaker 5 (1:17) One evening, I see lights. I open the door, and it's a police officer. They arrested me because I didn't make a $50 payment to Roger Marshall. I was eight months pregnant, and I said, please do not handcuff me in front of my two-year-old daughter. Roger Marshall preyed on the low-income families of Kansas. The health care system is broken, but not for Roger Marshall. He's absolutely profiting from it. Speaker 4 (1:46) So I shared this on social media on Friday, and I couldn't believe that some people thought I was sharing this as like Speaker 1 (1:54) a, go get them, Adam. Nice job. Mark's shaking his head in disgust. I got multiple direct messages from people saying, why are you sharing this ad and why are you supporting it? Well, actually, what I did is I shared some of the background. on the individual in that ad. And that individual, regardless of how you feel or whether or not you agree or disagree with medical debt collection, this was not a situation where somebody was blindsided with no opportunity to respond. That's not what happened here. Okay? There are multiple collection cases Speaker 4 (2:39) involving this individual. That's number one. And then the second part of it, so I initially, I admit, and I share this on my social media pages on X and Facebook, I grabbed this individual's incorrect. Speaker 4 (2:55) uh case involving the same person who had not paid multiple medical practices over the years so do with that information what you want now on top of that you know you hear the ad there where the person notes it's a 50 payment to roger marshall and the cops showed up at my house and they arrested me eight months pregnant now marshall's campaign disputed this they pointed out and they looked at the documents from the case which we shared on social media on friday that shows The debt the patient owed was $3,600, not 50 bucks. And it goes on to note that a judge ordered that this individual, Misha, appear before the court before she had failed to appear in court 16 times in Speaker 1 (3:40) a three-year period. Speaker 1 (3:43) That's some of the background of Speaker 4 (3:45) this story. Now, Marshall's campaign is also arguing that the woman could not have been arrested for failing to pay her bills because Kansas law states, quote, no person shall be Speaker 1 (3:55) imprisoned for debt except in cases of fraud. So that backstory matters. And the question is. Speaker 4 (4:05) Do you want to live in a state, in a country where you can just be absolved of all of your debt? And I know that in some cases you Speaker 1 (4:12) can when you declare bankruptcy. But as we sit here right now at 608 on a Monday morning. Is this really the indictment on Roger Marshall that some people make it out to be? Well, I'll be honest. It can be because far more people are going to see that ad than are going to have some of the information on the backstory of the ad. That's just how it goes. So, yes, it can be a wildly successful ad against Roger Marshall. I think that that's indisputable. The question is, what does he have in his back pocket? I saw some of the ads last night, and they were Speaker 4 (4:49) referring to Roger Marshall, or excuse me, Pastor Adam, as, you know, the woke megachurch CEO who has multiple homes. And, you know, they were highlighting some of the issues as they see it within Church of the Resurrection. That's some of what I saw from Roger Marshall last night when I was just watching, I think it was like Sunday Night Football and just flipping around Fox and some of the other channels. Is that going to be enough? I Speaker 1 (5:15) mean, it should be. In a state that he rolled by double digits six years ago, that Trump rolled by double digits two years ago, it should be enough. Like, even though I think Adam Hamilton's run a damn effective race for a Democrat who has not won Speaker 4 (5:32) in this state in nearly, or yeah, nearly 100 years, 1932, Roger Marshall should still Speaker 1 (5:39) win. But Adam Hamilton is making him sweat. Now, Why are we sitting here talking about Roger Marshall having to sweat it out? Not necessarily because of anything that Roger Marshall has done or not done, but more because of what continue to be self-inflicted wound after self-inflicted wound within the Republican Party. I mean, that is just an indisputable conclusion to come to based on the last few weeks. OK, you can't sit here and convince me in any way, shape or form that the Republican Party has not made blunder after blunder after blunder and largely been out of touch with the people that got them elected. And the people that ultimately delivered them, the White House and every single swing state in 2024, cared about the cost of living, Speaker 4 (6:34) cared about the fact that they felt like their kids, if they were older adults, would never be able to afford a home. They felt like the American dream was slowly slipping out of reach. And my question for the Republican Speaker 1 (6:47) Party is, what have they done to change that? Yes, they extended those Trump tax cuts. That's great. I mean, that big, beautiful bill. Yeah, very solid. Yes, they've closed the border. No doubt about it. Those are two big wins. But where else are you going right now? You got mortgage rates that continue to tick up. You Speaker 4 (7:09) got gasoline sitting at $4.50 for a war no one can really grasp as to why we're still in this thing to begin with. I mean, there are a lot of questions within the GOP as to what exactly they're doing. Speaker 1 (7:22) And now you've got this over the weekend. I saw the headline poll sweating. GOPers are pouring money into battleground states after grim outlook for both the House and the Senate. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is hoping its latest $46 million spend can hold back a potential Democratic tsunami. Speaker 1 (7:46) You've got Republicans scrambling everywhere, says West Virginia Senator Jim Justice. Well, speaking of Jim Justice, I mean, I never talked about this guy before. He's out of West Virginia, right? Jim Justice, I mean, you want to talk about a let him eat cake moment from a guy like Jim Justice? He shared this on Friday, and I was like, this can't be real. Jim Justice, who I'm reading from this story in the New York Post about how the Republicans. are basically sweating out the midterms. The guy shared a video of his dog's birthday party and his dog being paraded through the United States Senate. And this is what it sounded like. Speaker 7 (8:31) Happy birthday, dear baby dog. Happy birthday to you. Wow. Look at this. Look at all the attendees for baby dog's birthday party. Speaker 1 (8:51) You're paying $4.50 for gas. U.S. Senator Jim Justice is worth half a billion dollars, and he's throwing a public party for his dog in the hallways of the U.S. Senate, which has worked 12 days in the month of September. I mean, these guys are completely feckless, out of touch, and having another one of their let-em-eat-cake moments, as far as I'm concerned. This is absolutely pathetic. And then I'm reading this quote from Jim Justice in the New York Post being like, Yeah, boy, Republicans are scrambling. We've done all kinds of great stuff, but we're tone deaf in a lot of ways. Bro, look at your own social media. You got your dog being paraded around the hallways of the U.S. Senate, and you're like, oh, I don't know why people think we're out of touch. Oh, dude. Speaker 1 (9:41) I mean, this is the kind of stuff where I say, do these people want to win? Or do they like being in the minority and then complaining about socialism? Ah, they got socialism coming our way. Yeah, and what did you do with two years of power? What'd you do with it? We gave you everything on a silver platter. Tell me what you did beyond the two things I highlighted that people should be really juiced up about coming up in November. Instead of fear-mongering around a guy like Hassan Piker, who's a podcaster that 95 % of Americans couldn't pick out of a lineup if they life depended on it. I mean, you know, the Adam Hamilton ad I think is largely unfair, Speaker 4 (10:30) but it very much has the potential to be highly effective in this current climate. As I see another Adam Hamilton ad right now on this TV in the studio on Fox 4. Go figure. It is 6.15 on a Monday morning. We are at 913-408-7957. I'm asking you early on a Monday. And this is risky because Mondays are not typically when many of you want to pick up the phone. But pick it up. and tell me how the heck any of this turns around if it can turn around 913-408-7957 we have that and we also have uh locally we'll get to this story later in the hour you have a police chief who's been on leave for a year who's cleaned up a couple hundred grand who and why all coming up on KCMO. 621, good morning, happy Monday. We are here on KCMO in Kansas City. Welcome into our friends at KFRU in Columbia, KTOP in Topeka, also carrying us as this week we flip the calendar to October. I mean, we're sitting here with barely a month to go until these midterms. Roger Marshall is under attack from Adam Hamilton with a new ad that has been up claiming that he had a... pregnant mom arrested for a $50 medical debt. That's been all over the TV over the weekend. Now there's more nuance to it, but the reality is Democrats smell blood and water. And that means they may flip a Kansas U.S. Senate seat, which has not had a Democrat in it for 100 years. That's the last time, 1932, since a Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate out of the state of Kansas. It's wild, absolutely wild. And there's a lot of alarm bells going off in GOP circles. And it's like, well, guys, what are you doing? Speaker 1 (12:25) What are you doing about it? Where's the money? Where are the ad spends? What's the vision? It's just lacking in a big way right now. 913-408-7957 on a Monday morning. Let's go right to the phones. I wanted to start with Wyatt. He's in Cleveland. Hey, Wyatt, good morning. Speaker 2 (12:47) Yeah, I've been kind of thinking here recently about how we could possibly turn this country around and get it back into a good place. And about the best solution I've been able to come up with is that we could go back to a fully constitutionalist government. No Republicans or Democrats or anything like that. We all just look at just the Constitution, and that's how we run the country. I don't need a judge to tell me what the First and Second Amendment says. I can read it plainly. clear for myself. And then the other thing is we've got to make sure that these politicians understand that they belong to us. Back in the day, if the politicians didn't listen to the people, they would have consequences for that. And I think we're just seeing less and less of that. The politicians don't care about us. They will just sit back and make a bunch of money off of whatever illegal activities they want to do. You know, we don't get anything out of it. Well, Speaker 4 (13:47) and why is that? That's happening because ultimately it's a money game. And if they've got the party, if they've got the right donors, if they've got the right lobbyists in their back pocket, it's very hard for these guys and gals to lose. So they're, to your point, I don't disagree. There's very little downside for these guys basically telling their constituents to pound sand on major issues. because they won't face any repercussions because they still have the big money behind them. Speaker 2 (14:18) Yes, and that is a very big problem. I mean, you know, ultimately people with money are going to do what they're going to do, and we can't really stop it, but we've got to make sure that they realize that they work for us and not just one or two guys. So let me ask you Speaker 4 (14:33) this, though. Let me ask you this then. Okay, so