Hello, Colorado.

I hope it has been a good week for you.

One that you've spent with family, friends, and maybe some lively Thanksgiving table conversations.

Our insiders are chomping at the bit to dig into everything that has unfolded during this final full week of November.

So let's get started with this week's Colorado Inside Out Hi everyone.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

Let me get right to introducing you to this week's insider panel.

We start with Patty Calhoun, founder and editor of Westword.

Krista Kafer, columnist with The Denver Post.

Maryann Goodland, chief legislative reporter for Colorado Politics and the Colorado Springs and Denver Gazette.

And Alton Dillard, former election spokesperson for the City and County of Denver and current consultant at The Diller Group, senior advisor at Rock for gray, and political analyst at Denver seven.

Busy Guy.

We start where we left off last week, when one of our panelists pointed to Congressman Jason Crow as her low of the week, citing a TV interview in which he defended a video that he helped create one encouraging service members to refuse orders if they believe that those orders violate the Constitution.

Now, after our show was recorded, the president then called that act punishable by death.

Then came a bomb threat to close Aurora office and the calls for investigations and punishments have only grown louder.

Patty, Congressman Crow and the others involved are not budging.

They are not backing down.

No.

And imagine the gall of this man whose only field of victory was reality TV, who called John McCain a loser because he had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The gall of Donald Trump to go after these six lawmakers, threaten them with death for having the taking the heroic act of making a video saying to other members of the military, you do not have to do illegal acts.

So everyone from Army Ranger Jason Crow to mark Kelly for, you know, astronaut, military man, married to Gabby Giffords and probably the next president of the United States.

But threatening someone like Mark Kelly with death if we want to talk about her heroism, think this week and two of other military men who refuse to do illegal acts.

Starting with Silas Sewell, who refused to participate in the Sand Creek massacre on November 29th, 1864, and was assassinated as things on the streets of Denver in 1865.

So we should all be thankful to these heroes, these six people who've stood up to Trump.

Okay.

Yeah.

Patty's right.

They're heroes.

They they did an act of courage by saying to servicemen and women, you do not have to follow illegal orders, orders that are against the Constitution, whether you've been deployed to a city, whether you've been asked to fire upon, individuals that are possibly innocent, you don't have to do those things.

And here's the deal.

If you do things that are illegal, that's no defense.

If if later on, somebody says, hey, these things were illegal, you participated, you are still liable.

I'm just following orders is not a defense.

So, whether you agree with the video or disagree with you video, I think that it is an act of courage.

The fact that the president then said horrific things via Twitter, denigrating men and women who have acted honorably.

And thing is, is it's their opinion.

He's free to disagree.

What?

He is not free to do is to call upon, the FBI to investigate them and instead, encourage others to, seek revenge against men and women who have served this country with honor.

Marianne.

this continued obsession with saying things that are not presidential.

I can't even imagine any president that we had before Donald Trump saying the things that we're now hearing.

And, and it's it's disturbing and and it's, it's it's actually really frightening, to consider what could happen to these people you look at.

And I'm going to set an example from Indiana, where I was a week ago, the, Indiana legislature, which is Republican dominated and has been pretty much the entire time that I can remember, actually stood up to Trump and said, we are not going to redistrict.

We're not going to redraw our congressional maps.

Republican lawmakers got death threats in Indiana because they stood up to Trump.

This this is this is what this is what our political culture is like now.

And it's and it's it's it's just very sad to see.

And.

And I agree with Marianne what happened to toning down the rhetoric.

And I also agree with what I've heard around the table that these folks are heroes not only for their service, but for having the courage to step up now.

And so, yes, so I have seen coverage essentially saying that now they all have to have extra security.

And to again, Marianne's point this rhetoric, this is really concerns me because this is going to be another instance of the sort of nutcase sleeper cells getting activated, because now you've got these people who just again stated their opinion, but because it's not a popular opinion with the great leader.

We're in this situation and it just it just makes no sense.

And you know, when you think back to these different moments when you're like, okay, we've just jumped the shark.

The shark seems to keep moving when it comes to Donald Trump.

Let's turn now to Colorado's top statewide leader, Governor Polis, who is facing a great deal of scrutiny right now, along with slipping approval ratings and even a death threat this week that surfaced on a conservative podcast tied to the decision before the governor as to whether to release or not release election denier Tina Peters from state prison.

Meanwhile, the governor's effort to privatize Pinnacle Insurance, the state workers comp carrier, is not as moving as smoothly as he had hoped, and Coloradans continue to look to leadership to the governor for answers on the rising cost of living, which is becoming an increasingly difficult thing for many families across our state.

Krista.

Well, I think the Governor Polis needs to come out and say, look, we're not going to transfer Tina Peters to a federal facility because that whole point of that exercises to free her, Trump and his crazies, they want every election denier from the Jan six insurrectionists all the way to, you know, the crazy liars, I mean, lawyers that were part of his his conspiracy theory to overturn the 2020 election.

And now we're down to Tina Peters.

The problem is she's in a Colorado prison because she was she she broke Colorado law was convicted of a jury of her peers.

And she's there.

He can't release her.

So what he's trying to do is circumvent that by having, her transfer to federal facilities, where then, you know, some bureaucratic error can take place and she can be freed.

Meanwhile, you've got this crazy guy, this podcaster, Joe Altman, who's saying, that the, the Polis and Wiser Griswold and others should be, should be killed.

He keeps saying they should be hung.

And I just want to point out to him, and perhaps also to Trump, who says similar things, that the term is hanged if somebody is dying at the gallows, the term is hanged.

If you use hung, you can say a picture has been hung.

You could say a jury has been hung.

But if you say a person has been hung, that's that's a different connotation.

And I'm not going to give a lengthy description as to why that's problematic, except to say to Joe and Donald, you might want to stop.

Okay.

Thank you.

Our wordsmith here at the table.

Thank you.

Marianne.

Oh, you got me there, Krista.

I've been watching the governor in the last, you know, this year, as he heads into the last 12 months of of his time as governor.

And we're seeing some really interesting missteps.

And, the pinnacle may be another one, the bridge, project that that turned into such a fiasco.

And then Jeff Davis, the, had, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, announced that he was stepping down, to take a job.

That didn't exist before, before this week, apparently.

Or at least according to to the Department of Natural Resources website.

And and that that's another issue.

The the whole the whole issue of the wolf reintroduction program, which Davis has been in charge of since, since the first wolf was released and the disaster in Washington state, about ten days ago, when Washington state said, you're not getting our wolves.

The fact that that Jeff Davis steps down mere days after that, you know, it kind of gives you an idea of what it was that that was his downfall.

But but the governor, you know, it it's sort of an escalating series of just kind of odd things going on.

The pinnacle deal.

Parrott told me this week that they want over $300 million to pinnacle out of the state pension plan and at least, back in January when that number was floated, pinnacle said no.

And and that was the end of it.

So that, you know, that may put a nail in the coffin that you can't pull out.

Okay.

Yeah.

When it comes to the polls and I've said at this table that you're going to be looking at a different level of lame duck when it comes to him.

It's like libertarian lame duck every.

So in addition to what you're talking about, about pinnacle, I've also seen discussions about trying to tap para.

And it's like, no, wait a minute.

We've already got people concerned about their Social Security, which is an earned benefit.

You've got pensioners concerned about their pensions and you have to remember policies independently wealthy.

There's a very sort of sense of let them eat cake when I hear them even talking about that.

And to the Peters thing, as somebody who worked in elections administration and knows people who received threats because of her actions, the fact that he will not just come out and say, we're not doing this, there's no nuance here.

This is a yes or no decision.

And so this going back and forth and trying to decide what he's going to do, and, you know, I, you know, the county clerks are understandably concerned.

And remember, county clerks, a bipartisan be majority Republican in the state of Colorado.

It just doesn't make any sense.

So again, agreeing with Marianne, the missteps that continue are baffling.

All right.

Patty.

Well, he pardoned turkeys at his at the governor's mansion last week, but the turkeys are coming home to roost over this issue at the governor's.

There is no excuse for him not coming out strong immediately after the county clerks.

The best organization, I think, of governmental officials in this state.

When they came out Tuesday, another group, really, of heroes because they've been threatened and said, please do the right thing, do the legal thing.

She's convicted in Colorado.

She disobeyed every rule we follow as county clerks that he hasn't come out strongly after that, after they'd been threatened the weekend, that weekend because of another strong letter that had gone in response to Trump's request.

It's appalling.

He's got to come out and say something and Krista hung or hanged, you're still dead.

And it's appalling that Joel Altman continues to push this scenario, this narrative.

He's the one who's the primary person behind the election denier rumors back in 2020.

He has got to shut up.

And I will say that and shut shut it up any way you want to say it, he's got to go.

Okay.

It was ten years ago, November 27th when three people were killed and nine others injured in the shooting of at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.

The man charged with the crimes, Robert Deer, died last weekend.

Though word of his death did not surface until week, he was never tried for the attack, despite initially admitting to the shootings.

He was later, though, deemed incompetent to stand trial and remained in federal custody for all of these years.

Marianne, you were a reporter on the scene that day covering the shooting and then the barricade.

It went on for hours.

I was probably down there, I guess, between 4 and 6 hours.

And yes, it was bitterly cold that day.

But watching the hostages, being escorted out of the Planned Parenthood clinic in North Colorado Springs, knowing that they had spent hours in terror, I was just, it breaks my heart even today.

And then they took their out later.

Not not much longer after that.

The the tragedy of of the shooting.

And and of Dear's death is that there will be no justice for the people who died, including a police officer, who was a pastor and a, and an officer at, the Colorado Springs campus.

There will be no justice for them.

There will never be anyone held to account for everything that happened on that day.

And it's that, to me, is the greatest tragedy of all in that shooting is everyone's going to get left out in the cold and that's that's a, that's a sad situation.

And they probably already felt that way because it was taking so long and things kept getting continued.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you know, one of the things that I am glad to hear, especially around the table here, is that we're losing the political correctness and reintroducing the word crazy into the lexicon.

Robert Dear was the real McCoy.

That do was crazy.

And so I always say there's a difference between being mentally ill.

Say yodeling or doing hamlet soliloquy on the 16th Street Mall versus shooting people.

And see, it's my threshold is always going to be harm to yourselves or others.

That is crazy behavior.

And it also, again, spotlights this whole competency issue.

And I'm going to give a shout out to my colleagues over at Seven news are taking a deep dive into this issue because in addition to the Robert Dier thing, you have the King Soopers shooter who they sat on until they made him competent and made sure he was facing some charges and now he's doing like 2000 years in prison.

We've got to go back to a place where you cannot let the actions of the 1% affect the 99.

We have to be careful about who is running around free in our society.

Honey.

Amazing that it was ten years.

He is behind bars at least, but they couldn't render him competent for trial and in fact he his lawyers went all the way to say no, he is not going to be medically treated so he can become competent.

And then ironically, finally after it went to the Supreme Court here he was, you know, he was on the medical treatment to be found competent, even though he said, I'm not crazy, which is probably your best proof that he was crazy.

But in the end he couldn't be restored to competency.

That was in September that they still said we cannot try him.

So for ten solid years people are in limbo and so we need to look at the definitions.

We need to look at where to house these people.

But out on the streets is not a good solution, at least in this case.

He never was back out on the streets.

Do you think the competency will come up in the legislature this year?

Oh, there's.

No question about that.

The the governor's already talking about it.

Lawmakers are already talking about it.

I don't I don't think there's any question of that.

Christie.

That's what's wrong with yodeling on the 16th Street Mall.

It's not a mall anymore.

Yeah, it's true, it's a 16th street.

I mean, this is a tragic situation.

You have people who are murdered, you have somebody who's mentally ill.

And I think it's important to recognize that the vast majority of people who struggle with, with even severe mental illness are not dangerous to themselves or others, but for those that are dangerous for them to themselves and others, they need to be somewhere where they're safe and separate from the rest of society.

I will give credit to the Trump administration for, broaching the issue of we need to go back to having, institutions for those who cannot live in the community.

there is a percentage of people who really need to be somewhere else.

And I think about when I went to Starbucks the other day, they had to lock the door because there was a person outside who was making all kinds of threats, who had already who had physically attacked some customers.

When I saw him, he was just having a full conversation with like five people who weren't there.

And, and the and the police were slow to respond.

That person needs to be somewhere where he can get treatment.

In the meanwhile, because the customers and the young woman behind the barista, I mean, she, she should not have had to carry that weight.

I imagine the linguists out there are already debating the word of the year, and transparency might be in the running.

It is a word that we've been hearing a lot of and using lately from the skepticism, surrounding the weekend, swearing in of the new DPS board members to this week's ruling from a federal judge requiring Ice agents to follow the proper steps when making arrests.

Transparency is very much in the spotlight these days.

Alton, I will begin with you.

Denver Public Schools and their inability to get out of their own way.

It just remains baffling to me.

It really does.

And so, again, as someone who worked in the administration, they are correct in that they do have a very tight statutory deadline to do that.

Swearing in.

I mean, as soon as we would conduct a coordinated election, which is an odd year off year election, the phone would ring as soon as, you know, election night was over.

When are you guys going to certify when you guys are going to certify the results?

We have to get our board sworn in.

But you would think because of all the concerns about their lack of transparency, they would have figured out a way to coordinate schedules of whatever they had to do to make sure that a everyone was there and that the swearing in took place in the public.

And so starting out with a half a new board and still starting out from a place where you are calling transparency into Question Day one, it is such an unforced error.

And even more appalling because they did have to do it within the ten days.

Yes.

That's true, but that they were trying to elect the new officers, the new board chair positions that when two people couldn't be there, that was really appalling.

And just is shows how far this DPS board.

And we'll see how it's how it is when it's reconstituted is willing to go, but also go to transparency with the ice arrests.

When there are not warrants, there's not probable there's no cause to go, that we're finally going to get some transparency, maybe thanks to a judge's ruling this week.

But we see a lack of transparency everywhere now.

And reporters, we spend a lot of time trying to get information.

And I think and Marianne will probably agree with me, it is harder than ever.

There are fewer reporters than ever, and the roadblocks being put up to our work for the public to get information to them.

Those are higher than ever.

Yeah.

So I want to thank the journalists at this table.

I'm not a journalist, I'm a columnist.

I work, I can work because of the work that they do, and they're the ones that are primarily exposing this stuff.

If we would not know that the Trump administration, was, was breaking the law in many cases when it comes to immigrants, They are here illegally, and now they've been detained.

And even if they get released, they don't get that time back.

I mean, a lot of these folks are working at jobs where they're not on salary, so they just miss a month of work.

Who here can pay the mortgage if they missed a month of work?

Also, a young woman that was arrested and detained here in Colorado for three weeks had to drop the classes.

She was taking a college.

She doesn't get that back.

And so until the Trump administration starts to comply with the law, I want to give my hat.

I'll take my hat off for those who are exposing one after another, those infractions, those violations of our laws, including our Constitution.

Okay.

Marie And I absolutely agree with Patty, the the fight by reporters to force as much as we can, elected officials to, to come out of the out of the shadows and let us know what they're doing.

This is this is a constant issue, for those of us at the state Capitol in dealing with the governor and dealing with the legislature, and, and elected officials are increasingly very comfortable with living in the dark and keeping the public out of the public business.

And this is this is so appalling to me.

And it is a fight that I, I wage, all the time.

Most recently when the governor and the Joint Budget Committee and the leadership of the House and Senate all had unannounced meetings with the governor to discuss the budget.

This was on October 31st, and they.

And these conversations were actually rather illuminating.

I actually got to sit in on one of those discussions, and there were things that came out in there that didn't come out later in the day when the governor was actually publicly talking about the budget.

This is why we need to keep forcing elected officials to do their jobs and to do it in front of us.

And and frankly, the public is not doing their job in demanding it.

I'm sorry.

That's my soapbox.

That's okay.

All right.

Let's talk about some of the highs and the lows from this week.

We'll start in a low note with Patty.

I'm going to return to the Sand Creek Massacre, the darkest, deadliest day in Colorado history.

There's a program at the library on Saturday about the, with some of the survivor, descendants of the survivors speaking.

And meanwhile, a certain publication that Marianne is not responsible for.

The Gazette just editorialized that the Civil War statue that was already toppled should go back into space that the state legislature has said should now be reserved for a monument to this state's original inhabitants.

That's disgraceful.

It's been settled.

That statue belongs there.

Okay.

You know, human conflict takes a toll.

And, the people who bore the brunt of that toll in on this continent were the Native Americans.

But there were also moments of peace, moments of intermarriage, moments of trade.

And, the the day that we celebrate Thanksgiving, when you had Native Americans and people who had come from Europe together, celebrating, eating together, sitting next to each other on the table is a beautiful thing.

So shame on those at the university level that are calling this a day of grief, that are trying to, quote unquote, decolonize Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is something that we can all celebrate.

It's a beautiful thing.

Okay, Marianne.

My disgrace of the week.

TSA, and I want to be clear, I went through two TSA checkpoints in the past week.

One in Denver and the other in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The Fort Wayne TSA was great.

No problems.

The TSA here in Denver, I was selected for special screening, of my genital region.

What?

Sorry.

I had a hysterectomy a year ago.

So all those parts are gone now, and apparently that's now of interest to TSA.

And it was humiliating and frustrating.

And I told the TSA people, I said, I'll be talking about this, I promise you.

That's so weird and so awful.

And I can't think of other women who are going through that as well.

Follow that one.

Yeah.

Mine's going to be a little lighter, literally, in that, this whole daylight savings thing.

Please get rid of this.

This is the one that I really struggle with.

The clock says 11.

Your body says midnight, and I am, but we're almost three weeks past it, and I'm still having trouble adjusting.

Put the clocks in one, please.

Leave them alone.

Okay.

All right.

Something positive, Patty.

To everyone who watches this show and comes up to us at various places to say how much they appreciate channel 12 and Colorado inside out.

I'm just thankful that everyone is watching.

Everyone still reading.

Everyone is still thinking about how important it is to protect the Colorado we love and how to make it better.

And so thank you to all the people who watch.

Absolutely.

Thank you, thank you.

Yeah.

For some, My hats off to.

You have a frog in your throat.

I know, I apologize, I guess I should give my hats off to the makers of Cold Drops.

No, I, I really, appreciate the county clerks.

Also, the Da of Mesa County and also our attorney general who are pushing back on the release of Tina Peters and upholding our laws here in Colorado.

All right, ma'am, Marianne.

I would like to say thank you and a salute to people who, families who take care of loved ones when they are in the latter years of their life.

And this is something that I, have had a recent experience with for people who take care of others with dementia and Alzheimer's, my hats are off to you because there's almost nothing more difficult.

And, keep up, keep up the good fights and, and and the most important thing, find help where you need it.

If you've got somebody that can come and smell you for a day or a week, you know, take advantage of that, because the stress is unbelievable.

Okay?

All right.

Alton and my high is it's high school hoops season.

And so I get the opportunity to coach at Martin Luther King Early College.

But it's just such a great time of the year.

Now you're not sitting out, you know, in the cold football bleachers once year into November, in December, and you really get a chance just to watch the competition at all levels.

I love this time of the year and then also sneak preview in 2627.

Colorado is going to be going to a shot clock for high school basketball.

So you're going to start seeing that transition and that being tested out here and there.

So be ready.

Did you know that Mrs.

Basketball over there did not.

But but since you've come back to me I just want to say one other thing.

But go Hoosiers beat Purdue okay.

Hahahahahahaha.

All right my high.

The week is all of the people who are helping travelers get to their destinations this holiday weekend.

And really, for the whole season that's ahead of us.

And I want to give a shout out to the handful of United Airlines employees, who have been working at Dia for about four years now.

I encourage you to check out an article in the Denver Post that profiles the Special Olympics athletes who are United Airlines employees who assess customers.

With customer service at Dia.

It could be anything from printing out baggage tags and boarding passes to giving directions and doing just about anything that is needed to make someone's time through Dia a little bit less stressful.

So thank you to all of them.

Thank you all of our insiders.

And as Patty mentioned, thanks to you who are watching along with us or listening to our podcast on Spotify and Apple.

I'm Kyle Dyer.

I will see you next week here on PBS 12.

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