Mark Vargas exposes Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s divisive rhetoric—urging "no peace" with Republicans and investigating political foes—while linking it to post-Trump violence risks, despite his own property tax scandal. He highlights Illinois’ collapse under Pritzker: 76 school-aged murders in Chicago (2023), 225,000 unanswered 911 calls, and bail reforms releasing violent criminals faster than New York’s. The episode also targets Pritzker’s migrant policies, including shielding MS-13 gang member Kilmar Garcia Abrego—a domestic abuser—while Democrats boycott El Salvador over his detention. Rural hospitals face Congress’ threats amid Illinois’ chaos, yet Trump’s 2024 surge (nearly 1M votes without campaigning) contrasts with the GOP’s fractured anti-Trump stance, framing him as the only viable 2028 disruptor. [Automatically generated summary]
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
Now we're joined by Mark Vargas.
He is the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review.
Mark, welcome to the Stone Zone.
Great to be with you, Roger.
Thank you so much.
So the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, if he was in New York, they'd want to make him his own borough.
This guy says, and I quote, it's time to fight the Trump agenda.
It's time to fight everywhere all at once.
He goes on to say, to try to get the exact quote here, that Republicans should have no peace.
This sounds to me like a call for insurrection and violence.
How did you read this?
There's no question about it, Roger.
This is inciting an insurrection.
This was a hate-filled speech that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivered on Sunday night in New Hampshire as he teases a potential presidential campaign.
But after President Trump's not one, but two assassination attempts and one in Butler, Pennsylvania, that nearly took his life by hitting his ear, this type of rhetoric is dangerous and it's now putting the lives of everyday Americans in grave danger because Governor Pritzker has called for Republicans to have no peace as he attacks the Trump MAGA agenda.
Roger, he also calls for, which is very interesting, he also calls for, should Democrats win majority of Congress this upcoming midterm elections, he's calling on his Democratic counterparts to immediately launch investigations on their political enemies.
But this type of rhetoric is dangerous.
It's wrong.
And you were absolutely right in your post on X earlier this morning that if this were a Republican using this type of rhetoric, there would be insurrectionists.
They'd be calling it an insurrection and there'd be investigations launched immediately.
Yeah, it really is quite extraordinary.
I seem to have read about a recent scandal in Illinois where the governor, who, as we both know, he and his family are fabulously wealthy, actually cheated on their property taxes by removing a certain number of toilets from their home.
Can you explain this to us?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
He's got a mansion in downtown Chicago and he wanted to buy the mansion next door, but he didn't really want to pay for it because he didn't want to use it.
He just didn't want to have any neighbors around him.
So what he did is he ordered all of the toilets, about seven or eight bathrooms.
He ordered all of the toilets to be removed from the home so that could legally be called uninhabitable.
And therefore, he would get a property tax decrease because the home wasn't livable.
When it was finally discovered, the governor, candidate Pritzker, then scrambled, paid the difference, and then claimed to have no knowledge of it.
And so that has dogged him his last two campaigns.
Yeah, kind of rules for the, but not for me.
It's a very common thing we see among Democrats.
I look, this guy, he's so fat, when he walks down the street, the cops say, break it up.
But I don't see him as a viable presidential candidate because I assume he would do for America what he's done for Illinois.
How is Illinois doing these days in terms of crime and the quality of life and the economic climate?
Horrific in every aspect of it.
And Roger, this is a man who doesn't have any friends because he inherited billions of dollars from his family who owns the Hyatt hotels.
And so what he did is he bought his camp.
He bought the governor's seat to the nearly spending $400 million of his own money in his last two elections for governor.
And so this is a man who doesn't know how to run for office.
He just knows how to pay for it.
And this thought of him running for president is laughable.
I mean, he's going to make, I wouldn't make Howard Taft look like a supermodel at a 450-pound man who during the pandemic we used to refer to as the health czar.
But Chicago is an utter disaster.
Think about this for your listeners, Roger.
Chicago is the crime capital of the nation.
We, in fact, lead all major U.S. cities in both murders and mass shootings every year.
In 2023, and this is a horrific statistic, 76 school-aged children, 15 years or younger, were murdered in the city in Chicago.
That's more than any other major city in the country.
In addition to that, another horrific statistic is not only are we losing school-aged children to murders in very large numbers, but we also lead the nation in murders committed by youth.
We're facing a domestic violence pandemic crisis here.
And at a time when crime is skyrocketing, when over the last four years, they've welcomed violent and dangerous migrants into our city.
We're facing a police shortage.
In fact, the city of Chicago has short 2,000 police officers.
And think about this, Roger.
In 2023, 225,000 high-priority 911 calls, like shots fired, assault in progress, they went unanswered.
Why?
Because we have a police officer shortage.
And so if Chicago has any idea and the state of Illinois has any idea of what Pritzker's leadership looks like, I can't imagine this guy coming anywhere close to winning a Democratic primary for president.
I see that he has now jumped into the controversy regarding Kilmar Garcia Abrego, who is, of course, an El Salvador citizen who was quite legally deported to his home country of El Salvador.
He is without any question a MS-13 terrorist who also has a history of beating his wife.
The president demonstrated that Abrego actually had M-13 tattoos on his hands.
But for some reason, the Democrats have decided to die on this hill.
They keep insisting that he is a quote-unquote Maryland man because he lived illegally in the state of Maryland when he was here.
Now, the Illinois Sanctuary State Governor J.B. Pritzker has directed all state agencies to take actions against the country of El Salvador because El Salvador refuses to ship Abrego illegally back to the United States.
Pritzker is asking state agencies to boycott and divest from companies controlled by El Salvador, cancel state contracts with Salvadorian companies, and analyze trade between Illinois and the country of El Salvador.
First of all, I don't know how much such trade there could be, and I don't know to what extent that this is largely a press release, but when Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019, he was with two other members of MS-13.
He was known by investigators to be affiliated with the gang.
He was further detained in December 2022, investigated for human trafficking by the Tennessee Highway Patrol until the FBI ordered his release.
But this hasn't stopped radical Democrats like Pritzker from glorifying this deported illegal alien, attempting to bring him back to America from El Salvador, where the government has him imprisoned for his crimes.
Mark, you're a shrewd political analyst.
Where are the votes in this for Democrats?
You know, this is Pritzker's, he has gone so far left.
This is a 9D10 issue.
And Roger, we shouldn't be surprised because under Pritzker's leadership here in Illinois, the Illinois Democrats that have a super majority control in our state capital, Springfield, they've introduced a bill to allow illegals to change their name in order to evade ICE.
That's point number one.
So we shouldn't be surprised what Pritzker is trying to champion and support and protect an MS-13 gang member when he can't even protect his own citizens, his own legal residence.
The state legislature has also tried to pass a bill to allow illegals to vote in local elections.
Think about that.
So it really is remarkable that under the last four years of Pritzker's leadership in Illinois as governor, they have coddled to the migrants, the most vicious and dangerous migrants.
They have completely ignored their own residents as black and Latino residents continue to live in poverty.
Roger, they even asked Chicago public school teachers to give migrant children passing grades.
Now, how fair is that?
Regardless of what their test scores are, regardless of how well they do on their homework, you must give migrant children passing grades.
This is all under J.B. Pritzker's leadership.
And this is why the Democrats in Chicago, particularly the blacks, have turned on Governor Pritzker and on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has a 6% approval rating, by the way, and it continues to go down because they have continued to prioritize vicious and dangerous migrants over law-abiding residents.
It's interesting because New York State, under Andrew Cuomo and then under Governor Kathy Hokul, really pioneered the bail reform, which is really just a turnstile that puts violent criminals back out on the streets.
The experience in New York has been horrific, where despite the fact that they try to cook the crime statistics, crime is very definitely up in every category across the board, both in the cities, but also in the suburbs and in upstate.
Rather than take this as a cautionary tale, J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Democrats have essentially copied the New York Democrats to put in place the same system of bail reform in which all but murderers, the most violent criminals, are put back out on the streets within hours of their arrest.
There is no more common sense in this party.
And Roger, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that under J.B. Pritzker's leadership, the state allows high schools, middle schools and high schools, allows boys to participate in girl sports under Pritzker's leadership.
They also force young girls to change in middle school locker rooms in front of trans-identifying boys.
Pritzker wants to make Illinois the Disney world for gender transition services.
You can get an abortion as a young girl, underage young girl, without asking for permission from your parents.
You could take medication from your school nurse as hormone blockers without permission from your parents.
This is the type of chaos.
This is the type of United States of America that Pritzker envisions under his presidency.
I guess I have to ask this question.
It's a hard one, but it's been a long time since Illinois has been competitive in a presidential race.
It's been a long time since they've been competitive in a gubernatorial race.
Yet there's a lot of very good people, a large number of common sense voters.
Mark, what's wrong with the Illinois Republican Party?
It is in total chaos.
It's led by a bunch of never-Trumpers who never supported Trump from day one.
And they like to target, they use their funding and mailers to target conservative, grassroot Trump Republican candidates throughout the state.
And because they are so fractured, they have no idea what it's like to win.
But here's the strength of President Trump.
He didn't spend one cent in Illinois during this last presidential election.
He didn't even visit Illinois.
And yet he gained nearly a million new votes from 2020 and got 45% of the vote.
I mean, imagine if the president had spent just a little bit of time and a little bit of money in the state.
I think we could have seen a whole, I think we could have seen a much different situation here in Illinois.
And I hope in the future that they begin to focus on this state because the failed leadership is finally catching up with the Democrats.
They've got nowhere to go but to hide.
Excellent analysis from Illinois.
I want to thank my friend Mark Vargas, the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review.
Mark, where can folks find you on social media and where can they read the stuff that you write?
Thank you, Roger.
You can follow me on X at Mark A. Vargas, and you can go to our website, illinoirereview.com, illinoisreview.com.
Charisma And Social Media Influence00:06:13
Thank you, Roger.
God bless you, my friend.
One final question for you.
Some polls, I doubt this, show a substantial dip in the president's approval rating.
But anecdotally, as I talk to people on the streets, it's not what I'm finding at all.
I have yet to find one person who says they voted for Donald Trump, but they now regret doing so.
What are you hearing on the streets?
I'm hearing the same thing here on the streets of Chicago.
They're thrilled with President Trump as tough on crime, is shutting down the border, deporting vicious and dangerous migrants.
They know that the economy has needed some help and a boost, and that they have confidence in President Trump and his team, like the Treasury Secretary and the Commerce Secretary.
I think that everyday hardworking Americans who don't listen to the mainstream media, they love what President Trump has done in, what, 100 days starting tomorrow?
Yes.
I would remind people, these are the same polls that showed that Kamala Harris was leading or she was closing fast or she was in a competitive race, all of which was a psyop.
If you're just tuning in, we're talking to Mark Vargas, the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review, and will be.
We'll be right back.
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We're joined yet again by my good friend Mark Vargas, the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review.
Mark, as you know, everybody in the political business loves to handicap the horse race.
And although it's very early, I noticed that President Trump was asked the other day whether Vice President JD Vance would succeed him.
Now, I think JD Vance is doing a very good job.
I also think he understands that you don't upstage the President of the United States, particularly this president.
But he played a very key behind-the-scenes role in winning the confirmation votes for Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy, for Scott Besett, the Treasury Secretary, for Kash Patel, for the FBI director.
On the other hand, Donald Trump broke the mold.
I mean, he changed all the rules.
Before him, every president had been a governor, a senator, a congressman, or a general.
How do you handicap the race in 2028?
Yes, I know it's early.
It is.
It is very early.
And, you know, in true Trump fashion, I think, you know, he's not going to endorse anyone early on.
It's still wide open.
As you know, Roger, better than anybody else, a day is a thousand years in politics, and we'll see what happens.
But that's what one of President Trump's strengths is he's predictably unpredictable.
But Vice President Vance has done a terrific job.
And I think sometimes this is some of the media just trying to create a little bit of division and distract from President Trump's historic record in his first 100 days in office and just the difference that it has made in people's everyday Americans' lives, whether it's securing our border, whether it's fixing our economy and his America first policies.
I mean, look at the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in investment that's coming back to the United States because of what President Trump has done.
China's on its heels.
America is back.
Just look at what President Trump, just look at what the audience looks like when President Trump was at either Pope Francis' funeral, when he's overseas.
All eyes are on him.
You know who the leader of the free world is when he walks in.
That's President Donald Trump, while Joe Biden's walking in still seeking assistance and holding on to people's arms and not even sure where he's at, to be honest.
Yeah, I couldn't believe how much criticism President Trump got for wearing a dark blue suit instead of a black suit.
He was wearing a somber tie.
But you're right.
All eyes were on him.
It's because he has that elusive quality that I first saw in 1988.
Charisma, magnetism, confidence.
He exudes it, and it represents the country well.
I saw him at dinner two Fridays ago.
And I must tell you, he's never looked happier.
He's never looked more satisfied.
He's never looked more determined.
He was in a great mood, lost a little weight.
He looked terrific.
He feels terrific.
He's best in conflict.
In all honesty, he loves a good fight.
And when it comes to America, he'll never stop fighting.
They can attack him.
They can try to undermine him.
But his late-night true social postings are just extraordinarily entertaining.
For those who don't watch them, particularly when he goes to all caps, you know he's really, really serious.
Once again, Mark, tell folks where they can find you on social media and the Illinois Review.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Roger.
You can find me on X at Mark A. Vargas, and you can visit us online at illinoisreview.com, spelled out illinoireview.com.
All right.
I want to thank our guest, Mark Vargas.
I urge you to check out his social media postings.
Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
You can hear The Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
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So you never have to wonder what the heck is going on here.
Rural Hospitals: Lifelines of Health Care00:00:53
Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.