Chuck Woolery: Television, Senior Advocacy, and the Healthcare Debate

Chuck Woolery joins Coach Pete for an archive conversation about life after television, senior advocacy, and healthcare politics. He shares his views on AARP, Generation America, and the Affordable Care Act. Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700. Transcript Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate. 00:00 And welcome back in, folks. Of course, this is the Financial Safari, and this week we have a very special guest. I remember him from back in the day when I watched a lot of TV. His name is Mr. Chuck Woolery, and you'll remember him from shows like The Love Connection, The Dating Game. He was also the first host on The Wheel of Fortune back in 1975, and he's joining us from just outside of Austin, Texas. Chuck, welcome into the show. Well, thanks, Coach. Nice to be with you. Now, what has Chuck Woolery been up to lately? Well, mostly just fishing. I do a lot of bass fishing because that's what I moved here for, and have my family here, and, you know, just working, tweeting 24 hours a day, it seems, and keeping up with what's happening in politics and staying 00:45 active in that, and representing a few people around the country, and looking toward doing a new show on a network that I can't talk about, so don't ask me. Well, Chuck, let's talk about politics for a minute, and specifically what AARP did in promoting the Obamacare. Well, you know, it's really funny. I have to put a disclaimer up here because I'm involved with a company that is really counter AARP. I work for a company called Generation America, which is a very conservative company that does basically the same thing as AARP does, so I really need to put that disclaimer out to let people know that I do have a dog in this fight, and yet, as a senior, I am stunned by some of the things that AARP has done. On December 5th, for instance, in 2009, Jim Messina, who's the deputy chief of staff in the White House, he sent an email to Nancy 01:35 Lamont, who's a senior vice president at AARP. Now, you understand, these people are nonpartisan. That's what they say. They come out and they say, we're nonpartisan. We're not, you know, for any group or anything like that. We only care about seniors. And here's what he said. We need Barry Rand, CEO of AARP, this is an email, by the way, to go meet with Ben Nelson, the Nebraska representative. You remember he was kind of the swing vote. Right. To personally just lay it on the line. We will be with you. We will protect you. But if you kill this bill, seniors will never forget, we're at 59. We have to have you to win. I mean, excuse me? So they're not only lobbying. And by the way, that's one of, I don't know, 70 emails that they had between senior people in the White House that AARP had between senior people in the White House. 02:21 And this came through, some of it came through the Freedom of Information Act. And some of it came from insiders at AARP. And of course, we can't mention who they are. But I mean, when you're talking about Jim Messina, who's deputy chief of staff at the White House, talking to Barry Rand, who's CEO of AARP, and then Ben Nelson, who's the swing vote for, you know, Obamacare, I mean, it's just amazing. And then they go on in some of these emails and they say, well, you know, our membership really isn't for this, like 14 to 1. They're against it. But we have to come out and show that we're nonpartisan and it's really for their benefit. Well, for their benefit, here's what their benefit is. AARP is a nonprofit organization, right? Right. That will make about a billion dollars a year from Medigap. If it hadn't been for AARP, quite 03:09 frankly, Obamacare probably would not have passed. Without a doubt, it wouldn't have passed. And they pressured Ben Nelson from Nebraska and just, you know, they put it on him, man. Now, Chuck, let's talk about, I mean, AARP, has it always been this political? Because, I mean, I don't remember it being this political back in the day. Well, the problem is you don't remember it being this political because it's never been brought to the forefront. It's kind of one of those things that goes under the radar. And we've been working on this because we knew it was going on, but nobody was talking about it. So we kind of started investigating and saying, you know, what the heck is going on? These guys are very left wing. And which is why, you know, Generation America was started because it's on the right side. So we began to investigate, look at them, and they are the big dog in the room, man. I mean, they are just the gorilla in the room because, you know, you're talking about a multi-billion dollar 03:58 corporation that is non-profit and they will, everybody was scared to death to go after them and bring this stuff up. And quite frankly, we've just kind of put it on the line and said, you know what, why should seniors, number one, be uninformed, number two, be taken advantage of, and number three, not have a choice? And so, you know, they wrap all their commercials in this kind of we're non-partisan and we're out for seniors and all this kind of stuff. Well, making tons of money and pushing Obamacare through. That's basically what they did. And there's so many aspects of the Obamacare that we don't even realize yet, or we haven't even felt the true impact of it, have we? Oh my God. The cost of insurance will go up probably $95 per senior. I mean, it is truly amazing. It's just amazing the stuff that's embedded in this that people will never know about until the bill comes and they'll say, well, why did this happen? 04:47 So, you know, they're really worried about their non-profit tax-exempt status. They're tax-exempt, by the way, on top of everything else, being jeopardized if they coordinate with any political party. Well, they've done more. I mean, coordinate, excuse me there. I have, if you go to Generation America's site, it's generationamerica.com. We have like 70 emails that we've posted just to inform seniors so that they know what AARP's been up to. Well, it's important to keep people informed. And folks, we are talking to Chuck Woolery. He's former game show host of The Love Connection and The Dating Game, as well as many other ones. He also was the first host of The Wheel of Fortune back in 1975. Chuck, what else can we learn here from what's going on with AARP and the media ignoring it? I mean, what's going on today in 05:35 society that people just won't ask the tough questions? Well, you know, I really don't know. I've got a real war with the mainstream media that's personal. It's my own personal war, but I'm sure a lot of other people do too. It just seems that nobody will go after the hard questions today and ask these people, you know, what they're for, what they're against, what's going on. It's very, very political. And so with politics, you know, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing, and it's tough. People work for a living. They don't pay attention to a lot of this stuff. I mean, AARP's been around for a long, long time. People know it. They trust it. And yet the talking points at AARP and the White House is just, it's an unethical relationship that people need to know about. And so at least, you know, we're bringing it to the forefront. And look, we have a certain profit motive 06:22 involved in it because we have, you know, the other choice, but you need to know what the heck you're involved with. And so that's why we're talking about it. I mean, we got, you know, confidential emails between AARP and the White House and their strategies to get Obamacare passed and multiple emails that show AARP knew their members were opposed 14 to 1, but they worked to get it passed to protect their future profits. That's basically what they're all about. They're a profit, you know, so are we, but not to the expense of our members. I mean, we're not going to lie to our members. We're not going to misrepresent to our members. At least they know what we are and what we're about. And they just, they've lied and misrepresented. You know, it's just, when you read these emails, it's breathtaking. It really is. So when people pay their AARP dues to get the discounts, what they are doing in effect is 07:11 financing a political machine, aren't they? They're financing a lobbying group, a left lobbying group. That's exactly what it is. Look, I don't resent anybody doing well and making money and we're a capitalist society. I believe in that, but I don't believe in it to the point where you, you misrepresent to your membership who you're supposed to be protecting, frankly. Now, Chuck, you had over 2,000 episodes of Love Connection. You were, again, the Wheel of Fortune. You had a show called Lingo on the Game Show Network. It was the number one show. You've been on QVC. I mean, you're supposed to, didn't you ever hear that you're supposed to relax in retirement, Chuck? You know, somebody asked me, he said, well, will you retire? And I said, no, I didn't retire. I just moved. You know, I'm one of those guys that I'll retire when I die. You put me in the coffin 07:56 with my boots on. I really, number one, I really like to work. I like people. I like talking with them and enjoy their conversations and points of view. And so I'll always work and, you know, represent companies that I believe in and like. And so it's nice that I have this time in my life where I can make the choices that I want to make. But yeah, I just, I love show business. Well, Chuck, let's get into a time machine and let's go 10 years into the future and let's pretend that nothing ever happens. Obamacare is still here in 10 years. What does the country look like at that time? Well, it'll look like Western Europe. We've been moving toward that since 1880, really. I mean, with progressivism that came out of Germany, that's really where it came from and kind of filtered down through our college PhDs. And then Woodrow Wilson was, well, Woodrow 08:43 Wilson was the second progressive president, the first progressive president, really Theodore Roosevelt, who was a Republican. So Republican was the first. And the word progressive and liberal are just kind of the same. It's just that progressives are a little more dangerous than liberals. Most progressives have no idea who they are and what they are. So by the way, you can go to heritage.com and look up what progressive is and how it started and what they are. It's basically socialism. It's linked with every kind of fascism and Marxism around the world. I mean, it's dangerous stuff. So as people don't pay attention and they don't know much about their history and they don't know what they're talking about, they listen to the platitudes and they're kind of carried on a wave of comfort until they hit the boulder in the middle of the ocean and then it's all over. But it's over before they know it. 09:32 So I feel like this whole progressive socialist kind of template that's been constructed for us since the late 1880s and came to fruition in the early 1900s and really Calvin Coolidge was an interruption to it in 1920, 21, and then kind of came right back in with FDR. And I mean, I guarantee you there are people out there that have no idea the history of FDR and realize that he hated the constitution. He wanted a new constitution. He wanted a progressive constitution. Most people don't know that about him. They don't know that about Woodrow Wilson. They don't know that the government, for instance, in many government offices, there were blacks and whites in all of these high positions. And by the time Woodrow Wilson came in, he completely desegregated the entire government. Did you know that? I had no idea. He desegregated the government. And all of a 10:20 sudden now we start with segregation, real bad segregation, not that there wasn't racism, but I'm talking about government segregation. And then we came through this whole thing. I mean, the history of this country, if people just go back and look and try to figure out what the real history of it is, it's very interesting. And so I'm, you know, I'm an anti-progressive person. I don't like it. When Hillary Clinton came out and said she was a progressive about, I don't know, four or five years ago, I had no idea what she was talking about. And then I started to study it and look at it and realized I knew very little about the history of this country. And I was kind of upset because my teachers hadn't taught me. Well, Chuck, what were you also served two years in the Navy? And we're all thankful for that as well. I did. Actually, I was about six years. I was in the reserve for four of those years and two on active duty. And I got to spend about three months off Jamaica, 11:11 not on Jamaica, but off Jamaica during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So that was about as close as I ever came to, you know, real action. But thank God the Russians blinked on that one. Absolutely. Now, Chuck, we'd love to have you on after the election sometime to analyze what's going on. How's that sound? Thank you. I'll give you my prediction. Yeah. Would you like to have my prediction? I sure would. And I believe this, and I've said this since he was nominated, I believe it will be Mitt Romney in a landslide. I think all of these polls and all this stuff is just to make it a horse race. It's not about the country. It's about the ratings. Well, good. Chuck, worry his prediction. And we'll talk about that afterwards. All right, buddy. We usually say we'll be right back. But before we go to the break, I want you to do what you used to do. And we'd leave the love connection for a break. What would you say then? And we'll be back in two and two. And two and two. 11:59 Thanks, folks. Chuck, thanks for your time today. All right. Thanks. Thanks, folks. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.