Ryan Grim: Over here I see a bunch more people on golf carts. Is this the, what kind of, what area of The Villages are we in now? Is this the south? This is, this is the wealthy—
This looks like a wealthier area — the villages. And you’ve got—
Greg Grim: Oh, yeah. These houses are a lot bigger.
RG: Yeah. You’ve got big screened in-porches, looking out at golf courses, obviously the palm trees.
Hey, Grim Ryan, I’m taking you to The Villages in central Florida, where the descendants of Howard Schwartz, the patriarch who founded the community in the 1970s, draw a lot of water and live in a trailer. This episode of Deconstructed is about them.
RG: So you can’t tell if the golf carts are golfers or current golfers are on their way to golfing or just the way that they get around here. What’s over there? Is that a giant pickleball assemblage?
With a delightful exclamation mark, we recently drove past a massive sign that depicted the towns as “Florida’s most amiable hometown.” Our father is a snowbird residing in the Villages, and I am currently exploring the area with my sibling, RG.
There will be 2 for 1 specials happening in the town’s squares later today, and there will also be a happy hour. The golf courses, tennis courts, and putting greens will be free, and there are endless pickleball courts. There are a lot of retirees here, and we are currently counting 130,000 of them in this planned community.
The Republican stronghold is also present here. Mike Pence was recently here, along with KellyAnn Conway. Every GOP nominee comes through here, and the family of Ron Desantis, the Governor of Florida, are close political allies.
I’m here because many of the individuals residing in The Villages, who rely on fixed incomes, were greatly affected by a harsh blow when their property taxes experienced a sudden increase of 25 percent in 2019.
The Morse family, as the developer, aimed to expand south of The Villages in order to support the growth. However, it is possible that you could argue that sacrificing traffic concerns or using the new taxes to fund new amenities for the residents of The Villages would justify their decision.
Numerous residents from Villages expressed their anger during local gatherings and on various social platforms.
Unknown person: How is it my responsibility, partial, albeit partial, to pay for the development of Buena Vista in another part of the county.
Unknown person: I am totally against us paying for any roads in Southern Oaks.
Unknown person: And I’ve been an administrator and a hospital finance person for major hospitals corporations around the United States. Had I ever presented to the board a budget that went up by 24 percent one year, I wouldn’t be living in The Villages. [Laughter and applause.]
Unknown person: You are sticking it to us, and hopefully we will return the favor at election time. [Cheers and applause.]
Unknown person: I pray to God that everyone of you are replaced. [Cheers and applause.]
The champions of the jailed leader were thrown in by the local political machine run by the Villages, but they ended up getting smashed by Gov. Ron Desantis of Florida. However, they won those seats. So, a group of Villagers decided to run it back to the county commission. Anyway, they went ahead with the tax hike.
However, elections still must take place. Moreover, they have control over local politics. Possesses the glossy magazine. Controls the radio station, which broadcasts Fox News and conservative updates through speakers in shared spaces and at swimming pools. The Morse family possesses the influential local newspaper, The Villages Daily Sun. The Morse family wields a significant amount of influence in the region.
Gary Search, Oren Miller, and Craig Estep. They operated under the clever EMS alias, running as a promising ticket to rescue the Villages.
In opposition to the tax increase, businesses that benefit from the development argued that they should bear the responsibility of the impact fee. Some of these businesses also pledged to return to rural areas outside the community in order to maintain control over local politics and overturn an initiative that had facilitated the process for the family.
One of the candidates, whose wife was committed to animal rights, added a promise to bring a no-kill shelter to the Villages, winning the support of backers in the area.
The EMS slate won the commission by a landslide of 3-2 in the November 2020 election, but it wasn’t enough to close the $200,000 gap. The incumbents were lavished with donations from other generous contributors and contractors. Incumbents swooped in to fund the tax increase enacted by T&D, Inc., A firm that works almost exclusively for The Villages.
Accusing them, The Daily Sun depicted the new commissioners as near communists who aimed to dismantle The Villages’ way of life, resulting in EMS being immediately bombarded, while advocating for a change in the county’s long-standing pro-business approach.
The fresh commissioners were informed by a high-ranking official from The Villages about the challenging path they were about to embark on. Addressing a gathering of the Property Owners Association, here is Gary Search, one of the contenders who had supported the EMS lineup.
Gary Search: And I was here to represent the people, but from the day I was elected I had a hierarchy of The Villages put his finger in my face and say Search, just remember one thing: I’m a big person, you’re a little person. I can squash you anytime I want. I said, is that a threat? And he said no, it’s a promise.
The three contenders swiftly took action to transform their campaign pledges into tangible results, however the magnitude of the financial risk involved was staggering, reaching well into the hundreds of millions of dollars for the developer.
However, businesses are expected to be significantly impacted by a substantial increase in fees, with a 75 percent rise, as a result of the Search and Miller vote-2 3 in March 2021, which aims to cover the future cost of development.
If the Morse family desired to expand The Villages, they would be able to finance it on their own. The residents contended that there was no valid justification for subsidizing the expenses of additional expansion for the Morse family.
The elites in the business and political sectors, who had previously rejected any arrangement that fostered a close relationship, experienced a shift in their community’s direction. In response, the residents joined forces to voice their opinions, creating a sense of democracy in which actions were taken and ideas were openly exchanged.
Next in line was the reduction of property taxes. None of that, obviously, could be permitted.
The Villages had a strategic ally in the right location. In January 2021, legislation was introduced in Tallahassee to prevent local authorities from substantially raising impact fees. The first opposition to this proposal emerged.
In 2018, after being elected to the state House and later becoming the president of T&D, the primary contractor, Brett Hage was hired by The Villages. The following year, he received a salary of $141,000, which was more than twice the amount he earned in his initial year.
The legislation had a retrospective effect. In June, Governor Ron DeSantis enacted the bill as a law. Hage, who is still employed by The Village, introduced a bill on January 9, 2021, to prohibit the suggested impact fee. This was particularly important for The Villages.
The annual income is recorded as $29,697. Ever since his election to public office, his total assets had increased by almost one and a half million dollars. His salary had risen to $925,096. His financial disclosure for 2021 reveals that Hage received a substantial salary increase.
The resistance didn’t cease at that point. However, if the resistance from The Villages and DeSantis had concluded at that point, it would still signify a bold transfer of funds from a developer, directly to the individual financial institution of a state legislator who subsequently enacted laws that preserved the developer’s fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars and instead distributed the expenses to tens of thousands of Floridians.
DeSantis further took action by dismissing them from the commission and proceeded to issue executive directives. In December 2021, Republican State Attorney Bill Gladson pressed charges against both commissioners, Oren Miller and Gary Search, for committing felony perjury, which carries a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.
GS: Two things are happening here: intimidation and humiliation.
RG: That’s Search talking one month later, addressing The Villages’ Property Owners’ Association.
GS: The second thing is, it’s also to take other candidates, and I love that Andy is still going to run, because it’s to intimidate any other candidate from running against the local government that they’ve controlled for so long.
RG: And here’s the leader of the homeowners’ association.
Cliff Wiener: I want to just say, he mentioned something: I had lots of people lined-up to run in 2022 for the two seats that were open. Andrew is the only one still standing at this time. And some people that were going to run in 2024 for other offices that were going to be coming up, slowly but surely they are all dropping. They don’t want to go through what Gary and Oren are going through right now.
RG: I was in the Villages the day of Oren Miller’s sentencing. He had been locked up for more than two months.
[Sound of car door opening.]
Angie Fox: I didn’t know if you were married or what I brought two waters. I’ll put them in the backseat.
RG: Oh thank you. Appreciate it.
Miller’s time of service was completed, granting him the opportunity to return home. He had been anticipating the judge’s decision to release his wife, Angie Fox, while I was en route to meet RG.
RG: How often have you, have you been able to talk to him?
AF: I talk to him every single day.
RG: OK.
AF: Every morning he calls, we haven’t seen each other. We did that one by design two, we know that we’re gonna have to have money for an appeal, and while everybody thinks that we’re rich, we’re not. And so I’m trying to save as much money as I can.
RG: How is Oren doing in jail? Like what are his phone calls like?
AF: He got very sick at one point. He had 10 days that they weren’t giving him his medicine — his heart, heart and thyroid. And he had the first 10 days he wasn’t even getting that medicine. So he was in bad shape. He’s handling it with all the grace that he normally handled things, but he’s—
It’s not, this is not a piece of cake. I mean, he’s doing it and he knows he may not get out today. I mean, that I know. I mean, the judge said we didn’t think that he would remand him to jail. So that was a shock.
The local high euthanasia shelter euthanizes pets at an alarming rate, prompting Angie Fox’s team of volunteers from Lost Pets of the Villages to swiftly gather there to locate the missing pet, as Angie Fox is the founder of the group.
AF: I realized we didn’t have a system here to get dogs back home when they got lost. So I started Lost Pets of the Villages. And it started out with, I mean, I had a lot of friends here. I put ’em all in this, in the group. And it grew, I think it’s over—
RG: The Facebook group?
AF: Yeah, I think it’s over 6,000 now. I don’t remember. I had to get, when Oren, we were boots on the ground when I did it, we were boots on the ground. If somebody found a dog, we’d leave whatever we were doing and we’d get the dog.
If they couldn’t foster in place, we’d get the dog and drive around the neighborhood and find the owner. Or you know, if we had to bring the dog home for a period of time or find a foster, whatever we had to do to keep the dog out of our shelters.
The funding was revoked following Ron Desantis’s dismissal of Oren Miller and his colleague Gary Search from the commission and appointing new members, but he successfully obtained its approval when Oren Miller campaigned for the commission. One of his significant pledges during the campaign was to allocate funds for the establishment of a shelter where no animals would be euthanized.
To comprehend how Commissioner Miller went from being a newly elected commissioner to conducting an investigation with little background information about Florida’s Government Sunshine Law.
The Service Center of Sumter County in The Villages convened on February 16, 2021, and the county board underwent a series of training sessions on the Sunshine Laws in the subsequent months. The commissioners took their oath of office in November, 2020, and two significant regulations pertaining to Miller’s story are as follows: Firstly, county commissioners are only permitted to publicly address county affairs during official meetings, and not privately with fellow commissioners. Secondly, the commissioners are prohibited from utilizing a “third-party channel” for such communications. The state takes great pride in its legislation promoting governmental transparency.
[Gavel pounding]
We’ll call the meeting to order. This is a special meeting of the board of county commissioners of Sumter County.
The proposal was rejected by a vote of 4-1. The primary matter at hand was a suggestion put forth by Bradley Arnold, the county administrator, advising the commission against increasing impact fees for businesses. Instead, it was proposed that the developer engage in negotiations for a voluntary impact fee.
Miller, along with his wife, were among the supporters of the nearby euthanasia shelter and local animal welfare activists who were involved in an ongoing conflict, which Miller addressed as his last matter of concern.
Oren Miller: I’d like to see an animal advocacy group put together. We’ve got way too much animosity between animal services and the animal advocates in Sumter County. Too many things have been done in the past that do not help. Both groups have a reason to be in existence.
During that meeting, Miller was present. Considering Search’s expertise in psychology, he recommended Gary Search to act as the mediator and put forward the idea of establishing a reconciliation group of some sort.
OM: I would like to ask for Commissioner Search to mediate that group if he’s willing. This is news to him, I’m blindsiding him with this.
GS: Yes, yes, you are.
OM: But, with your background— well, if you don’t want to do it, I’m OK.
GS: No, no, no.
OM: I’m saying he’s got a background in mediation and negotiating and there’s some strong personalities in that group. So that he can keep peace in the meeting, I would like him to mediate that group.
RG: Miller was talking about a group that consisted of his spouse, Angie Fox.
Following a brief conversation among the members of the board, Bradley Arnold, the county administrator, interrupted.
Bradley Arnold: The advocacy group component and the names that Commissioner Miller has raised, there’s a conflict that’s associated with that. There’s a conflict associated with sunshine law issues that we’ve already run into. The problem that we had was, I had a meeting with Commissioner Search and he relayed his conversation with Angie Fox that was advocating for this very solution to be presented to the board.
Arnold is once again speaking at the meeting. Despite the indication that Search was unaware of his nomination as a mediator, Arnold is essentially accusing Miller of communicating with Search’s wife regarding the proposal, potentially violating Florida Sunshine Laws.
BA: I then had a directive email from Commissioner Miller that said, go and do this and use commissioner search for that specific purpose. That indicates clearly that Angie Fox is a conduit of communication between two commissioners, which is a violation of open meetings.
Two individuals participated, and he nearly urged someone in the crowd to lodge a formal grievance. Arnold suggested that the proposal for the committee should be delayed until a possible inquiry is conducted, RG.
BA: So my concern is that where you have something that unfortunately I became a witness to a violation that becomes an ethics related issue. If that is filed by someone and the investigation occurs, my concern is: is that you may want to wait until that activity has happened and the investigation has been concluded before you involve anything to do with Angie Fox, who’s currently acting as a conduit.
RG: That, at least, was Arnold’s account of what happened.
AF: Now Gary told us that Gary had taken it to Bradley and I don’t know if, if you talked to Gary or what Gary said, but Gary had taken it to Bradley. And Bradley told him not to bring it up and he had told him, he told Oren not to bring it up, but that’s not what the email says.
RG: That’s Angie Fox once more.
According to an email obtained by The Intercept, Miller had explicitly urged Arnold to take that action. In addition, Arnold himself was not only aware that Miller would present the concept to the board, but also worked behind the scenes.
Based on emails acquired through a public records request by Fox, Miller did in fact communicate with Arnold regarding his concept on February 11, 2021. Miller expressed, “I was out playing golf today and Angie spoke with Commissioner Search.” He further stated, “I am unaware of the details of their conversation, nor do I have any interest in knowing. However, I believe his experience would be valuable in serving as a facilitator. I am unsure if he would be open to this idea, but I believe he might be.”
Arnold replied that he thought it was a good idea to forward the email to the County Attorney, as Miller had asked him to bring the issue to the board’s attention.
During the interview with Arnold, he mentioned that his involvement in the meeting initiated the subsequent inquiry.
BA: That’s what ultimately led to the complaint with the State Attorney’s Office from at least one individual. I think that they had more complaints.
RG: Arnold had a contingency plan if Miller didn’t mention it.
BA: If that had not been raised by him at the meeting, it was the plan of the county attorney to share how dangerously close the commissioners are coming to a potential open meetings violation. But before she could provide that support, he had already proceeded. And then that basically met all of the conditions from my concern that I had raised with the county attorney.
Regardless of whether Miller raised his proposal or not, Arnold intended to raise an accusation of violation of open meetings, also known as RG.
RG: On that particular meeting, did you suggest that he bring that particular issue to the board?
BA: Actually, what I stated was— No, absolutely not to that degree.
“He mentioned in an email, after I presented him with the emails at a later time, that this communication happened before I found out about the open meetings problem, which is discussed in the meeting minutes.”
However, it must be noted that Miller’s personal email mentioned that his spouse had already conversed with Search.
Miller and Search were ultimately apprehended and accused of preposterous felony perjury charges for purportedly falsifying the content of their phone conversations. A formal inquiry was initiated. Rather than being brought before the ethics commission in Tallahassee as one would anticipate, the complaints were directly forwarded to the local state attorney as criminal cases. A total of three official grievances were indeed lodged.
He said that there were no business commissions active, and some calls were made about relief for Covid or functions of the church. The pickups had to be coordinated, so J’s Dough was out of the way. The interrogation took an excessive amount of time, and the apple fritters were brought from J’s Dough for the staff meetings. Some calls were being arranged for the staff who were going to bring apple fritters from J’s Dough. Some calls were also made about a golf outing that Miller recalled. Miller said that prosecutors didn’t show him any heads up or calendar to cross-check his schedule, and he didn’t remember most of what the calls were about.
The resistance to The Villages’ political powerhouse was rapidly deteriorating. The Daily Sun regularly published photographs of Search and Miller throughout the entire ordeal.
For a period of six months, preventing him from participating in the upcoming election, the agreement prohibited him from seeking public office. As a means of evading imprisonment and bringing the legal dispute to a close, he reached an agreement with prosecutors to provide testimony during Miller’s trial. Due to his prescribed medication regimen, serving a prison sentence was not the most desirable option, especially considering that Search also had a scheduled surgery. Before long, both Search and Miller found themselves overwhelmed by mounting legal expenses.
The Intercept published an article checking out the details of the entire rollercoaster process. In a meeting, J’s Dough was supposed to coordinate and bring those details, but they would. They weren’t discussing the business commission, but Miller confirmed that they had spoken on the phone in February or January. The testimony was not damning, but it did not end the Search.
Miller’s sentencing for waiting, we’re back at the courthouse half a year and two months later. He marched off to jail and was not given bond until sentencing. The jury found Miller guilty based on apparently sufficient circumstantial evidence, coupled with relentless coverage from the Daily Sun. However, the calls themselves stopped after the said time, but it is said that Miller had talked about business commission on the phone. Now, there is no single witness presented by the prosecution that supports the search evidence.
[Courthouse]
Marshal: Let me see your flashlight before you go in.
RG: That’s a microphone.
Marshal: Microphone, OK.
Miller, a previous commissioner removed from his position by a DeSantis proclamation, was escorted in handcuffs into the Marion County Courthouse on January 30, 2023. Incarcerated for a period of 74 days, he had shed more than 20 pounds. He was dressed in an orange and white jumpsuit and sported a complete beard.
AF: [Crying] I miss him so much.
Unknown person: And you know what? He said you wouldn’t recognize him, I did.
AF: I did.
Unknown person: Of course you did.
Unknown: I liked the beard. [Crosstalk]
AF: I actually did kind of like the beard.
RG: Numerous advocates of Millers’ filled the courtroom. Additionally, three of them provided testimony as witnesses to his character.
Bryant Fulgham: My name is Bryant Fulgham…
Dock Blanchard: How long have you known Mr. Miller?
BF: Since I was 14 years old.
I know Oren Miller to be the most truthful person I’ve ever met, and I want to share this with the court with his honor that Oren Miller and Angie Fox on September 7th, 2020 brought me and my mother down to see my dying grandfather at the VA hospital in Tampa. A man who was district chief of the Bushnell Fire Department and worked with the state of Florida for the prison system for 30 years. He was dying and Oren and Angie were at my house in Bushnell from the villages in a matter of moments. They brought us down there, they fed us, they sat down there the entire time that my grandfather was on life support. Oren Miller is the greatest man I’ve ever met. I think what’s happening is a travesty.
Gene McRedmond: Gene McRedmond.
DB: Do you know Mr. Miller?
GM: Yeah, I’ve known Oren for eleven years.
When I reflect back on things that Oren has done, what comes to mind mostly is [Hurricane] Irma back several years ago. And I think at that time Oren was number one or number two in charge of CERT— community emergency response team. He set up a center where people were bringing food, and water, and drinks.
And then I remember even before the storm stopped, Oren asked me to go with him. And we went through the whole old section — the orange blossom section of the Villages — which has a lot of old people, elderly people. And we knocked on door after door after door looking for people that needed help. And it was sad, you know, there are a lot of widows, widowers.
We met one lady who was without power for about two days and her insulin needed to be replaced. And we helped so many people and it was Oren who did that. And it was Oren who worked 24 hours a day for about two days trying to make sure that everybody was taken care of. He didn’t have to do that, but he did it. And that’s Oren. He doesn’t have to do anything, but he does it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
Miller was required to carry out 200 hours of community service at the nearby landfill and was additionally given 36 months of supervised probation and credit for time already served, even though there was no victim, no violence, and Miller had a clean record. The judge thoroughly reviewed the sentencing suggestion.
Outside the courthouse, I inquired the prosecutor a few queries.
RG: What’s your sense of whether justice was served in this case?
Prosecutor: I think the jury listened to the evidence that was presented and returned to verdict based on that, and it was up to them and they made their decision.
After being sentenced, Miller called Angie and her friends from the prison and they all went to a nearby McDonald’s for lunch.
Recorded voice: Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.
AF: Hi Honey. Are you ready to come home?
OM: I’m ready.
AF: I’m on my way. I’ll be, I’ll be home. I’ll be there in a minute. I love you. Bye.
RG: I had a conversation with Oren Miller following his release.
RG: How are you feeling?
OM: Physically I’m probably back to about 90 percent. I’m not sure they were giving me the right doses of medicine and they were obviously giving them to me at the wrong time. And there was a couple days I slept through the first medication call, so they refused to gimme my medication in the afternoon. So I didn’t get my medications on some days.
RG: And Angie said you went 10 days in the beginning without any of it. Is that right?
OM: Eight, eight days without my heart medicine and 13 days without my thyroid medicine.
RG: What did that do to you physically?
OM: Dizziness and light-headed nonstop.
RG: How, how many people were in there with you?
OM: 80.
RG: And what, what was the population like?
OM: The total population was 1,800 people.
RG: Oh.
OM: In my particular pod it was 80 people.
RG: And were you all together in a day room?
OM: Yes. Night room, day room. The whole, the whole thing. The day room had seating for 56 people, but yet we had 80 people in the pod. So when breakfast, lunch, and dinner was served, only 56 people could actually sit down at a picnic table type thing with metal and eat. The rest of them had to stand up at their beds and or sit on the floor and eat on their beds.
RG: Now because of your seniority, did you get a seat or because you were brand new, you had to sit on your bed? What was your situation?
OM: Luckily, a guy adopted me when I came through the door and he got me a seat in the seating area. So I was able to sit.
RG: What, what was, what was his story? How’d that work out?
OM: He’s a lifetime member of the jails and prisons of Florida. He goes out, he comes back, he goes out, he comes back. He just, he can’t stay off of drugs.
RG: Miller stated that conflicts occurred frequently.
OM: Every two or three days there was a major fight. In my time there, I saw two people I thought were almost killed.
One of them was choked into complete unconsciousness. Finally, the guards did come in on that one because it was in the frontal cell where they could see it. And they casually walked over to the guy and put their taser lights on him, and he saw the taser lights and he stopped choking the guy.
The other one, five guys beat the crap out of a guy. He was in bad shape, but he came to, and they drug him into the shower 15 minutes later, 20 minutes later, so he could get himself cleaned up. He literally got the shit beat out of him.
RG: Did you ever get roughed up?
OM: No.
RG: Or, how’d you, or how did you avoid the scuffles?
OM: I was called aside by one of the leaders of one of the gangs. By day two, he says, Oren Miller, you are protected in here because you’re a senior citizen. He says, but understand, don’t cross any lines. Don’t speak out of turn. Don’t do anything to ruffle anybody’s feathers. And he says, we’ll protect you if we can. So I minded my Ps and Qs.
RG: So when, when you went into court for sentencing how did you mentally and emotionally prepare yourself for the uncertainty of what the sentence would be?
OM: I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that this judge had it in for me. He told us at the first motion to suppress that we were guilty. He announced us guilty right then and there. So my fear was it was a class three felony. I could have gone to prison for five years, could have faced a $5,000 fine. Now my lawyer kept saying and some of the jailhouse lawyers — the guys in jail — well the guidelines say you can only get up to one year so you won’t go to prison. But that’s a guideline. That wouldn’t have stopped him from giving me a maximum sentence of five years. So I was scared to death until they told me I was going to be released of what my outcome was going to be.
RG: Were you able to even concentrate on what you were hearing from the character witnesses and from the judge or were you so zeroed in on just hearing what the sentence was going to be?
OM: I was so zeroed on the sentencing, I was not hearing much of anything.
[Starts crying] I broke down when I saw my wife because I hadn’t seen her in 74 days. I was trying not to break down, but I couldn’t help myself. We’ve been married for 35 years. I, you know, she’s my right arm.
RG: And I saw you tell her I love you as you walked out the door going back to be processed. What was that feeling like, knowing that at some point soon you were gonna be reunited?
OM: Probably the best day of my life since we did, since the day we got married because I was gonna get to be with her again.
On Monday, February 20th, Oren Miller will report to the landfill for his first day of community service, while his wife has successfully raised enough money through his Gofundme campaign, which he finds very appealing.
[Credits begin.].
I would like to express my gratitude to Greg, my brother, for giving me a ride to Angie’s house and for his hospitality while I was there. I would also like to thank my dad, George, for his hospitality while I was a resident at Villages. Additionally, I am grateful to Angie for helping me with the sentencing and to Oren for recommending J’s Dough.
If you ever find yourself in Webster, Florida, Oren definitely knows them and will tell you. The apple fritters are completely out of this world.
RG: Alright, we’re in Webster, Florida. Deep down south in Sumter County and there is Dough J’s. Huge yellow, what is that barnhouse looking? Looks like they make good donuts. Dough J’s Chicken and Doughnuts. A hole lot of soul with hole spelled h-o-l-e.
Clerk: Good morning.
RG: Morning.
Clerk: How are you?
RG: Wonderful. How about you?
Clerk: I’m good. No complaints, hun.
RG: We’re definitely going to get the donut with the chicken.
Clerk: Ok so you want either the J’s Glazed Donut Sandwich, which consists of egg and cheese [and] your choice of meat, whether it’s bacon, sausage, or chicken. [Laughs.] Or you can do the Glazer that has…
RG: I think we want that one, right?
GG: Wow.
Clerk: [Laughs.]
GG: I’ll eat another one of those.
Clerk: So one has egg and cheese and the other one doesn’t.
RG: We’ll get that second one.
Clerk: You want the Glazer?
RG: Yeah, and then I got to get the kids something too.
Clerk: Am I grabbing a box for six or more or six or less?
RG: I’m going to get some apple fritters too.
Clerk: OK.
RG: So, a big box.
[Paper crinkling sound.]
RG: Apple fritter. Yum, yeah. More apple flavor than you get in a typical apple fritter.
[The music of deconstructed credit plays.]
Roger Hodge serves as the editor in chief of The Intercept. Our theme music was created by Bart Warshaw. The show was mixed by William Stanton. Laura Flynn holds the position of supervising producer. José Olivares acts as our producer. Deconstructed is the production company behind The Intercept.
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