Congressman Mooney on the Pivotal Senate Race in WV and Alexander Raikin Exposes the Surge in Assisted Suicide

Welcome to this week's episode of Breaking Battlegrounds! First on the show is Congressman Alex Mooney, Representative from West Virginia's 2nd Congressional District. He'll be diving into pressing topics such as federal spending, the looming specter of a government shutdown, and the pivotal Senate race in West Virginia. Stay tuned as we unravel why this race carries not just statewide significance but also national importance.

In our second segment, we welcome back friend of the show, Alexander Raikin. With a focus on medical ethics and a keen eye for statistics, Alexander delves into his latest research, featured in the National Review, titled 'The End of Medicine: How death care replaced health care.' He exposes the proliferation of euthanasia within healthcare facilities in Australia and Canada with reports of silencing whistleblowers, inappropriate discussions about sedating a patient into euthanasia, and the expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) to vulnerable populations, including the homeless and children, particularly Indigenous children.

Our final guest of the show is Ken LaCorte where he joins to discuss Lachlan Murdoch, soon to be the new chairman of Fox News.

Stay tuned for Kiley’s Corner, where Kiley Kipper serves up the week's most intriguing stories. In this episode, Kiley delves into the recent controversy surrounding Dave Portnoy, the President of Barstool Sports, who exposed a Washington Post food critic's eyebrow-raising practices. Uncovering the critic's efforts to engage sponsors by making claims of misogyny and racism, Kiley discusses the implications for journalistic integrity and ethics. She also dives into the gripping Karen Read murder case, where Read faces charges of murdering her Boston police officer boyfriend, all while asserting her innocence amidst allegations of framing.

-

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Congressman Alex X. Mooney and his wife, Dr. Grace Mooney, live in Charles Town in Jefferson County with their three children. The son of a Cuban refugee and Vietnam veteran, Alex grew up with a deep sense of appreciation for the American ideals of individual freedom and personal responsibility.

Alex’s mother, Lala (Suarez) Mooney, was born and raised in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, where she was thrown into jail for seven weeks for opposing Castro’s communist regime. When she was 20, Lala escaped Cuba and fled to America to restart her life.

Alex’s father, Vincent, was sent to Vietnam when Lala was expecting their first child. He served as an Engineering Captain and was awarded the Bronze Star.

Listening to his parents’ inspiring stories, Alex knew from a young age that he wanted to spend his life fighting for the American ideals set forth by our Founding Fathers.

Alex played football and rugby at Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1993 with a major in Philosophy.

Alex was first elected to Congress in 2014 and re-elected in 2016 and 2018. He is a principled conservative fighting for lower taxes and less government regulations on businesses to create more jobs in America.

Alex believes in the American values of hard work, faith, and freedom that have made our country great. With a proven record of fighting for conservative values, Alex is working to defend traditional values, protect the Second Amendment and promote respect for all human life.

Congressman Mooney serves on the House Financial Services Committee which oversees some of the most important economic issues facing West Virginia, such as our banking, insurance, housing and investment policies.

-

Alexander Raikin is a freelance journalist and a writer interested in medical ethics and bad statistics. His writings have been published in City Journal and The New Atlantis. Alexander is also a research fellow with Do No Harm. He can be found on Twitter at @AlexanderRaikin 

-

Ken LaCorte is Host of Elephants In Rooms and Former Fox News behind-the-scenes. He writes on Substack about censorship, media manipulation, and honest insight for people curious about how the world works.

-

TRANSCRIPTION

Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, we have a couple of great interviews lined up for you today. We are leading off the program with Congressman Alex Mooney of West Virginia's second Congressional District. Congressman Mooney and his wife, Dr. Grace Mooney, live in Charles Town in Jefferson County with their three children. He is the son of a Cuban refugee and a Vietnam veteran and grew up with a deep sense of appreciation for American ideals of individual freedom and personal responsibility. And right now, Chuck, he is getting out on the campaign trail, looking at the Senate seat in West Virginia and taking on Joe Manchin.

Chuck Warren: It's unbelievable. Congressman, thank you for joining us on the show.

Ken Lacourt: Hey, man, great to be with you guys.

Chuck Warren: So you're running for us Senate. You've been out on the campaign trail. What are what are voters most interested in versus what the media wants us to think they're interested in?

Ken Lacourt: Well, the voters are most interested in keeping their freedoms, not being controlled by their government, being censored or frankly, being even jailed by their government just for being patriotic Americans. That's what I'm hearing. And they want people who do what they say they would do. My good friend, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who, by the way, has endorsed me for my Senate race, he wrote a whole book. It just said, Do what you say you would do. Said you would do just the whole book. Just do it. And people get really upset because they elect oftentimes conservatives and conservatives don't don't follow through. Repeal Obamacare, for example, cut taxes and rein in this two tier system of justice that we're seeing these days. So that's what I'm hearing. They want a fighter and that's what I'm going to give them.

Sam Stone: Congressman, I love that you made that point because one of the things I've been saying for a while now is Democrats run center and then govern left, Republicans run right and have not made not fulfilled those commitments. A lot of them have moved to govern center. And I think that's created a lot of the distrust and division within the party right now. Is that specific dynamic?

Ken Lacourt: Yeah, I mean, it's a willingness to fight. It has created that. There are some Republicans you just give up. They get down there. The Democrats fight real hard. I mean, the Senate will filibuster and shut down government, then try to blame Republicans for what the Democrats are doing. And it is a fight. I mean, we have to go on shows like this and other shows and explain to the American people the truth. They're not. The American people will get it, but they have to be told the truth. And frankly, too much of the mainstream media that report on this stuff obsessively do not report the actual facts of what's happening. They're almost like mouthpieces for the far left. And so you've got to you got to work a little extra hard for us conservatives to tell our constituents what's actually happening. So it's a it's a worthy fight. As you mentioned, my mother fled a communist country. And those countries, they declare people guilty until proven innocent. And the government censors what can be said. And we're fighting for that here. And you mentioned, you know, I'm running for Joe Manchin seat. Senator Joe Manchin voted to impeach Donald Trump twice, throw him out of office for nothing for a phone call to the Ukraine to make sure our money is being spent correctly. So, frankly, he's part of the problem.

Chuck Warren: With Congressman Alex Mooney. He is serving West Virginia's second District. For those of you in West Virginia, you can catch him on the station, 1170 a m in Wheeling, West Virginia. Congressman, so as you've gone around, you've done these meetings and we want to go here to the possible shutdown in a minute. But as you go around and you meet with donors in West Virginia versus town halls in West Virginia, is there any difference of what the priorities are, what they supposedly think of the donor class in West Virginia versus your small business, your people going to town halls? Is there any difference? They both see the same problems.

Ken Lacourt: Oh, honestly, I'm hearing the same problems now. Most of the donors I'm talking to are conservatives. They wouldn't be donating to me to begin with. Right. And when I when I tour businesses, a lot of the businesses are related to oil and gas. Coal here and small business people are the backbone of our economy and they're struggling under the weight of high taxation lawsuits. And frankly, the most harmful is just these regulations, these well, well written in the cleverly written, I should say, regulations that just make it hard to make money and the wokeness into the banking system where they want to bank gun stores or coal companies. I mean, the left is really obsessed with pushing these things. And I don't think a lot of Republicans understand that, that we really have to fight back. They're not going to go away easy.

Chuck Warren: No, they're not. And yeah, as a matter of fact, the you're on the financial committee. What they're doing on the banking system is just it's like a dictator. It's unbelievable what they're doing to the financial institutions of this country.

Ken Lacourt: Yeah. I mean, they shouldn't even have a right to ask. They're just asking how much of your money goes to green new energy? How much of your money goes to coal? Do you bank guns? And it's freaking everybody out. Like, why are they even asking the question? There is no government mandate as to how much money private investors can give the energy sector for coal, oil and gas. There's no there's no requirement that they only invest a certain amount or have to give to green energy. That's not a mandate that they're trying to push it and they're abusing their powers. President Biden tried to tried to forgive everybody's entire college loan debt in the whole country, trillion dollars.

Sam Stone: Well, in the downtown.

Ken Lacourt: You can do whatever he wants.

Sam Stone: The downstream of that is d. Banking of unfavored individuals, businesses and institutions.

Ken Lacourt: Exactly. You know, you know, these policies have the opposite effect. They actually make it harder for someone who needs a loan for a home or a small business to get one because the regulations take away the money.

Chuck Warren: Congressman Mooney, we're looking at a possible government shutdown. Would you first explain before we get into the weeds on what's going on in DC? I understand Speaker McCarthy has sent everybody home for the weekend to take a deep breath and they told to be on alert, to be called back. And I want to talk about that. But what I want to ask is if the government shuts down, what does this mean for the taxpayers of West Virginia? The small business owner, for the taxpayers of this country? Is America falling apart? Then? Do dogs and cats start raining or is it just overblown by the press?

Ken Lacourt: Well, first and foremost, most of the money coming out of DC is mandatory. So programs, Social Security that is not affected by a government shutdown, that's an automatic program. The checks go out every month. So any scare tactics you might hear about people not getting their Social Security benefits is just not true. Social Security checks go out and Medicare and Medicaid are still programs that continue to exist because they're they're not something we vote on in the regular budgets. Then I mean, the way it's supposed to, the way we do it is we would fund one agency at a time. Don't mix them all together. Do you deal with one topic at a time? Single subject is a way to say it, and most of the funding is frankly the military to fund our troops, their pays and their activities. That's the big one. That's the one we're working on this week and we've not gotten it through yet. I did vote for that one, of course, and we're just a couple of votes away from passing that. But that's the biggest one. That's most of the spending. Then it goes to transportation and health care. And at some point you'll get to, like the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, which frankly, if that shut down, it wouldn't be the worst thing.

Sam Stone: I one of the things that I think the media, certainly The New York Times, Washington Post style media would like to forget is that a lot of the speaker's battle, the leadership battle, centered on return to regular order and handling these bills individually rather than as omnibus or continuing resolutions. And even the Democrats at that time were saying, well, that sounds like a good idea. Why? Why are we so behind, it seems, in this process?

Ken Lacourt: Gosh, I mean, there's no excuse for it. We've had eight months to pass these bills. We have a very slim majority. There's 222 Republicans. So if five Republicans don't want to vote for the bill, you have a problem. And those could be people who have certain specific concerns or cuts. Too much doesn't cut enough. We have a very slim majority. We've known that all along. We saw the speaker's battle. It took a really long time to put Kevin McCarthy in there as speaker. And I think that sort of showed our Republican majority are slim Republican majority, how we could get things done, how we need to actually just have a conservative product is what it is. If it's a good conservative product, I think it would pass. And we only 1 or 2 votes short at this point for passing it. So I guess we could have stayed. I would I would have been for staying in continuing to vote if we work it out. But we have this deadline and we've had eight months to get there. We've known it's there. I've seen this over and over again. This is my ninth year in Congress. And this is this happens like every year. You wait till the last second. And it's a bad tendency. We need to get back to what you just said, regular order. We're supposed to have this all done by June and over to the Senate and you negotiate it. I'll tell you, the Senate is Democrat and the things that we want to do in our bills like ban transgender surgeries in the military, ban taxpayer funding of abortion, the things that we want to do. The Senate doesn't want to do that. So there's going to be some differences there.

Sam Stone: Yeah, there's a reality that Republicans need to win these seats to have our way. Otherwise, you are in a position, you're required to compromise and come up with something that everyone can agree on.

Ken Lacourt: Right? Right. But what I've seen is if you go to this continuing resolution idea where you just you put all the money in there and you try to add a couple a couple of things. I think one of the proposals said border security. I'm all for border security, but that doesn't stop the wokeness in the banks. It doesn't stop the transgender surgeries. It doesn't stop the war on coal and the war on oil and gas in my state. So we really just do it all. We should do it. All of it. At least pass it in the House, see what the Senate will do. I mean, the Senate, these things require 60 votes in the Senate because either party can filibuster, can can require a cloture motion and require a filibuster. So you have the Senate. It has to be more bipartisan. And that's tough. That's really tough for the Senate. I mean, it's tough on us for us. And we have a majority here. We don't have the filibuster. We can just pass it with a majority vote. They require a supermajority of 60 votes. So it actually is you know, what normally happens, sadly, is 10 or 12 Republicans vote with all the Democrats for a more liberal product for more spending. But then we should still go that go to conference committee. They need to teach us in fifth grade. Then you go to conference committee and you reconcile the differences there. And yeah, there's some give and take, but it's all too all too often we just give up on the whole thing. We pass what's called this continuing resolution so there's no checks and balances on the money. The two tiered justice system continues. No border. I mean, we just give up. Basically, we're giving up. And that really upsets the voters. That's your first question. Yeah. The voters want to see us actually do something.

Chuck Warren: We're with Congressman Mooney from West Virginia. Congressman, we got a couple of minutes left here to our next segment. And when you come back on that next segment, we want to talk about your mother's story about Fidel Castro, Cuba, and how she was thrown in prison. I think voters would like to hear that and how it affects you. You played football and rugby at Dartmouth College. Which would you prefer and which do you still watch?

Ken Lacourt: Rugby? I prefer rugby. Do you really was my dream sport. I did, yeah. Well you know in football is offensive line so most I'm just blocking people right when I switched to rugby you get to run the ball. Everybody, all 15 players get to run the ball. You're like a running back, which I always wanted to be a running back and they wouldn't let me do it. And on the football team. And then when you're not running the ball, guess what? You're tackling the guy running the ball. So you're like a middle linebacker at that point. I mean, that's a dream, your middle line. And those are the two positions I always wanted to play Big guys, probably true of most football players. You want to be a quarterback running back at least to wide receiver, right?

Chuck Warren: Right.

Ken Lacourt: It's every every lineman's dream.

Chuck Warren: Yeah. What was your what was your nickname? What was your nickname on the rugby team? Did you have a nickname? Well.

Ken Lacourt: Well, what did they call me? They only played football my freshman year. They called me Mooney in the bank instead of money in the bank? Mooney In the bank. It was nice. It was complimentary. Oh, God. They called me Moondog. All sorts of things.

Chuck Warren: On the football. That's great.

Ken Lacourt: On the rugby team, we at Dartmouth College had a very active rugby team and we were we were we often were Ivy League champions. We were ten. And over my senior year, I mean, we took it we took it real seriously up at Dartmouth.

Chuck Warren: All right.

Sam Stone: Love it. Congressman, We're going to be coming back with more in just a moment with Congressman Alex Mooney of West Virginia. Folks, stay tuned. We've got a great second guest coming up today. Alexander Rankin talking about Canada's medical euthanasia program. Stay tuned.

Advertisement: At Overstock. We know home is a pretty important place and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms, Overstock has every day free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful, high quality furniture and decor. You need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock Making dream Homes Come True.

Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're going to be continuing on with Congressman Alex Mooney of West Virginia's second Congressional District here in just a moment. But folks, how are you feeling about your portfolio right now? Stock market's been going up and down with Joe Biden's economy. You just cannot trust it if you are looking for a fantastic opportunity to earn a great return on your money. A fixed rate of return up to 10.25%, you need to call our friends at refy and talk to them about the fantastic opportunities they offer. Go to invest. Y refy.com that's invest the letter. Why then refy.com or give them a call at 888 yrefy 24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.

Chuck Warren: So, Congressman, you have a you know, all families have stories, have narratives. Your mother is a Lala. Is that how you pronounce it? Lala, Lala, Lala. Yeah. She was born and raised in Fidel's Castro, Cuba, and she was thrown in jail for seven weeks for opposing Castro's communist regime. What was she doing? Her opposition. How did she get thrown in jail? How has this influenced your view of those seeking asylum, say, for those from Venezuela right now? And how has it affected your view of national security?

Ken Lacourt: Yeah. Yeah. So she actually wrote a book about it a couple of years ago. Oh, wow. "My story". Yeah. Lala Money. You can look it up. And the first chapter of that book talks about how when the Bay of Pigs invasion was coming up, the chance to free Cuba from the communist regime and it failed because John F Kennedy canceled the air support anyway, that was coming up. So the communists started putting in jail. Everybody they suspected, right? No. No rights, no hearing, no trial, no chance to defend yourself. You just went to jail if you were even suspected of not being a communist supporter who might sympathize with the freedom from communism and not side with Castro. So they put her her siblings, her, her father all in jail. It was seven weeks long. Unfortunately, the Bay of Pigs invasion didn't did fail. And so, of course, they let people out. And, you know, they wanted to frankly, they let people leave for a period of time. So fortunately, my mother and her brothers and sisters, she's one of 14 children. So her brothers and sisters and parents all got to leave. And then, of course, everybody kept leaving. So then they lock you in. That's the way communists are. They lock you in. People want to come to our country in communist countries, they won't let you leave. You know, it's the opposite issue. But she came here legally because she was a political political refugee.

Ken Lacourt: So she came here legally. And the immigrants that come here. The rule of law is important. They come here because of the rule of law, because the Constitution applies to everybody the same, regardless of when you came, what race you are, anything. It's the rule of law. And my mother is a big believer in that. She's a big believer in political participation. She's 82 years old, lives near near me here, a couple of miles away in Charlestown, West Virginia. Very blessed to have her here. She loves the political process. She would never run, but she's she did raise us to believe in participating in elections because she saw what's happened. She saw firsthand what happens when the bad guys take over. They lock you down, man. These Covid lockdowns that were going on, waiving our rights, emergency powers being abused, you know, people being forced to vaccinate or wear masks. Man, that is that is totalitarianism. That's the type of stuff we do not believe in and cannot get to that point. So that's who raised me. My father passed away many years ago. He did fight in Vietnam. He was an army captain behind the advance of Vietnam, the advance of the communism in Vietnam. And he was proud of doing that. But now I feel that the good Lord has called me to fight within this country, those same types of policies, frankly.

Chuck Warren: Well, that's that's a fantastic story. And I'm sure you're proud of your mother and your your kids are as well.

Sam Stone: And we're going to actually get the link to that book and put it up on our Twitter and our social media. So people want to check that out. They they can get Lola Mooney's book.

Chuck Warren: So, Congressman Mooney, thinking about your mother's story, if I'm a cynic, which I sometimes in and I'm on a comedian show, I would say your mother would be in prison and would put her hands on Joe Biden's face and say, Joey, let me tell you how bad communism is. I mean, that's the way Joe Biden would tell if it happened to his family. Right, Right, right. Tell us tell us about the impeachment inquiry. What should people know about it? Yeah.

Ken Lacourt: I was livid when when Adam Schiff had his secret little star chamber down there and was deposing witnesses in secret without Trump or his attorneys able to even be present, selectively leaking information. I was so upset, I said, this is what the communists do. This is actually what they do. So you may recall I helped lead a group of about 60 congressmen who went into the skiff at one point. We just walked in there, even though they told us we weren't allowed in and we occupied it for the entire day. That got so much media. See, that's the type of fighting back I'm talking about. That's why I'm running for the US Senate because I am a fighter and I think West Virginia is deserve a conservative US senator. I'm the only one running and I'm a fighter. And I walked in there. We shut that thing down. We got so much attention. I did. I did media for basically the next day to explain why it was so important we had to go in there even though they told us not to, and it got so much attention. Then they moved the impeachment trial to the for the whole country to see and the full Judiciary Committee and the country turned against it because it was so unfair. But we had a fight. We had a fight. We couldn't just sit there and let them keep abusing their powers. And that's the way I was raised. I was raised to fight because if we don't fight those little battles, it gets worse and worse. Frankly, you're seeing it now because the Democrats want to shut down the government and blame Republicans and create a two tier system of justice right here under our nose.

Chuck Warren: Yes, they do.

Sam Stone: Yeah. How much has your mother talked at all about seeing any parallels in what Democrats are trying to do here now versus what she experienced when Fidel came to power?

Ken Lacourt: Absolutely. Yeah. The parallels are everywhere. And it's not just that. I mean, that's the two tier system of justice, but even things like we're a family of faith. Faith is very important to us, our religion. We believe in Jesus Christ. We believe in the Bible and for people of faith, even that even that's in jeopardy. Now, if you don't want to I don't know you don't want to participate in a transgender surgery. The Democrats want to get you fired. People, you know, you don't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding. They want to shut down your business. Yeah. So.

Sam Stone: Congressman, I look at like what's going on in some of these other countries, too, like Canada, New Zealand and some of these others that have gone further. And, you know, I was just reading a piece and we're going to be talking about it a little bit with our next guest. But but Canada actually went in and just government took over a Catholic hospital because it was Catholic and they didn't want to allow that. I mean, that we're not that far from that here, are we?

Ken Lacourt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of one of the scarier things that happened two years ago when the Democrats had total control, they actually removed the historical religious freedom protections that were in all the spending bills used to be any money given to a hospital. It was a standard language that you're sincerely held. Religious beliefs can never be violated. That was just a standard actually passed in 1990s. Bill Clinton signed it. Chuck Schumer supported it. They started taking those out. They literally were subjugating faith to government, which had never been done in this country before. We always had said, your faith comes first. And they want to they want to subjugate that. It is scary. And that's what they'll do if we give them total control. And that's why the House of Representatives that's now Republican. That's why I'm running for the Senate. We're one seat away from taking the US Senate over, you know, getting those like Joe Manchin didn't vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett. But he did vote to confirm. Jackson Brown, the most radical one we've ever put on there. So it does matter who we put on these courts, and that's the job of the US Senate. And I'm the only you know, I'll vote for conservatives, not liberals.

Sam Stone: We need more conservative fighters. Congressman, thank you so much. We really appreciate your service. We've got just about one minute left here. How do folks get behind you and support you and your campaign and stay on top of the work you're doing?

Ken Lacourt: So thanks. My is Mooney, my last name M-o-o-n-e-y Mooney for F or WV, West Virginia Mooney forwv.com. And we run a grassroots campaign. Please sign up there. We'll door knock phone bank, get some yard signs out, have some rallies, Please sign up Mooney for WV. You can donate through there as well. And we appreciate whatever help you can give us. We are going to take this message right to the voters.

Sam Stone: And folks, if you're out there thinking, hey, that's not my state, maybe you're in California where we're on the air, maybe you're in one of the other markets where we're on the air and you're not going to have a Republican opportunity to put a Republican in the Senate. You can phone bank for these guys. You can contribute as a volunteer for these folks like Alex Mooney, who are going to be our conservative fighters. Congressman Mooney, thank you so much for joining us today. We look forward to having you back again in the future. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Coming up next, friend of the program, Alexander Raikin coming back on. He is a freelance writer interested in medical ethics and bad statistics. And unfortunately, Chuck, medical ethics are in decline and bad statistics are increasing like crazy. And he's joining us today to discuss his continued research into assisted suicide with his newest piece in the National Review, The End of Medicine How Death Care Replaced Health Care. Alex, I would say I love having you on this program to talk about this stuff because you were like the only one doing this. I wish we didn't have to have you on this program to talk about it because it wasn't happening. But it is some of the stuff you reported. I was hot under the collar yesterday, so he called me.

Chuck Warren: I was in a meeting and he was off the hook.

Sam Stone: I mean, let's just start with the fact that someone in Canada can call a suicide hotline. Alex They can call a suicide hotline and be offered assisted suicide instead of help. How is that even?

Alex Raikin: It is much more. It is much more frugal.

Chuck Warren: Yes, it is. Yeah, it is.

Alex Raikin: It's really hard to believe just how quickly all of this has escalated. I mean, we're talking about a practice that was illegal in 2015. And now again, the people who are most impacted by this are not physicians. They're not the hospitals. So imagine if you are a physician in Canada right now and you see what your colleagues are doing right, or you're working in a hospital where you know that euthanasia is being provided to people who otherwise would get better if they actually had proper health care. Right. But the people who are most impacted by this are exactly what you say, Right? There are people with disabilities, people with serious illnesses who are trying to get medical care and they're being denied. Right. Long wait times in Canada have continued to get worse at the same time as you have this massive normalization of death care.

Sam Stone: Yeah. Astoundingly, I mean, you you documented the first case of physicians in Canada, and apparently this has happened previously in the Netherlands as well, talking very flippantly about sedating a patient in order to prevent the patient from resisting. This made assisted suicide program.

Chuck Warren: Can you imagine someone saying no in a let's use me too, as an example. Someone saying no, say, well, I'm just going to sedate you. It's not what you really want. I mean, that may be a crude analogy, but is that far off from what they're doing?

Alex Raikin: It's it's crude, but it is exactly what they're doing. Right. And this is a conversation. So this is a conversation that's recorded where physicians are openly discussing what to do if a patient is and here's a quote, is a patient who has lost capacity with a waiver in place and is now delirious, shouting, pulling their arm away as one tries to insert the IV to provide made. So the waiver for final consent is this completely cryptic agreement, right? It's unsigned agreement with only one of the two made physicians. That's how they describe themselves, made providers or made assessors. It's an unwritten agreement. There doesn't need to be any witnesses. Family does not need to be informed. And yet, as soon as they enter into this cryptic agreement, Right, a physician can sedate you essentially to make sure that you're not shouting, pulling your arm away. It is absolutely absurd. And yet these physicians are openly discussing this and laughing about it.

Chuck Warren: Well, how many people maybe you know this fact, If not, maybe you can find out. Be good for an article. How many people think about suicide? Get to the point where they do the preparations, but don't go through with it. I'm sure it's not one. I'm sure it's not 5%. I'm sure it's double digits. What? What do you think that percentage is?

Alex Raikin: Right. So this is the part where it gets interesting. A lot of these statistics are. Intentionally made secret. So we know from the beginning that when euthanasia was first legalized in Canada, there was a physician in Toronto who claimed that only 10% of made requests went through. And obviously there were media articles about this, like what a travesty it is. Right now, only 4% of cases are actually rejected based on capacity or based on the illness. And the majority of those cases are because the patient is only suffering from a psychiatric illness, which will be a qualifying condition this march. So in six months. So we don't really know what the true number of people who would otherwise still be alive. Right. All that we know is that there is a few percentage of cases that are, you know, where people do change their minds. Right. But we're literally living in a time. So if you look at Quebec as the only province that publishes this data and they show that 50% of the time between requesting made and dying for made in Quebec in 2021, 50% of cases was in under ten days. I don't know any other medical service where goodness get that done so quickly.

Sam Stone: Oh, okay, folks, we're going to be coming back with more from Alexander Raikin here in just a moment. If you haven't, you need to check out his piece on National Review. We have that up on our social media feeds for breaking battlegrounds. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

Advertisement: At Overstock. We know home is a pretty important place and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms. Overstock has every day free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful high quality furniture and decor. You need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock Making Dream homes Come True.

Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Folks, you probably heard me talking about why wi fi for a while now, they've been getting a ton of phone calls and I thank you for supporting an investment that actually helps people. First off, let me give you some some facts about this. It's true. You can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market of the Fed. You can turn your income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There are absolutely no fees and there's never any attack on your principal. If you need your money back, you'll get your monthly statement each month with zero surprises. If you're not sure if you trust this economy, this secure collateralized portfolio may be a good option for you. So go to invest Refy.com that's invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888. Y refy 24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.

Chuck Warren: Before we go back to a new question, I just looked it up. The University of Washington did a study with teenagers from 2019 through 21, and they found in their studies that there were 38%. Who were suicidal. Who had planned suicide. Went through the steps but did not attempt it.

Sam Stone: Well, in a lot more we know from all the literature.

Chuck Warren: But can you but can you imagine if they're doing it saying, no, no, no, Look, you made you sign something. You made a commitment. We're going to.

Sam Stone: Yeah, we're going to sedate you. We're going to sedate you.

Chuck Warren: I mean, that's what they're doing. You have 38% and then you have the, you know.

Sam Stone: A lot of suicide attempts are cries for help. Right?

Chuck Warren: Right. But there's just incredible. That's what they're doing. So let me ask you a question. Since Canada is quickly becoming one of the biggest serial killers in the world and that's what they are. Let's not pretend otherwise. And Australia seems to be joining in on the fun. They are defunding and threatening hospitals who will not go with this madness, aren't they?

Alex Raikin: Yeah. And so the first victims were those who were public hospitals. So secular hospitals, they overwhelmingly were the first to cave in. There are still some holdouts. So the largest mental health hospital in Canada, they still do not allow euthanasia on site, but that might change in six months. They haven't issued any statements. There were secular palliative care clinics in Quebec that refused to sign on. So the government essentially passed legislation forcing them to before they were just threatening to cut their funding. But now they just force them through legislation. So the remaining targets are Catholic hospitals or other faith based institutions that are trying to say, no, we will not be part of this madness. The Guardian. Also just recently, I just looked earlier today, The Guardian has issued essentially a hotline where you can report cases of physicians turning you away from euthanasia.

Chuck Warren: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

Sam Stone: It's hard for me to understand this. I mean, I think coming from any kind of moral perspective, but but reading and this is where maybe maybe you have some insight into these people, Alex, and why they're why they're doing this. Because as I as I read through your piece and looked at the quotes and then clicked on some of the links and watched some of the videos, the absolute callousness for human life displayed by these supposed doctors, I think was the most shocking thing. As you're watching that, you know, they really sort of revel in what they're doing. And my question is, why? Why why would anyone be so eager to kill other human beings?

Alex Raikin: That actually reminds me. I interviewed a forensic psychiatrist. She told me that in her work she has dealt with the most vile people in our society. She has dealt with mobsters. She has dealt with child abusers, serial killers. And yet she told me that the people who who she is most afraid of are none of them. It's instead physicians who provide assisted suicide in the hundreds and thousands, by the way, in the Netherlands.

Chuck Warren: Oh, my gosh.

Alex Raikin: These people legitimately believe that what they're doing is medically therapeutic. They legitimately believe that some people's lives are not worth living and they want to be the people to get them to the other side. That's why Stephanie Green, for instance, who's the head of the Canadian Association of Made Assessors and Providers, she delivered babies before and then she decided to have a career change and she decided to perform at least 3 or 400 made made deaths. And she still calls them the exact same thing. She also calls them deliveries.

Chuck Warren: Oh, she's an evil mindset.

Sam Stone: I mean, I don't see many of these people being religious, so what the heck do they think they're delivering them to? I mean, you can almost say, like, if you don't believe in heaven, then where's the where's the good outcome from this?

Chuck Warren: It's just a burden on society. That's the only way I can view them viewing it. Is that right, Alexander?

Alex Raikin: They have almost this quasi religious worldview where so I have this document from 2018, so it's of Camps annual conference. So again, the Canadian Association of Maid Assessors and Providers and they openly discuss and they describe Maid as sacred. That's the word that they use. So it's almost as if they do have this alternative religious out view and it's not that they're against religion. They're only against religion. If you take thou shalt not kill seriously. Otherwise, though, they'll gladly sign you on.

Chuck Warren: I think that's I think that's called a cult. It sounds like it's cultish behavior.

Sam Stone: It's a death.

Chuck Warren: Cult we are with  Alexander Raikin, we're talking about Canada's medical assistance and dying or made law. Alexander One thing that has alarmed me as I've read your your work on this is physicians who are basically voicing opposition to this, voicing concern they're being threatened with their medical licenses. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Alex Raikin: Yeah, I mean, it's quite explicit. If you so many provinces and in many countries. So this is also happening in Australia. This is happening in New Zealand. This has already happened in Netherlands and Belgium. And of course, as with everything else on this file, Canada is going at the forefront. If you do not provide a referral for medical assistance in dying, right, Even if it's in cases where you think that the patient can't qualify, it's not legal for them to qualify. The patient doesn't have the capacity to consent. The patient doesn't have an illness that is serious enough. Many different medical colleges have instituted effective referral requirements. If you do not refer the patient, you are at risk of losing your medical license. If you're outspoken about this, you are getting threatened by a college. One of the cases that I had was of a geriatrician in Quebec who spoke to a parliamentary committee. So remember, freedom of speech. You're literally testifying to parliament, right? The the site where defamation laws do not even apply because it's considered to be a breach of of free speech laws. Right. He testified to a parliamentary committee saying that Canada was not ready to allow made for cases of dementia. What happened was that his colleague from his hospital, he claims, filed a complaint with the medical college. And even though it should have been dismissed outright because they do not have jurisdiction over parliament and who gets to testify to a parliamentary committee, he instead was threatened with this massive investigation and it took him hiring a lawyer and going through this multi-month ordeal for him to actually to clear his name. And all of the time he knew what was the reason. It was because he testified to parliament. He claimed and he claimed what he saw. Right. Which is that the the current law is not working and it shouldn't be expanded. So, yes, these physicians are being threatened with their livelihoods.

Chuck Warren: I. What they're doing sounds a lot like what Iceland did with Down's syndrome Baby Sam. You know, if you're identified as your pregnancy is possible Down syndrome, you know, I mean, magazines like CBS News has talked about how Down's syndrome in Iceland is almost disappeared. Well, it's disappeared because you're killing them. It's eugenics. There's nothing here. What Alexander has been reporting that does make believe that they would have no problem. Say, look, you're homeless. You know, you're you're you're a burden on society. You have autism. You're a burden on society if you're broke, you know, so you know, you're a burden on society. One of the things.

Sam Stone: He reports and this really blew my mind is that they are advocating expanding made to indigenous people because of poverty that they've already qualified. As I understand it, Alex, based on your reporting, they've already qualified people for this based on credit card debt. And then then this line just threw me for a loop. And to Indigenous children since they are quote, are considered wise because they are closest to the ancestors. What the.

Chuck Warren: Well, that's the cultish behavior. Alexander What does that mean? What is the indigenous tribe saying about this? Are they getting upset about it?

Alex Raikin: That's a good question. It's a random delegate to camps conference in 2018. Right. Just two years after legalization. And they're already discussing plans on how to expand it to children and especially to indigenous children. I mean.

Chuck Warren: Where are the progressive groups? Where are the progressive groups on this?

Alex Raikin: Well, that's a very good question. Disability groups are an uproar. The Indigenous Disability Alliance, they're an uproar.

Chuck Warren: But that doesn't get reported and it doesn't get reported, right? Yeah.

Sam Stone: I mean, it's it doesn't get reported.

Alex Raikin: It doesn't get reported.

Sam Stone: It's crazy. You know, if you run an oil pipeline through a a native reservation or tribal area and you pay them a bundle of money to do it with really no effect on anybody. The liberal groups will be out in the tens of thousands marching and screaming and leaving a giant mess behind. And here they're. They're silent. They're gone. This, this, this just none of this makes any sense to me at all. Have you. Have you, Alex, have you tried? Like, how do you even comprehend the mindset of the people that are pushing this? Because I just. I still struggle with that. I think you can tell by my questions this is so foreign to to any kind of morality that I've ever experienced or thought of or expected in any Western democracy.

Alex Raikin: Right. It's I'll be honest, I struggle with the exact same thing. There was a bioethicist or excuse me, a clinical ethicist, right. So he actually deals with patients in hospitals. He's the one who helps hospitals decide when they need to ration ventilators. Right? So he has a real job with real impacts. He wrote an article in a Canadian newspaper recently trying to claiming that Catholic hospitals should be forced to provide made on site. And he's also the same individual who wrote who wrote an entire article justifying infanticide. And the reason that he used is because you can abort as many children as you want. Some children are going to be born and some children are going to be disabled during childbirth. That is his worldview. And that's why you need to legalize infanticide.

Chuck Warren: Oh, my gosh. Alexander, we have we have a minute left here with you. First, I'm going to give you an assignment. I'd like you to come back on next week and explain to people what the government shutdown, if we have one in D.C., really means. You're a numbers guy. What does it really mean to the average taxpayer? Can you do that for me? Yeah, we'll do. Okay, Perfect. Second, first time we had you on, I was quite adamant and said that this is evil. You took the proper course, and we're not as quite dogmatic as I was about it and being a good journalist. Since our first conversation now. And you've written more. You've investigated more. You've interviewed more. Would you view this? What they're doing is simply just evil, demonic.

Alex Raikin: Yeah. I mean, at this point it is evil. I do not understand how they are not even pretending to abide by the legislation and the fact that they are openly lying. This is an organization and these are physicians who testified to parliament saying that this is the first time that the first time they've ever heard that euthanasia was being granted to patients because of poverty was in 2020 or 2021, because that's what the that's when the media started reporting about it. That's what they claimed. Yet in reality, they were already discussing it in 2018. It took them two years to figure it out.

Chuck Warren: Yeah.

Alex Raikin: And then they just lied.

Chuck Warren: So, Alexander, tell our folks where they can find you and they can find your most recent article. We'll also post it on our social media, folks. Go ahead, Alexander.

Alex Raikin: Yes. Feel free to follow me on X. I'm Alexander Raikin. Raiken is Raikin. You can find my work on National Review or the New Atlantis.

Chuck Warren: Alexander, thanks a million. Stay tuned for bonus podcast section Kiley's Corner. We're going to talk about Fox News changeup, other fun things. Alexandra, thanks. A million, folks. Have a great weekend. Bye now.

Advertisement: The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a your name Web domain from GoDaddy.com. Get yours now.

Sam Stone: Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking battlegrounds. Folks, stay tuned because we're going to have Kiley's Corner coming up, everyone's favorite segment where we alternately make fun of Kiley and she tells us all sorts of fun stuff. But right now, we have Ken Lacourt, our media expert and friend of the program, returning to talk about the big news at Fox, which, Chuck, it may be an earthquake in the conservative media world happened yesterday and it doesn't seem like a whole lot of people know it.

Chuck Warren: Talk about it, Ken. Tell us what you know.

Ken Lacourt: Well, on one hand, it's really not a radical change. I mean, Lachlan Lachlan is now the the chairman of News Corp, the overall overall entity which runs Fox, Fox News, and I think executive chairman of of Fox News. He was CEO before, but his dad.

Ken Lacourt: Was always somebody, you know, for the last several years Lachlan had been in that seat, but his dad was probably driving or at least certainly around for most of those decisions. So they've done a they've done a gradual move of power over the past handful of years to get Lachlan running it. So and he's a mixed bag. On one hand, he's very good, if you like, the Fox News Channel because unlike his siblings, he doesn't hate the Fox News Channel.

Chuck Warren: You know.

Ken Lacourt: I mean, you know, James, James was is a is a very James's brother is a very shrewd, aggressively business guy. Lefty always talked about trying to make it more responsible, which you know what that means. It means make it look as much like MSNBC as you can without losing our audience. And the sister was the sister was was out in out in left field as well. The trickiest part right now is, is I don't think the external kind of challenges that Fox has and they've got a few they've they've got another big Smartmatic lawsuit which might cost them another half a billion. They've got some other lawsuits by some pension funds, which I think are nonsense, political driven, driven things. I think I think Lachlan's biggest problem is that that he came out of such a privileged position. And I say that not not not as an insult. I mean, I mean, Lachlan has been groomed for this most of his life. He's worked in various News Corp entities around the world. He's had dinner with US senators and governors on a routine basis. He's he's shadowed his father for for much of his life. He's been well trained for it.

Ken Lacourt: But there's a serious question is, does he have the grit and does he have the drive that his dad had? I mean, his dad was very much like a shark. I mean, he just wanted to keep eating and growing. And even when he was worth $5 billion and had a a media conglomerate that was X size, he always wanted it to be double sized. Lachlan Not so sure. Lachlan You know, look, he's, he's tan. He's got the tribal tattoos on his arm. He's got a gorgeous ex-model wife. He lives in a $30 million house down in Australia. He bought when he bought his LA mansion. It was the it was the most expensive house in Los Angeles ever sold, $150 million. 11 bedrooms, one of those. So and from from what I hear in the past year or so, he's hard to reach. He's he doesn't have his fingers on the pulse of it. He's still down in Australia. He's so on one hand, all decisions need to go through him and they haven't given the current CEO like Roger Ailes type powers. On the other hand, he's just not as invested in it. And that's a recipe for problems.

Sam Stone: Yeah, One of the things that I've noticed Chuck and Ken over the years is there's a huge difference with these giant companies that have been created by a singular founder or personality driving that company. And I think the best example is is Apple with Steve Jobs, which was an innovation machine. And then after Steve Jobs death, it's it's a moneymaking machine, but it's not an innovation machine in the same way.

Chuck Warren: Well, for example, they had Mr. Cook, who was the CEO or chairman or whatever he is, of Apple. They had him on CBS Sunday Morning show, which I like because they do pretty good interviews. His big thing was the innovation is that they've done a bunch of solar power to replace the usage of iPhones. I mean, that was his big innovation. Right? Right. And that's not innovation. I mean, that's nice. I'm not discouraging it, but that's not innovation. So, Ken, so what do you see him doing long term with Fox News?

Ken Lacourt: I think, well, long term, their biggest issue isn't. The issues that I talked about long term is the fact that cable news viewers are dying. And for every 80 year old cable news subscriber who died, there's not a 25 year old jumping into that pipeline. Our kids aren't going to write checks out to Comcast to to maybe for Internet service, but not for this whole kind of of, oh, you know, I'm waiting for the 6:00 news or Hannity's coming on at eight and I'm going to sit in front of this this screen and wait till they start it for me and then roll commercials into the middle of it. So the biggest long term challenge for all of the cable systems is at some point in the next decade or so, that model will become unsustainable, that they are paying huge amounts of money. They are earning still just gobs and gobs of money. I mean, Fox News Nets probably about a billion and a half a year. That's net, which is just mind boggling. But when that starts to change, that will change. And they will they will contract in power. And the ones that have put smart bets out in the digital world and expanded their their audience there, which Fox hasn't done a good job of, they'll be the future. So that's the long term challenge. The middle term again, the big challenge for them is that Lachlan is still hanging out at yacht races and and is ostensibly in charge that that the CEO, Suzanne Scott isn't doesn't have the ability to make bold decisions even if she was even if she was inclined to making the right ones and that it kind of meanders along as I think we've seen it happen as basically as it's happened since since Roger Ailes left. And it's still got an almost an almost monopoly situation in the sense that what else are you going to watch? You're not going to say, I'm done with Fox. I'm going to go watch CNN. Maybe you go to Newsmax. But Newsmax is still just it's just.

Chuck Warren: Yeah, no.

Ken Lacourt: It's a small audience because they're very, very conservative. And but it's the Junior League. It's like watching high school TV.

Chuck Warren: Exactly. I mean, I know everything about the person. When they tell me watch Newsmax like the same person who still wears a mask in public. I know everything I need to know about both people. One last question here. We're going to let you go. So there seems to be a trend upon the corporate media that we need to we need to save democracy. That's what a lot of these reporters seem to think, You know, and it doesn't seem.

Sam Stone: Like they have much idea of what democracy.

Chuck Warren: Is. And so, therefore, one of their rules that seems to be is you can't criticize Biden. And I'll give you an example. NBC       's Ben Collins was concurring with Guardian columnist Margaret Sullivan this week. Quote, With democracy on the ballot, the mainstream press must change its ways, arguing both sides reporting misinforms the public. Since it's not two parties, but democracy versus something maybe illegal. Do you see this being a trend, this election, that they're just simply saying it's our way or the highway? Or is this just am I just picking 1 or 2 people and being unfair?

Ken Lacourt: No, no. I mean, if anything, it's the continuation of a trend that has started ten years ago and probably peaked or at least hit full throated ridiculousness with Trump. And there it was open. It's like he's Trump, Hitler, we're all going to die. And therefore we have to put our values of being an American over our journalistic values. And so and the largest problem with the press is that they're still pretending to be referees when they have long thrown away their referee notions and they put players jerseys on. Right. And and it's like, that's my look. I don't I'm not bothered at all by the Huffington Post being The Huffington Post or at this point, even MSNBC being MSNBC. We all know what that is. The larger problem that I think that we face as a democracy and we face as news consumers is that so many people still think when they're reading The New York Times or the LA Times or watching CNN, that they're getting a relatively unbiased point of view. And they're not. They're getting hard core, hard core narrative that's that's specifically excluding conservative thought on things and pretending it doesn't exist and that that tweaks out the whole system when people are lying like that and they have so many news consumers still believing them, it's getting less every year, but it's still exists.

Sam Stone: Even, you know, the conservative icing out conservative thought is one thing. But I've actually been going back and forth with a guy that, you know, has followed me and interacted with me on Twitter for many years as more of a centrist Republican. And we're talking about something here where the mayor of Phoenix is the co-chair of the C40 cities. She's a signatory to all their programs, which include, you know, no cars, you know, getting rid of cars and meat and all this other stuff. And I mean, she's co-chair, she's signatory. I've told this guy, you know, this is what she she stands for. She's done this. And he literally said, no, I can't find it on our local. Npr, our local affiliates, our local paper. I don't believe you. Yeah, that's a hard thing to get around.

Ken Lacourt: Yeah, And I've got some very good friends who in most lives are smart people, but they just, you know, they grew up not being lied to by the groups that are now and I'll call it a lie, because when you misrepresent something enough and you do it intentionally and you keep certain things away from people and you blow up certain certain aspects, that's a misleading that's close enough to a lie. And your friend, like some of mine, just doesn't realize that that again, they they change their somewhat biased referee clothes for players. And he just hasn't figured that out yet and hopefully he will.

Sam Stone: Yeah that's that's going to be a long road. And it's one of the key battles for Republicans going forward over the next few years. Ken Lacourt, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on the program again and looking forward to having you back very soon. Terrific.

Chuck Warren: My pleasure. Thanks, buddy. Have a great weekend.

Ken Lacourt: All right. Take care, guys.

Chuck Warren: Kiley's corner folks. She has a stack of paper. She is fired up today and she is ready to air her gripes.

Sam Stone: She's got like, war and peace in her hand right here. Chuck, she's made more notes than I do in in a year.

Chuck Warren: Kiley I think a couple of years you'll have a book, just Kylie's Gripes, a book with which every podcast episode with your gripes.

Kiley Kipper: I know I couldn't even narrow it down this week. There was I have a whole notes page of just links like I have a murder section. I got a, you know, my opening statements missing Jets, Pornhubs doing crazy stuff. But we're not talking about any of that. All right, let's go.

Sam Stone: Can I tell you how much I love the meme about it was a bad week for expensive jets.

Kiley Kipper: The the 911 call from the guy that ejected, he's like, I don't know where it's at, but.

Chuck Warren: Did they find it?

Kiley Kipper: No. No.

Chuck Warren: What the hell? All right. Well, that sums up America again for the week. Or just crying out loud. Skip that. It doesn't sum up America. It sums up the world. Yes. I mean, folks who think we're cluster just go outside of the United States. The cluster grows significantly. Kylie, go ahead. What do we got?

Kiley Kipper: Okay, So my first topic short, we have to acknowledge it because it's Dave Portnoy and Barstool and it's just like such a great story.

Chuck Warren: He always needs to be acknowledged.

Kiley Kipper: Yeah, yeah. So this week in New York, Saturday. So tomorrow I guess people are listening to it today. So he is hosting a pizza fest where he has over 35 pizza parlors all joining together. There's music, all of this stuff, party, whatever. In the past, he's like, it raises money. He's raised $50 Million for Small Businesses to Stay Open.

Sam Stone: Dave Portnoy leading it. You know, none of those 35 are bad pizza.

Kiley Kipper: Exactly. Yeah, you can trust him with the pizza. So he gets wind of a sponsor, forwarded him an email from a Washington Post reporter. Basically, she's saying, I'm going to write an article about this pizza fest, but she didn't really state it in that way. She started saying that he was misogynistic and racist. Do you want to defend your sponsorship? So I actually have a clip because Dave calls her out, so calls her and is like, this is Dave Portnoy. Why are you emailing my sponsors? You're calling me misogynistic. He's and he pronounces it wrong, but ignore that part in racist and whatever. So he's he's calling her out and she's trying to deny it. But Jeremy has the clip, so I want you to hear this.

Washington Post Reporter: Not. I haven't said anything like that.

Dave Portnoy: Well, I can. I can read if you want. If you want, I can read what you actually sent. I have it.

Washington Post Reporter: Yeah. Yeah. Because I sent a bunch of notes, so I want to make sure I know which one.

Dave Portnoy: Okay. We are planning to write about the festival and how and how some of the sponsors and participants have drawn criticism by seemingly to associate themselves with Dave Portnoy, who has a history of Misogynic comments and other problematic behavior. I want to make sure that Blank had a chance to respond to this, since the company is the most prominent in their partners of his festival.

Washington Post Reporter: Oh, that's the one I sent. It was definitely the most pointed of them because I really did want them to respond and I was hoping to get something from them.

Dave Portnoy: Do you think that's fair? Like, I totally disagree with the assertions of what you said, that misogynic and all that stuff. So like it kind of backs people into a corner. So I'm happy to go over anything. I mean, you have that is pretty pointed. You said you didn't do it then. I have the exact evidence of you doing it, so.

Washington Post Reporter: I didn't say I didn't do that. I said I did. That was the one that was the most well.

Dave Portnoy: Know before I before I provided proof. You said you didn't really remember doing that. And then I read it to you and you're like, Oh, yeah, I did at that one time. So you did do it.

Kiley Kipper: So this call goes on for 12 minutes. It's on his it's on his Twitter. I'll reshare it on breaking battlegrounds, Twitter, so you guys can read it or listen to it. But it.

Sam Stone: Goes on. It's a fantastic call. I've listened to the whole thing and it's it's worth your time, folks.

Kiley Kipper: She goes on and says, Unfortunately, this is I have it in quotes. Unfortunately, this is standard journalistic practice. And he responds and goes, Unfortunately, yes, it is. So her background is she's a Washington Post food critic.

Chuck Warren: Oh, my God.

Kiley Kipper: She's starting out these emails to these sponsors saying he's misogynistic, racist. Do you want to defend yourself? Basically trying to get them to pull out of the pizza fest.

Chuck Warren: But she's a food critic. She's supposed to be doing reviews of restaurants and food and dishes and things of that nature. Instead, she's taken The Washington Post, woke Culture and applying it to these 30 plus pizzerias. Yep. Yep. So what's been the public reaction to her lie since she since she clearly lied? I mean, this is awfully we'll just call it. She's a horrible human being. What does people's reaction been to her?

Kiley Kipper: Well, I'm assuming well, everyone's on Dave's side. They're all attacking. I'm assuming she's getting lots of messages because she has gone private on social media.

Chuck Warren: She should be fired. Yeah, 100% be fired. Once the press starts doing this a couple of times, this crap will stop. Yeah. Yeah. It's not it's not part of her mandate. It's not part of her lane. She should be doing food. And then she's just making. I mean, if she wants to go do that, she should go work for some pod, you know, some something. Some do her own podcast or work with National Enquirer or something just make unfounded.

Sam Stone: Well, I mean, look, I think Dave Portnoy is handling this exactly the right way. He's fighting back, using his platform, calling her out by name with the recording, just saying this is garbage. And people can judge that for themselves and they see it's garbage. That's how we stop this. You're right, Chuck. You just got to smack them.

Chuck Warren: Let's make sure we put that and boost that on our social media.

Sam Stone: Yeah, All right. I mean, congratulations, Dave. You. You're playing this perfectly, man. Don't give up. Don't stop.

Chuck Warren: Kiley has more.

Kiley Kipper: I have so much more. Not just kidding. All right. So I wanted to bring this case up now because the the it's a murder case and the trial is going to be in March, I believe it was. And so I want to discuss it now because it's there's a woman named Karen Reed, and she's being accused of killing her boyfriend, who is a Boston police officer. So she's charged with the killing of him. Right. She's saying she's being framed by Boston police. Two sides of the story here. Okay. So this is these are the facts. That night, her and her boyfriend, uh, John O'Keefe, they go out to the bars having a good time. There's video footage of them, like from the bars. They're hugging, kissing, totally normal, whatever. They then leave to go to another Boston police officer's house where she says now, this is based on what she told the officer who came in the morning. I dropped him off. My stomach was hurting, so I went home. So I just dropped him off the party and I'm going home. So then in the morning at 5 a.m., this is where the timeline all starts. She starts calling her friends, saying, John never came home last night. Where is he? Blah, blah, blah. Um, so then one of the friends goes to her house and she describes her as hysterically crying and is saying, What if I hit him? Is he dead? It's snowing out. Where is he? Blah, blah, blah. So then her that friend and another friend go back to the house where he had dropped him off and they found him in the snow, dead. So to her and another friend, start giving him CPR. Call the police, obviously. Where had.

Chuck Warren: He been shot or.

Kiley Kipper: Something? No, he just looked like. So according to her, the defense, he it looks like he got beat up. Okay. The prosecutors are saying he got hit by a car. So when the when the investigator showed up that day, she was supposedly hysterical, yelling, could I have hit him? Did I kill him? Did I hit him with my car last night? Blah, blah, blah, blah. She has a broken tail light, to which her father said was in the morning when she was, which there was no report on either. Friend has said anything, but the dad said that she, when she was backing out of the driveway, hit John's car because she was frantically leaving. And that's where the tail light broke, which.

Sam Stone: Is actually plausible, which.

Kiley Kipper: Could.

Sam Stone: Yeah, I mean, sure.

Kiley Kipper: So she's so this is like what we know now. She's she was out on bail, but there's like a whole group of people that think she's that this is she is being framed like there's a website. They've raised almost $200,000 for her for legal fees and she's done all of these interviews. So like this is where I kind of believe her because if you're going to, like, premeditate to kill your boyfriend or husband or whatever it is like you're going to, I don't believe you'd be yelling. Like, did I hit him or was this me? Or maybe you do. But but she's doing a bunch of interviews now, too.

Chuck Warren: I agree. But the problem with this and I agree, you know, just all.

Kiley Kipper: Play it off. Yeah. I mean.

Chuck Warren: But I agree. The problem is you can't view it that way because unlike a physician in Canada who does euthanasia, we don't have those minds. Right. So I don't you know, I don't know what psychosis is if someone like this. But right now, that does not sound like enough evidence to me to to indict someone.

Kiley Kipper: Well, she was indicted.

Sam Stone: I feel like you do need more. And actually, the fact that they indicted her on what appears to be flimsy evidence to me is actually the best argument for her case.

Chuck Warren: Exactly right.

Sam Stone: Exactly that. You know, look.

Chuck Warren: But she's always tagged with it innocent. She's always tagged now. Oh, there's well, there's the neighbor that killed 56.

Kiley Kipper: Pieces of evidence that the defense is not able to look at. So the prosecutors haven't allowed them to look at it, which they've said, oh, we found the tail light in the like part of her tail light in the snow near John. But they haven't been able to see the tail light test. The tail light to make sure it's her tail light or anything like this. So everyone's saying because it was at a Boston police officer's house with another Boston police officer and this woman, that they think that when she was saying, oh, my gosh, could I have hit him with my car, that they then took that story, ran with it, And it's all like a whole framing.

Chuck Warren: I'm thinking some police officers of another police officer or police officer's wife.

Kiley Kipper: Well, and there's you know, people being interviewed is like highly possible.

Chuck Warren: This is this is where I'm going with today on on Chuck's Conspiracy Corner. This is where I'm going.

Sam Stone: I know a lot of police officers. Most of them are excellent people in a few of them are dogs.

Kiley Kipper: I'll share this on our social media, too. But there's a photo of people outside the courthouse in free Karen shirts. Like they are going all out for her.

Chuck Warren: Wait, wait. Her name's Karen. All right. Next story for you. Wrap up. No, no, no, no.

Kiley Kipper: I just narrowed it down to two today.

Chuck Warren: All right, well, that you'll keep us up to date on Karen. Oh, absolutely. All Karen's are just this.

Kiley Kipper: Karen. Karen Reed. Just one. Karen.

Sam Stone: Well, just. Just. Just Karen. The accused killer?

Chuck Warren: Yeah.

Kiley Kipper: The accused.

Chuck Warren: Murderer. Folks, thank you for joining this week. We hope you enjoyed it. Please pay particular attention to what's happening in Canada and Australia. Make no mistake about it, I believe there's ten states in our country that allow it. It's 11 now, 11 that allow it. Folks, this is just not a whole we need to go down. It's bad. It is evil. If you don't think it's evil, you probably shouldn't listen to the show. This is Chuck Warren. You can follow us on all podcasts and also follow us on breaking battlegrounds. Upvote or wherever you find your social media. Have a great weekend.

Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe