Breaking Battlegrounds

In this week's episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, we're honored to feature Aaron Murphy, a social media sensation whose journey in South America ignited a powerful mission against poverty. Overcoming personal struggles, Aaron's act of selflessness during lockdowns sparked a movement, inspiring donations to aid impoverished families. Explore the impact of MurphsLife Foundation in creating food farms, toy factories, shelters, and schools in El Salvador. Following Aaron's inspiring narrative, join Judge John Kralik, renowned for '365 Thank Yous' and 'A Simple Act of Gratitude.' His journey, born from a New Year's resolution to express daily gratitude, unfolded through transformative books. Later in the episode, Pastor Carl Wimmer delves into the biblical perspective on gratitude, offering spiritual insights. It's a power-packed show delving into personal missions, transformative gratitude, and insightful perspectives. Don't miss this episode of Breaking Battlegrounds—it's one you won't want to miss!-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-About our guestsAaron Murphy is a social media sensation who transformed his journey in South America into a mission to combat poverty. Overcoming personal struggles, he immersed himself in the region, learning languages and understanding the socio-economic landscape. His act of selflessness during the lockdowns sparked a movement, inspiring donations to aid impoverished families.After a particularly bad 2007, lawyer and Judge John Kralik decided to start 2008 with a serious New Year's resolution: to be thankful for the good things and people in his life. So he spent the next year writing one thank you note for each day -- to family, friends, co-workers, even the barista at his local Starbucks. Those notes make up his new book, 365 Thank Yous: The Year A Simple Act of Daily Gratitude Changed My Life. Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

In the latest episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, we're joined by Noah Rothman, a seasoned senior writer at National Review. He sets the stage with his incisive take on the complexities of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the intricate web of American foreign policy dynamics. Brace yourself for thought-provoking discussions that kickstart the show's exploration of today's most critical global issues. Following Noah, Corinne Murdock takes the spotlight, diving deep into her investigative reporting. She delves into the case of Arizona State University College of Law Professor Khaled Beydoun, who deleted a viral tweet detailing a racially-motivated verbal attack against Muslims after it was publicly exposed as fake. We have a power-packed episode for you—this is one you won't want to miss!-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-About out guestsNoah Rothman is a senior writer at National Review. He is the author of The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back against Progressives’ War on Fun and Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.-Corinne Murdock is a reporter who prioritizes truth and rejects those partisan takes that spare a favored narrative. In addition to AZ Free News, her reporting appears in The Daily Wire and Be the People News. She got her start reporting with The Star News Network. Her proudest reporting accomplishment to date: when The Rush Limbaugh Show cited her investigative reporting prior to his passing. Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

In this week's episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, we're honored to host Carla Sands, former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark and current Vice Chair at the America First Policy Institute. She brings unparalleled insights into pressing global issues, including ambassadors' advocacy for Israel and the dynamic role of ambassadors in conflicts similar to those in Israel and Ukraine. Join us for a comprehensive discussion on the risks associated with Biden's energy plan, featuring facts and figures that shed light on it all. Later in the show, we welcome back Attorney General Austin Knudsen, addressing his recent reelection bid for Attorney General, the constitutional implications of Hawaii's gun ban, and the support for a mother suing a school district for hiding her child's gender transition. Visit AustinForMontana.com to learn more. Wrapping up, we have a special podcast feature with labor law and policy expert Vinnie Vernuccio, exploring deceptive salting loopholes in unions and their impact on the workforce. Plus, don't miss Kiley's Corner, where Kiley provides updates on the Idaho 4 murder case and reports on the suspicions surrounding the suicides of four Los Angeles Sheriff Department deputies within a 24-hour span on Monday. It's a power-packed episode you won't want to miss!-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-About our guestsAmbassador Carla Sands is currently the Vice Chair, the Center for Energy & Environment, America First Policy Institute, and also leads AFPI’s Pennsylvania Chapter. She previously served as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark which includes Greenland, and the Faroe Islands from 2017-2021.During her tenure, she and her team increased U.S. exports to Denmark by 45% according to MIT’s Observatory of Economic Complexity.  Her number one goal as ambassador was to increase U.S. national security by establishing a consulate in Greenland. By working with the inter-agency and Congress, her goal was realized in 2020.Additionally, she successfully executed trade and cooperation agreements with Greenland and the Faroe Islands to counter Russian and Chinese malign influence. In 2021 she was awarded the Department of Defense’s highest civilian honor, the Medal for Distinguished Public Service.In 2015-2017 Carla served as Chairman of Vintage Capital Group and its subsidiary company Vintage Real Estate which specialized in the acquisition and development of regional malls and shopping centers across the country.Before an orderly wind-down of the company starting in 2018, Vintage Real Estate had a portfolio that included 13 properties with 4.3 million square feet invested in underperforming assets. The team was vertically integrated with in-house leasing, development, and property management.Early brief careers included film acting and practice as a 3rd generation Doctor of Chiropractic. Carla pursued her undergraduate education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Elizabethtown College where she studied pre-med and earned her Doctor of Chiropractic from Life Chiropractic College.Carla is currently a board member of the Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum and serves on the advisory boards of Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, and the International Women’s Forum. She has served on many charitable and philanthropic boards.-Attorney General Austin Knudsen grew up on his family farm and ranch just outside of Bainville (in the far northeast corner of Montana) where they grew wheat, sugar beets and raised angus cattle. Austin was a 4-H kid, raising steers to show at the fair, and volunteering at community events. He participated in Future Farmers of America (FFA) throughout high school. In fact, Austin met his wife, Christie, while they both served as FFA State Officers during their freshman year of college at Montana State University-Bozeman.Austin put himself through college in Bozeman working jobs at the local butcher shop and a hardware store, and each summer he returned to work on the farm and ranch. Austin and Christie were married shortly after graduation and moved to Missoula where Austin earned his law degree from the University of Montana. Their oldest daughter Leah was born in between Austin’s first and second years of law school and they were later blessed with a son, Connor, and their youngest daughter, Reagan.After law school, Austin and Christie moved their family back to the farm and ranch where they knew they could instill in their children strong Montana values. Austin worked at a law firm in Plentywood before opening his own practice in Culbertson.In 2010, Austin was elected to serve as the Representative for House District 34, defeating a two-term incumbent Democrat in what was one of the most expensive State House races in Montana history. Having quickly noticed the extent of the disconnect between Helena bureaucrats and political insiders and the rest of the people across Montana, Austin took on leadership roles within his caucus and was elected Speaker Pro Tempore (deputy Speaker) in just his second session of service.AustinForMontana.com-F. Vincent Vernuccio, president and co-founder of Institute for the American Worker, brings over 15 years of expertise in labor law and policy. Vernuccio holds advisory positions with several organizations, including senior fellow with the Mackinac Center. Vernuccio served on the U.S. Department of Labor transition team for the Trump Administration and as a member of the Federal Service Impasses Panel. Under former President George W. Bush, he served as special assistant secretary for administration and management in the Department of Labor. He has advised state and federal lawmakers and their staff on a multitude of labor-related issues, and testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service and Labor Policy.TRANSCRIPTION Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest up today. Carla Sands served as US ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark, which includes Greenland and the Faroe Islands, from 2017 to 2021. Currently, the vice chair at the center for Energy and Environment and America First Policy Institute. Ambassador, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program.Carla Sands: Thanks. It's great to be with you guys.Chuck Warren: Well, ambassador, I was listening to an interview that you had recently that said you always wanted to be an ambassador. You've always been involved in politics, very engaged. You always wanted to be one. Then one day, you get a call from the Trump administration and said, we're going to appoint you here. What? Did it meet your expectations, I guess is my question.Carla Sands: Wow. So it was a dream as a high school girl to be an ambassador, but I didn't know about the Foreign Service.Chuck Warren: Matter of fact, matter of fact. Ambassador, I wonder how many girls in junior high have the dream of being an ambassador.Sam Stone: It's. It's brilliant. I love that.Chuck Warren: I love it, too, I continue. Sorry. That's amazing.Carla Sands: No, no, not at all. So I just harbored that dream in my heart and went off and became a businesswoman. And so when I got the call, I mean, I was thrilled because we know, like when you can fulfill a dream, it's a very, very good thing. So I went off and served and it did exceed my expectations. It was extraordinary. What an honor to work for the all the people of the United States. And the power of our federal government is so immense that that, you know, the respect that you receive has nothing to do with you as a person. The the other country's leaders respect our country so much.Sam Stone: Ambassador, I have to jump in. I know we're going to get to talking about the letter that you helped organize to Congress about Israel, but from the outside, and maybe this isn't entirely fair, but it seems like there are, in essence, two types of ambassadors, those that go in a more ceremonial role and those that roll up their sleeves and dig in. And the ones that, like you did, roll up their sleeves and dig in, can get really extraordinary things done. And I think a lot of times under the radar, people don't even realize that it's true.Carla Sands: And political ambassadors, some of them do go to it seems like have have a vacation and some go to really work hard. But but the career foreign service officers, because some people make a career out of being an American diplomat, you just take the test, the Foreign Service test, and then you enter the Foreign Service and the, the, the capstone for their careers would be to become an ambassador. Those people also get a lot done, but they don't have most of them don't have that private sector experience that, for instance, the Trump ambassadors brought that where we know how to get things done. And they're also fearful of doing the wrong thing, because then it's very easy to derail a fellow Foreign Service officer's career.Chuck Warren: Oh, interesting. Interesting.Sam Stone: That makes they live in fear a lot of sense.Chuck Warren: What surprised you about the what surprised you about the job?Carla Sands: Um, what surprised me was how much some European countries dislike, like the United States and do not wish us well. Who are they? How unfair. Most of our European allies. Actually, our trade isn't fair. They do things. Their tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers. They they do. They do a lot of unfair things to our trade, to suppress our trade where we don't do that to others in the same way we're we're pretty much a fair minded country. We've cut a lot of bad trade deals. I think President Trump tried to right those bad deals and did have a lot of success. He got that phase one China deal, he got the NAFTA, became Usmca. So he was looking after the American working people and American companies and saying, you got to treat us fairly. That was a big surprise to me.Sam Stone: And that's a that was a big shift in his administration, because historically, there really hadn't been much pushback against any of those barriers or trade deals.Carla Sands: Yeah. No.Sam Stone: No.Chuck Warren: Let's get to the nitty gritty. So on October 7th, a major terrorist attack happened upon Israel. Yeah, a group of ambassadors, including you, sent a letter to Congress urging support for our closest ally in the Middle East, which is Israel. My question to you. There's two questions here. One, did you have anybody saying no to you when you try to round up this letter? And two, we have two main hot points in the world right now Israel, Ukraine. And of course, there's a bunch of other things. There are very long term but immediate focus. What is the role for an ambassador, a US ambassador in those crises?Carla Sands: Yeah, it's a really good question. So first of all, the ambassadors really did want to support this letter on behalf of. So on behalf of all of us urging bipartisan urging Congress and the Senate to support Israel and to make sure that that support stuck. And because we all saw that ISIS kind of behavior in Israel. My worry is we're going to get that in the US on our soil, because the Biden administration has a wide open border and they're not catching all of the terrorists. They already caught less than 300 like in the last recent time, but we only catch 60%. So some are getting through. And a lot of Chinese aged and foreign countries we're not friends with aged military men are getting through to tens of thousands. But the role of an ambassador. So during a conflict like this, it really depends where they're serving. Are they serving in a NATO ally country? Are they serving in an adversarial country, a muslim majority country? Right. So you got to know, like the audience and how you can get support. And then if you look at how all of these different countries around the world are voting at the UN, for instance, not to censure Russia after the Ukraine invasion, if you see how the Chinese Communist Party is having an outsized influence on a lot of these countries in the world, and then you see how if we all think about the United States Congress and the president, we have been in a bipartisan way supporting Israel, the state of Israel and the Israeli people. It's been very strong. But now you see how the left and the Muslim supporting elected officials and citizens have really, it looks like abandoned Israel in a public way. And they're supporting the terrorist group Hamas.Chuck Warren: Right.Sam Stone: Ambassador, do you think this is adjacent? But one of the things that we've seen is that these these radicalized Islamic factions have done a really good job of infiltrating US universities and education and really spreading their message there. Does Israel need to be more proactive in trying to counter that messaging at that level?Carla Sands: Well.Sam Stone: Can they? I mean, I don't know.Carla Sands: I think it's tough because there's so much anti-Semitism around the world. It's very strong. So it's a big challenge. But it's not just in academia. Iran is at the highest. Iran has people in the highest levels at the DoD, at our Pentagon. So and yes, they do in the white House and at State Department. So they have influence over our government. And you can see that in some of the softer support of Israel, how we saw Obama, very big Iran sympathizer. And we can see how, for instance, the the students for Justice in Palestine is on a lot of college campuses. That's a muslim Brotherhood offshoot, right, funded by the Muslim Brotherhood. Okay. Like ISIS kind of people, all funded through Iran. So this is all the spawn of Iran. And I think we really are are doing a disservice to the kids on our campuses to allow such an entity have such a big influence, but also Muslim countries. And they're funding things at the universities are having an influence in what our kids are learning too.Chuck Warren: Well, it seems like all these university professors do is out, raise money all the time, and they don't really care what it comes from. But, you know, like Covid, while while Covid was a tragedy, what it did do is open a lot of middle class parents eyes, upper middle class parents eyes to how bad the public schools are. And you're seeing those changes in education and the only the only spark of light in this tragedy in Israel right now is it's a waking up a lot of donors to how bad these universities are, and that they've been giving money and they're not going to do this any longer. So hopefully this has some long term effects. Have you? Being a Pennsylvania girl, are you surprised by Fetterman's absolute support for Israel? I mean, I've been impressed. I mean, he is not taken. He is giving it back. I'm really impressed by it.Carla Sands: Well, before I pivot to Fetterman, I just wanted to say that China has given $400 billion to Iran in military training and military equipment. So China is behind a lot of what is happening. There's now become an alliance which is economic and military with China, Russia, Iran. And of course, we know North Korea, but it seems like it's strengthening and becoming more bold. John Fetterman I mean, please, how it's embarrassing to Pennsylvania. It's embarrassing that he's representing us. He doesn't share my values. But yeah, I'm glad that he's supporting Israel. That's the right thing to do. Everything else he's ever said and fought for, I'm against. But in this one place, I will stand with him because you find your friends where you find them.Sam Stone: It takes a lot of courage on the left. Right. Well, I.Chuck Warren: Think I think here's the thing about him as well. And I agree with you 100% on your opinion on him. I think it's important if we want to start seeing some resolve and getting things done in DC again, that when our political opponents do something that's worthwhile, that we do say thank you. Though you agree, you give credit. I don't think you can get anything done. If we say everything they do is bad. Because you know, what makes you ever going to build any goodwill to get things done? And so I think in the case of Fetterman, I agree with you. I wish he wasn't in the Senate. I think he's going to vote the wrong way 98% of the time. But when they go and do something like this, I think you say kudos. Thank you.Carla Sands: Yeah.Chuck Warren: Quickly. We're going to take a break here in about two minutes. But I quickly want to ask you, how did you increase trade US exports to Denmark by 45%. Who did you beat up to get this done really quickly?Carla Sands: What I did is we made goals at the embassy. Number one, security number two, trade to make to create American jobs. And so I and my team would go and talk to pension funds to insurance companies saying, please invest in America by our by by our companies or invest in them, invest in our stock market. Please buy our real estate. And we would ask them to invest in the US. And then I would work to get them to be open to more trade to from the US. And you have to understand the EU trade really is done in Brussels. We went to Brussels, but there's other stuff we did as well.Sam Stone: That is brilliant and real quick we have about 30s left. What are our number one export? What are our top exports to Denmark?Carla Sands: Well, they buy our pharmaceuticals, we buy theirs, they buy a lot of software and they use our Zoom and Microsoft platforms. So there's a lot of service exports as well. But they also buy wood pellets and burn them and call it green.Sam Stone: Of course. Of course folks, we're going to be coming back with more from Ambassador Carla Sands in just a moment, so please stay tuned. And if you're not already, make sure you're subscribed to download our podcast, Breaking Battlegrounds Dot vote. We'll be back 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, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're continuing on with Ambassador Carlos Sands in just a moment. But first, folks, how's your portfolio doing? The market's been going up and down. Biden. The Biden economy is just tearing people apart. That's why we recommend highly recommend that you check out our friends and invest y Refy.com. So go to their website, invest the letter Y then refy.com learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return on your money. You can compound it. You can take the money monthly as income. No attack on principal if you have to withdraw your money ahead of time, it's a fantastic opportunity. So again check them out. Invest y.com or give them a call at 888 yrefy 24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.Chuck Warren: We're with Ambassador Carla Sands. Sands? She's from Pennsylvania. She's a former US ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. You can find more about her and her writings at Carla. Sanskar com. She is also the vice chair for the center for Energy and Environment for the American First Policy. Which brings me to the question. I'm still laughing. They import the Kingdom of Denmark wood pellets in Burnham and count them as clean energy. How is the clean energy policies affecting Europe? I know when the war started in Ukraine with Russia's aggressive actions. Yes. You know, oil, the Nordic pipeline, I mean everything.Sam Stone: Germany, Poland, they're buying coal to burn in their houses.Chuck Warren: New York Times basically said when the war started, Europe's going black that winter. Right. Okay. So how was the green energy crusade of Europe affecting businesses and employees and their households and things of that nature? Yeah.Carla Sands: Well, thousands of people died in London last year because of the high price of heating. Thousands.Sam Stone: You don't hear that from anywhere?Chuck Warren: No. Wow.Carla Sands: Yeah. Germany and Denmark pay the highest energy costs in all of Europe. And they really did believe in Germany that they were going to have everything was going to be windmills and solar panels and Kumbaya. But the dirty secret was they were doing that deal with Nord Stream two, the Russian gas pipeline, as their base load power. But they never talk about that. They were turning their back on clean nuclear. They wouldn't turn their nuclear plants on. So there's there is a kind of climate delusion, a climate religion that a lot of Europeans have bought into. And you can hear their doxology as they speak. But but it's crazy. It doesn't work. You need baseload power. Maybe tiny countries can make that work, but not countries that make big things. You need a lot of power to do manufacturing like we do in the US. And so on. A cold day in my state of Pennsylvania, a third of the power comes from gas, a third from nuclear, and a third from coal, with maybe 2%, 2.5% from renewables. And and that's pretty much what it's going to be. I think we'll increase the natural gas over the years. The renewables haven't kicked up a whole lot, even with the billions and hundreds of billions and trillions that we're dumping into it as taxpayers.Chuck Warren: Well, I just looked up your comment about how many people died in England. This is from The Economist in May 10th, 2023. Expensive energy may have killed more Europeans than Covid 19. They're estimating high energy costs. I'm sorry for laughing. High rising energy prices cost 68,000 deaths in Europe. Yeah, that is that's true. I mean, no one's talking about kudos to the kudos to the economists for printing it. I haven't heard anybody else talk about it.Sam Stone: I had not heard it.Chuck Warren: I'm actually stunned by this.Carla Sands: Yes. It's real. It's killing people. Cold kills a lot more people than heat does. And people thrive when it's a little warmer.Sam Stone: Yeah, it cracks us up here in Arizona because they keep telling us if the temperature goes up one degree, we're all going to die.Chuck Warren: And soon, soon, soon.Sam Stone: Yeah. We've all been through summer before. What's one degree?Carla Sands: Yeah, well, Joe Biden says it's more frightening than nuclear war if it goes up.Chuck Warren: Exactly. I remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is very green, was trying to put solar panels in Death Valley and all the environmentalists started complaining and suing that, you know, you can't do this. You're going to kill X, Y, or Z, right? Some rodent, some insect, and I'm Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm paraphrasing, basically said, if you're not going to put these in Death Valley, where in the hell are you going to put them?Carla Sands: But it does kill birds and it kills animals, just like the windmills kill a lot of eagles and other protected birds and bats too, right?Sam Stone: Well, Whales also.Chuck Warren: So yeah, it's it's incredible. So let's talk here. So what do you think America's energy policy needs to be going forward?Carla Sands: Well I would like to see a policy where. Every kind of energy is treated on a level playing field. So and I trust American innovation to figure out how we're going to do it. But we're never going to run out of our oil and gas. We have enough gas to run the whole world for hundreds of years. And with innovation, we're going to figure out incredible ways to power our lives going forward. If you think about how fast the world's changed, I can remember a time before cell phones. So it American innovation is extraordinary.Chuck Warren: But.Sam Stone: Ambassador, for instance, if we were putting a significant portion of this money that they're spending on this green fantasy, if we were putting that money into the development of advanced nuclear and reactor technologies, how much further ahead would we be on that road right now to developing things that are truly sustainable?Carla Sands: Well, we're pretty far ahead in nuclear. We do have those small modular reactors and they are successful, and I'd love to see them roll out more. I actually don't like a lot of taxpayer money in the private sector a little bit to incubate and get it going, but then I like to see the free market work because consumers are the best judges of what they want. And when you do top down planning Chinese Communist Party style, you don't get to a good outcome. And that's what the Biden administration is trying to do, for instance, with our combustion engine cars. They're trying to say you will drive an EV by 2030. I think it's 2035. No, it's nine years. So 2032 and you will and it will be 60 or 70% of you will drive an EV. So they're shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars at the car companies right now. So they retool and make EVs. But the fact is people don't want them and it enriches China. They make most of the parts.Chuck Warren: Well, it also you have to have the car 15 years to see an environmental benefit from it.Sam Stone: And we don't have the grid.Carla Sands: Most people don't know that. That's a terrific.Chuck Warren: Fact. So George Will had a great op ed today. I suggest everybody post it. But he makes a point here. In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said the US oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. In 1939, the Interior Department said world oil supply done in 13 years. It goes on and on and on. In 1970, it was estimated there were 612 barrels of proven reserves. In 2006 it was 767 billion. Now it's 1.2 trillion. His whole article is climate warriors are idiots. I mean, it's just like they don't know what they're talking about. And the problem is, Sam has this theory that this is all about just government power and ruling has nothing really to do with the environment.Carla Sands: Yeah, I totally agree. And Harold Hamm, who's one of the original founders of the horizontal drilling to get at that oil from one clean little pad of drilling, wrote a book recently called Game Changer. I highly recommend it to your audience if they like to read about Great American Story. Yeah. Great book.Sam Stone: Absolutely. We have just about one minute left. Ambassador, how do people follow you and your work? Because especially at the America First Policy Institute, you guys are doing amazing work, and we'd like to get more people tuned in to to help support those missions.Carla Sands: Thank you so much. So you can go to American America First policy.com. And we have 22 centers. And we're working to make policies that benefit every American. I also am on Twitter at Carla H. Sands. I'm on Instagram and Facebook a little bit, and I have a website, Carla sands.com, and I'd be delighted to. They can read what I'm posting. A lot of it is pro American energy to bring us back to American energy independence. Well, come.Chuck Warren: Back and join us any time. We'd love to having you ambassador.Carla Sands: Talk to you guys.Chuck Warren: Bye bye. This is breaking battlegrounds. Breaking battlegrounds vote. We'll be right back.Sam Stone: All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. Up next, we have a friend of the program, returning guest, Austin Knudsen. He is the 25th attorney general of Montana. We had a great conversation with him. It was about a year ago, wasn't it? It was. Yeah, yeah. And actually it's Knudsen. Knudsen. I am so sorry. I'm the.Chuck Warren: Boat. And he was so excited about the interview. He flew down to be here with us.Sam Stone: See, I happen.Austin Knudsen: To be in town. This worked out really, really well. So glad you're here.Sam Stone: Yeah, it's great golf season for any guests who want to come into town and knock a ball around. How many.Chuck Warren: How many whip wimpy Montanans come down here for the winter? I mean, I'm sure you look at them very poorly, but how many wimpy Montanans.Austin Knudsen: Well, you're wrong. So my my parents are actually among that group. There. Look, it gets cold. Oh, it does this time of year.Chuck Warren: And my one of my better friends is up there, and it's. He.Sam Stone: I lived in Montana through exactly one winter, and I'm from upstate New York. Yeah. And one winter of that. And I was like, okay, no.Austin Knudsen: There's a ton of people from Montana that come down here and actually, believe it or not, my little my little rural hometown, I bet half the town spends the winter in Wickenburg. Oh, do they really well? And they rope. Yeah, they're all rodeo people and they all rope. And Wickenburg is a huge roping community.Sam Stone: They have a fantastic facility.Chuck Warren: And you have a lot of Arizonans go up there for the summer.Austin Knudsen: I don't know about that. I think the whole thing's probably still better here. But it gets hot, though. Yeah.Chuck Warren: It does. Well, thank you for coming in. You've announced a re-election.Austin Knudsen: I have, yeah.Chuck Warren: Was that a tough decision?Austin Knudsen: No it wasn't. I had people asking me to do some other stuff. There was, you know, people wanted me to run for the Congress and run against Jon Tester. And I like what I'm doing. I mean, I, I've put together a really, really good team. We're doing really fun, aggressive things with the attorney general's office. We're taking Montana in directions. It's never gone. I think it just makes a ton of sense to stay, stay the course and keep doing what I'm doing. So that's that's why it was this was a no brainer.Chuck Warren: Well, let's talk about one case you've signed on. It's states are supporting a mom suing a school in Chico, California that hid her daughter's gender transition. And this seems to be popping up here and there everywhere, more frequently than we would ever thought ten years ago. Right. Are you amazed by the rapid process of this now, this just this trajectory, just like they're hiding what these kids are doing from parents.Austin Knudsen: It seems like we say that about everything. I mean, we just can't believe how fast this stuff is moving. We can't believe how fast, you know, just just in three years of Joe Biden, how much the world has changed. Really? Yeah.Chuck Warren: I mean, it's it's sort of like I had a friend who was an attorney when the gay marriage issue was coming, and he said, I'm not concerned about gay marriage, but I don't think the people understand the floodgates on other issues is going to come about. That's my concern about it. I really don't care if Bob marries Mark, right. But it's the other issues.Sam Stone: And then I think Covid broke the norms when they were able to get so outside of the norms of governmental operations, suddenly it seems from the left, like anything is possible.Austin Knudsen: I think that's exactly right. I mean, there was a huge power grab with Covid and I mean, if if that's constitutional, I mean, what isn't constitutional, right? And that's that's why you saw so many AGS like me push back on that. But yeah, the case you're talking about, I had to look up the lady's name. It's Regina versus the Chico Unified School District. And so yeah, what you had in this case was you had a girl who was going through a rough time at home.Chuck Warren: Dad died.Austin Knudsen: Yeah, dad, I think that's right. I think dad died or left the home and divorce and mom got cancer, and she was she was going through a really, really tough time. And unbeknownst to her, to her mother, the school district started transitioning her and using male pronouns and helping this girl transition, which she now has backed away from and has detransitioned and said, no, I was. I was mixed up, I was emotional, I was going through a very difficult time and but but look what the school district did to her. And we've seen this in a couple other jurisdictions as well. And this, this people ask me, well, why does Montana care? I mean, this is. You have a fundamental right to raise your children. I mean, there's nothing more fundamental in our country than you as a parent are the one responsible for those kids. My kids can't get an aspirin at their school without my say so.Chuck Warren: Nor should they.Austin Knudsen: But we're going to live in a world where you can transition my children without me knowing. I mean, my God, what are we doing?Chuck Warren: But that's that's what's amazing about it. They don't even understand the illogical nature of the argument. I'm going to hide the gender transition. But you can't get an aspirin. I don't want you to drink. I don't want you to do these things. But I'm going to hide your gender. I mean, a fairly lifelong decision, a.Austin Knudsen: Lifelong decision, and one that certainly should involve the parents and probably faith leaders, whatever that might be. But it's probably not the job for the school guidance counselor.Chuck Warren: Like, ever.Austin Knudsen: Like ever.Chuck Warren: So what? So what happens when you go when you guys go and join, you have 16. Well we have one minute left. We'll go over from that. But when we come back I want to ask what is. So what does it mean when you have I think it was 16 or 17 Republican attorney generals join in on this case. To our listeners, what does that mean for the residents of voters of Montana? What does that mean when you have all of these people and you're a leader in this group? Yeah. What does that mean long term on these issues? Well, I.Austin Knudsen: Mean, first of all, I think it sends a message to the people of our respective states. But number two, I mean, this is us literally trying to help. I mean, we file amicus briefs. This is front of the court briefs. We're we're not an actual party to the case, but this is where we come in and say, look, court Ninth Circuit in this case, which, you know, we sit in right here, this is important enough that we as state attorneys general, believe that we should tell you our opinion on this and you should listen to it.Sam Stone: Precedents are being set in California that will affect the people of Montana, Florida, Arizona and every other state.Austin Knudsen: Unfortunately, we're all in the Ninth Circuit.Sam Stone: Breaking battlegrounds back 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 Chuck and Sam. We're going to be continuing on with Attorney General Austin Knudsen of Montana here in just a moment, folks. But first, you've been hearing us talk about why refy for a while now? They've been getting a ton of calls from people listening to this program. We thank you for your support in an investment that actually helps people. First off, it's true you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market. You can turn your income on or off, compound it. Whatever you choose. There are absolutely no fees and no attack on principal. 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So tell us what's going on in Hawaii and what they've done, because this story, I don't think has really gone far and wide enough. Yeah.Austin Knudsen: Well, I mean, I'm a big Second Amendment guy. I mean, just as a Montanan, shooting, collecting, hunting, competitive shooting, reloading. It's my hobby. So I mean, I'm, I'm really, really passionate about about the Second Amendment, but this one's really dangerous. And unfortunately, this isn't just Hawaii, but what Hawaii did is it started with the Bruen decision, right? This this is the US Supreme Court decision where it affirmed, yep, there is an individual right to carry a firearm and not just in the home. You have the right to bear arms outside of the home. Right? Okay. And what the Bruen decision also said is, well, okay, but there are some restrictions. This isn't wide open. You there are some historical precedents where we have restricted firearms carrying, for instance, and the Supreme Court in Bruen said specifically polling places, government buildings. Okay, those those were the two examples that they could historically say, all.Sam Stone: Right, airports. And.Austin Knudsen: Yeah, well, I mean, even that there's probably a historical question about. But I mean, I think just from a I think that one probably stands. But what has happened with Hawaii, they created they crafted new legislation that said, well, yeah, polling places, government places, but also also sensitive places. Well, what is a sensitive place? And this is where this gets real nebulous. The Hawaii said, well, you know, parks, maybe some restaurants, maybe beaches. Yeah. Well sorry. No, that's not in the Constitution. And that certainly does not comport with with the Bruen decision. I mean, the Bruen court was very clear. There has to be some sort of historical precedent, a historical analog for whatever restriction you're trying to place on the Second Amendment. So, I mean, that's why we jumped in this one, because Hawaii, I think when they when their legislature passed this, they probably knew this was going to get slapped down.Sam Stone: Well, in their really good Chuck and and AG Knudsen, they're really good at nebulous language that they then work to expand on over years. Oh for sure. They chip away at every legal decision and they're very patient about it.Austin Knudsen: Well, and we had a very similar case to this coming, coming out of Maryland. And I forget which circuit we filed a very similar brief because they tried to do this in a in a county in Maryland. I mean, almost exactly the same thing. And people said, well, why does Montana care about Maryland? Well, as these circuits go, so do the rest of the circuits. I mean, we're going to create a situation here where if this is done in one circuit, another circuit will try it, and pretty soon this is the law of the land. I mean, this is this is why we're having to be so, so aggressive on the Second Amendment stuff in front of the Ninth Circuit. I hope we don't have to go to the US Supreme Court, but based on Bruen, we might.Chuck Warren: You probably.Sam Stone: Will. How much is the Ninth Circuit moved back towards the center after Trump's appointees or has it.Austin Knudsen: Well, I mean, some of those appointees are fantastic. I mean, I happen to know one of them. He's a he's a former solicitor general from from Montana, Justice Van Dyke. The problem is there's they're just so outnumbered. I mean, the ninth is still just so crazy to the left. Yeah. There are a handful of of better justices on the panels for sure. But what what inevitably happens is whenever you draw one of those good panels. The ninth will suddenly find a reason to come in on bonk. And and we'll just review what those conservatives did and and yeah, we don't like that and we'll flip that over. I mean, that happens a lot.Chuck Warren: Former Senator McCain wanted to break up the ninth. Yeah, he.Sam Stone: Did, and he was right about that.Austin Knudsen: He's totally right. Absolutely. I mean, I look at my state, I look at your state. I don't think we belong in that that crazy circuit.Chuck Warren: No. Let me ask you a question. So we have this Maine tragedy, this this evil act done by this guy. And there was just like, gobs of warnings from the Army Reserve. They did two welfare checks on him. How do we prevent people like that from happening? I mean, he just should not have had a gun for law abiding citizens. We all agree this evil act could have been prevented. They had plenty of warning on this family. The Army Reserves. A former soldier said he could break the sheriff's office. Yeah, I mean, they all did it. Yeah. How do we prevent this? I mean, that's that's going to help a lot. How do we prevent this?Austin Knudsen: Well, I mean, we have to enforce laws that are already on the books. I mean, this guy was clearly a prohibited person. This this is a person with a history of mental disease or defect diagnosed. The warning signs were all there. I mean, they were multiple, multiple reports. I mean, he literally kicked one of his friends out of a moving vehicle because the guy tried to talk him out of shooting up the military base that he was a member of. This was reported to the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office showed up, knocked on the door. He didn't answer. Oh, well, case closed. I mean, this this was a case of the law enforcement system failing. I mean, there needed to be follow up here. And this guy, I mean.Chuck Warren: But it seems that but that seems that failure seems to happen a lot when you ever you go look at these mass shootings, has there been one. There's not been there's been no warnings.Sam Stone: No. I mean, for instance, the Nashville, the three pages of the Nashville Shooter Manifesto that just came out. Yeah. How about that stuff? Wow. I mean, she she references that there was some sort of contact, probably in 2021 with law enforcement or the FBI or something. We don't know exactly all the details, but she references that she could have been caught at that time. Right.Chuck Warren: I think Republicans, those who support the Second Amendment, are going to have to allow law enforcement to say if there are these triggers, we're bringing them in, period, and we're going to understand that.Sam Stone: But as the AG says, it's really just a matter of enforcing laws we already have.Austin Knudsen: That's exactly right. It's already illegal to be a mentally defective person and have a firearm. The question is, how do we get that diagnosis done and how do we make sure that's enforced? And I mean, I've had cases of this just in my own private practice where someone that clearly has a mental disease or defect is still able to walk in and purchase a firearm, like there's there's obviously a gap here, I think, in law enforcement, but whether it's from law enforcement to the ATF and the NICs system or, you know, however that gets communicated. And I'm here to tell you, sometimes the communication between the administrations from a state level to the federal level does not work really well. That that's a real, real problem. And I think you're right. As Republicans, we have to be in favor of enforcing that.Chuck Warren: Well, and I think we need to be leaders on this and be very proactive and tell people what's in the books and what's being missed. I don't think people understand. I just think they think we keep adding x, y, z. It's going to solve the problem. All these problems would have been solved. Nine out of ten of these would have been solved if law enforcement had done their job. These people have come in and I don't care if they had had a psychological check or whatever, you would not have had these tragedies. A lot of.Sam Stone: This tracks back to the FBI, which maintains the database. Is it time for Congress to hold hearings on where did you guys miss all these signals?Chuck Warren: It is it is time. And matter of fact, maybe what you do is skip Congress. Maybe the AG's do a tour around the country and say, here are these ten shootings. Nine could have been prevented. How are these missed?Austin Knudsen: Atf has got a lot of problems. I mean.Chuck Warren: They've always had a lot of.Austin Knudsen: Problems. The NICs system with an FBI has got a lot of problems. I mean, the problem right now we've got is that those agencies aren't talking to me. I mean, they they especially the federal DOJ, I mean, they they detest me. They do not like me. Now, I've had some communication with ATF that the regional director on the western side of the US, we've we've we've had some things happen in Montana and he's actually traveled up and sat down to his credit, knowing he was coming into probably an unfriendly situation. He came into my office and sat down to talk with me. But they don't communicate with us. The states, especially the red states, they don't talk to us. So, I mean, there is a huge breakdown here.Chuck Warren: You were. Uh. Let's see. Well, you were in Trump's. You were elected in 2018.Austin Knudsen: In.Chuck Warren: 2020. Okay. So you missed the Trump years. I'm interested if there have been the if it's just them being just obstinate or that's an administration thing. Well, I mean.Austin Knudsen: I certainly saw it in my time in the state legislature. But before this, several years back, I was the state speaker of the House. And I can tell you, I mean, I started that serving while Barack Obama was was the president. Zero communication out of Washington, DC to our state legislature? Zero. And I just assumed that was normal because I was a freshman legislator, I didn't know why would you know? And then I transitioned in my last term, we had President Trump, and all of a sudden I'm getting phone calls from the white House, from from the Office of of Intergovernmental Relations. I didn't know there was such a thing. I didn't know that we could have intergovernmental relations from from the federal government to the state legislature. And it was great. You know, we were able to discuss policy and talk about things that we had mutually could work on together. That did not happen at all before. It's not happening now.Chuck Warren: That's just unacceptable.Austin Knudsen: It makes no sense. I mean, it was such a it was such an aha moment for me to get a phone call from, from the president's office. And it was, hi, I'm so-and-so. This is my job outreach to state legislatures. What do you need? How can we help you? What are you working on?Chuck Warren: Well, especially since not every issue you're working on is adversarial to the administration. Right?Sam Stone: Right. Well, and Democrats like to talk.Austin Knudsen: It seems like it is anymore.Chuck Warren: Yeah.Austin Knudsen: Especially in Montana.Sam Stone: Democrats like to talk in the press all the time about finding common ground. They want to present themselves in that light. But what you're saying totally refutes that. I mean, just totally refutes it.Austin Knudsen: The only communication I have with the federal government is I do have a relationship with our US attorney in Montana, and that's just because I went to law school with the guy. You know, he's a he's a Biden appointee. He's he's a John Tester. Confirm me. But we're like, we're we get along, you know. Yeah I mean just it's a small state. We know each other.Chuck Warren: Are you a better student to him? You can be honest here. You know, he.Austin Knudsen: Was a couple years ahead of me. I really couldn't tell you. We're both in the legislature. I'll say that.Chuck Warren: So that brings up a point. So what do you think we need to do? That we can work better together. Look, we have our differences, but there are things that we can do to work together. We. We had a former ambassador, Carla Sands, on before you and we were discussing John Fetterman, who none of us in this room agrees with on anything probably disagree with him 95% of the things. But he has been a stalwart on this Israel. He has.Austin Knudsen: He's been really good.Chuck Warren: And we just Sam and I were talking to her and she agreed. Like, look, when our opponents do something, well, they need to be praised and given an attaboy. I don't think it happens enough because there are things we can work on together like, and they're probably not a lot of I mean, I think you're I think you're in the one field that there's not much give and take in a lot of things. But, you know, if you're talking about budget or infrastructure, look, there's some give and take here to get things done, right? I mean.Austin Knudsen: Border security, public safety, fentanyl. I mean, there are some things that we should be aligned that affect everybody and we're just not.Chuck Warren: So you focusing on the southern border, is there a problem in the northern border? Are we having things? Are drugs and fentanyl coming through the northern border because Canada has a loosey goosey immigration system?Austin Knudsen: I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it is such a small percentage that for for the sake of our conversation and for the sake of what's going on in our country, no.Chuck Warren: Because that's because they're afraid of the Dutton family. Yeah.Austin Knudsen: It's just so cold up there. I mean, it's it's something that we do track. I mean, we've got almost 700 miles of, of northern border in Montana, and we we track that very carefully. I've got good relations with the sector chief up there with Customs and Border Patrol. I'm not saying it doesn't happen.Chuck Warren: But it's a tough but.Austin Knudsen: It's a it's such a small number. When you start talking about the human trafficking and especially the drugs. The drugs are all coming from the southern border because it's so easy to get across.Chuck Warren: I'm sure you've talked to a AG who's a Democrat. What do they not understand about the southern border problem? Well, I mean, what is their view on this? Why can't they see this as a problem? We have one minute.Austin Knudsen: I really can't tell you because, I mean, this is just one of those blind spots they have. I think it's so ingrained into their base and into it's such a hot issue for them that they don't want to publicly have an intelligent conversation about it. I mean, every law enforcement officer in this country knows where all the fentanyl is coming from, and it's all coming from that southern border because it's wide open.Chuck Warren: It's like every mom who says their oldest son is just brilliant.Sam Stone: What if, you know offhand, what is the price of a fentanyl pill in Montana? Well.Austin Knudsen: So in Montana, it depends. So down here. A fentanyl pill is probably worth $1.25. Okay, well, you know better than me, but up in Montana, depending on where you are, 50 to 100 per pill.Sam Stone: And you wonder why the trafficking. Absolutely. A strong incentive and why we have to cut it at the source.Austin Knudsen: They want to be in Montana, that's why.Sam Stone: Yeah, absolutely. Attorney General Austin Knudsen of Montana, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you back and love having you in the studio. Happy to do.Austin Knudsen: It. Yeah. This worked out.Sam Stone: Great. And any time in the future if there's some issue, please let us know, because we want to be able to inform our listeners about what's going on all around this country.Austin Knudsen: Great. Thanks a lot, guys.Chuck Warren: Thank you.Sam Stone: Breaking battlegrounds will be back on the air next week, but make sure you tune in for the podcast segment. You can go to Breaking Battlegrounds dot vote all your favorite podcast channels. We're on there. Make sure you download, subscribe, tune in again next week. We'll see you then.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: All right. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren I'm Sam Stone. Up next for us today, Vincent Vernuccio, president and co-founder of the Institute for the American Worker, has over 15 years of expertise in labor and law policy. And we asked him on today, specifically, Chuck, to talk about an article he recently published in the New York Post called Unions Deceptive Salting Loophole Leaves a Bad taste. Vinnie, welcome to the program. And let's start out by telling what is salting.Vincent Vernuccio: Hey, Chuck, it's great to be on again with you. And thanks again for having me on. So salting, is this really kind of deceptive tactic? You have union organizers, many of which are getting paid by the union. Go get a job. Don't tell the employer. The sole reason they're taking the job is to organize the company. Then they get the job. They rabble rouse on the worksite. They instigate their fellow employees. They try to organize the employer, sowing discord at the workplace. And, you know, the whole reason is to try to bring a union in. And like I said, that union that they're getting paid by, but not telling anybody that they're getting paid by.Sam Stone: And also so these people show up, let's say you have a a nice happy work environment. All your employees are doing well. These people show up part of their their opening mission is to try to create rancor and discord in your employee base. Like that's step one, right?Vincent Vernuccio: That's step one. You know, there's even we've even heard examples from when they're doing trainings on this of how to win over the employer. You know, they do thankless task scrub toilets volunteer. So the whole point is to put the employer at ease, weasel their way in and then, yeah, get employees. And you know, we've all had know we've all known fellow employees that, you know, the whole toxic employee that creates rancor in the work environment. That's what they're trying to do. In many cases, they're not telling their fellow employees that they're actually working for the union and saying, hey, now that I've gotten you all angry at the employer, here's the solution. It just so happens it's the union that are working for.Chuck Warren: That's like false advertising. Is there some law that should be passed in various states to prevent this? Well, it.Vincent Vernuccio: Would probably be at a federal level. Representative Allen Rick Allen has the Truth in Employment Act, which would allow employers to at least ask, hey, by the way, are you taking this job for any other reason besides, you want to work for me? So that's one option. You know, the NLRB or. Excuse me, the Department of Labor could probably look into it. Obviously, under this administration, they're not going to do that. But here's the rub. If you have a employer going out, hiring a consultant, having that consultant talk to their own employees and say, hey, you know, a union may not be the best thing to come in, and it might not be the best thing for our workplace, that those consultants actually have to be reported to the Department of Labor. However, if you flip that and you have a union paying someone to talk to their to talk to employees, to try to get those employees to unionize, they don't. So there's a loophole. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander. And if employer consultants have to file these forms with the Department of Labor, so should unions. Salts.Chuck Warren: Don't you think we should have some states? Try to pass this, though, and let the administration just challenge it and take it to court.Vincent Vernuccio: You know, I you know, it would be really interesting. Unfortunately, there may be some preemption issues because, you know, the law on unionization for the private sector, for the most part, you know, with the exception of right to work and a couple other things is pretty clear that, you know, all that runs under the purview.Chuck Warren: But they're lying, but they're lying on their application, but they're there for I mean, most jobs, you would be fired for lying about something on your resume or not disclosing it.Vincent Vernuccio: That's right. Right now, that is the heart of what Representative Allens bill is trying to do is simply say, hey, you could ask this question and it is, you know, it is an offence if the worker lies or the union organiser lies about why they're really taking the job.Sam Stone: This really to me, this whole idea of salting sort of degrades the principle of unionization, which which is based on the workers in a particular industry or for a particular company coming together of their own self interest, which is essentially a free market force at that point versus having it imposed where someone comes in to agitate this from the outside. It sort of seems like it really throws out the, the principles, the, the, the moral principles behind unionizing.Vincent Vernuccio: That's right. I mean, this really is, you know, a key example of astroturfing. And you're seeing that with most of the union organizing drives these days. You know, gone are the days of, you know, it's organic from the employees of the worksites saying, hey, we're being mistreated. We need help. We need to band together. What you're seeing with salting and, you know, with a lot of these organizing efforts around the country, is that it's actually unions going, oh, wait, there's money there. Let's organize these employees so we can get dues. So, you know, fully supportive of, hey, if employees want to band together and they want to organize to negotiate with their employer, you know, that is very clear. That's, you know, why labor law was created. But unfortunately, what we're seeing today is it's not starting at the employee level. It's starting at the union level. And you're seeing it with this salting where the unions are targeting employees and saying, okay, you know, who can we organize? Well, in the.Chuck Warren: American public against the salting, I mean, you put some polling number in your New York Post piece. It found that 75% of Americans agree that if employers need to disclose their labor consultants union should disclose all of their organizers, including salts. Some 59% want union unionization elections with hidden salts to be thrown out as unfair. And you have 62% want workplaces to be able to ask applicants if they're union organizers, something that's banned under federal law. So clearly the public is on the side of this. But this is this is one of those small items that it seems like those who support free enterprise should really be pushing through.Vincent Vernuccio: That's right. You know. You know, the salting practice. It's disingenuous. We went out. We did that polling over the summer. And you see the incredible results there of Americans simply saying, yeah, this is this is not right. There should be other options. If employers have to file their consultants, Union should have to file their salts. Right. If those salts lie, then employees should be entitled to a fresh election. And then like the, you know, allenville that we were just talking about. Employers should have that right to ask, hey, are you really coming to work just for me?Sam Stone: Vinny, how much of this? So there's been a long term decline in unionization in this country. This is one of the tactics they're using to try to turn that around. But I would argue that the biggest reason for that long term decline is that they take union dues. They use them for entirely political purposes on one side of the aisle. They're really not used to benefit the members that directly. In other words, it's not that great a deal to be a union member. And so it seems like they're having to turn to these sort of backhanded tactics to prop up their membership.Vincent Vernuccio: Yeah. You know, it's funny that you you bring up some of the history there. That is something where, you know, we were talking to, you know, a lot of Americans. And it's something that kept coming up with salt. And, you know, let's put the politics aside for a second, is that it's an antiquated tactic. It's not something that's new. It's something that, you know, is is decades old that the unions are doubling down on now. But most people that I've talked to on this like, well, wait a minute. But, you know, it's not like the union needs to lie to get access to employees, right? Or it's going to have trouble getting access to those employees anymore. You know, now you have social media, you know, they can advertise on Facebook, they can geo locate, they can do a lot of ways of communicating with employees. They don't need this salting tactic. But now going back to your point about union membership declining, this is exactly why. It's because unions aren't innovating. They aren't modernizing. They're doubling down on these decades old tactics. Their business model is mired in the Industrial revolution, one size fits all collective bargaining mentality. And the modern worker is just saying, you know, I don't think that's for me.Chuck Warren: Isn't this the same tactic that The New York Times and the Washington Post moan and groan about James O'Keefe and Project Veritas does that. They put people inside as a job, unsuspecting, and they tape people. I mean, if you did this, a Republican operative went and placed somebody on a Democrat campaign and did this. Can you imagine the howling and screaming for weeks on Broadcast News, New York Times, LA times? Et cetera. It's the same. It's the same concept. Am I wrong here?Vincent Vernuccio: I mean, the bottom line is they should be transparent, you know. If a union wants to organize workers and once again emphasize the union coming in and organizing those workers, they should be transparent of who they are. And with salting, that's just not happening. In fact, the unions are even doing classes on this is how you can win over employers and gain their trust so you can infiltrate and try to organize the worksite.Sam Stone: Unbelievable. Vinnie Vernuccio, thank you so much for joining us today. How do folks stay in touch with you and your work before we wrap up here?Vincent Vernuccio: Sure, you can find this article. You can find the polling that we use to back up the article. It's all on our website, Institute for the American Worker. It's I the number 4.org i4 org and it's all there.Sam Stone: Fantastic Vinnie thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to having you back in the future.Chuck Warren: Hey. Thanks, Chuck. All right. Well, interesting guest today. Yeah.Sam Stone: Really interesting.Chuck Warren: We covered a gamut of things. We did cover a.Sam Stone: Gamut of things. You know, I really love these interviews. When we have someone like the ambassador on who can talk about stuff that nobody's paying attention to and nobody's heard about.Chuck Warren: And wood pellets or green energy.Sam Stone: And we get this with Vinnie Vernuccio. This isn't, you know, I mean, he has the piece in the post, but this isn't been turned into a big thing. Right? And then you hear from AG Knudsen, who is involved in some lawsuits you're not going to hear much about from the mainstream media what's going on with those lawsuits.Chuck Warren: And we learned today 64,000 people in Europe died because of high energy prices. I'm stunned. I'm stunned at that number.Sam Stone: My my jaw is on the floor.Chuck Warren: It's incredible. Kiley's corner.Kiley Kipper: Yeah. We got some interesting things today. Well, the first one we have is an update on the Brian Kohberger case, because I know you love that case so much.Chuck Warren: I do love the case. That's the Idaho.Sam Stone: Case. Oh yeah, we do love that.Kiley Kipper: We do. Yeah. Yeah. For those that don't know, the Brian Kohberger case is the gentleman who's being accused of can I call him a gentleman? I shouldn't call him that individual.Chuck Warren: Call him a.Kiley Kipper: Dude. Yeah. The dude who is accused of suspect. That's the best word. That's what he is.Chuck Warren: That's a legal word.Kiley Kipper: Of murdering the four Idaho students. The four students at the University of Idaho. Anyways, so he filed a motion to get the entire case removed on the grounds that there was an error in grand jury instructions because they used a grand jury to indict him. Right. And so his defense is saying that there they were he was convicted on probable cause, putting this in air quotes instead of beyond a reasonable doubt.Sam Stone: But but but a grand jury does not convict the grand jury. Correct.Kiley Kipper: So like the Idaho state law says, the grand jury has to just find and indict them based on the evidence that they're shown. It doesn't. There's no argument to it. It doesn't.Sam Stone: It's usually a preponderance of evidence standard in front of the grand jury, not beyond a reasonable doubt.Chuck Warren: Right? Right.Kiley Kipper: Yeah. And so the prosecutor said, well, the language is vague. The Idaho Supreme Court has already ruled that this is good enough to stand up for it. And the judge who is on this case denied the motion, obviously saying this is an issue you're going to bring to a higher court, aka the Supreme Court, which they've already done, ruled on it. And he said, I appreciate the journey back in history and I appreciate this argument. I think it's creative. He kept going on and it goes, but I'm going to deny the argument.Chuck Warren: Is there been anything in this case that you've seen that has made you change your opinion that maybe Brian didn't do it? No.Kiley Kipper: And I've seen people's comments on it. Like, I think he's innocent and all this. I just think he's really because he also his team filed two other motions, one to dismiss the case on a a biased jury and then dismiss the case on lack of sufficient evidence, slash withholding evidence. And I think they're really just trying to because they denied the speedy trial. So they're just trying to push it off, trying to find anything to just drop the case. Because I do think that he is guilty.Chuck Warren: And they are seeking the death penalty, right?Kiley Kipper: Yes. Yeah. They come out in July and said that their God bless Idaho seeking the. Yeah. All right. What else do.Chuck Warren: We what else have we got on Kylie's corner.Kiley Kipper: Here. You know this one is not much of a story because we're not getting much out of it. However, I find a suspicious. So I want to bring it up and hear your guys's thoughts on it.Chuck Warren: You've gone down some rabbit holes on it.Kiley Kipper: There's just. I've tried, I've tried. I'm really trying to find more information for you guys, but tell me, tell me. On Monday of this week for LA Sheriff's Department, deputies died by suicide in a 24 hour span. For for wait. What I know.Chuck Warren: For LA sheriff.Sam Stone: La sheriff's.Chuck Warren: Deputies by suicide in a week.Kiley Kipper: In 24 hours in the same day. So the first one was found at 9:30 a.m. Monday and the last, the fourth one was found at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday.Sam Stone: So what case did they have in common?Chuck Warren: So did they have one in common?Kiley Kipper: That's like I think what people are trying to figure out. But one was retired, three were current officers. And so it's just that's all they've said is we're treating these as individual cases. And end of story. We haven't. Like, there's nothing out there that's more trying to figure out who these people are because they haven't released two of the names either. So we only know two names and two are not really.Sam Stone: I mean, look, it is a profession that has an unfortunately high rate of suicide.Chuck Warren: The stress, the stress is huge. Four in 24 hours. Is that that's unheard of. Matter of fact, I'm sure that's even happened before.Kiley Kipper: So in 2020, there was 116 suicides across law enforcement across the country. In 2021, they increased 23% to 150 in 20 20 to 170. 172 officers die by suicide. And then this year alone, so far, 83 law enforcement officers die by suicide, nine coming from this department alone. Being the LA Sheriff's Department.Chuck Warren: Okay. That's strange.Kiley Kipper: So I find those numbers like that's a lot of officers that have died by suicide. However, the number that have come out of the same department seems.Sam Stone: I think something's happening there. That does not sound like that is a a that's a major statistical anomaly. I mean, you're way outside of any probability field.Chuck Warren: Keep on this. I'm not.Kiley Kipper: I was like, I need more.Chuck Warren: I don't trust this at all. Yeah.Sam Stone: Also, I think we probably need to assign you to track the six journalists who were apparently embedded with Hamas on the morning of the seventh, because Israel announced today that they're going to be executed. They're they're they're not going to be here.Kiley Kipper: I saw the videos on Twitter this morning. I think your.Chuck Warren: Guy had the grenade in his hand. Yeah. So did you know there's been 46 attacks on US bases the last three weeks? I did know.Sam Stone: Yeah.Chuck Warren: Incredible.Sam Stone: And our response was to bomb an empty warehouse in Syria. That's the Biden response. It's literally an empty warehouse.Chuck Warren: So let's talk about this for a minute. So a poll came out today that nearly half of Democrats disapprove of Biden's response to the Israel-hamas war, which is amazing. Poll found 50% of Democrats approve of Biden has navigated the conflict, while 46 disapprove.Sam Stone: That 46% is rooting for Hamas, 100%.Chuck Warren: It's it's crazy. Nearly seven of ten Democrats approve of Biden's management of the conflict, but think the US provides the right amount of support of those who disapprove. 65% say the US is too supportive of Israel. We are really discovering the anti-Semitic nature of the progressive left, which has been there forever. It's been there forever. The fact that the because the press is.Sam Stone: Has hit it and blamed it on white supremacy. But we all know the truth that the vast majority of anti. I said the other day.Chuck Warren: 65% of Democrats younger than 45 disapprove of Biden's handling the.Sam Stone: You know what the difference between the left and the right on anti Semitism is on the right. We have a couple of fringe anti-semitics. They're nuts and nobody gives them any credence.Chuck Warren: We all we know what they are.Sam Stone: Yeah we call them out. We ostracize them.Chuck Warren: On the left are university professors and reporters at the New York Times.Sam Stone: Yes, that's the difference.Chuck Warren: Didn't you have experience where you posted this? Did you? Were you the one telling me that they had that they got scolded for being pro-Israel?Kiley Kipper: Yeah, yeah, I have, I have the text. Let me see if I can find them really quick. Put me on the spot there. It wasn't me. It was a friend who sent it.Chuck Warren: No, but your friend sent you. Yeah. I remember you telling me that story. It's. Uh, they really look, these progressives are in universities. They are teaching this bigoted, racist ideology of theirs. It's it is really frightening what's happening in our universities right now. There was a really interesting piece this week. Um. And then in the London. I think it's the Telegraph, to be exact, the Telegraph. And they were talking about the reports about just how Jewish students do not feel safe in England now going to universities.Sam Stone: Well, and how can they? I mean, as bad as the vitriol has been here, the vitriol in many European countries against Jews has been far worse.Chuck Warren: Oh, it's so bad. It's so bad.Sam Stone: I mean, if you were a Jewish citizen of the UK or mainland Europe right now, and you are not trying to figure out how to relocate to Israel or frankly, the US, still, I think you're crazy. I think you're leaving yourself in a very, very vulnerable position.Chuck Warren: Let's talk about the debate.Kiley Kipper: Around the text. Read it to us, please. So this person messaged my friend and said, delete it now. And she goes, no, he goes, you seriously feel that way? And I remember vaguely the image it must have. I think it was just the flat the Israel flag with like I support Israel or. Yeah, just the very basic image. There was no fax or anything on it. Like just nothing like that. Just said I stand with them and he goes, you seriously feel that way? And she goes, feel what way? And he goes, you stand with Israel. Are you an effing terrorist? You support crimes against humanity. You support Jewish question mark. I'm just like a bunch of texts, like all in order. Did she.Chuck Warren: Say yes?Kiley Kipper: She just didn't. She was like, I'm over it. I'm done responding. And then she did say he texted her like 3 or 4 more times, and she's just like, I'm done.Chuck Warren: You balk them, I hope.Kiley Kipper: Hopefully I'm just that's you know.Sam Stone: This is a result of the deliberate miseducation of multiple generations now is what's I mean. Well, it goes it.Chuck Warren: Goes back to this TikTok thing we were talking about last week. This is very much because they get their education from TikTok. Everything.Sam Stone: Well, but if the if the k 12 education they were getting, if the college education was honest and and and reasonable and factual, there would be a balance to that. What they're learning on TikTok. But they're not getting that. They're getting reinforcement and the.Chuck Warren: Press is not help. Let's talk about one other thing the press is stupid about this week. So, you know, Vivek went after Nikki Haley's kid. And you know, Nikki. Nikki's a tough old bird, right? I mean, she's she's a tough gal. So they asked Ron DeSantis about it on NBC and he just said, I think kids are out of bounds. I don't think that was an appropriate thing to do. So then NBC goes and tries to make a big deal of DeSantis going after Biden. So folks, for you out there who are really disinclined intellectually. Nikki Haley's daughter is in her 20s. She's not a public figure. Hunter Biden's a degenerate at 53 years old who has stole money tax, evaded well, sold his soul.Sam Stone: Also, by all accounts, I mean white House accounts and appearances. He is one of his father's closest advisors.Chuck Warren: He goes with them presidential trips. So, folks, there are two different paths here. One, you have a 20 something year old who's living her life. That's her decision, right? Well, it's Hunter Biden is embarrassing. And the fact that the NBC news tries to lump them together makes them a failed institution.Sam Stone: And this is why I never complained when the press did pieces on Eric Trump or on Jared Kushner and Ivanka, because they were directly involved in the activities, which is the Trump kid that isn't involved with any of this stuff. I forget. Right? But but that's the dividing line. Tiffany, Tiffany, Tiffany's not yeah, if you're not involved, if you're not part of this world, then you're off limits.Chuck Warren: Yeah I agree, I agree. Well great show this week. Thanks for setting it up Kylie. Absolutely follow up on both these cases. But I want to know more about the sheriffs. That is a that is a strange one. There are coincidences but usually not.Sam Stone: Not at that level. That is a lot of coincidence, folks.Chuck Warren: Thanks for joining us. Please share our program with your family and friends. You can find us at Breaking Battlegrounds Dot vote or wherever you download your podcasts. Have a great weekend and week! Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

Join us this week on Breaking Battlegrounds as our hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone present a captivating radio show featuring two remarkable guests. First up, we have the esteemed #1 New York Times bestselling author, Richard Paul Evans, who will share insights into his latest children's book, "My Son Lives in a Tree." Discover the inspiration behind this heartwarming story and why he's generously donating all his royalties to charity. You can purchase the book at RichardPaulEvans.com or on Amazon. Then, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a dynamic leader from Tennessee, will delve into critical issues such as the Middle East, housing affordability, and her work on the Kids Online Safety Act. And in Kiley’s Corner, Kiley Kipper joins us to discuss the mysterious case of a California woman who went missing in Arizona while driving from California to Connecticut for a wedding. Don't miss out on these engaging discussions, and visit our website for more information: www.breakingbattlegrounds.vote. -Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-About our guestsRichard Paul Evans is the #1 bestselling author of The Christmas Box. He has since written 41 consecutive New York Times bestsellers and is one of the few authors in history to have hit both the fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. There are more than thirty-five million copies of his books in print worldwide, translated into more than 22 languages. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mothers Book Award, the Romantic Times Best Women’s Novel of the Year Award, the German Audience Gold Award for Romance, five Religion Communicators Council Wilbur Awards, The Washington Times Humanitarian of the Century Award, and the Volunteers of America National Empathy Award. Evans lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with his wife, Keri, and their five children and two grandchildren.-U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn was sworn in to the Senate in January 2019. Marsha Blackburn was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2018, and is currently serving her first term representing the state of Tennessee. Before her election to the Senate, Marsha represented Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.Marsha’s public service is dedicated to promoting opportunities for women and making America a more prosperous place to live. Marsha’s leadership philosophy is based on her experiences in the private sector as a small business woman and author, as well as being a mother and grandmother.Marsha went to college on a 4-H scholarship and worked her way through school selling books for the Southwestern Company as one of their first female sales associates, and later as one of their first female sales managers.She then became Director of Retail Fashion and Special Events for the Castner Knott Company, which was a Nashville-based regional department store. Later, Marsha founded her own business, Marketing Strategies, which focused on the retail marketplace, as well as electronic and print media.Marsha began her career in public service in 1995 when she was named executive director of the Tennessee Film, Entertainment, and Music Commission. In 1998, she was elected to the Tennessee State Senate. In the state legislature, she earned a reputation for fiscal responsibility and government accountability by identifying waste and offering realistic solutions to Tennessee’s budget challenges.While serving in the Tennessee Senate, Marsha led a statewide grassroots campaign to defeat a proposed state income tax. The tax was defeated, and Marsha’s leadership earned her a reputation as an anti-tax champion. In 2014, the people of Tennessee passed an amendment to the state constitution to expressly prohibit a state income tax – a fitting cap to a 14-year battle.In 2002, Marsha was elected to represent the people of Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District based on her record in the state legislature. She brought her Tennessee values to Washington, DC, and became a leader in the fight for small, efficient federal government that is accountable to its citizens. As a Congressman, Marsha was often selected by her colleagues to lead the charge for principled conservativism. Her congressional career was also noted for her Chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, as well as bipartisan expertise in defending songwriters’ and performers’ rights.Marsha is a member of numerous charitable organizations and is an active member of her church, Christ Presbyterian. Marsha and her husband Chuck live in Williamson County, Tennessee. They have two children, Mary Morgan (Paul) Ketchel and Chad (Hillary) Blackburn, three grandsons, and a granddaughter. Originally from Laurel, Mississippi, Marsha is a graduate of Mississippi State University.-TRANSCRIPTION Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

This week on Breaking Battlegrounds, we have guest host Michelle Ugenti-Rita filling in for Chuck Warren, along with co-host Sam Stone. Join us as we welcome our first guest, Abe Hamadeh, who's running to represent Arizona's 8th Congressional District. A former U.S. Army Reserve Captain and Intelligence Officer, Abe is a staunch America-first fighter, and he'll share his vision for securing the southern border and holding the government accountable. Our second guest, Mike Coté, founder of Rational Policy and a writer at the National Review, offers a historical perspective on policy, international affairs, and politics. Tune in for engaging discussions and expert insights into the political landscape.-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-About our guestsAbe Hamadeh is a former U.S. Army Reserve Captain & Intelligence Officer, Maricopa county prosecutor and an America first fighter. Abe is the son of immigrants; his family fled places like Syria and Venezuela. He knows all too well that if America falls, the flame of freedom may be extinguished forever. Abe is running to represent Arizona’s 8th Congressional District where he grew up, having gone to Happy Valley School, Stetson Hills, and Terramar. He is honored to be the voice of the district back in Washington.Mike Coté is a writer for the National Review and historian focusing on great-power rivalry and geopolitics. He blogs at rationalpolicy.com and hosts the Rational Policy podcast.-Transcription Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Sam Stone. The international man of mystery. Chuck Warren is out of the studio again this week, but we are graced by the lovely presence Michelle Ugenti-Rita, former state senator here. She's running for office herself. Yeah, yeah.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Glutton for punishment.Sam Stone: Yeah. No, seriously. Having done that once now and having no interest, I have all these people keep coming up to me and they're like, hey, Sam, you should run again. I'm like.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Why are you kidding you? You value your yourself too much to do that again.Sam Stone: It's painful.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: It's tough. It's tough. I like it though. I mean, I don't know how many races have I done. 6 or 7. And you know, the vast majority of one lost one, one six. I like it. You have to like it to do it.Sam Stone: See, I like working on campaigns. Yeah.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: So you like it? Just a different component, a.Sam Stone: Different component of it. I actually I just found out that when I was doing it, I found out I don't like being the candidate.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Right. That's a that's a different kind of person, the person who likes to be a candidate. But there can be a lot of people that like to be in the political sphere, working behind the scenes, working on policy, working on campaign strategy. But the candidate, it's it takes a lot.Sam Stone: It's different. I mean, for one thing, the thing that that frankly got me and folks, we have some very good guests coming up today on our second segment, we're going to have Abraham Hamadeh. He was the candidate for attorney general, general election candidate in Arizona, lost by I think by the end it was like 270 votes. I think it was down to like 123 by the time it was all okay, whatever. And as we discussed briefly or will discuss briefly with Abe there, there's really no doubt in anyone's mind here that he got hosed out of that election by Maricopa County. And what happened on Election day and uncounted ballots.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Their incompetency.Sam Stone: Their incompetency and all this kind of thing. I have not met one serious person who doesn't think that he should be the AG right now in a fairly run election. Yeah, and that's even a lot of those people are people who disagree with Kari Lake and disagree with Donald Trump and don't take that position, but they look at what happened here on Election Day with malfunctioning machines and 63% of the precincts, all this stuff and they say, look, 100 and something votes that absolutely cost that. So he's announcing a run for Congressional District eight here in Arizona.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: So that's going to be that's going to be a really interesting congressional race. You mentioned we we talked to Abe about this.Sam Stone: But folks, in all fairness, before we stumble over this anymore, we actually already did our interview with Abe. We pre-recorded it before we began the show here. I'm just going to be honest about this. Like, folks, you know, we're not live. We pre-record this on Friday. You're going to you're going to hear this on Saturday. So it is what it is. Instead of assembling it over to Michelle, we'll just tease this interview that's coming up and then folks make sure yeah, make sure you stay tuned afterwards because we're going to do a nice podcast segment following on this as well. And then for segments three and four today we have Mike Cote, writer for National Review and historian, focusing on great power, rivalry and geopolitics, which obviously isn't relevant at all to the moment in time we're in. Yeah, yeah. Um, but so we were teasing the lead in with Abe in that race from last time when Debbie Lesko became the congresswoman. I think if I remember, I mean, it was a huge field, like 15 to 18 people in that field.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: I think so too. I mean, everyone and their mom comes out and puts their hat or puts their name in the hat to run. And but that is honestly the nature of an open seat. You see that quite frequently in an open seat. It is exasperated by fact that it's a congressional open seat. And on our side, the Republican side.Sam Stone: Whoever wins the primary.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Yeah, it will. The general.Sam Stone: The general. I mean, I think when Debbie ran, her Democrat opponent in the general was.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Tipirneni.Sam Stone: Was it Hiram Tipirneni or was it? I think it was Brian nee. Brianna Westbrook. I don't know. Either way. It was terrible.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Candidates or something. Yeah. It's terrible.Sam Stone: Well, yeah. No. So the Democrats here in Arizona don't have a great bench.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: No, no, they don't have a good bench at all. It's not deep. Just the fact that we have Katie Hobbs as our governor I think is evident of that. But it does tell you, though, that if we aren't smart about how we're campaigning, if we don't have strategy, if we don't stick to our talking points, if we veer off of, you know, issues that matter to people, it's not a given. We're going to win. I mean, right, you know, just because the other side is that bad does not mean you're going to win. You know, you really have to make sure that you get your message out and you, frankly, stay on message. Stay. On message. I hope that's what happens in in CD eight is they stay on message. There's so much going on. Abe talked about that. And people want results. Yes. You know, deliver something for the good people of that district, please.Sam Stone: Well, you know one thing, and I know Debbie Lesko a little bit. You probably know her a lot better than I.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Served with her.Sam Stone: Um, but one of the things I was a little disappointed with her over the few years she's been in office versus Paul Gosar, for instance, is that Paul ran around and turned out voters in his bright red district in general elections. Yeah. And Debbie did not do that in hers. And folks, that makes a big difference. You need a candidate. Yeah. They've won the thing in the primary. It's over basically. But you need them to go out and turn out those votes.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: You do have to energize the base, right? This is a numbers game. The person with the most numbers, you know, the highest number, excuse me, wins. And it's about keeping majorities or getting majorities if we don't have them. And that doesn't happen unless let's get out to vote. Like your point.Sam Stone: Let's take a Debbie Lesko and let's call it five of our brightest red state legislative districts. Right. What what how much of a change is there if each one of if Debbie turns out an extra 1000 votes and all of those turn out an extra hundred.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: And especially since races are becoming more and more competitive, they're closer and closer. So, you know, a lot of people have this mindset of like, oh, it doesn't matter or I'm just one. But when when, you know, the race we had the superintendent race, there was another legislative district race. This was just last general election, right. They they triggered recount my recount bill, by the way, that the counties opposed vehemently because they don't like to recount.Sam Stone: That's one of the things most people don't maybe don't know, because people don't follow the legislature in any state.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: They should, but they should.Sam Stone: I always laugh because, like the Florida legislature has done so much right, and everyone, all everyone talks about is governor DeSantis. Now, I love governor DeSantis too, but let's be honest, 80% of what he gets credit for.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: They they served up to for him.Sam Stone: They're teeing him up. And, you know, we we haven't always done a good enough job here. But had we turned out those extra 1500 Republicans, we're not talking about Abraham Hamadeh running for CD eight. We're talking about AG Abraham Hamadeh right I mean that's a big difference. And this is nationwide folks. Think about all these the presidential election, everything how close that was.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: And it's only going to be I think that you're going to see more and more competitive races. And what I mean by that, the differential between the top two candidates become narrower, more narrow and narrow. So they're going to be razor close. So every vote actually does count. And I think in 2016 it was Congressman Andy Biggs that won his race by I want to say 27 votes.Sam Stone: Yeah it was really tight really really tight tight. Yeah. And so these things make a big difference.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: So if you're extended family's not voting and you lose that race I mean you can't go to any family function ever again.Sam Stone: Well no you can. You just you stand at the door and you're like, you're allowed in. Let's see. Did you vote? Pull up the voter rolls. Did you cast a ballot? Oh no no, no potato salad for you today.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Exactly.Sam Stone: Um, there's a lot going on in the world, and obviously we're going to be focusing on a lot of the the great power situation and all of this with Mike Cote. When Cote, I'm hoping I'm probably mispronouncing this two different ways. That's what I do, folks. Um, but I want to touch on something else that came up today. It's kind of icky, but I'm throwing I'm throwing this into this thing. It's Friday. There's the news out today that about a week ago you had a reporter in Philadelphia, 39 year old reporter who was murdered in his home. And everyone was like, you know, what's going on, blah, blah, blah. Well, today they arrested a 19 year old homeless kid that he was having a air quote, I'm putting up the air quotes here, folks. Relationship with. This comes about two weeks after we saw a activist stabbed on the streets of New York.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: That was horrific.Sam Stone: Video for basically the same underlying reason that he had been in a relationship with this crazy young homeless person who then stabbed him to death. Democrats have a pedophile problem.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: You are going bold.Sam Stone: I am going bold there. But you know what they do. Look at the thing. So there was a little bit of controversy here about Turning Point USA. One of their activists chasing and asking questions of an ASU professor, who then shoved the cameraman and physically made a poor decision of who to assault because he just got tossed to the ground by a much stronger person as a result. Now that that was the result of his actions, this this act, this activist professor. But I looked into why they were asking him these questions. This guy is a professor at our university and he's basically promoting pedophilia. I mean. What are we? What do we have to do?Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Why isn't why isn't there an outcry about that?Sam Stone: You know, I saw a little clip from Joe Rogan this morning, and I actually, I like Rogan. I think he's a great interviewer. It's not his insights I actually find the most interesting. UsuallyMichelle Ugenti- Rita:  He's good at teasing it out of his guests.Sam Stone: Yeah, he's a great interviewer. He asks brilliant questions, but this was a kind of a clip of him talking with one of his guests, guest hosts or co co producers or whatever, and he was saying, you know, you have this thing where it's just Ghislaine Maxwell has been jailed, convicted, right, of selling kids for sex. And yet there's no one anywhere in any documentation who bought. That sex. Now obviously that happened. I'm not saying it didn't write. But why aren't they being charged? All of those people who were flying to Epstein Island.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Who are they and.Sam Stone: Who are they? Where's the list?Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Where's right? It happened. Where's the list? Who are they? Why can't we identify them?Sam Stone: Yeah.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: And bring them to justice.Sam Stone: And forget trying to hold them accountable? We're not even being told who we.Michelle Ugenti- Rita:  You don't even. Know who it is.Sam Stone: Who should be held accountable.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Very powerful.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Forces.Sam Stone: And this is this is something totally different. Like I always was. You know, you grew up in a country where it's like, hey, one side wants lower tax rates and the other one side wants to spend more money. And like, okay, that's a discussion we can all have.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: And be on.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Either side of the issue on. Right. But why, why are why why is this one divided. Right. Or at least feels like it? Shouldn't we all be on the same side on this one?Sam Stone: I'm sorry.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: You have a different perspective when it comes to pedophilia.Sam Stone: Or. Yeah.Sam Stone: I mean, like they go so far as to call it minor attracted persons. Now they're trying to do this name swap thing again.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Hopefully Huckabee has banned that term.Sam Stone: Everyone should ban that term. If your governor hasn't banned that term you need to talk to your governor. I don't care which side of the aisle they're on. Okay, folks, we're going to break. We're going to be coming back for more. Make sure you tune in for our podcast segment, because I want to follow up on some of this. It's, you know, there's some weird stuff going on these days, folks. We'll catch you on the next episode here. We're going to be talking to Abe Hamadeh and then moving on with my coat or coat writer for the National Review 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: All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Michelle Ugenti-rita. And I'm Sam Stone. Coming up next, a guest who just announced a run for Congressional District eight here in Arizona. He is also the man. I really believe that you can if you're a Democrat or you're an independent, you want to quibble about what happened to Kari Lake? You can, but I don't believe you can quibble about what happened to this guy in Maricopa County in this last election, where he theoretically lost by a couple hundred votes when they had huge problems with the machine problems. I have not talked to anybody in Arizona, anybody who's reasonable, who doesn't think the election was stolen from Abe Hamadeh. So, Abe, thank you for taking the time this morning. I know you've got a busy schedule because you just launched this run for Congress. Tell us how you're doing and what's going on.Abe Hamadeh: Thank you. Sam, good to be with you, Michel. It's been, you know, it was Groundhog Day for a whole year, just about since last November. Right. Focusing on our election lawsuit, which, you know, as you said, I think everybody recognizes what happened. And, you know, with the government withholding all of the evidence, all these 9000 uncounted ballots. But when this opportunity arose, you know, I decided, hey, you know, I don't trust I don't trust the court system right now. Sam, you know, it's really unfortunate that we've been met with roadblocks. So I plan to serve in in Washington alongside Kari Lake and alongside Donald Trump. And I think that's where the focus is now. But we're still fighting the election lawsuit, of course, because we need to expose what happened. But, you know, right out the gate, we had so many endorsements, Sam, and we got endorsed by Kash Patel, who's a huge fighter. We have Ric Grenell and director of National intelligence. We had Robert O'Brien, the national security adviser. We even had Adam Laxalt, who ran for Senate in Nevada, the former AG up there. So I think we built this really broad coalition and a type of unity to kind of ticket right now, because I'm just trying to I want the grassroots, the grassroots right now need a victory.Abe Hamadeh: You know, they need a fighter who's willing to say the things that need to be said and do the things that need to be done. And when I go to Washington, DC, everybody knows my fighting spirit, right? I mean, the establishment wanted me to go cower and hide and, you know, beg for forgiveness. And instead I stood tall to them. I stood tall to them, the the media and the political class. And I think I've come out stronger than ever. And the polling suggests that certainly right now. So we're in a very good spot. And I'd be honored to go back to my eighth congressional district, where I actually grew up from. I lived in North Peoria. I went to school at three different schools out there. So it feels it feels really nice and especially that area for so long. You know, it's really MAGA country, very supportive of President Trump. And who can't be, especially with the world on fire right now. Sam. So I think my skill set, you know, being the an Army captain serving overseas, being a former prosecutor, I think it's going to be it's going to be really good transition in Congress.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Yeah. So I think the audience we kind of need to set up this race. This is this is we had an incumbent who is not running for re-election, Debbie Lesko. So we have an open seat in a.Sam Stone: Very red district.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: A very.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Red district. So this is going to stay Republican. It's just what flavor Republican are we going to get. And we need to get a conservative. The race is shaping up. Talk to us about what that looks like right now. How many candidates are in the race. How do you see it ultimately kind of solidifying as as people look at.Sam Stone: As I told someone the other day, I think Abe has a pretty good chance of winning a 19 way primary.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Well, you know what?Michelle Ugenti- Rita: These open seats, right? I mean, that's around how many candidates enter the races.Sam Stone: I think last time it was like 18 or 19 for this seat when it kicked off.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: So it's really going to be about your base. And in that niche what do we what does it look like right now.Abe Hamadeh: So I think you guys are exactly right. And, you know, I entered the race as the clear underdog with 0% name ID and, you know, that was probably the most contentious primaries in terms of how many legitimate candidates there were. And, you know, we defeated all of them because, you know, the voters are smart. They really sense authenticity. They know who's genuine. They know who's a fighter. Right now, I know my one of my opponents, Blake Masters, just entered the race. He's coming in all the way from Tucson, no ties to the district. And, you know, actually did the worst out of any of the Trump endorsed candidates. He he only won that district by 7%, which is kind of scary. I won the district by 12%. So but, you know, I'm focused on my race. I don't really need to focus on anybody else. But people know they're the electorate nowadays is a lot smarter than people give them credit for. They know they're really in tune with so much of what's happening. So, you know, the more the merrier that come in and, you know, we'll, we'll we'll just run our race just like we ran the ag race. And I have no problem running against people who are older than me, who are more established than me, but I.Abe Hamadeh: People at this at this time. They know our country is collapsing. I mean, we have to be very honest about the assessment of our country. It's in a dire state. And it's the same reason why I ran for AG and the same fighting spirit I'm going to take to Congress with me is I know what's at stake. My family left Syria, know I was born in the United States, but my family immigrated from Syria and my family from Venezuela. And I've seen what Marxist revolutions do to countries. And once they activate them, it happens very quickly. And as I were seeing all of our institutions under attack right now, but I look forward to a spirited primary and, you know, we're going to we're going to go off to the races. But I feel very confident we're going to have a lot of support. I'm honored that Kari Lake endorsed me right off the bat, too. She was actually on the phone with me telling me to get in the race. So I feel really good about the way of the race. Right now.Sam Stone: We have just about two three minutes left before we get to the end of this segment here, and I want to give some time for you at the end to be able to share your website and all your information so people can help support you. But one of the things I noted from the campaign last time for Attorney general and for folks outside of Arizona, you wouldn't have seen any of this. Obviously, no one's paying attention outside of the state. It was, like you said, a big primary. One of the things I thought differentiated you from the other campaigns was you were focused on campaigning, on things you were going to do in office. A lot of them spent a lot of time attacking you. I didn't see that from your camp. You really ran a issue based. YeahMichelle Ugenti- Rita: Right.Abe Hamadeh: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, there are so many, so many people want to get into politics because they want to be a politician. I'm getting into it because I'm desperately worried about our country. And I've seen it firsthand. Right. When when you had everybody coming after me, you know, with this election that happened last November, you know, one of the things I want to go into Congress is get election integrity at the federal level. And so I think just that type of fighting spirit the voters recognize, they know that I'm so focused on terrorism. You know, I've served overseas in Saudi Arabia vetting, you know, trying to prevent terrorists from coming into the United States. And, you know, you see our wide open border, which I think, unfortunately, we've had 167 encounters with people on the terror watch list. I mean, there's so much, so many things that are happening in our country where it's a multi-dimensional war and we have to fight it on all fronts. And having somebody with that conviction and who can withstand the pressure is so important right now at this dire time, and especially with and look at this time last year, Sam, Michelle, we didn't president Trump wasn't under indictment. Now he's had to withstand four indictments. And I think people need to be really concerned about the direction of our country right now, where we're starting to jail political opponents. I mean, this is not something that we've seen in the United States of America before. This is more reminiscent of banana republics, third world countries. And I think I can speak to it most better than most people right now.Sam Stone: We have just a minute left. Oh, real quick, give us your top three issues and then tell folks how they can support your campaign.Abe Hamadeh: My top three issues are, of course, the border. I mean, the border is completely open because of the disaster of the Biden administration, which I do believe is intentional. And I think we need to impeach Secretary Mayorkas as soon as possible. Election integrity is my other focus, and I've been tried and tested in that battlefront, and we're going to do some good things at the at the federal level with that. And thirdly, you know, national security and military, you know, somebody who served, you know, I know what veterans go through. And I also know that a foreign policy that doesn't put America first is a is a disaster. But I feel really blessed to be to represent this district. And if anybody wants to learn more about the campaign, I'm honored to have their support. They can go to my website at for Azcom. Abe. Perfect.Sam Stone: Thank you so much, Abe. We're coming back in just a moment. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Michelle Ugenti-rita. I'm Sam Stone. We're going to be continuing on with our interviews here in just a moment. But folks, you've been hearing me talk about why Refy for a year now? It's actually been a year since they started sponsoring this program. And, you know, after a few months, I went and did some research on my own and really got to know the folks in that company. And I got to tell you, you are missing a fantastic opportunity. If you don't go to their website and see about the incredible rates of return, you can get there. It's not linked to the stock market. You can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. That is just an incredible opportunity in today's market. So check them out. Invest y 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. All right. Continuing on today, folks, we have Mike Coté. He is a writer for the National Review and historian, focusing on great power, rivalry and geopolitics, blogs at Rational policy.com and host the Rational Rational Policy podcast. Mike, thank you so much for joining us. And welcome to the program.Mike Coté: Great. Thanks so much for having me.Sam Stone: So nothing to talk about at all these days in the areas of great power, rivalry and geopolitics. Um, you know, one of the one of your recent articles is that titled the Sky Isn't Falling for those who decry Western support for Ukraine, everything a precursor to World War three? This couldn't be further from the truth. Tell us a little bit about that, because I thought that was an interesting take and kind of an important one to inject into the discussion at this moment.Mike Coté: Yeah, great. Thanks so much. So the piece basically I'm trying to talk about we have people online, especially even going up to people in Congress as well as the president of the United States that are basically thinking that any sort of change in our posture in Ukraine, whether that's giving them more weapons, assisting them with intelligence, things like that, pretty much are forcing us into a third world war. You'll see people talking about World War Three, things like that all the time online. And that was something that really bothered me. As someone who studied both world wars, they're basically mistaking the way that escalation dynamics worked, both in the current war as well as in both the First and Second World War. So unfortunately.Sam Stone: What are what are some of the primary differences in that?Mike Coté: Sure. So with World War One, that's something I study a lot, and I feel like it's unfortunately not really well understood as much here in the US, but people usually think about it as, you know, war that happened for nothing. A lot of people died for really no reason. It kind of burst out of nowhere with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in summer of 1914, but this was something that was brewing for a very, very long time beforehand. The big geopolitical rivalries between Britain and Germany and France and Russia with Germany as well, were really simmering for decades, if not longer. And this was something that really kind of ramped up over time. And I see the Ukraine war right now as much more as one of those smaller wars that were kind of earlier, a couple of decades earlier, as a precursor to the First World War. It's a proxy war essentially. Right now, the US is not directly involved, neither is any other NATO country. And you have Russia basically trying to take over their smaller neighbor. So there are various conflicts that were like this before World War One.Mike Coté: None of them blew up into the big one. Obviously that eventually happened, but there was a lot more build up to it than there is right now with Ukraine and with respect to World War II specifically, I think the lesson that people are taking away from that is kind of the opposite. We saw those smaller conflicts happening before World War II as well. Hitler was trying to gobble up different parts of Europe. Japan was trying to take over China since 1937, and essentially us in the West. We did very little about that. You famously have Neville Chamberlain with the peace in our time, getting a piece of paper at Munich, basically saying, oh, Hitler is not going to do any more besides take this part of Czechoslovakia. And we all know how well that worked out. So I think the lesson coming from World War II is that if we meet with force, these sorts of revanchist aims by a country like Russia and Ukraine, then we may be able to avoid a much bigger conflagration later on.Sam Stone: And, you know, I think that makes sense. It's a view that you don't hear expressed that clearly very often. And I think one of the issues that I see with the public on this is that coverage of the war tends to be either rah rah or no, no, the war in Ukraine, there isn't much room for nuance, it seems, in the national discussion right now.Mike Coté: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a big problem with it. I mean, I wish the president would go out and make a speech that really kind of explained the stakes, why it matters to the US to aid Ukraine in this war against Moscow and kind of help them protect their own territory. You know, one of the things that I think people don't talk nearly enough about is the world system. We live in now that the US is really the hegemon of. That's something that's very fragile. And these things that are chopping away at the edges of it, like the war in Ukraine, really do undermine our security here at home.Sam Stone: Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be going to break here in a moment, but we're coming back with more from Mike Kott, writer from National Review and historian focusing on great power, rivalry and geopolitics, blogs at Rational policy.com. And he's the host of the Rational Policy podcast. We also want to get into, obviously, what's going on with the Israel-hamas conflict and how history can help us understand that conflict a little bit better. And in general, I think it's valuable just to hear from people who aren't looking at these things as black and white and very straightforward. They are complex issues that will affect this world for decades to come. So stay tuned, folks. We're coming 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, Michelle Ugenti-rita. I'm Sam Stone on the line with us. Mike Cote, writer for the National Review. Mike, when we went to the break, we were talking obviously a little bit about the Ukraine conflict with Russia. I do want to touch one thing real quick on that, and then I want to get on to what's going on in Israel and Hamas. And another piece you've written that I think is very interesting. But talking about containing Vladimir Putin. How much do leaders around the world and intelligence agencies see Ukraine as a line where if we allow that, that domino to fall, that it's almost certain Russia will take additional steps, and perhaps China and other potential aggressors will see that as the green light to go in, you know, expand their territorial ambitions.Mike Coté: Yeah. And I think that's that's very true. I think one thing with Ukraine specifically is we've kind of seen this happening over the past decade or so. In 2008, you had the invasion of Georgia by Russia, which we didn't really do much about, that. Georgia was not in NATO is not in NATO at this point. Basically, Russia carved off a significant portion of Georgia and has kind of kept that country on the sidelines in terms of an American or a NATO alliance. We saw that as well in Ukraine in 2014, when Russia invaded, took Crimea and started a long, prolonged conflict in the eastern part of the country. Obviously, this year they've expanded that, trying to take out pretty much all of Ukraine. Their initial advance was really on Kiev, which was the capital. And obviously trying to do that is not something you do if you're just trying to take small, different parts of the territory. I think one thing that Vladimir Putin is banking on is that Ukraine is not in NATO. I think that really is where he's trying to push at first to see how NATO responds when it's not a NATO ally that's directly affected. But we have seen NATO allies directly affected as well, especially in the Baltic countries. Over the past 5 or 6 years. We've seen various incursions there, especially with cyber attacks.Mike Coté: And that's something that I think we're going to see more of going forward, that asymmetric sort of warfare, trying to test NATO's tripwires and see where we'll really get a stronger response and where they may not. And as you said, with other countries, especially with China, in Taiwan, I think, as you said, with respect to Israel, we've seen Iran becoming more belligerent with respect to the way that it's attacking Israel and trying to carry out its own aims. You know, we've responded pretty strongly in Ukraine. I think one of the problems is we haven't been getting them the material they need fast enough. The Biden administration has basically slow walked a lot of these things saying, oh, you know, Israel doesn't need it, sorry, Ukraine doesn't need it. And then a few months later, okay, well, Ukraine can get it in a couple of months from now. And by the end of that cycle, it's 8 to 9 months, if not a year down the line, that Ukraine is actually getting these sorts of weapons on the battlefield. And that sort of delay is something that I think really does incentivize our enemies to try to make these big moves, especially like China on Taiwan, and try to get that done before we even really have the opportunity to react.Sam Stone: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Moving on and switching up subjects a little bit here, talking about what's going on in Israel with the Hamas attacks. Israel's response. You had a great piece accusing Israel of genocide as a moral outrage, but also based on your historical background and knowledge. How can people I mean, again, this is a narrative, Michel, that I think has been massively oversimplified in public discussion here and around the globe. There's a lot of history that goes into this. And people, you know, people talking about apartheid or talking about occupation don't seem to understand that history very much at all. So, Mike, give us a little bit of that background and what is informing the decisions that are being made on both sides.Mike Coté: Sure. So I mean, you can go back even to before the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. And see, there was very interesting back and forth between Israel, Jews in the area that would become Israel, and the Arabs in the area that would have become Palestine had they accepted the creation of a state either in 1948 or later on. And basically, we're seeing a battle over something that's been really fought about for for centuries. The Holy Land has always been somewhere that you've had competing claims Muslim, Jewish, Christian, obviously, the Crusades going back over a millennia at this point. But with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it really goes back to 1948, where you have Israel being partitioned, the land that was Mandate Palestine. The UN basically split it into what would have become a Jewish state and what would have become an Arab state. And that was something that was accepted by Jewish leaders at the time, including David Ben-Gurion, who became the first prime minister of the country. Unfortunately, the Arabs did not accept this and had basically launched a genocidal invasion at the time to wipe out all the Jews of Israel. And this is something that you can see pretty clearly from the historical record. Various Arab and Palestinian leaders essentially are saying that we need to wipe out the Jews here. We need to make sure that this is purely a muslim land. And at that time, you had a significant number of Arabs living in what would become Israel. Many of them fled. There was a lot of fighting that was really back and forth, civil war, sort of fighting. A lot of civilian casualties on both sides. And the Arab armies that were coming in essentially said, hey, get out of our way.Mike Coté: Let us come in here to do what we need to do to destroy what would be the state of Israel. And then you can go back to your homes afterward. And so a lot of people did listen to that. Most of the population, the Arab population of the area fled. I think there were about 750,000 refugees. Palestinians today call that the Nakba, the catastrophe. So basically, the catastrophe for them was the very existence of Israel in the first place. And you see a lot of this happening at the time, you know, various partitions of states, India and Pakistan being split up, which caused about 15 million refugees, a much, much larger population. And those people were eventually absorbed into those two states. Obviously, there's still conflict between India and Pakistan, but you don't have as much of that internal conflict, whereas you have Palestinian refugees that have been refugees in camps for 75 years now. And I lay a lot of that blame at the feet of the Arab states around which have kept the Palestinians essentially completely outside of the political process in these countries. Whereas you had Arabs who remained and became citizens of the state of Israel who have participated in politics in Israel. You even had in the last government, an Arab party was part of the government for the first time in Israeli history. So it's really been a very long term conflict here. You've always had Palestinian Arabs, especially in the leadership, basically advocating a genocidal aim towards the Jews of Israel. And that's something that is very, very hard to make peace with, as we have seen.Sam Stone: Obviously, the underlying issue, I mean, really break it down, is that one side would accept peace and one side will not. And the accusations of genocide are completely reversed from the reality. Yeah.Mike Coté: No, totally. I mean, it's one of those things again and again, you'll hear even people who have been very pro the peace process. Bill Clinton, for example, in 2000, essentially was trying to broker a deal at Camp David between Yasser Arafat and the Israeli government, and they gave Arafat essentially everything that he could ask for in terms of territorial splits, in terms of having a relatively contiguous Palestinian state. And he turned it down, and they launched the Second Intifada, which killed several hundred Jews in terrorist attacks across Israel. And it's really one of those things where, again, you can offer so much, but if it's not accepted, what are you going to do? Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, pulled out Israeli settlers at gunpoint and relocated them into the state of Israel. And yet you had the people of Gaza essentially electing Hamas as their government, who only had one election. They've held a power in Gaza the rest of the time, and they've been using all of the aid money we give them, essentially, to impoverish their own people and build terrorist infrastructure to try to destroy Israel. So it's very hard to make peace with a group of people who are led essentially by terrorists, who have no interest in actually having a state, even when they have the chance.Sam Stone: One of the one of the charges you hear all the time is that Israeli settlements are encroaching upon Palestinian land. But but as you point out, since 2005, that has not been the case. As far as I can tell. Those complaints are actually based on well, Israel's population is growing, so they're building more houses in Israel.Mike Coté: Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of it. And you do have some settlements in the West Bank, which have been very controversial, but that has nothing to do with the conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Like I said, there have been no Jews living in Gaza essentially since 2005. And if you look at Palestinian governed territories or generally the Middle East overall, it used to be various vibrant Jewish communities across the Middle East, whether that was from in Morocco, in Baghdad, which had a centuries old Jewish community. They were all evicted essentially after 1948, causing about 850,000 refugees, which were indeed accepted by Israel and integrated into the population.Sam Stone: So a fair swap at that time, I mean, if we're just talking fair, would have been, okay. All you Arab states, you take the 750,000. That are.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Refugees.Sam Stone: That are that left to get out of the way of your armies. You take those refugees and we're taking the 750,000 Jews. But but this, this sort of genocide, if you want to talk about genocide or apartheid has continued very programmatically into very recent years in a lot of these Arab countries where even just 10 or 20 years ago, there were still hundreds of thousands of Jews living there. And now there are basically none.Mike Coté: Yeah, yeah, you've seen that happen constantly across the years. And thankfully there is a state of Israel for these people to go to that would be able to protect them. And I think that's one of the biggest things that we see is that obviously there is the atrocities of October 7th, and that was one thing that was obviously a very big security failure for Israel that they'll be dealing with over time. But that's somewhere where you have an Israeli army that is meant to protect Jews in Israel. And having that place for them to go to is something that really is very different than what the Arab countries. Obviously, there are plenty of Arab countries. Jordan has a very large Palestinian population, and yet they have refused to essentially integrate these people into their societies, which has indeed actually caused many more problems. Know, if these Arab countries aren't integrating Palestinian refugees, that breeds more resentment. And instead of directing that resentment towards the Arab countries, they're directing it towards the one Jewish state in the region.Sam Stone: Mike, before we wrap up, we have just about three minutes left here today. Really appreciate you joining us on the program, folks. You can follow his work at Rational policy.com. Also at National Review. Mike Cote, I want to thank you so much for joining us. But before you go, I want to jump onto one last topic. You recently wrote a piece, The Multi-headed Hydra Menacing America, talking about increasing cooperation between China, Russia and Iran. Why should that concern the average American?Mike Coté: So basically, I think it comes down to their goal, which is really what unites them. They all wish to essentially destroy the world order that we live in and have lived in since the end of World War two. Basically, at that point in time, the transition from Britain, you know, running the world is really not the right word. But controlling the world system, making the rules, trying to establish fairness for various countries that really that responsibility came on to the United States. And what we've seen over the past 75 years is an explosion in prosperity, not only within the US, but around the world. Whether that's been the protection of trade by the American Navy, the fact that we have rule of law generally have international bodies which have arbitrated disputes between states. Obviously, there have been wars since World War two, but nothing to the extent of that war. And I think part of that is really because of the Western led world order and these countries China, Russia and Iran, as well as some of their proxies, Venezuela and North Korea, etcetera. They want to overturn that. They want to return to a world that's much more like the 19th century, where you'd have hard spheres of influence with the great powers basically running their near abroad and controlling that. And that's been something that has not been the case for the past 75 years, where we've had small states be able to have their own interests and have their own security without having to worry about their bigger neighbors gobbling them up. And so these nations really want to go back to that older world where they can have a stronger influence around the countries around them, whether that's economic or military. And one of the ways they're trying to dismantle our world order is through secondary economic institutions. They try to avoid US sanctions. They try to build their own banking systems, things like that, to really separate themselves from the American led order. And that poses a danger to us here at home, because it really cuts at the core of our prosperity and our security.Sam Stone: Fantastic. Mike, thank you so much for joining us today, folks. Mike Kotei, writer for the National Review. Mike, how do folks follow you and your work and stay in touch? And obviously, we're going to look forward to having you back on to continue some of these discussions. I think it's critical for the future. Yeah, sure.Mike Coté: Well, thanks so much. They can check out my website at Rational policy.com. I write there a good bit. Obviously I have writing at National Review, Providence Magazine, and The Federalist, and you can check me out on Twitter or whatever they're calling it now at RATL Policy.Sam Stone: Fantastic, folks. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Breaking battlegrounds. We'll be back on the air next week, but make sure you download our podcast segment. Also got some juicy stuff in there this week from Michelle and I. Breaking battlegrounds back next week.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: All right, welcome to the exclusive podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host today, Michelle Ugenti-rita. Thank you so much for joining us in studio I love coming. You know, we were talking a bit in the first segment, and I want to kind of build off of that about the Democrats really appear to have a problem with pedophilia, and they have a problem calling it out, and they're not willing to just be like, this is wrong.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Well.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: You know. Do they see a constituency there?Sam Stone: Apparently they must. I mean, but but so I was thinking about that in light of everything going on with Hamas and Israel. Right. I don't know how you cannot anybody everybody cannot unambiguously say that people. Raping women and children, taking hostages, killing civilians, 1400 dead civilians. How? You cannot say that. That is an unalloyed wrong. There is no justification for such an act ever. And yet you see Democrats in this country, they cannot say that.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Right. There's something there's something that they're unwilling to admit.Sam Stone: The moral, the moral equivalencies they're creating. Are just. I mean.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: But remember.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: These are the same people that can't even say what a woman is.Sam Stone: Yeah, it all ties together, though, to me, Michel, because, like, you can't say that a woman's a woman. No, you can't call a pedophile a pedophile, and you can't call a terrorist a terrorist.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: So it's bigger than those examples. It's it's really this war on facts and the truth. And they seem to want you to believe that there's subjectivity in facts and the truth and there's not. It just is factual and it just is the truth, whether you believe it or not, doesn't take it away. The truth doesn't need you to support it. It survives and exists outside of of whether you agree with it or not. But they don't want it seems like they don't want you to believe that. They want you to believe. Whatever they say is the truth, or that you have some ability to create your own set of facts and truth.Sam Stone: You know.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: How do you have. A society if there aren't rules?Sam Stone: Well, so this is actually the point I was I was going to get to with all this discussion. How do you have a society without some sort of moral values? Right? I mean, the entire Western world has been built on essentially the Judeo-Christian set of values, right? We all agreed on those things. And I think one of the things that's going on is Democrats. It's all about power and control. And a moral. People do not require a lot of government oversight.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: No, but.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: You're right on power and control. That's exactly what you saw with Covid. That was all about power and control. That's what all of. And that's really this. The trans gender issue is about power and control, making you feel that you can't even speak out loud what you know to be true, what is true, what is factual because you are so in fear of being either ridiculed, fired, you know, drawn and quartered in your community. And that's a power and control thing. They don't want you to feel like you have freedom. They want you to get permission.Sam Stone: And and you just brought up a really good point. So for like you and me, you know, I say things whether here on the radio or on Twitter, which I now call Twix, right? I say things all the time that if I were working for almost any company, any fortune 500 company in this country, I would be fired that day.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: There'd be some video.Sam Stone: Oh no. Yeah, I mean, they they would never tolerate someone like me. They would never hire someone like me if they went back and looked at those things.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: So, you know, I, you know, this really actually brings up an interesting area which is corporations and what they're doing, what they have done. To allow this and give this kind of this, this power grab steam. I mean, look how they market. Look what they do. Look at the choices they make, look at how they set up their corporate boardrooms and the diversity training and what, you know, cancelling Christmas parties because God forbid, you celebrate anything and, you know, they're part of it.Sam Stone: It's corporate cowardice, I think is the root of this. And I don't think they're just part of it. I think they are the engine now behind it, because I think the I think the left realised that without the power of corporations behind these ideas, that these ideas would never extend past the dark recesses of academia.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: That's right.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: They would implode upon any reasonable person, you know, thinking about it or looking at it. It couldn't survive. It's that nonsensical. So you use corporate the corporate world to.Sam Stone: Yeah, you infiltrate HR.Sam Stone: You take HR and turn it into something it was never intended to be. Hr was never intended to be the Hall monitor in a business. It was simply intended to be the person who managed like your health plan and your benefits. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, oversaw the paperwork for now.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: You know, looking in your office and seeing what posters you've put up or, you know.Sam Stone: They're following all your socials, you know, they're they're tracking everything you say and do.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: These ideas don't sell like you were saying. So people have to be.Sam Stone: They have to be.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Coerced and coerced into acquiescing. So that's why you can never acquiesce. Don't put that mask on. Don't social distance.Sam Stone: Amen. You know, I know absolutely.Sam Stone: Absolutely. You're hearing it from a Jewish guy now.Sam Stone: Amen, sister.Sam Stone: There's no question that is exactly right. The only answer is to have no tolerance at all for their version of this societal great change that they're trying to bring in, which is built on the most amoral and and unsustainable foundation.Michelle Ugenti- Rita: Well, no. Yes. It's collectivism. Right? Everybody does the same thing. Nobody stands out. That is not how we are built, particularly in America. It's exceptionalism that motivates us. Individuality. It's funny that these are the same people that pretend to care about individuality when they want everyone to be the same, marched to the same tune. Do not deviate. Everyone has to act the same, be the same, think the same, look the same. It's that's really how they behave.Sam Stone: It's an amazing.Sam Stone: Point. It's. It is. You're telling these people, oh, you're an individual warrior, and yet you don't allow them to step out of line one bit. They're ants marching, right?Michelle Ugenti- Rita: That's exactly right, sheeple. Going right off the cliff.Sam Stone: Well, and speaking of off the cliff, folks, we are going off this cliff and off the air. But thank you so much for tuning in and joining us today. We really, really appreciate having you. And make sure if you're not subscribed, subscribe. Send this to a friend. We really count on those things to show the support to the Salem Network and to our folks here, so we can expand and help reach more people each week. Again, thank you for tuning in for Michelle. I'm Sam. We'll see you next week. Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

Join us for a dynamic episode featuring three exceptional guests who bring diverse insights to the forefront. Paul McLeary, a seasoned defense journalist at Politico with unparalleled reporting experiences; Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a former Navy Lieutenant Commander, physician, and political candidate running in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District; and Rick VanMeter, the Executive Director of The Coalition for App Fairness, leading a bipartisan effort to address anti-competitive policies from tech giants Apple and Google. -Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-About our guestsPaul McLeary covers major defense programs and acquisitions policy for POLITICO. He previously covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News and Breaking Defense, and has embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.In Afghanistan, he was the first reporter to get inside the secretive ODIN program that targeted insurgents planting roadside bombs, and later accompanied U.S. special operations forces training Syrian Kurds in northern Syria. He has also traveled to the Arctic with the Norwegian military.-Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a former Navy Lieutenant Commander, physician, and political candidate running in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District-Rick VanMeter is the Executive Director of The Coalition for App Fairness. A bipartisan Congressional effort aimed to address anti-competitive policies from Big Tech companies Apple and Google.-TRANSCRIPTIONSam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. Chuck Warren and I are apparently taking alternate days off this month, but fortunately for for us, we have Michelle Ugenti Rita in studio today to be here. Michelle is always fantastic and another fantastic lineup of guests for you today, folks. First off, we're leading out with Paul McCleary. He covers major defense programs and acquisitions policy for Politico, previously covered the Pentagon for foreign policy, defense news and breaking defense and has embedded with US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to the program.Paul Mcleary: Thank you.Sam Stone: Obviously, there's a lot going on right now. A lot of news focused around Israel and Gaza and everything going on there. But that's also leading to a lot of ripple effects around the globe in terms of defense, in terms of economics, a whole host of, of of problems that are created when a situation like this kicks off. Can you talk a little bit about what's going on and how that's affecting our defense programs and policy really globally right now?Paul Mcleary: Sure thing. Yeah. I mean, I think what the wars in Ukraine and now in Israel are really showing is that the the Pentagon gets $800 billion a year, is well funded, but there are some real stresses here that were being felt even before these wars and the defense industry, as far as how long it takes to get new weapons and equipment under contract and things like that, and how expensive they are. And that has not been working out well for Ukraine as we're shipping billions of dollars worth of weaponry. We've given 2 million, I think, artillery shells to Ukraine. And the Pentagon has been struggling a little bit to get contracts to the defense industry to replenish our own stocks for that sort of thing. Both countries are also using a lot of Israel, more than than Ukraine, precision guided weapons. And those are expensive. They're kind of tough to make. And the US hasn't really ramped up production for those as much as maybe they would like to, given that China is also posing a threat on the other side of the world. We're not in a war with China, obviously, but the DoD is trying to increase production to increase its stocks for that, while it's also giving to Ukraine and now Israel. So there's some real concern on Capitol Hill and at DoD about how they're going to pull this off. There's no US troops involved in in these wars, clearly, but the US defense industry is going to have to get on wartime footing at some point. And it's definitely not right now, which is the new package that the Biden administration released on Friday morning. $106 billion for Taiwan, for Israel, for Ukraine, for the US defense industry, for border security. And that's going to try to get at some of this to increase production lines, speed things up a little bit. But there's no House of Representatives at the moment. So that bill is going to go anywhere for the foreseeable future. It's going to be some debate.Sam Stone: Is there a whole you know, you follow obviously, acquisitions policy really closely. And I've wondered for a few years now if we have a hole in our thinking where our adversaries around the globe are manufacturing very quick, cheap, easy to manufacture weapons, where everything we have is very high tech and tends to be very expensive. Does the US need to consider creating almost a secondary pipeline for weapons that we we've known how to manufacture for 50 years, and things that can be manufactured and given into the field very quickly.Paul Mcleary: Yeah. I mean, the thing with God is everything that they buy is bespoke, right? Very little commercial off the shelf, off the off the shelf equipment and stuff, you know, and and so everything that they buy or they ask industry to make is made for God specifically. Right. They demand intellectual property, things like that. So it is tough for them to do it quickly. And it's tough sometimes to even share that technology with with allies. That's been the case with Ukraine, with some of the weapons systems, even with Israel. So and we've seen the Ukrainians, I mean, they're building small drones using Chinese parts and whatever they have, and they're being incredibly effective with it. The Russians have no answer for it, but the US Army and military would never do that in a million years. Right? Right, right.Sam Stone: Right.Paul Mcleary: Build small parts even though it works. But we're just not going to do it.Sam Stone: Yeah. I mean, it seems like our enemies obviously have the ability to wage war for a lot less money than we do. And a lot of it comes down to that sort of bespoke military that you're talking about.Paul Mcleary: Exactly. I mean, the Chinese are doing it, the Ukrainians are doing it. Most countries around the world are doing it to some degree, and DoD won't. And there's a real push to try to change that. There's a new program that the DoD announced in August. We don't have a lot of details about it called replicator, which is a great name, where they want to build thousands of small drones that can be lost. They can be treatable where they can perform drones, drone swarms, do surveillance, I think some kind of kinetic activity. And this is aimed directly at China because China is building these, these drone swarms and things like that. But there's a lot of questions if DoD can do this in the next 24 months, which which they're giving themselves a timeline to do it if industry is ready, if DoD will trust small, innovative companies who they don't have a relationship with to work on this stuff, because this has been a years long project where DoD is trying to get VC firms, small tech firms to work with them. And they've had real, real problem with it because the overhead is low, the payoff is low for these companies, and it takes years for DoD to do anything right. They say, okay, this little drone looks good. Make five of them. We'll get back to you in two years, and we'll tell you if we want to buy 500 of them. And these companies say no thanks, it's not worth their time, right?Sam Stone: Yeah. We talked to a reporter a few maybe, actually about a year ago, who was talking about this in a different sense, that we've become too reliant on just a handful of major contractors, and they're not designed none of them. Their operations are designed to quickly gear up to expand production overnight.Paul Mcleary: Well, exactly. Well, this is part of in 1993. So I'll be quick about the history lesson, I promise. Then-secretary of Defense Les Aspin called in all the major defense contractors for a dinner at the Pentagon, and it's called the Last Supper. And he told them, hey, budgets are going down. There's 92 defense companies. And some of you, we have no problem with some of you going out of business, so you're going to have to consolidate or die. So those dozens of defense companies whittled down to the handful we have today, which creates less competition, higher prices. Et cetera. Et cetera. So that was a decision made then, that we're really feeling now that all those smaller companies that maybe would compete or have new ideas are now, you know, ten companies, essentially the Lockheed Raytheon's BAE systems bought up all those companies. So the policy decisions made 30 years ago are having a real impact now in trying to modernize and reform the system.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Is is America vulnerable militarily, with us being pulled so thin across all of these different interests in terms?Paul Mcleary: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's an argument that the DoD makes that I think has some merit to it that, you know, we're giving billions of dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine. But what Ukraine is doing with that investment is decimating the Russian war machine. Right? I mean, stuff that we had built in the 80s or early 90s to fight the Soviet Union is now fighting the Russians in Ukraine. And it works. It works the way they wanted it to work. And the Russians, a lot of it for a lot of this equipment, don't have a good answer for it. And this is at the cost of the package. Today will be at 64 billion for for Ukraine, a lot of money, but no American soldiers are being killed, no Americans are being taken hostage or prisoners. So the argument by DoD is that this is we're achieving our aims cheaply and without loss of American life. But still, like I said before, until and unless DoD and industry can really figure out a way to get industry on some sort of. War footing. It's not sustainable for the long run for the United States. If this war drags on for four years, which it looks like it likely will.Sam Stone: That looks like it will drag on for years. And, you know, we we've talked about that quite a bit on this program that I don't think anyone really has any idea of what the out out in story is. Is Gaza different? Because it does seem like Israel is starting to very carefully focus on what comes after the invasion that appears to be imminent.Paul Mcleary: Yeah, it does appear that the IDF will go in on the ground in Gaza and try to clear out the north and target Hezbollah leadership. I it's it's not clear that Israel has a good day after plan other than decimating Hamas leadership. What comes next? Is it going to be an occupation? Is it a couple of battalions behind you? Create a buffer zone. It's that is going to be tough, tough stuff because the urban fight in in Gaza will be will be absolutely brutal. And we, the United States has done it in Najaf and in Fallujah. And those were hard, bloody door to door, literally room to room knife fights.Sam Stone: And and those are not as dense. And the density creates additional challenges in that type of environment. Right.Paul Mcleary: Exactly. I spent some time in Fallujah with the Marines after the, after the big fight. And there was still, you know, some some resistance there, but just driving through those streets and, you know, taking over houses and, and just trying to do that in a populated, dense city is just so hard. I mean, every time you turn a corner, there's a threat. Every time you pass an open window, there's a threat. And Hamas, I'm assuming, has Islamic Jihad has dug in pretty well in Gaza. They're going to have tunnels. And so this will be incredibly difficult for Israel. And it blunts a lot of their technological advantages, right? Things like drones and things like that they'll still be able to use, but packed in so tight those won't be nearly as effective as they would be on open ground.Sam Stone: We have just about a minute and a half before we go to break. We're going to be coming back with more right after that. From Paul McCleary with Politico covers major defense programs and acquisitions policy. Talking a little bit about, obviously, Gaza and Israel, what's going on in the world right now. But also I want to touch a little bit on Taiwan and China and does this when we come back. Does this create an opening, the US involvement in Ukraine now in Israel, potentially a pretty significant supporting of our ally there? Does this continue to make things more dangerous for Taiwan and increase the chances that China may look to take advantage of everything that's going on in the world right now? And obviously, I want to give you a little bit more time than the 30s we're about to have here. But Michelle, I think it's not been talked about enough. What what all this various conflicts is doing to create additional instability.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Absolutely.Sam Stone: So folks, make sure you stay tuned for that. We're going to be coming back with more from Paul McCleary in just a couple of minutes. And then stay tuned afterwards, because we have a very interesting second guest on the program, Dr. Judy Zaza. Zuhdi Jasser. I'm getting his name wrong already, but he has a fantastic background, and he's just announced a run for Congress here in Arizona. It's going to be an interesting fight, folks. Stay tuned. Breaking battlegrounds back 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 in studio with me today, Michelle Ugenti-rita. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. And on the line, Paul McLeary covers major defense programs and acquisition policy for Politico. We're talking, obviously, about what's going on in Israel and Gaza and the effects all around the globe. Paul, is this creating an opening that China may look to take advantage of, or that creates additional concern for Taiwan in that regard?Paul Mcleary: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. The Biden administration is trying to at least make the right noises about this in the $106 billion supplemental today for Israel and Ukraine and other things. There's 2 billion for foreign military financing for Indo-Pacific partners, and there's also money for Taiwan to finance US weaponry. But yeah, I think the Chinese are seeing the United States and Europe being consumed with the fight in Ukraine and now Israel. And just like they watched for 20 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, while China was cranking out destroyers and aircraft carriers and submarines and things like that, they can kind of continue with that, that that project there is I think they're also probably taking some lessons from the from the fighting, right, in that in Ukraine, particularly that a small country backed up by the West and can fight and can do some real damage to a larger industrialized nation like Russia.Sam Stone: Well, and they share a lot of the same technology. Theirs is better for the most part, but the basis of a lot of their military technology. Is Russian technology, correct?Paul Mcleary: It is. It is the disadvantage that Chinese have if they were to try something in Taiwan or, you know, give them a shooting war in the Pacific, is that they haven't they haven't fired a shot in anger since the late 70s when they fought Vietnam to a standstill. Right. So they have brand new ships and submarines and drones and a lot of and fourth or fifth generation fighter jets, as we've seen with Russia and Ukraine. That stuff doesn't always work. You know, you build stuff cheaply and in mass. It's not always going to work the way you want it to.Sam Stone: It doesn't even always work for us. I mean, hence the f 35 and its continued travails. But yeah.Paul Mcleary: Exactly. Or the littoral combat ship for the Navy, which are retiring five years after they built some of them. So that's not to take away what China's done, but it's a big unknown. If this stuff works right, we're doing something in an exercise is a lot different than doing it under the stress of actual combat. But the United States is trying to bolster allies in the region, you know, trying to make more deals with countries like Vietnam. There's a big push in the Philippines to get them more aircraft and more ships and things like that. So it is an increasingly complex situation in the Indo-Pacific, and it's kind of unclear where China wants to take this and how just how, how many things the United States and its allies in the West can juggle at the same time?Sam Stone: Reading into some of what kicked off this event in in Israel, in Gaza, it looked in the weeks preceding this like they were going to be some fairly historic agreements coming up on the table between Israel and some of the other regional powers there, particularly Saudi and Egypt. We're talking about a large economic corridor for transport. How much are groups like Hamas tuned in to those sorts of things, and how much does that affect their decision making when they launch these type of things? Or was this just something from what you know, that they were planning and they were going to do regardless of anything else going on in the world?Paul Mcleary: Yeah, I mean, Hamas had clearly planned this for, for several years. I mean, this was a complex, massive operation. They somehow kept kept secret. But I would think that the agreements that were being reached, Israel kind of being accepted slowly and incrementally into the larger Middle East community, I'm sure that did concern them. But they also took advantage of an Israeli defense force that was completely distracted by. I mean, I think they were most of the IDF was focused on the West Bank. That's where the Israeli settlers and their politicians in the Knesset had demanded more protection from the IDF. And those are Likud voters. There's a Netanyahu people. So the IDF was fully focused on the West Bank, and it was also in focus, focused on a lot of internal fighting, with Netanyahu trying to change the Constitution and and exert more control over the courts. You know, there were mass resignations, there were protests within the IDF from top leadership to the to to regular soldiers. And I've spoken to a few IDF soldiers who said that they were distracted by just internal fights over these political moves by Netanyahu and the rejection of them within the military. So I think they took advantage of that. The idea of being focused on the West Bank and the internal struggles in Israel, where they took their eye off, off the border there and in Gaza and. They clearly took advantage of that and took the Israeli army hours to reach a lot of those communities, which wouldn't have been the case probably just a few years ago.Sam Stone: That brings up kind of the follow up question is the IDF regardless of some of these other things going on, have they gotten, you know, sorry to say it this way, but a little soft, a little complacent with the last decade of relative quiet?Paul Mcleary: Yeah.Paul Mcleary: I mean, I think whenever things are quiet and there seems to be a status quo, most people settle into a routine. Right? And you watch the border and nothing happens. You do that for years at a time. You probably settle into that routine. But like I said, a lot of those units that were around Gaza were pulled out to go over to West Bank and the West Bank and and protect the Israeli settlers there. So I think that was it was a confluence of a lot of events. And Hamas pays attention. And they saw it happening and they they decided the time was right. I'm sure with the agreements Israel is making with other countries and just kind of the internal chaos and the distraction by the IDF, they figured it was time to go.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Who's Hamas is, you know, back up where where can they rely on for military support and money and finance?Paul Mcleary: Several places I've speaking to earlier today, a few sources in the region who said that the Israelis have seen some North Korean components in some of the rockets that have come over from Gaza. So they have been pulling a little bit from North Korea, is happy to solve anybody.Sam Stone: Right? Right.Paul Mcleary: So they've pulled from North Korea. There's been some Iranian help, just like with Hezbollah. So they they have allies and sources that they can. I mean, there's been a blockade of Gaza for years, but they've still managed to smuggle in all this weaponry and all this equipment. So it gets in and they have some state actors who are helping them out for.Sam Stone: Fantastic. Paul, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. How do folks stay in touch with you and follow your work? Because obviously, we'd love to have you back on the program. I thought this was a fascinating discussion. I'm sure a lot of folks out there want to stay in tune with the work you're doing.Paul Mcleary: Yeah, thanks for having me on. I write daily or multiple times a day, depending on what happens in the world. Yeah. Politico.com. I'm also on Twitter at Paul McCleary Mcleary. And if I could remember my blue Sky and threads handles, I would tell you those, but you could look me up on either one of those, and they could.Sam Stone: Probably find you through your Twitter and take it away from there. Right?Paul Mcleary: Exactly, exactly.Sam Stone: Paul, thank you so much. We really, really appreciate having you on the program. Thank you for fantastic discussion today, and we'll look forward to having you back on to talk about some more of this stuff, as unfortunately, the world doesn't look like it's getting safer anytime soon.Paul Mcleary: So thank you very much.Sam Stone: Okay, folks, make sure you stay tuned. We're going to be coming back with a couple more segments here. Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, he has an amazing resume.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Michele, interested to hear about this. A challenger to Stanton.Sam Stone: It's a it's a blue seat. You got to you got to be ready to fight.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: I want to hear the strategy. Yeah.Sam Stone: Me too. All right, folks, breaking battlegrounds. Coming back with more in just a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds, folks. You've been hearing us talk about why reify for a while now, and if you haven't gone on their website and checked them out, you need to do it today. Especially with the stock market as discombobulated as it is, the market's going up. It's going down. World events are decimating people's bankrolls and their futures. So you need to check out our friends at Invest Refy. You can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. That's not correlated to the stock market. All you got to do is go there, 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, and you'll do a fantastic thing to help secure your financial future and your family's future. So moving on with our next segment today. We are very excited to talk to recently announced congressional candidate Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. He is running against Greg Stanton here in Arizona. For folks who don't know, Stanton is the former mayor of Phoenix. He campaigns as a moderate. He governs as an extreme liberal. He did this when he was at the city of Phoenix, when he was on the council. And as the mayor, he will talk the the middle of the road all day long, but he votes the far left lane. But on the other hand, Greg Stanton is a tough competitor. He knows how to campaign. He knows how to to win in these races. And so, Dr. Jasser, thank you for joining us today. And welcome to the program. You've got a big hill to climb, but I think you're the type of guy who can climb it. Tell us a little bit about you and your background first.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Well, I served in the Navy for 11 years as a physician. My family emigrated from Syria in the 60s as political refugees and got asylum here. I grew up in Wisconsin, was on a Navy scholarship for medical school, and moved here to join my father in practice in 99. My dad was a cardiologist and internal medicine doc here in town, and I've been in primary care running a small business in Maricopa County. And with most of my patients actually from the district area for now 25 years, and been very involved not only in the medical society. As a past president of the American, I'm sorry, the Arizona medical Association, but also active on the Maricopa County Board of Health and a number of areas in the community, but also post nine divided by 11, have been very active in Islamic reform, counterterrorism. And as we see now, it's more relevant than ever and have been leading the charge nationally and globally, actually in Islamic reform and counter ideology. And I think that it's time for new leadership. It's time for folks that our community trusts and have looked to leadership on a number of issues, not only in health care. I mean, through the pandemic, for example, I was one of the few docs to to stand up and say, listen, we shouldn't have these shutdowns that destroy American businesses. We shouldn't be printing money. We should allow the engine of American economy to work. And I'm for free speech and the ability of American citizens to make their own decisions and not have government make the decisions for them. And I think it's time to to send people like Congressman Stanton back home, as they are simply empty suits who talk the talk sometimes when it suits their purposes and campaigns. But the reality is, is he's a rubber stamp for President Biden and also the far left radical progressivists that are anti-Semitic and un-American.Sam Stone: And, Doctor Dr. Jasser, you have served two terms as a US Senate appointee and vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, which I think is actually one of those groups that does really good work that a lot of people don't know about. We have only about two minutes before we go to break here. We're going to be coming back for more. But tell us a little bit about that experience and what your work was there.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Yeah. Thank you. Senator McConnell had appointed me based on the recommendation from Senator Kyl back in 2010. It took a year and a half of vetting. I was one of the first appointees that President Obama actually refused to accept, even though the Republican seat that should have just been accepted. But the the Islamists across the country did not want me in their served for four years. That's an independent body that had nine seats, three from the Senate, three from the House and three from the white House. That is pretty balanced. And it provides feedback to the State Department, to appropriations and others about how we spend our money abroad, and the fact that America should stand behind forces of freedom, religious freedom, protecting minorities, such as. And what I spoke out quite a bit about was the protection of Christian minority Jewish minorities across Muslim majority countries, across the planet. And 2013 we went to Egypt. I confronted the Muslim Brotherhood in meetings at the time. I went to Saudi Arabia three times and basically told our State Department that they were mistranslating things intentionally to make it seem like the Saudis were more moderate than they were. And now, fast forward, we realize we need adults in the room. And this is some of the experience, I think, that would shape my ability to do a lot more as a member of Congress and represent our constituents much better than Congressman Stanton, who really has really very little to show on what he's done in his three terms.Sam Stone: Yeah. You know, for folks who know, I worked at the city of Phoenix while Greg Stanton was mayor there, and quite frankly, he had very little to show for his time at the city of Phoenix. You know, he is he's one of those go along to get along rubber stamp votes. And folks are not being well served by him here and here in Arizona. So we're going to be coming back with more from Dr. Zuhdi Jasser 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 the host Sam Stone and Michelle Ugenti-rita in the studio with me today on the line, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, he's running for Congress against Greg Stanton. And while we were at the break, Michelle was asking a good question because we're broadcast now across this country, literally from coast to coast. Yes, a lot of people probably have no idea who Greg Stanton is or what this district is we're talking about.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah. Let them know what the geographical makeup.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Yeah, it's a CD four. It includes all of Tempe, most of Mesa, and also Ahwatukee Phoenix. And demographically, it's a very diverse district with various populations of the community that include a large Hispanic population and, and a number of faith representations. And also the numbers Republicans should win this district. It's not as democratically blue as it was when Stan got elected. It's now plus 2%. It was split completely down the center presidential ballot with 49.1 to 49. Biden, Trump and right now registers heavier Republican by 3 to 4% with a large independent registration. So it's definitely winnable by a conservative, by Republican and with the right candidate and the right background. And that can take Stanton to task.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Very competitive district.Sam Stone: Yeah. It is. And it's funny because it includes a big Mormon population in portions of it. But you also have Tempe where ASU is, which is is very blue around that. So Dr. Jasser, you mentioned kind of briefly that you were one of the few physicians in the country who kind of stood up to the Covid restrictions that were rolled out and all the limitations on on people, the lockdowns and everything else. Tell how how tough was that? Because there really weren't many physicians who were able or willing to do that at that time. And I think a lot of them I've talked to kind of regret not taking that that tough road that you did.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Yeah. You know, this is one of the reasons I'm, you know, after being an activist and small business medicine for some time, I'm putting my hat in the ring to politics because I see folks like Stanton in politics. And I ask, where is their courage? Why? Why the demagoguery in which they say one thing privately and do something else publicly and so many physicians, unfortunately, from Fauci on down here, we have a profession that for a long time, I can tell you in primary care, I'm often trying to push physicians to tell my patients what they should do, because they're often giving them a buffet of choices and often are noncommittal. And yet, in the pandemic, we were basically our our profession almost willingly became weaponized in order to tell government that they should shut down businesses, shame gyms and shame restaurants and others into shutting down. I understand initially, until we figured out what was going on for 4 to 6 weeks, maybe it made sense. But after that, when did America become the most risk averse country in the planet in which we were basically telling businesses, telling families, somehow I became the only profession that was essential. I mean, health care is not the only essential profession. Every family is essential when they want to put food on the table for their kids and their families. And we then started doing disease trading. I was telling medical leaders here in Arizona and was on the radio frequently in television saying, listen, you're going to delay the treatment of elective procedures of cancer, screenings of patients with abdominal pain, asthma attacks, heart attacks and chest pain.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: And true enough, there's going to be pandemics after the pandemic. And we saw that now in the last year, so many diseases were delayed, so many treatments were traded for that one virus. It didn't make sense from a public health perspective. It didn't make sense from an American choice perspective. Let families make their own decisions. And yet politicians locked us up, told us that they couldn't go to work. And I was talking to so many people in the district that were saying they wanted to work, and they were being forced to wear masks, and sometimes they didn't disagree. They disagreed with that. They were suppressed in their free speech. They couldn't speak out against what government was mandating. And it's just from every perspective. And I think the people of this district, especially that includes ASU and other places where free speech should be a big part of who we are. I think there's going to be a large pushback in this election, as we're seeing, for example, even on the left with Rfk's candidacy and others, there's folks that are really fed up with government controlling so many aspects of our of our lives.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah. Well, I would say I mean, Covid to me was about control. I think you really hit the nail on the head there about control. How do you see the campaign moving forward right now? Are you the only Republican in the race?Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: No. We've got a contested primary against Kelly Cooper and I've I've not met Kelly. Look forward to a challenge and challenging him. You know last time he had his hat in the ring and unfortunately lost by 12 points. So I think it's time for a new candidate, new platforms. And I think we can hit Stanton with a much broader and I think diverse portfolio, if you will, for the constituents to appeal to.Sam Stone: Yeah. And for folks again, who don't know, outside of Arizona, Kelly Cooper, a local businessman, owns a handful of restaurants here locally. You know, certainly he he, you know, did as well as he could in that run, but it was still a 12 point margin. That's a tough seat. But I think it does take a little bit more experience. And maybe he could bring that in a second run. But you come to the table with that here for your first run.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Yes. And I think it's this is the issue I believe in meritocracy. That's what America is all about. And have the voters decide, you know, who is not only the best for their district, but the best to bring change and new leadership, because it's not just about being able to check a box and become a congressperson, but it's what's best for the district, what's best for the state, the country. I think the Republican Party needs a bit of a new branding, if you will, as far as diversity. And and we look on the far left, you've got extremists like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and I think the party of immigrants, legal immigrants as the Republican Party. And that's really the story that and the reason I believe in this country. And I've been so honored and privileged to be able to serve. So many different ways in the past few decades.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: And I think another important component of this race coming up will be turnout. So we're coming into a presidential election. And that's not what obviously last election cycle was. That was a midterm cycle. So there may be an opportunity to get this seat. If you see our side, our Republican side, really build out our turnout, the ground swell. And with Biden doing such a horrible job, I mean that in a weird way, there's a gift there. If we can capitalize on it and see if we can't win some of these more competitive seats.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Amen. And this is one of the reasons I felt, you know, sort of carpe diem. Seize the moment now. Because if you look, I became a conservative in high school right after the Carter administration and saw what inflation was doing, was a Reagan conservative in junior high. And that's when I started to do my first volunteer work. And so much of this seems the same to me, is that you see a huge swing because people are working twice as much to make the same money. They are realizing that we're losing strength. We had hostages in 79 that were taken by Iran, and now we're seeing Iran fueling another war in the Middle East. Same thing is that nature abhors a vacuum. There's been a vacuum of American influence, not only domestically, economically, but globally, militarily. And I think people you're going to see a conservative wave. And this district governor Ducey won by six points in the current polling of the current district. So with the right candidate, this district can be won. And I think it's only been lost in the past because, you know, good candidates might have said, oh, it's it's too solid for Stanton, but it's just not true. I think that toe to toe pre.Sam Stone: 2020 though, the district legitimately was tougher because you had he had more of central Phoenix wrapped into it. Right. So it was through redistricting. Yeah.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Yes exactly. And that's why the numbers I gave you about Ducey's margin, the Republican margin of registration of 5 to 6% is all post 2020 redistricting.Sam Stone: So one of the one of the challenges I think you're going to face in other candidates. You've got an amazing background, amazing record, is getting that out to the public in a in a year when people are talking about Arizona potentially being the having the most political spending of any state in the country, I mean, people are talking about maybe 5 to $800 million plus in political advertising spent just here in Arizona in this cycle. And obviously, you're running for Congress. You're not going to have 50 or $100 million to get your message out. How do you get across to voters who you are and who what your background is, so that they have an they can make an informed decision?Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Well, I think it's exactly what I've been doing for 25 years in primary care is you meet people, you engage them, and then they feel they can trust you and want to invest in your message and feel that you will serve their interests transparently and do the best possible to advance the interests of the district. So I think ultimately, as they hear that message, they'll want to invest in that future, because I think most of the voters are looking for new leadership. They don't want the same old failure that's been happening with the Democrats. They see that the Biden administration and the rubber stamps like Stanton have brought them nothing. And I think ultimately, you're right. It is going to take a bit of fuel. Stanton is not only an empty suit, but he's not as good a fundraiser as you know, the folklore has. Yes. The ICC dumped a lot of money into the last few months of his campaign, but that's really most where most of his money came from. And I think ultimately, this is my first run for political office, and I think people will be refreshed at seeing a new candidate who can bring new leadership for the district and ultimately want to invest in that and, and be able to produce very good.Sam Stone: Dr. Jasser, one of one of the things here on your resume I got to ask you about, well, two things, but I'm going to start I'm going to start with the easy one. First, you were a recipient of the Meritorious Service Medal for service to the office of the Attending Physician of the US Congress. Tell us a little bit about that, because that's pretty darn cool. Yeah.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Well thank you. Yeah. My I served as a physician with the Navy for 11 years. My last billet was as a physician to Congress. I was chief resident at Bethesda Naval Hospital, which also includes NIH. And by the way, Fauci was one of our attendings out there. And after I.Sam Stone: Did, he actually did he actually, like, treat patients?Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Sometimes you did a lot of research, done a lot of grants. And yeah, he's a smart he's a smart guy, but obviously became a politician instead of a sort of state as an academic professor, if you will. But then my last billet was the head of internal medicine at Bethesda Naval Hospital, then became the admiral for the attending physician of Congress, and he asked me to join him. There are two junior internists that are staff physicians to Congress, and I served there for a little over two years. And after that service, I received the Meritorious Service Medal. And part of it was in recognition, I don't know if you remember, but on July 24th, 1998, Russell Weston junior shot his way into the US Capitol and killed three Capitol Hill Police officers. And I was the only physician that responded to that. It was 20 yards from our medical clinic, and we did advanced trauma life support on the police officers. And unfortunately, they didn't make it. We did get them to the hospital, but it was the closest I got to terrorism directly, if you will, with the four corpsman and I that responded to that. And I talk about it, by the way, in detail in my book, A battle for the Soul of Islam and a lot of Time on service. I was a member of the USS El Paso, served in Operation Restore Hope in 93, in Somalia, and was part of that deployment.Sam Stone: So last question before we let you go here today. You are a father of three. Your children are ages 21, 19 and 15, which means by the time it's all over, you will have had a teenager in your house for the better part of a decade and a half. Can anything prepare you as well for the battles in Congress? Is that.Dr.Zuhdi Jasser.: Exactly? This is you know, it's the teens today especially, you know, post Covid are my poor kids were stuck at home. It made my wife and I were like, this makes no sense. Why are they at home? Covid doesn't affect them. You're affecting the next generation for no reason. They had to stare at a screen instead of socialization, and it was just the worst decision public health could have made. Absolutely.Sam Stone: Folks, you can check out Dr. Zuhdi Jasser at Z for F or Z for Arescom. Check him out. Go on. Their breaking battlegrounds is going to be back on the air next week, and we'll look forward to as this campaign unfurls. Learning more about Dr. Jasser and his positions back next week.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 Breaking Battlegrounds podcast with your host, Sam Stone in the studio with me today, Michelle Ugenti-rita. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us. Happy to be here. And someone on the line right now that I'm excited to talk to because it's I love finding out about issues I know nothing about but that are potentially actually really impactful for folks. And so, ladies and gentlemen, we have Rick Vanmeter on right now. He is the executive director of the coalition for App Fairness, a bipartisan congressional effort aimed at to address anti-competitive policies from big tech companies Apple and Google. And yeah, they are really vicious in their, frankly, their agenda, in their agenda and their exclusion of all potential competitors. They have created these landscapes that are almost impossible to avoid and that they control totally. So Rick, thank you so much for joining us today. Welcome to the program.Rick Vanmeter: Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. We're a coalition for App Fairness is a group of about 70 app developers from all over the world. Some big companies like Spotify, Epic Games, match Group, but also a lot of smaller kind of mom and pop app developers with with 1 or 2 employees. So but what unites us all is that we're all fighting these anti-competitive practices, which come through the app stores, which are holding back innovation and creating a lot of consumer harm. So look, looking forward to discussing this with you all.Sam Stone: So how did this come about? I mean, we know that they have developed these ecosystems. And I think when you look at some of the antitrust issues behind it, it's this exclusion of app developers and other software developers from their platforms. Given that Apple and Google essentially dominate the the mobile, mobile phone and mobile device market. How were they able to do that legally?Rick Vanmeter: Well, to your point, this really came about because of the fact that Apple and Google came to dominate the mobile, the mobile internet, if you will. So if you think back, you know, ten, 13 years ago, you had a lot of different choices for smartphones. You had iPhones, there were Android devices, windows had a phone, there was Windows Phone, there were Nokia's, there were blackberries. And at that time developed kind of the the hardware companies were competing for developers to create products and software or apps for their, their devices because they lured customers to their products. You know, if you've got cool apps on iPhones, you want to buy an iPhone. That's that's why I originally wanted to buy an iPhone.Sam Stone: It's not just for the color of your texts.Rick Vanmeter: That's right. Yeah. Somebody, you know, at first I had no interest in having an iPhone. Then I had a friend who had one, and he was showing me Pandora and Google Maps. And, you know, I thought all these things were really that it was because of the software on the phone that made it desirable. And then now you've basically got a system where two companies not only control 100% of the market share, but within that market share, there's no going back and forth. It's not like Coke and Pepsi, where one day you're going to buy Coke, and maybe next week you're going to buy Pepsi. Once you have an iPhone, you're locked into that Apple ecosystem and you can't get Android apps on your your iPhone and vice versa. So it's really kind of a siloed ecosystem where they have total control over developers and ultimately over what consumers can put on their phone and what they can't have on their phone.Sam Stone: I mean, really, it's sort of, for consumers, a digital prison that you have, you can roam freely within the walls of the prison that Apple or Google create for you, but you're dependent on them to expand it, to go anywhere else.Rick Vanmeter: Yeah, that's exactly right. And for for developers, where this is a problem is, you know, on on you can't get your software to a consumer on their phone without going through the Apple App Store. And they use that basically as a choke point to impose all of these other crazy things.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: So like what what are what are some of the things that they do.Rick Vanmeter: So for example, one of the major concerns of our member companies is that they one thing that they will do is they will say they categorize you if you sell goods through the app. So they say you're either physical goods or digital goods and why that matters, I have no idea. But if if you sell digital goods, they say you have to use. Our payment processor to process credit card payments. So Apple Pay on the Apple devices and Google on Google devices, they both do this the exact pretty much the exact same way. So and they charge a 30% commission to process those payments, whereas a standard credit card processing fee is like 3 to 5%.Sam Stone: So and this is for digital goods. But like so like if someone orders from whatever restaurant app, you know, Grubhub or whatever, they don't pay that same level of fee.Rick Vanmeter: They don't. And actually that's a good example because this is a good point on, you know, kind of the arbitrary nature of this, of this determination by the two companies. So things like Grubhub don't believe are they're categorized as physical goods because they say you're getting a you know, food, you know, it's a physical thing. Whereas the companies themselves, like Grubhub might argue, well, we're just a platform, you know, we're just software. We're connecting drivers and restaurants and customers.Sam Stone: Yeah, they make that argument extensively. Legally.Rick Vanmeter: Yeah they do. Yeah. Uber is another example where Apple and Google said Uber is a physical good because you're getting a ride. So when you pull up your Uber app, you say where you want to go, but then you have a choice on how you want to pay. You can pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. You can use your credit card, which they use a third party processor to process that payment. You can use Venmo, PayPal. You can even use your SkyMiles. But if you're using a dating app or if you want a streaming service, something that they determined to be digital, you don't have a choice. You have to use Apple Pay or Google Pay, and the company has to pay that 30% commission. So when you're talking about 30% commission, that's a huge amount of money, especially for small companies that are up and coming and trying to get started to pay 30% of their revenue to Apple and Google, who have provided no value for the developer. So but what do they say, other business expenses that ultimately gets added into the cost of the products that they have to consider?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: What does Apple and Google say in response to that? There must be a justification that they rely on.Rick Vanmeter: Sure. Yeah. What they will say is that these are our customers. And if you because they're using an iPhone, they are apples customers. Of course, Spotify might say our customers to, you know, just because you that like if. If you use your Toyota Camry to drive through a drive through at McDonald's, and then. Toyota wanting 30% of the sale of the McDonald's food because their Toyota customer mean they're just it's just different things, right? You can be a Spotify customer and an Apple iPhone customer, but but Apple takes kind of a controlling view of that is their customer.Sam Stone: Rick, I got to tell.Rick Vanmeter: You, you want to right? To sell anything to them. You have to pay us a commission.Sam Stone: I don't want you to give these car companies any ideas right now while they're looking at it.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: At this this this is a familiar issue. Has there been legislation regarding this? This sounds like something I've, I've seen introduced at the state level and maybe even at the federal level.Rick Vanmeter: Yeah. So several different states have attempted to pass legislation that would say is very narrow and kind of one, one part of this issue, which is the payments issue. Right? So essentially saying that you you can't force developers to use your payment processor if they want to use something different, they have to be able to do it. That should be fairly common sense. You know, any other business can choose how to accept payment. You know, there are many businesses that are cash only. There are other businesses that are no cash. Some businesses accept checks, some do not. You know, for for brick and mortar stores, that's that's always the option. So that should be the option online as well. Um, that has not I don't believe that has passed in any state, and in large part because there was federal legislation introduced about two years ago, bipartisan, the Senate, by Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal. Um, it did get a bit of traction in the past. Last Congress, it passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee 22 two. So nearly unanimously, um, and it's a little bit broader than just that payments issue. It would also basically say that developers can offer their apps and services outside of the App Store. So that would make it basically work on your phone exactly the way you get software on your desktop computer or laptop, where you can go through the official app store to get software, or you can go directly to a developer's website and download it directly from there. So we people do this all the time. It's it's very common if you if you buy a new computer, which I did recently, I went to Microsoft's website to get Microsoft Office, you know, Outlook Word. Um, I went to Zoom's website to get, you know, to download the zoom app. I went to Spotify's website to download the Spotify app. This would essentially remove Apple and Google as the internet gatekeepers for mobile devices and just make it work like your your desktop computer or laptop.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: And I suspect they're vehemently opposed.Rick Vanmeter: Yes, yes, there might be an understatement. Yeah, yeah, the big tech companies, I think last year spent, according to Bloomberg, they spent over $300 million in advertising against this bill and several others, you know, kind of big tech reforms. And they spent an additional, I think, $90 million in lobbying, um, which is which is just insane. I mean, it's it might be the most ever spent on a lobbying campaign. It tells you how.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Lucrative this must be.Sam Stone: Yeah. I mean, from my understanding for Apple and Google now, they're both basically trending towards being essentially subscription services and that revenue being a much more significant portion of their business than hardware or other other services or that kind of thing. So this points right at their intended business model. Right?Rick Vanmeter: Right. Yes. And one of the arguments that they make all the time is this is our business model, to which we say, well, you're you're just because it's your business model doesn't mean that it's right or doesn't mean that it's legal. So it can still.Sam Stone: Be monopolistic and anti-competitive. We've had plenty of businesses that have engaged in very predatory practices like that. Rick, we have just about two minutes left. What are the current what is the current status of that legislation? What are you guys trying to get done and how can folks support your work doing that?Rick Vanmeter: Well, the current state of the legislation is that we're hoping it will be reintroduced in the House and Senate shortly. You know the best thing, folks? Can do is to contact their members of Congress, their senators, their House members, and encourage them to support this issue. We actually have a function on our website which is app fairness.org. And you can you can go there and you can enter your address and information and it will help you contact, you know, send a message to your your representatives and senators. But there's a lot of more information there. So I would encourage folks to go to our website again. App fairness.org. And to contact your lawmakers.Sam Stone: And tell them to support the Open Apps Market Act. Correct. Or or similar legislation. And and there can be a push to get some of this done at the state level also. I mean, it might not be as effective, but at the same time, we've seen states have a major impact on corporations like these when they pass these laws. Absolutely. Because all of a sudden they either have to start creating a patchwork system, or they have to follow what that state is leading.Rick Vanmeter: That's right. Yeah. If a state were to pass it and folks in other states would see that it works and it's effective, it helps lower prices and probably have a lot of app developers moving to that state. Yeah, it could grow from there. So we definitely would not discourage that at all.Sam Stone: Fantastic. Rick Vanmeter, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on the program, folks. Make sure you check them out at the coalition for App Fairness and the Open Apps Market Act. I'm going to trip over that if I try to say it again. But thank you again, Rick, so much for joining us. We really appreciate having you on the program and look forward to getting an update, hopefully down the road when this moves forward.Rick Vanmeter: That sounds great. Thanks for having me.Sam Stone: Perfect. Thank you. All right, Michelle, I want to thank Rick Vanmeter for his time on the program. Really appreciate having him. But I got to got to get to something that, folks, if you're outside of Arizona, you're probably rolling your eyes because this is a little bit of an Arizona heavy episode. But at the same time, there is one of these organizations in your state, too. And if you're not aware of who they are and the work they're doing to undermine public education, quite frankly, you should be. We're talking about the Arizona School Boards Association. There is a National School Boards Association. There are basically branches in every state. These are hard left organizations that pretend to be nonpartisan.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: When they're the exact opposite.Sam Stone: When they're the exact opposite. I mean, they are they are so far lefty. Remember, these are the ones they got in big trouble around. Some of the trans stuff. They got big trouble around some of the Covid stuff. These organizations are.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: They're like an arm of the the the.Sam Stone: Teachers union.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah, the teachers union. It's exactly right.Sam Stone: And and they control by the way, this is where schools get their superintendents from, right?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: This is where they're farmed. Right.Sam Stone: If you wonder where your superintendent came from, who put them up for that job? It was your local school board association or your state or your national. So they have a huge influence on what happens with schools, which makes this week's news in Arizona just a little bit more entertaining. So, Michelle, it came out today that the Arizona School Boards Association hired as their executive director a ridiculous nutjob commie Democrat.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Perfect for them.Sam Stone: Yeah, perfect for them. But who lied on his resume? Oh, and doesn't have a college degree?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Well, whoopsies.Sam Stone: Now he has put this on multiple applications and resumes. Not only for this, but he tried to get a maricopa supervisor, you know, supervisor seat. He applied for that.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Oh, as an as as an.Sam Stone: Appointee and he didn't get it. But he had that on his resume. When he applied for that. He served as a temporary appointee in the state legislature. As a far left dem and he had it on his resume there. But then this fool had had gone on.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: So it was working for him.Sam Stone: It was working for him. Except that he went on some friends podcast in 2020 and told the truth.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Well, how would you do that?Sam Stone: I don't know, it's.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Not that smart at the end of the day.Sam Stone: Oh my goodness. Seriously. Like so here's the thing. Like I don't even care that he doesn't have a college degree. What does that.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Matter? Right? But why'd you lie about it?Sam Stone: Yeah. What is it again? Why does it matter? And then the school board is being called out. They found out about it.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: What are they going to do? Have they said anything?Sam Stone: They. They have a lawyer looking into it. Right. Who came away with. Okay. No, he didn't go to college. But more to the point, they weren't then going to they were going to sweep this under the rug and just go on. And they're paying him, by the way, $215,000 a year.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Is. Are you really?Sam Stone: Yeah. For to be the executive director for the state school board Association, which, by the way, is a cakewalk of a job.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: And what are you doing? You're coordinating your.Sam Stone: Coordinating some meetings each year. They have like a monthly meeting and then they have an annual meeting. I'm sure you're coordinating those and you're coordinating messaging and you're recruiting candidates to to come be school leaders. It's not a $200,000 job.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: You know, what's this organization even doing? I mean, beyond just the executive director position.Sam Stone: Why do they exist?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah, that's right. There's like a broader question there. Why do they exist? They have been nothing but a thorn in the side of students parents.Sam Stone: And they're paid for.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: By the legislature.Sam Stone: They're paid for with tax money. Right.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Because these are this is this is an association and the school boards pay dues.Sam Stone: Yeah. The schools are all members. The districts are members. The school boards pay dues. So, I mean, these are they work.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Against the interests of students and of parents and of hardworking teachers who just want to, you know, get in the classroom and and teach. Yeah.Sam Stone: And folks, again, this isn't just Arizona. This is going on. They may not have hired a liar in every other state.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: I don't know.Sam Stone: Possible in at least a few of them. But I mean, but this is going on everywhere. And why does you ask the right question, Michelle? Why does this organization exist? What is the point?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Well, when this happens, a lot of times they consolidate, right? And there's just a lot more power and control when you can consolidate the school boards and then have everybody in lockstep, in unison, saying the same thing the same way, and it looks like there's a much bigger support for your message when it's all coordinated by a select few.Sam Stone: Yeah. So so to your point, the school board associations actually put out and train all the school board members at all the different schools on their approved agenda.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: And the school board should be like, what approved agenda? I'm a school board member. I will approve our agenda for our district, but you have the association wanting to combine all of that and take advantage of the control that you get when everybody's saying the same thing. This is all about propaganda pushing.Sam Stone: Isn't that even, like entirely the point of having independent school boards?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: That's right. Exactly.Sam Stone: Because otherwise, wouldn't you just elect a state school board? That was these people. Basically, why do we have.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: 200 plus districts? Right? Right.Sam Stone: Yeah. Because otherwise, again, this this throws out the entire notion of local control disappears.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: I mean, this is a one size fits all for education. And that's the exact opposite that those at the local level like to say they support, which is something that's far more connected to the local districts and those that you know are in school.Sam Stone: It's really amazing what's going on with our public schools. Like I'm not I used to a few years ago and tell me if you agree or disagree, but a few years ago I was like, no, we can turn this around. We can save them. I'm kind of at the point, like just tear it down and start over because they're just such a disaster.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: You know, I have three kids in public school and it's there's there's a lot of great moments. The problem the problem is there's so much fear and there's they've abandoned independence. They've abandoned their teachers, their, you know, teachers can't do what they want in their classroom. There's so everyone's being watched and they're really been exploited. And now this is an area where they can get to your kids before you can. And you know, there's a distrust. You know, that's how I feel as a parent. I dropped my kids off and I am like, I hope you're teaching the basics.Sam Stone: How much of this do you think? I've always wondered about this, but how much of the hard core left movement in schools, which has gotten way worse in the last decade or two? How much of that has come from a combination of helicopter parents and endemic lawsuits from those parents? Right.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: I think a lot. I mean.Sam Stone: It's kind of a defense mechanism against that, isn't it? Like the way they're doing it.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Well, I just think that schools have gotten way too outside their scope.Sam Stone: I'll give you a good example. So the local school district that I live in, they have I think the last time I looked at the numbers, it was like 37,000 students. They deliver 90,000 meals a day.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah. Yeah. Right. So exactly like they're, you know, their you they're they're addressing food and mental well-being and, you know, education and sex and, you know, personal health issues. And they're just getting way too big and they're becoming way too integral into like, your student and your child's life when they just need to be talking about math, science, reading, writing. But this is a way to get to your kids. That's what's so sad.Sam Stone: You know, I think there's a lot of sometimes good intentions gone wrong in a lot of this stuff, right? But at the end of the day, I think they've just made themselves so vulnerable to this sort of Marxian philosophy where they have just decided we're going to take over the schools and mis educate the children and the way we want, and that's going to change the world and the way we see it, and they may not be wrong, is what worries me.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Well, the good news is, if you have parents who are active in a child's life, then a lot of this stuff can be combated. I find that the problem is when you have schools that have an agenda and are looking to exploit and then, you know, parents and caregivers who aren't, as.Sam Stone: Some of the narratives, though, seem worse than that, like the anti-police narrative, the anti-Israel one.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: At the school level. Yeah, yeah.Sam Stone: Like, these things are societally destructive. I mean, you talk to Democrats. You've heard this a lot this week. Israel is an apartheid state. Well, it's empirically not. The people of Gaza are prisoners. They are empirically not. It's an occupation. They hadn't set foot inside Gaza since Israel had not set foot inside Gaza since 2005. The blockade is not a blockade. It's basically a checkpoint where they try to limit the number of weapons that come in via the sea. So they just checking the cargo ships. It's essentially a port control.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Well, I mean, we're talking about something that I don't really know needs to even be discussed in school. I mean, you know, maybe you want to acknowledge it, but in terms of talking about the complexities of the issue, I mean, those are conversations that are probably best for home. It really has no relevancy in your arithmetic class.Sam Stone: It's also, I think, the age at which you're exposing kids to some of those.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: True. I mean, is it a second grader, you know, or are you talking about high school?Sam Stone: That was one of my complaints. Do you remember the old La Raza studies issues here in the state? Right. Uh huh. And one of my issues, I read through those books and I was like, you know, this all material is good when you're in college and you can question your teachers, and you don't have to assume they're right about everything, but it doesn't work when you're in high school. And the default for most kids is, well, if the teacher says that, then that's true. Like, as you get older, you learn that that may not really be the case.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: That's such a good point because I had this come up with with my kids. They were given ID badges. You know, they have an ID badge. And this year there was a chip put into it so that when you got off the bus, if you rode the bus, I mean, it would, it would log when you got on and off the bus and I hole punched them out and said, you know, you can have the ID, but not with a tracking chip in there. And my, my kids were like, mom, it's not. I'm like, what do you mean it's not? They're like, well, that's because the principal went on the loudspeaker and said it wasn't. And I'm like, so yeah, tell me why. How when it logs, it's an RFID chip. Yeah, yeah. How it logs where and when you're located. That's not tracking. I go did it measure your weight right. You're like, but it's mom. They said it's not tracking. I'm like, no, honey, I know, but what's the justification to your point? They just took it, right? And we had to spend, you know, I had to spend 45 minutes unwinding that and helping them understand that that's not the case. And let's use logic and let's work backwards from that statement and see if we can justify it. And you can.Sam Stone: A perfect example we dealt with at the city of Phoenix was around the traffic cameras, the red light cameras and that sort of thing. So the city told us for years that these things only take a still photo. Oh video. When a car goes through illegally. Right. And they told us that over and over and over here. Here's what we get. They even showed us that the videos and the photos, they're like, this is all we have, doesn't show anything else. We get into it and bring someone from that company in and put them up on the on the dais where they're now. They're afraid to perjure themselves. Right, right. Because it goes on public record. And so we start asking them those questions and it's like, well, no. So the camera's always running. It's running 24 over seven facial recognition. It's running 24 over seven license plate recognition. It's running geolocation data and all of that's gathered. But we don't give that to the city.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Right. But you can subpoena it.Sam Stone: Yeah but but but what do you do with it? Oh, we sell it.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah.Sam Stone: In. What are they selling data on your kids?Michelle Ugenti-Rita: That's what I was saying. What was the. What was the purpose of it? Did they tell you the purpose? Well, what's the harm? Well, no. You see, you guys, you're not looking at it at the right way. It's your autonomy. It's your privacy. You shouldn't have to justify why you want to keep it that way. They should have to justify why there's some overarching interest that makes a compelling one, that makes it so they can take it from you. But yeah, but if you just believe everyone at first blush, particularly in the K through 12 world, God only knows what you're going to.Sam Stone: Yeah, well, they will look.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: To you to come out at.Sam Stone: They will look you straight in the face, I.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Know and just blatantly.Sam Stone: Yeah.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Tell you the sky's not blue.Sam Stone: Yeah, yeah. Like we don't base our curriculum on on CRT.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Really. Right. That's not a tracking device. It's not interesting.Sam Stone: Folks. Thank you so much for tuning in again today. We really appreciate having you join us on the program. Make sure you share this with your friends. Share the podcast around. That's how we know you're actually interested in things we're yapping about here. And it's worth coming into the studio every week to do this. So again, thank you for joining us for Chuck. This is Sam for Michelle. I'll let you say goodbye to the.Michelle Ugenti-Rita: Yeah, please share it. And we appreciate the listeners out there. And everyone have a great weekend. Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to this week’s episode of Breaking Battlegrounds! In this episode, we have an incredible lineup of guests and captivating discussions. First up, Anna Giaritelli, a Homeland Security Reporter for the Washington Examiner, dives into pressing topics like illegal immigration, the southern border, 'special interest aliens,' and the recent 'Day of Terror' announced by Hamas leaders. Jon Riches, Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute, provides insights into the growing concerns of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) on Arizona State University's campus and the actions being taken to address it. Lastly, we welcome the Honorable Don Tapia, former United States Ambassador to Jamaica, who shares his valuable insights into the role of an ambassador, the appointment process, and the modern challenges of managing the Israel/Hamas conflict. Be sure to stay tuned for Kiley's Corner, where Kiley explores intriguing global topics, including the remarkable story of the world's largest pumpkin, affectionately named 'Michael Jordan.'Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-ABOUT OUR GUESTSFriend of the show, Anna Giaritelli, is a Homeland Security Reporter for the Washington Examiner focused on immigration, and border issues. Anna has traveled to the border on more than 40 occasions since 2018 and has covered human smuggling, the evolution of the war on drugs, domestic terrorism, and migration trends. She is currently based in Austin, Texas. Follow Anna on X: @Anna_Giaritelli. -Jon Riches is the Vice President for Litigation for the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation and General Counsel for the Institute. He litigates in federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, regulatory reform, free speech, taxpayer protections, public labor issues, government transparency, and school choice, among others.Jon has developed and authored several pieces of legislation, including the landmark Right to Earn a Living Act, which provides some of the greatest protections in the country to job-seekers and entrepreneurs facing arbitrary licensing regulations. He also developed legislation eliminating deference to administrative agencies in Arizona—a first-of-its-kind regulatory reform that can serve as a model for the rest of the country.His work at the Institute has been covered by national media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CBS This Morning, Bloomberg News, and Politico. Jon is also a member of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project: State and Local Working Group.Prior to joining the Goldwater Institute, Jon served on active duty in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. While on active duty, Jon represented hundreds of clients, litigated dozens of court-martial cases, and advised commanders on a vast array of legal issues.He previously clerked for Sen. Jon Kyl on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, worked for the Rules Committee in the Arizona State Senate, and clerked in the Office of Counsel to the President at the White House. Jon received his B.A. from Boston College, where he graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from the University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law.Jon served as a presidentially appointed Panel Member on the Federal Service Impasses Panel. He is an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and an Adjunct Professor at Arizona State University School of Law. Jon is a native of Phoenix.-Honorable Donald Ray Tapia, a prominent businessman, committed civic leader and compassionate philanthropist, was the Chairman and CEO of Essco Group Management the largest Hispanic owned business in Arizona for more than three decades before retiring in 2010 to devote his time to philanthropy. Essco Group Management provided front line management and back room production for twelve electrical wholesale branches located in Arizona and Southern California. Mr. Tapia’s philanthropic efforts have included serving on the Board of Directors of the Sun Angel Foundation & Endowment at Arizona State University, as Chairman of Board & Trustee at Saint Leo University in Florida, and as Member of the President’s Circle at Xavier College in Phoenix, Arizona. He has served on the Boards of social service organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club of Metropolitan Phoenix, Teen LifeLine Phoenix, Advisory Council of the Arizona Animal Welfare League and Advisory board for Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix Arizona.Mr. Tapia is a veteran, having served in the U.S. Air Force, Honorably Discharged (1955-1959). Mr. Tapia’s excellent management and entrepreneurial skills, demonstrated commitment to a culture of success and wide-ranging leadership in business, community and education make him well-qualified to serve as Ambassador to Jamaica. Additional enterprises Mr. Tapia has engaged in; include CEO, Sonapar USA, Chandler, Arizona (2008-2010) as well as employment with Cal Neva Corp., Los Angeles, California (1973-1977) and International Telephone & Telegraph Corp., Chicago, Illinois (1967-1973). He also worked as an air traffic controller for the Federal Aviation Administration in Cleveland and Cincinnati.Mr. Tapia earned a B.A. and M.B.A. from Saint Leo University, Saint Leo, Florida, which also awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.-TRANSCRIPTIONChuck Warren: Welcome to another show of Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, and with my co-host, Kiley Kipper. Sam is out ill today. We're first going to start with Anna Giaritelli. She's a homeland security reporter for the Washington Examiner. She's been on the show before. She has a very specific knowledge. She's been to the border more than 40 times since 2018. And she's also covered human smuggling and the evolution of the war on drugs, domestic terrorism and migration trends. And she is based in Texas. Anna, welcome back to the show.Anna Giaritelli: Thanks for having me.Chuck Warren: So we have a day of rage, apparently. Hamas has declared it. Tell us a little bit about it. And what does the United States government doing to prepare to keep our citizens safe here and abroad?Anna Giaritelli: Yeah. So yesterday the former leader of Hamas came out and said that, you know, people who sympathize with Hamas around the Muslim world and outside that that that just that region should take part and come out in public and protest and engage in a day of jihad and rage. And so the Israeli government put out notices yesterday saying, you know, people should take cover, should remain vigilant, should be, you know, braced for the worst. And so the United States has also followed suit. Typically, something happening in one region of the country wouldn't affect us. But the Department of Homeland Security said it's been in touch with for different faith leaders, 65,000 people in faith organizations, making sure that synagogues in particular, even mosques, are going to be safe today. I know here in Austin, Texas, police are are have been called in in full gear. So they're ready for anything they have to deal with. New York City, LAPD, Miami police, they're all being called in today to report to duty just to to make sure that their presence is there in case something does happen in any of these cities.Chuck Warren: Anna, have you talked to any Jewish folks or synagogues or educators at Jewish schools about today? Have you had a chance to talk to any of them and how they're feeling?Anna Giaritelli: You know, I haven't, but the secretary of Homeland Security had his spokesperson was saying on this white House call last night that he's been in contact with a number of different groups, and really, one of their top three priorities right now is being in constant contact with these faith based organizations. So it's not like these groups are on their own. You know, if you're a synagogue, you're on your own hope for the best. The federal government has billions of dollars in grants so that these facilities can what we say is hardened security. So make sure you have more security presence as well as police. Make sure you have private security, just especially at this point in time. So I think the department really is rolling out a lot. We've seen this for several years now, where DHS has even yesterday said that faith based organizations are considered critical infrastructure here. So that gives even more ability for the federal government to really surge resources and even push funding to to these entities.Chuck Warren: Well, and that's fascinating. And the Biden administration is to be applauded for that. There's not much I would applaud them for, especially regarding immigration and so forth. But I applaud them for doing that because they are a critical infrastructure. Explain to our audience what a gateway is and how this relates to what is going on at the border. And because of the gotaways, how this may pose a threat to some of these faith based communities and to our our larger cities.Anna Giaritelli: Yeah. So at the southern border you've got A 2000 mile border. Some with fence, some without. What we've seen over the past two and a half years is a real. It went up in March 2021 when Biden first took office and hasn't declined. Normally we would see 30 to 50,000 people cross the border in a month and get arrested. What we've seen. In each of the months since Biden took office is anywhere between 150,000 and 300,000 people in a month, which is just, you know, we can't detain people through court proceedings. There's things that bar families from being held more than 20 days. So it's the perfect storm of this mass releases.Chuck Warren: And let me and let me ask you this. How big is Austin, for example?Anna Giaritelli: Austin, I believe, is 1.1 million.Chuck Warren: So over a course of a week, we get a new Austin. Over a course of 4 or 5 months, we get a new Austin in the United States.Anna Giaritelli: We do. And that's and that's who's crossing, right? That doesn't mean they're getting released since since Biden took office, the best estimates we have are more than 2 million people have been released into the United States. And so we've seen the number one spot that people are going is New York City, based on where people tell Border Patrol agents and Ice, you know, when they're getting released, hey, I'm going to go to my sister who lives in Queens, and then let the immigration officials do is place them in removal proceedings. So, hey, you need to go to court and see if we're going to remove you down the road. And we're the closest court to Queens is the New York immigration court. So we'll put you in that system. And so based on all the court data, we're seeing that more people are being placed in the New York court system than any other in the country.Chuck Warren: And is the Biden administration and Congress providing more resources so you can have more judges so they can do quicker rulings on these and not have these lengthy time periods. So they bring it back in.Anna Giaritelli: You know, each administration the last few years has added judges. I mean, we only have under 700 nationwide and we have more than 2 million cases pending. So the thought is that even if you hired enough judges, you can't. You can't go through the backlog fast enough. You really need to do something up front. That that causes fewer people to either come through or you're immediately dealing with cases now so that more aren't being added to the system. But but this is something we've seen under President Obama, President Trump, and now President Biden each administration is guilty of. Well, not guilty of. But they have hired more judges. But but they're guilty of that number of the backlog just keeps going up.Chuck Warren: Well, I'm sure the judges also work banker hours. I mean, it'd be interesting if you say working quadruple the amount of judges we have. We're going 24 over seven.Anna Giaritelli: Yeah. And, you know, back to what you said about the Gotaways. Gotaways are people who, thanks to great technology and agents who are in the field, border patrol agents, you know what they'll happen. What will happen is downtown, in populated areas, at the border, you have a group of, say, 400 people come across at once. And that pulls all the agents in the nearby vicinity over here to take everybody into custody, to pat people down, make sure no one's carrying something they shouldn't be, and then to organize people by by country and by families here, adult men here, single women here, and then bussed them to the appropriate facilities where they'll be processed. That means that other areas of the border, maybe ten, 20 miles away, you've just pulled the agents that were there from their spots. And so what the cartels will do is run drugs across. They'll run the meth across. They'll run different stuff across the border because no one's there. And they'll also run the criminals. So say someone who's been deported previously knows they shouldn't be reentering the country, or someone who maybe is on the terror watch list, or someone who is a kind of a worldwide known criminal. So we can't look at databases for each country and see crimes, but they're well known, or they're a gang affiliation. They don't want to get caught like all the families coming across. So you'll see them on camera or agents will see them. But but they're too busy to make an apprehension. So it's like, okay, there's a group of 20 bodies we see in this infrared camera, and they're walking in and we have no one to get them. So, you know, add 20 to the list. And at this point we're over 1.6 million people. Who are we dubbed Gotaways. We've seen enter illegally. And then they got away. And that doesn't include the number who have entered illegally, not been observed and also got away.Chuck Warren: How big? You know, look, this is purely a guesstimate on your part. So I'm not asking you to go to Vegas to put a wager on it. But okay. So we have the ones they've seen the gotaways right. And they've done an estimate on it. And let's say they're off ten, 15% one way or another, minus or more. How many do you think have come into the country that they never observed?Anna Giaritelli: You know, I could not put a guess on that. So all sorts of numbers out there.Chuck Warren: So give me the give me the. You've heard a bunch of numbers. You talked to a lot of people. Homeland security border. What's the low number and what's the high number you heard. And then Kiley and I will make some really gut wrenching comment here on it. But what is the lowest number? What's the highest number?Anna Giaritelli: You know, I really just don't I focus on the numbers. We know for sure just because as a reporter, I want to make sure I'm putting out the most factual information.Kiley Kipper: Do We, Sorry. Do we know how much, how many miles? There aren't cameras that we so that we aren't seeing them. Do we know how many miles there are that aren't being monitored, or are they like drones that are going back and forth?Anna Giaritelli: You know, that's a good question. It's a it's a mixture of both drones have in the last few years, become a real big part of how Border Patrol is monitoring the border. The latest numbers we have are that the Mexican cartels actually have 17 drones for every one drone that the US has. So they're using that to surveil ports of entry. They're using that to see where agents are on the border. And oh, there's no one here, you know, run something across. And they're also some of them are capable of carrying, you know, just a couple pounds of something. So obviously you carry it. So you would carry a pound of marijuana over the border in a drone that's not worth a lot of money. But if you can carry, you know, fentanyl a pound or two, like that's, that's going to be worth a lot more money. So drones are really a way that cartels are surveilling US federal law enforcement and, and making moves here and there. And they're also you can't shoot it down with a gun half the time. You can't even hear them or see them at night. And so there's also no prosecutions. I think one has been prosecuted, one incident in the last five years, because you don't know where where it's going to or from.Chuck Warren: I. It's just. It's just not getting. It's just. I don't even know what to say. It's just not getting better here. We're coming up to a minute left here and we to our next segment. We're going to talk to you. But one thing I want to talk to you about, how was the dysfunction of the Republican Congress right now affecting things like homeland security and border, if it is or if it isn't at all? We know you have to have operational government to get resources, so we want to do that. One other quick question before we go to a break, because of the legalization of marijuana in the United States, has that decreased the amount coming across the border?Anna Giaritelli: Yeah, we do believe that. We used to see a couple million pounds coming across the border in a within a couple of years, easily over a million in a year of just marijuana. And that number has diminished significantly. And so overall, you would say Border Patrol is seizing far, far less drugs than it used to. But really, if you see a pound of fentanyl one year and then you seize £1,000 of the next year, but you're used to seizing £1 million of marijuana, you know, it's hard to sort of quantify. So we really try to look at it as a drug by drug. Right. But you're right. Marijuana is available here. So so yeah, it's still coming over, but it's not as profitable.Chuck Warren: We make our own. We don't need to import that. This is Chuck Warner breaking battlegrounds with Anna Giaritelli. She is a homeland security reporter for the Washington Examiner. You can find her on X, which is formerly Twitter at Anda. Underscore gear brightly. This is breaking battlegrounds. We'll be right back.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.Chuck Warren: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren of Kiley  Kipper. Today we have with us a friend of the show, Anna Giaritelli, Homeland Security reporter for the Washington Examiner, really asked you to follow her work. She does fantastic work telling us what's going on in our border, homeland security. And you'll be more knowledgeable for following her, folks. First of all, want to make sure and give a plug to our sponsor. If you're looking to increase your savings and your return, I suggest you go talk to Y refy. You can call them at 888 Y refy 24. That's 888Y Refy 24. You can go there. There's no fees for your investments, and you can get a 10.25% fixed rate of return while also helping college students with their college loans. So take a look and call Y refi and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. All right, Anna, so let's talk about something people don't talk about. Canada has a big border up north. And I, you know, assumption is the mother of all screw ups. But I would assume that people are starting to go into Canada and crossing through our border there. Is that true or am I just making something up?Anna Giaritelli: No, you're right on there. We see about 1% of the number of southern border crossings on the northern border. So it sounds like it's nothing really, but 1% of 2 million in a year. We do see a good amount of people who are coming across typically in Vermont, Maine and upstate New York areas. And we also see a lot of smuggling going from the United States into Canada. Those are typically things guns, the firearms, sometimes cigarettes, those sorts of things. And those are those are the old school bootleggers from 100 and so years ago who whose families are still involved and moving stuff. Um, but yeah, we do see immigrants coming across typically from Europe, sometimes Mexico and Central America. People will fly into Canada and then try to come down. But it is certainly there's no border wall across the 4000 mile northern border. It's double the length of the southern border. So yeah, it's very wide open. But again, we still have Border Patrol up there monitoring things. And and these are typically senior agents. They've they've paid their time on the southern border. Right. And now they're up north.Chuck Warren: Yeah I mean, you know, this is your nice retirement, your gold watch opportunity to serve at the end. And now you've got this going here. Do they have like coyotes up on the Canadian border like we do in the southern border? I mean, how are they getting across? I mean, there's obviously has to be operations that help them do this.Anna Giaritelli: There are. Yes. And some of the groups that smuggle stuff north are also working with people who are coming south. Some of those more irish-italian, sort of old school mafia groups are helping people. We do still have some coyotes, but but typically what we see are. People from Eastern Europe who have flown into Canada because they didn't need a visa. And then that's that's how they're coming down. And this winter, we saw a number of deaths of people who were trying to cross the border at night and, you know, freezing conditions and got lost. And, you know, those are really the really tragic things. But but, you know, people are going to there's a coast, there's the northern and southern borders and um, even Florida, Florida has seen extraordinary amount of people taking boats from Cuba and Haiti trying to reach the Florida Keys and get on land or trying to reach. We've even had West Palm Beach boats landing not far from Trump's home at Mar a Lago.Chuck Warren: Maybe they were just. Maybe they were just real estate appraisers. We don't know this, but maybe so. Yeah. Let me let me ask you this question. So since the start of the fiscal year 2023, which is October. October through August, the Border Patrol caught 151 people who were processed and determined to be on the FBI's terror watch list. That's who they caught. Is this something people should be concerned about, or is this just the imagination of conservative media that these are bad people.Anna Giaritelli: You know? And you explained it perfectly because these are people on the watch list. That doesn't mean that they are actual terrorists. I mean, they.Chuck Warren: Have a cousin or something, right? Or a friend or. Exactly. Yeah, but but but but they've got but there's a link. There's a handshake in there somewhere.Anna Giaritelli: Yes, exactly. It's not like you get on the list for no reason. Um, you know what we believe a lot of it to be is people, Colombian nationals who were affiliated with FARC. So during the the fight in Colombia a number of years ago, people who were involved in that are still sort of flagged in the system. But inevitably in the last ten days, we've seen people from 28 special interest countries. So that includes Egypt, Iran, uh, the whole of the Middle East, the Eastern Europe, Indonesia, certain countries, Uzbekistan, uh, apprehended at the border, which is not a normal but, you know, to see so many just just with what's happened in Israel and Palestine has given Republicans a lot of a lot of concern with, you know, we we know who we're encountering and we can screen them through the databases, but who we who gets away and hasn't been screened, we don't know.Chuck Warren: And so well in 20. So in 21 we had 15 people. Right. So there's hundred and 51 now. So and before.Anna Giaritelli: That it was like three. Yeah.Chuck Warren: So the number. So the number is increasing. Let's just say they're not all bad people. I mean I know Kiley, but I'm still a good guy. So we have that situation. But if you have 151 people versus 15 and 21 three before that, 1 or 2 probably we don't want to have over for dinner. Is that fair to say? Maybe just based on numbers?Kiley Kipper: And Tom cotton, I think you reported on it. And he said it took 19 terrorists to commit nine eleven. Right. So we have potentially, you know, so.Chuck Warren: So, Anna, look, you've been you've done this for a while. We got about three minutes left in this segment. What needs to be done in your expert opinion. And you are an expert. But your reporter I just want an objective. And you can say Republicans stink at this, I don't care. What do they need to do to get this border situation under control?Anna Giaritelli: You know, I think one of the interesting points is that under Obama, when he imposed the DACA program, Republicans said you overstepped your executive authority and you shouldn't have done that. Right. And so now what we're seeing with the Biden administration is they're using that to Republicans disadvantage. They're saying, well, the border, yeah, stuff is happening, but we can't do anything because we don't have the authority. It's only Congress that can do something. And so they're using Republicans argument against them as a means to do nothing. So, you know, in a way it's like you respect that, but it's nothing's happening. And it's we're heading into almost the fourth year now of the border. Just I mean, I would say remain unchecked. They've tried so many different programs that haven't worked. I don't think you necessarily need to return to Trump era policies to bring things down, but as long as people are seeing family members and friends, you know, hey, call, call them back home and say, I got released and I'm in New York now. What the Biden administration says, they can say the border is closed, but you have 2 million people who have been released and called home and said, yeah, you should come. Yeah, yeah. And so there's that stuff happening. Um, you know, whatever policy doesn't matter. You can have a policy, but are you going to enforce it.Chuck Warren: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's like a lot of parents, we threaten our kids, but at the end of the day, if we don't have the punishment aligned to it, they're going to just keep ignoring us. So it's it's hard to watch. And we appreciate you coming on the show. You've been fantastic as usual. Could you tell our audience a little bit where they can catch you at and follow your work?Anna Giaritelli: Yeah. On X if you search Anna underscore Giaritelli just look up. Gia. If you also want to go to Elon Musk's page and search his followers, I, I don't know why, but Elon Musk follows my work.Chuck Warren: That's amazing because you give good numbers and we hope you have a great weekend. Thank you for joining us on Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. This is Breaking Battlegrounds, folks. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host with my co-host Kylie Kipper. Sam is out with the sniffles today. Kiley we feel bad for Sam, don't we?Kiley Kipper: We do. All right.Chuck Warren: Well, we're here with a friend of the show, John Riches. John is the vice president for litigation for the Goldwater Institute. And he litigates on federal and state trial and appellate courts in the areas of economic liberty, regulatory reform, free speech, all those things. Good conservatives, libertarians care about things that the left says they used to care about, but they apparently don't care much anymore. He has a Boston Law School grad. He previously worked for John Kyl and he is a commander at the Navy Reserve. Thank you for your service, John.John Riches: Yeah, Thanks for having me on, Chuck.Chuck Warren: All right. So let's talk about DEI It's been an interesting conversation here on the show when the whole Barrett mess happened, and we had a professor on who didn't work at Barrett, but he was defending him because he just likes to talk all the time. And he said, oh, they don't require die. And what you found, what Goldwater found is that they were making was it staff or just professors take a loyalty oath.John Riches: So that was new job applicants. And then we started to learn that they are requiring.Chuck Warren: And how long ago was that for the did they implement this policy for new job applicants?John Riches: It seems like a couple years back. Okay. What we found is that they'd post like a new job application and there'd be your traditional things, your resume cover letter, but then they would require and tell us in two pages or less your professional accomplishments wherein you advanced dei measures. Et cetera. Et cetera.Chuck Warren: Really?John Riches: And we found that they did that in like, more than 80% of all new job postings.Chuck Warren: So, you know, conservatives like to yell and scream about Michael Crow. I think he's been a decent university professor in some ways. Is this something he would be unaware of because it's a department mandate that just happened?John Riches: Yeah, it's entirely possible. And to ASU's credit, and maybe to Michael Crow's credit, once we pointed it out and presented the evidence and provided the report, they stopped doing it.Kiley Kipper: What was Crow's response when you brought it to him? Well, we.John Riches: Didn't have a specific one from Crow, but when we brought it to the university and published the report, the university stopped doing it. And that's and.Chuck Warren: That's a decision probably he was well aware of at the time. And so when they when you brought this up with them about these loyalty oaths, what was their first reaction to you? Like, no, this doesn't happen. I mean.John Riches: There was a denial at first.Chuck Warren: So they lied.John Riches: There was a denial at first from the school and from professors and others like, you know, this isn't happening. This isn't happening.Chuck Warren: So John's talking legally, saying there's a denial. We're going to tell you on the radio show, folks, they lied because they knew they were doing it. Okay. So Johns saying denial hashtag Chuck lied. Okay. How long did it take to get the information from them that this was actually happening? And did you have to follow, you know, take the bat to this issue and say, you know, we're suing or what happened?John Riches: So we requested the information through public records requests, talking with new hires, things like that. You know, put put the report together in a few months. And once we published it, they were pretty quick to act to their credit. And they eliminated it. But that got us thinking, you know, is this happening in other areas? Does this go beyond the loyalty oath? And so a few months after that, we had a couple professors reach out to us and say, hey, we saw what you did with the Dei loyalty oath. Do you know that ASU is requiring all faculty and staff to take a mandatory training that covers all these Dei initiatives? Not only that, after you complete the training, the university gives you a quote unquote test where they supply the right answers. So it'll say something like, you know, you refer to a student and it's not the student's preferred pronoun. What do you do? A apologize B whatever. And the university then supplies the right answer. And if you get it wrong, then you're reported to your dean. So when we heard about that, we go, well, that seems like a compelled speech problem. So we requested more information about that.Chuck Warren: How long was DEI training? They had to take this mandatory training.John Riches: Unfortunately, I sat through it once we got the public records. Well, I should because you're.Chuck Warren: Because you're an associate professor at the law school. That's right. So you you had to participate in it?John Riches: Well, I, I never actually, I think I got an email once or twice, but I didn't quite pay attention to those ones. But once we realized that it was happening, I requested the records to get to.Chuck Warren: So how long did it take?John Riches: It was several hours.Chuck Warren: Just mind numbing word salad, progressive DEI. Don't offend anybody. Woke crap.John Riches: Kendrick. Zebra. You know, intersectionality. You know, the.Chuck Warren: Fraud, the fraudster they're promoting the fraudster. The guy who's basically bilked millions of dollars.John Riches: I think he had his own little video segment in the training.Chuck Warren: What a grift.John Riches: Yeah, yeah, truly. You know, things like white supremacy is built into the foundational documents of our country, you know, that sort of stuff. And it just went went on and on.Chuck Warren: It's just unbelievable what happened if you didn't take it?John Riches: Well, we don't know for sure. We asked about that. We asked the university about that, and they said no one's been disciplined for failing to take it yet, or at least they didn't have records of anybody being disciplined for failing.Kiley Kipper: Can you fail this said test? So if I fail it, I am just not a professor or.John Riches: Well, I mean, that was the problem. They said if you failed it, they would report you. They would report the professor to the dean. But then we asked, has anybody been disciplined, reported, and they said, we don't have any records of that.Chuck Warren: This is Breaking Battl Grounds today with John Riches. He is the vice president of litigation at the Goldwater Institute Center for Constitutional Litigation. He's general counsel for the institute. And this is Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us at Breaking Battlegrounds .vote. We'll be right back with John to talk more about DEI and the craziness at the university, not the University of Arizona. Arizona State, we want to talk about University of Arizona as well. Breaking Battle Grounds. We'll be right back.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.Chuck Warren: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. My co-host Kiley Kipper, also known for Kiley's Corner, which will be on later today on the podcast with John Riches, vice president of litigation for the Goldwater Institute. John, let's go talk further about the DEI situation at Arizona State. First of all, is University of Arizona, Northern Arizona. Are they also having these same type of issues?John Riches: We think we've gone to their website and requested some records, and it looks like they're doing these sorts of trainings as well. We sent a letter to Arbor where we asked them to audit all the universities across the state, because it appears that this is a broader problem than just ASU.Chuck Warren: How much money is ASU dedicated to DEI officers? Do you know that's.John Riches: A good question I don't.Chuck Warren: That'd be interesting for us to find out. Kiley, I think our audience would like to know. All right. So let's talk about the Board of Regents and die Staffing. Did the Board of Regents, were they aware of this? Did they? What did they do on it?John Riches: I don't know, we sent them a letter just last month. So this is interesting. The Arizona legislature last session passed a statute that prohibits DEI esque trainings for state employees and prohibits the spending of taxpayer dollars to provide these trainings. And there's, you know, very quaint concepts like, you know, no race is inherently superior to another. People aren't inherently racist based on their race. You can't discriminate based on someone's race. All of these things were in the statute.Chuck Warren: All common sense things. Most people would find common sense if we just went door to door.John Riches: Exactly. Common sense, moral things. Right. And it said, you know, no state agency, including the universities, can require their employees to take training that advances things contrary to the, you know, to these common sense items, and you can't spend taxpayer money on it. So when we got the records on this training for faculty and staff, it was pretty clear that that training violated violated the statute. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. So that's what we sent the letter to Eburon. And we said, look, here's the training. We pulled out specific segments of the training and said, you know, you're in violation of state law. What you should do now is stop mandating the training and stop spending taxpayer dollars to provide it.Chuck Warren: You have much money, just even the mandatory training cost, what they spend on that.John Riches: It had to have been a lot. I mean, it was a it was a very comprehensive training with videos with, you know, people throughout the country because.Chuck Warren: These people sure have no problem increasing tuition every year.John Riches: Yeah, yeah. That's true.Chuck Warren: Let's talk about the Cronkite's journalism school at ASU. It's a mandatory class there. Is it not or was.John Riches: That's right. Yeah. So what we found they're requiring this loyalty oath for new hires. They're requiring the training for existing faculty. And then we're wondering, is it going into the student body? And it turns out that the Cronkite School has a required Dei course for every single journalism student at the school. So we requested those records. We asked for the syllabus. At first they didn't want to give us copies of it, but eventually they did.Chuck Warren: What was what was on what was on the syllabus?John Riches: You know, a lot of the same sort of Dei dogma stuff that you see, you know, throughout, throughout these sort of courses, a lot of the intersectionality stuff and that sort of thing.Chuck Warren: We wonder why Kiley, our press is slanted.Kiley Kipper: I don't wonder anymore. It all makes sense, and I don't think ASU is coming up with these ideas themselves.Chuck Warren: So it'd be interesting to see surveying the students when they start the Cronkite School of Journalism if they think it's needed, and after four years, if they think it's needed.John Riches: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, think about how little time you have to actually do the few mandatory courses that are required that are required. And this is this is the thing that the school is focusing on, you know, and that limited chunk of time.Chuck Warren: Do you is this happening in our public schools on the high school level? Is it happening on the junior college level?John Riches: I'm not sure about junior college, but K-12 for sure. I mean, this has been a debate for for a couple of years now where, you know, K-12 are clearly introducing di CRT concepts into the classroom. They deny doing it. Then you come up with real clear evidence that they have. So yeah, this this goes obviously broader than higher. Ed.Chuck Warren: John, explain to our audience why this fight is necessary. We all you know, we want we really do want a colorblind society, right? I mean, I think that's all we want. You know, that may be a goal. You know, sort of like the more perfect union. You know, we can get a little bit better each time each generation. Our kids will be better, hopefully. But why is this important for us? Just to put our thumb on it and say this, this nonsense has to stop. Why is it important for our country, for the state of Arizona?John Riches: It's contrary to the founding ideals of the country, right? If you take a concept like equity, what does that mean? It's the opposite of equality of opportunity. It's they're trying to get equality of outcome, which of course, you can't do. And that's essentially a Marxist theory. But, you know, our country is predicated on the belief that all people are created equal and everybody should have an equal opportunity. Not that some people are given special privileges, not that some people should be discriminated against based on race. You know, the content of our character is determined by our choices and our actions, not by immutable characteristics.Chuck Warren: Kiley, do you feel like folks in their 20s and early 30s believe in that concept at all?Kiley Kipper: Yes. Yeah, yeah yeah I was.Chuck Warren: I mean, you have some friends who are Democrat liberal, I imagine. I mean, you've not cut him off, I'm sure.Kiley Kipper: No, no absolutely not.Chuck Warren: No, no, I have recommended it. But anyway, continue. What do you find their beliefs are on this, this type of thing.Kiley Kipper: I find that my friends who. They think Republicans are racist. Yeah, like, but when I was in high school, in college, I was really not political. And none of my friends were like, we did not discuss this and how I got in because.Chuck Warren: Because you're a normal human beings.Kiley Kipper: Yeah. And we just and we all. That's why we became best friends. And then obviously 2020 when the whole Trump everything, that's when it all started coming out. And I'm like, you have known me for this long, and have you ever.Chuck Warren: Seen me say racist thing in the world?Kiley Kipper: Exactly. And so I'm like, you guys need to look, reflect back and like, look at this and really look at the people. They really their character.Chuck Warren: They really don't look at the content of the character. No. It's been it's been very odd to see John as a Goldwater and you do litigation there. Okay. You've been doing this how long now? Goldwater? Ten years. How have things changed with the left and governments are trying to do ten years ago versus now? What is it? Have you seen a change? Has it gotten worse? What's what's going on.John Riches: Sure. So we got to decide, of course, what cases we're going to take. Are we going to do an economic freedom case? Are we going to do a free speech case? Are we going to do a regulatory case? And for the first five years, six, six, maybe even seven years, I was there. Things that everybody basically agreed on. Free speech is a good thing. People shouldn't be discriminated against based on their race.Chuck Warren: It was it was a liberal ideology in the 70s and 80s. Right. And Republicans are always trying to suppress it.John Riches: Supposedly it's essentially a liberal notion. Right, right, right. But these things that everybody that we thought everybody agreed on, you know, it appears they don't. And now things like free speech, you know, equality of opportunity are controversial concepts. And that's been that's been something of a surprise.Chuck Warren: Have you noticed attorneys you work with who are on the left or, you know, have they changed on this. Do they feel things are going too far? In one extreme, I think they're.John Riches: Saying, I think there's a divide in the, you know, on the left between classical liberals and this.Chuck Warren: Israel massacre. What's happening? It's been interesting to watch. And I know this isn't your forte, but we talk about this a lot on the show. I've noticed a lot of liberal journalists, traditional liberals, I'll call them. They're appalled. Like, I can't believe how much anti-Semitism is on the left. It's like, well, you never talk to anybody because it's been there forever, right? Right. I mean, talk about people with their heads in the cloud. Do you find that type of eye opening moment has come to some of these folks on the attorneys on the left you've known and you respect, just like, oh my gosh, what is going on here? Yeah.John Riches: And I've had I've had conversations with some that say, hey, look, I mean, I've been so disenchanted with what's happening with the progressives and this, this, you know, this animosity towards free speech that it's made me want to leave, for example, the Democratic Party. But I feel like it's necessary for me to stick around so that there's an adult in the room and so that there's a sane voice. But I think they're that voice is becoming quieter and the progressives are becoming louder.Chuck Warren: Yeah. I don't know where they go. I know we've had that on the right. We have our Never-trumpers or Trump. Of course, our side, in all their self-righteousness, stomp their feet, held their breath and just felt like, I'm just going to leave and take my ball and go home. And it's been an absolute catastrophe that they've done that because there's not this intellectual rigor of debate in the party right now. What else is Goldwater working on right now that you feel our audience should know about?John Riches: All kinds of things? You know, we do a whole lot of things where we try and protect taxpayers against subsidies. We got a case going up to the Arizona Supreme Court next month on an issue where City of Scottsdale is subsidizing one of its favorite parties. We're always working on people's right to earn a living, right? So everybody has an inherent right to work in the job of their choice, free from government interference. Courts have sort of relegated that right to second class status. So we're frequently in courts arguing.Chuck Warren: Talk a little bit about that, about the hairdressers and so forth. Occupational licensing talk a little bit what Goldwater has helped do versus your Michelle Ugenti sponsored the bill. Governor Ducey signed it. You folks are intellectual power behind that to a degree. Explain what difference that made for people. Sure.John Riches: Yeah. So you think about this about 50 years ago, only 5% of jobs required an occupational license, a government permission slip to work in the job. And it would be like lawyers, doctors, things you'd think about today. Depending on the state, it's about 25% to a third of all jobs require an occupational license. And some of the stuff is bizarre.Chuck Warren: Is that because of certain people in their industries have gotten together, created a cabal, and said, you need to be licensed? Precisely.John Riches: It's rent seeking. You know, it's rent seeking. It's a lot easier to go to the government and ask them to prevent competition than it is to actually compete and beat your competitor.Chuck Warren: I don't think people realize that's where a lot of it comes from, right? I saw it a lot. My dad owned a dental lab, and they're always trying to get people to have to be licensed to do it. Right now it's medical, I get it. It's a little bit different than nails or hair or, you know, things of that nature, but it does seem like it comes from people who've done well and have time to devote to let's create a trade organization. And then our next step is let's get these suckers. All licensed here.John Riches: 100%. Yeah. You'll like this story. In Florida, they decided to license florists. So if you wanted to sell flowers, you had to take a test. And then the second part of the test is you had to make a floral display and show it to a panel of licensed florists, and only if they deemed it sufficiently beautiful could you have the privilege of selling flowers in the great state of Florida.Chuck Warren: How long ago was that?John Riches: They still have the licensing requirements.Kiley Kipper: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.Chuck Warren: Is Goldwater do anything in Florida to knock down that nonsense? It is the free state of Florida, so I've been told.John Riches: So there was a case. In fairness, there was a case I think brought it a few years back that that attempted to challenge it. And I think they had some some victory in there. But the the licensing regime is still in place.Chuck Warren: Well, that sounds like something DeSantis probably should. Sounds like something he'll do if he gets excited about it. Yeah. You had a question. You know, I was just.Kiley Kipper: I was just thinking about why licenses are necessary in the first place. Because if I'm going to like my hairdresser and she doesn't have a license, but she cuts my hair, well, then I'm going to keep going to her. If she doesn't cut it, well, then.Chuck Warren: You go elsewhere.Kiley Kipper: You go elsewhere.Chuck Warren: Yeah. I mean, I get it for like, doctors I get for attorneys for medical.Kiley Kipper: Stuff and nails. I do because.Chuck Warren: They're basic things now. So I'm sure now for medical boards you have to pass some other sort of DEI training, as well as actual medical things that make people get better. Right? Yeah.John Riches: They're building all that stuff into a lot of licensing requirements.Chuck Warren: So we got we got a couple of minutes there left. How do people stop this? What do they need to do to prevent this die, this progressive organ control your thought patrol progress first.John Riches: Notice it. I mean, people got to got to understand this is happening, you know, throughout government, throughout universities, throughout K-12. So, you know, figure out what's going on in your school district, figure out what's going on in your state universities, identify the problem first, and then, you know, be willing to stand up. And sometimes that takes takes courage. You know, people don't want to get quote unquote canceled. But, you know, if there's a professor that's like, hey, this training's going on, I shouldn't have to do it. I shouldn't have to take this test where they're telling me what the right answer is. You know, it requires people willing to say, this is wrong and we shouldn't be doing this.Chuck Warren: So it's a really good point. I think people I think it's a problem is it takes people like you because most people don't have the time to spend on these issues. I mean, they've got a, you know, a lot of people working two jobs now trying to get extra income. They got their kids, they got soccer practice, all the things you do except during the day. You get to be sort of this watchman at the tower doing this. One final thing. You recently had a new baby. Yep. And you had a son before. What? How has fatherhood made you a better attorney?John Riches: Oh, that's a that's a really interesting question. I guess maybe fatherhood at bottom makes you more empathetic. And I think a lot of attorneys lack in empathy, you know, of course, for opposing counsel, but maybe even sometimes for your own clients. And I think, you know, there's nothing like having responsibility over a human life, developing a person's character. And, and, you know, being able to achieve those really important things that make you more empathetic and focus on the things that truly matter in life.Chuck Warren: 15 20s left. What's the hardest part about being a father for you?John Riches: Making sure they're protected while also giving them the freedom to grow?Chuck Warren: That's hard. You can scrape your knee. I just don't want you to break the leg. Got one of the two, right? That's right folks, this is thank you, John Richards, for joining us from Goldwater Institute. This is breaking battlegrounds. You can find us at Breaking Battlegrounds. Vote. Pay attention for our podcast. Coming up, we're interviewing former Jamaican ambassador Don Tapia. This is breaking battlegrounds. Have a fantastic weekend. Share the podcast. We love you guys. Take care.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.Chuck Warren: Welcome back to Breaking Bad Grounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren with Kiley Kipper. Sam is out with the sniffles today. We are honored for this portion of the show to have my friend and community leader, ambassador Don Tapia. He's former ambassador of Jamaica, and he's been a community leader and led a business here in Arizona for many years. He's also served on various charitable boards and whatever you think in Arizona, that's happened in the last 30 years, 40 years John's been doing it. Don's been doing it. Sorry, John. Don's been doing.Kiley Kipper: Just moved from John to Don.Chuck Warren: Yeah. Ambassador Tapia, welcome to the show. Well, thank you very much for inviting me. Well, we're so glad to have you on. So what was the process like becoming an ambassador?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, the first thing is, is you've got to be nominated, of course, by the president of the United States. And whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, it's great an honor to have the president nominate you. And then after the nomination, the process is you've got to go through the confirmation. And that's a confirmation of the US Senate. And you have to go and visit Washington, and you must make your rounds to the senators and so forth to let them ask you questions and so forth. And one of the things that always set me back is that what they call a motor, a motor, a motor board, and what that is, is that you go before the the opposition, which would be the Democrats, since I was a Republican, to go before this board and they take you down the road, believe me, they take you down the road with questions and so forth. And I always remember one I sat across from Menendez's attorney, know his office, and he said, I've been a liberal Democrat all my life, and I'm going to die a liberal Democrat. And of course, there's five other people in the room. And so you sit there and you listen to the questions and so forth. So when it came around to my time to respond, I said, well, I'm a Republican, but if in fact, I'm confirmed as a US ambassador, I will represent you as a liberal Democrat because I represent the American people. On which side of the aisle you're on, it makes no difference. And after the after we got through with that as we were walking out, he says, that's the best answer anybody has ever given me in 20 years that I've been on the murder board.Chuck Warren: Oh that's amazing. How many senators did you have to visit with?Ambassador Don Tapia: I visited with probably about 15 to 20, basically the foreign minister, the Foreign Relations Committee, and that was.Chuck Warren: Over a couple of days.Ambassador Don Tapia: They had oh, no, that's over. You got to go with their schedule. So that could be over a couple of weeks that it could take place.Chuck Warren: Once you got the phone call until you were confirmed. How long did that process take?Ambassador Don Tapia: Just about 11 months.Chuck Warren: It's a long process.Ambassador Don Tapia: It's a long, long process, yes.Kiley Kipper: So is what is that seat open? And then the president nominates someone. Or does every time a new president come in, a new nomination happens. You got to keep.Ambassador Don Tapia: In mind that it was some trying times back there. So Trump being the president and you coming in normally you would be you would be confirmed through, you know through a a committee. And then it goes to the floor and the floor then would actually call you up and it'd be unanimous. But because of the situation in Washington at the time, they were taking individuals. So we had to wait and wait and wait until he got called up. And out of all of them by acclamation, there was only two ambassador nominees that went before the full the full Senate, and that was myself and the one out of Georgia. There was only two of us that was that actually had to go through the complete roll call vote.Chuck Warren: Really?Ambassador Don Tapia: Yes. We thought that was pretty good. I came across out of all of the 100 senators, I got 68, I think it was 68 US senators across the aisle, which meant that I had Democrats and Republicans across the aisle. You're a.Chuck Warren: Bipartisan choice.Ambassador Don Tapia: I'm not real sure about that because you know it. But it was by eye that year was the highest that anybody ever received. Going through confirmation to the Foreign Relations Committee.Chuck Warren: We're with  the honorable Don Tapia. He's a former ambassador to Jamaica during the Trump administration. What being an ambassador, what did you think it was about going in and when you left, how had your opinion changed on the role?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, going into it, the first thing you got to look at is what is an ambassador? You know, what does the duties of an ambassador? And I always relate it to being the CEO of a large company. And that's basically what you are. You're the ambassador. You're the what they call the commander, the chairman of the board. When you go there, you have an embassy. And I had just under 500 people at the embassy that reported to me in different agencies. I had 18 law enforcement associate companies, or you might say, units that reported to me across the board from the CIA, down to the FBI, down to, you know, the. Dea and so forth. So you go all of those people were reporting to you to tell you what's taking place in the not only in Jamaica, but in the world.Chuck Warren: As an ambassador. Let's say today is supposedly the day of rage. Hamas has asked people to go out, express their rage. What would you be doing right now as an ambassador in Jamaica with such a warning throughout the world today? What would you be doing?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, let's take a step back and talk about Martin Luther King Day. You know, when we had the we had the Black Lives Matter that was going on and throughout the Caribbean and throughout the world, right at the embassy, of course, you have you have people showing up, you know, to demonstrate. And one of the things that I did is you have your detail. You're always around with your detail, your security detail. One of the things that I did that surprised everybody in Jamaica, and in fact, even the Caribbean, got a lot of a lot of press on. It is the fact is that I went out into the Black Lives Matter demonstration. And when I walked out there, they were all aghast at the US ambassador, who would actually walk out of the embassy and walk into a demonstration, right to meet with the people.Chuck Warren: Yeah, it would be. They wouldn't. They don't see that. No.Ambassador Don Tapia: And I'm not real sure of the way that with the organization that's out there now demonstrating that you would want to be in that, in that group of people. You know, it's it's a different type of you're talking about terrorists versus a demonstration. Correct. So that's one of the things that you're seeing here in, in the US that when you look at the demonstrations taking place in New York and in Los Angeles and so forth, Hezbollah, and you're seeing things that that truly we never have seen on our on the US soil, where you see terrorists. Actually, I shouldn't say they're all terrorists, but yet the the matter that they're, that they're demonstrating against or for is terrorism. It has been terrorism. So that's one of the things that you look at. And you're going to ask me about, about what my thoughts are about what's taking place in. Yeah.Chuck Warren: Yeah. What would you do as ambassador to prepare your staff today and obviously protect them and so forth on this type of day?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, they tell you to, to stay in place, which means when they say that, it says stay where you are, don't go out in the streets, don't get involved, stay where you are. And that's what you basically train. And we actually have things within the embassy that you train. All the people that went something like that happens to stay in place. So if they start storming the embassy like they did I did a few years back, that's different. You have there's no way that you can control that. There's no way that you you have your of course you have your military there, that that guards the gate and so forth, but there's not enough of them that could take that could stop a major demonstration coming over the wall of an embassy in Jamaica.Chuck Warren: How many people worked at the embassy? I mean, you told us you had this big crew, about 500 people. How many people were career people that worked at the embassy had been there for a decade plus.Ambassador Don Tapia: There's no such thing as a decade plus. Plus in an embassy. You're all your all your organizations that are that are assigned to the embassy is a three year, basically a three year run. You have your career, people that come in and they they're there for three years. The worst part about that is that that on their second year, they have to bid out to their next job.Chuck Warren: Oh, okay.Ambassador Don Tapia: They actually have to bid out. So you have them for one year when they knowing that that that they're leaving within a within that year period of time to go to their next assignment. So that's one of the things I hold the career people or the people in the State Department that are in the US embassies because they're traveling around the world. If you really want to, if you really want to see the world, join the Foreign Service, because that's where you will see the see the around the world. And if you have children, they'll get an education around, you know, different countries around the world and so forth.Kiley Kipper: So did did you find that people would join to see the world? So they would say, I'm going to go work at this embassy for three years, and then I know that I can be assigned to another one. Is that kind of their goal or.Ambassador Don Tapia: I don't think that that's anybody's goal to know that, you know, it sounds you're going to keep switching. It sounds, you know, romantically, you know.Chuck Warren: It sounds like the Navy recruitment. Right.Kiley Kipper: So they would prefer just to stay in like, well, there's an assignment.Ambassador Don Tapia: Or I think that they would like to stay longer. But you've got you got a three year because keep in mind, in two years you're only there two years and you're bidding, you're bidding out for your for the next three years or next four years. So and you're still maintaining your position there and in the embassy.Chuck Warren: What do you feel the difference is between ambassadors like you who are appointed men and women of great integrity, background substance versus these great career Foreign service folks who are appointed? What do you feel the difference is? Is it that folks like you, who have been appointed and not been part of the Foreign Service, just comes with fresh eyes? Is that helpful as an ambassador, to come in with fresh eyes and say, we can do this better?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, let's take a look at a career, a career ambassador. In an appointed or a political ambassador. A career ambassador, of course, is is a employee of the State Department. Keep that in mind. So for them to get things done, they have to actually more like tag based constantly with the with the State Department to do anything if they want to. If I wanted to talk to if they wanted to talk to, let's say, the DEA director, they actually would have to go back to the State Department to have somebody within the State Department make the appointment, tell them what they want to discuss with and who they wanted to talk with. Well, as a as a political appointment, you're you're appointed by the president of the United States and you're representing him directly. So therefore, you pick up the phone and I've talked to the vice president, I've talked to the secretary of defense and so forth, where you pick up the phone and you just call the secretary, or you have your secretary set up an appointment and you and you can get more things done as a political appointment than you can as a career.Chuck Warren: That makes sense in your weekly schedule is ambassador, how much time were you actually at the residence versus being out and about in the country?Ambassador Don Tapia: I started at 730 in the morning, got home normally about 4 to 6:00 in the evening.Chuck Warren: And so you're out every day?Ambassador Don Tapia: Yes, yes.Chuck Warren: What is something about Jamaica that the American public doesn't know about it? Besides, it's a great place to go for a vacation. What? Tell us about the people. And I'm sure you fell in love with these people. You feel like it's probably a second home now. Tell us a little bit about that.Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, Jamaica, there's a couple of things. There's the security thing that that you've got to look at. One of the things is Jamaica is sits in a location, of course, in the Caribbean, as we know, just south of, just south of Cuba. There's only two ways into the Gulf of Mexico. And that's one of the things that a lot of American people don't realize, that you either go north to come into the Gulf of Mexico, and that takes you that takes you by the D.R. and into by Cuba, into the Gulf of Mexico. If you're coming out of the Panama Canal, which most of the big ships are coming out of the Panama Canal going into going into the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans to drop you to drop the goods off that they've picked up in Europe is the fact is that you're going by Venezuela, you're going by Colombia into the Gulf, into the Gulf of Mexico. So what we have seen in one of the things that you've got to look at is the CCP, which is the communist, the Chinese Communist Party, which becomes a factor around the world. And that's one of the greatest threats that we have. It's not Russia is a threat, of course, it's they bring Russian. But we found out that Russia in the Ukraine did not did not have the where to to really fight a world war.Chuck Warren: Right.Ambassador Don Tapia: That's some of the things that you look at as an ambassador, because you were involved looking at what's taking place around the world. These are some of the things that that I think the American people in the Caribbean is seek the Caribbean actually is our first line of defense. When you look at it, the first line of defense. And during the Cold War, we put a lot of money and a lot of effort into the Caribbean. Once the Cold War was over, after after Reagan, we more like took him, took advantage of them. We we didn't pay attention to them. We paid more attention to to Europe, in South Africa and so forth than we did to our own home base. You might say to the beaches that that really protect us in the long run.Chuck Warren: What should we do? What should be the policy going forward in the Caribbean from the United States government?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, I think there's a certain areas that that need to be that need to be beefed up. You know, whenever you get down to El Salvador, down in that area and so forth, that the people that are coming from El Salvador, El Salvador, what you found out that just crossed over the border just about two weeks ago ago, about 50,000 Venezuelans that are coming into the US. So when you turn around and you start taking a look at who is coming across our border today, it's very scary because there's busloads of Chinese. How did the Chinese get to get to Mexico?Chuck Warren: Yeah, they didn't walk. They didn't.Ambassador Don Tapia: Walk. So you so when you start taking a look at the people that are crossing the border, we have no way to vent those people. No way to vent. Thousands of people crossing the border on foot. So we have a we have a major security line. And I always say that a country is not a country without a border. We are not a country today. We have no border to the south.Chuck Warren: No, we do not. We do not what right now, there's a there's a number of countries that do not have a United States ambassador for various reasons. And I'll get into all those. But what does it mean when a country does not have a United States ambassador in it? Who's running the the.Ambassador Don Tapia: Charge d'affaires is he's the second. Normally when the ambassador there you have what they call a DCM, which is actually the deputy commander, your deputy chief of staff is what they call him. Once that once the ambassador leaves, his title changes to charge d'affaires, which means that he is in charge. Charge of thee takes the place of the ambassador. He didn't have all the authority that the ambassador would have, but he has the authority to run the embassy and to take care of the day to day business.Chuck Warren: But to the president of a country or so forth. It's not the same as having the actual ambassador there. They know there's somebody, they know there's a manager at the place, at the business. They know there's somebody there, maybe an assistant manager. But the person who really can give yes or no is not there. And that and that has to play some role.Ambassador Don Tapia: That's exactly right. Is that without the ambassador, the ambassador in many countries, believe it or not, the ambassador has the same voice as the prime minister or the president of that company, that country. Because the fact is, he is the representative, the direct representative of the United States. So his words and what he says is taken very seriously. In a lot of times you can get yourself in trouble. So you've got to watch. You've got to watch what you're saying, too.Chuck Warren: How many how many countries had ambassadors in Jamaica when you were there?Ambassador Don Tapia: You know, that's a good question. I'm not sure, but we I know that I could be out probably 17, 17 or 18.Chuck Warren: Did you did you become close to to any particular ambassador from another country?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, the Chinese ambassador kept trying. The Chinese ambassador kept trying to meet me. And of course, my my detail. Your detail comes up and whispers in your ear as you see that the the Chinese ambassador would like to to meet with you and shake your hand. And I my comment was, I don't believe that I need to shake his hand, you know so so. But the differ the different embassies had would have certain kind of affairs and so forth that you were invited to. And a lot of times you sent your deputy instead of instead of you.Chuck Warren: Interesting, interesting. Well, ambassador, we sure appreciate you coming on the show today. You've been fantastic.Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, thank you very much. I wonder how I looked before.Chuck Warren: You look fantastic, and I appreciate your service. Would you do it again if they called you tomorrow? Would you do it again?Ambassador Don Tapia: You know, that's a that's a question that I get asked a lot. And it'd have to be depending on the, on the country and so forth in which you're going to. The reason at my age is I had a choice of a couple of countries, but I went to pick when they gave me Jamaica, I thought, you know, at my age I'm not that far away from the US. If something happened, I could be flown back to the US. So you take a look at things. I always, I always like to say that I'd like to be the ambassador to to Iceland, but that's. But that is covered by a different. There's three countries that are in there Iceland, Newfoundland. And I forget what the other. It's either Finland or one of them that actually has the responsibility. Oh, Norway. Norway actually has the responsibility for for those three areas.Chuck Warren: Oh, fascinating. Well, ambassador Don Tapia, thank you so much for coming on our show today.Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, thank you for the invite. And I'm.Chuck Warren: Anytime.Ambassador Don Tapia: We're happy to come back and give you you know, I had I get a lot of calls from still from around the world of people that I know, ambassadors and so forth. And we talk about the systems, the things that are taking place. And like in Israel, we it's been a lot of chatter on that one, I bet.Chuck Warren: What are they saying about it?Ambassador Don Tapia: Well. That you've had so many, you know, upstarts with Jamaica in the in the I'm sorry, the Israel and the Palestinians, you know, you've got to come to some some conclusion and let it and run its course. That's a heck of a thing to say, because that means that there's going to be a lot of a lot of deaths and so forth, a lot of innocent life, a lot of innocent life, a lot of innocent people that are going to that's going to suffer. But at the same time, are we going to continue? Are you going to let Israel and the Palestinians fight this battle every 10 or 15 years and so forth? This one seems, from what I from what I've been reading and what I've been told by some people that are actually in Israel, that this has been planned out for for quite a long time.Chuck Warren: Sounds like a year or two where I've been reading this morning. It's been coming out. It's you know, it is. We have the Wall Street Journal reporter on last week who covers Eastern Europe. So he's been covering the Ukraine war. And we asked the question, how does this come to a resolution? And his comment was someone has to win. That's and I feel sadly you brought up. I appreciate you bringing up the stark reality and not talking a word salad here. Somebody has to win for this to sort of end. And I was sort of stunned. He took it was, you know, a very unreported like statement. But he's been there for 12 years, speaks Russian and just says someone has to win. You know, you could do a peace agreement, but it's basically a recess. They'll be back at it in a year or two again. And that's what we're seeing in the Middle East and our prayers are there. Sadly, a lot of innocent people are going to lose their lives on this.Ambassador Don Tapia: That's a very dangerous spot in the world, because if that place explodes, keep in mind you've got Egypt, you've got Iran, you've got Syria, you've got Jordan. Well, you're talking now. You're talking about not just one country that can that the explosion can take place. And if it does World War, World War two will look like it. It was a training.Chuck Warren: Well, we can pray for some wiser heads prevail. And everything right now is what we definitely need in the world.Ambassador Don Tapia: All right, I know our prayers. I'll tell you. You have to pray. Pray for the people that are suffering, the people that are going to suffer, you know, and and of course, our people, that we have to pray for them and hope that we can work our way through this. But we haven't been able to. So I somebody would call me a hawk because the fact is, I say, let's get let's get the job done one way or the other. Like you say, somebody has to win, right? Let's get this. Let's find out who's going to win and move on from there. We haven't done that. It's over the last 50 years. We have not done it since the young Kippur War.Chuck Warren: Exactly. Well, ambassador, thank you for joining us today.Ambassador Don Tapia: Well, thank you for the invite.Chuck Warren: This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.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.Chuck Warren: Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck. Weren't my co-host, Kiley Kipper today. Kiley. Thanks. You've done fantastic today.Kiley Kipper: It's very exciting to be here.Chuck Warren: Very, very exciting here.Kiley Kipper: The big.Chuck Warren: Roll. Kiley and I before the show were harmonizing, trying to figure out a closing song. We'll get with you on that in a couple of weeks as we practice a little bit more. So Kiley  what do we have on Kiley's corner today?Kiley Kipper: Well, I felt since today's Friday the 13th a little spooky season. October I wanted to talk about the world's largest pumpkin. Okay, so Travis Gienger, he has been growing enormous pumpkins for 30 years now. It's one of his hobbies. He grew one so large that this year it was the it weighed as much as a small car.Chuck Warren: Really?Kiley Kipper: Yes. But in his previous year. So in 2020, he grew a pumpkin named Tiger King, which weighed £2,350. Last year, Maverick, his pumpkin was £2,560. Still hasn't did not beat any world records, however. This year it was the 50th annual World Championship pumpkin Weigh-off and he has been growing Michael Jordan for six months now, and he is the world's largest pumpkin, officially weighing £2,749. And he transported this. He drove 35 hours to this competition with this pumpkin in the back of his truck.Chuck Warren: How how did he grow them so big? I mean, what's different from, say, you and I go in our backyard and grow pumpkin? What does he do that gets them so big? Is there a certain a certain seed he's using? What does he do?Kiley Kipper: You know he does not tell his secrets. However, he did say this pumpkin. He sat out there and he watered him every 30 minutes. I'm not really sure what his day job is. However, he sat out there. Well, he's probably even watered him.Chuck Warren: Does he look older? Is he retired? Maybe.Kiley Kipper: No, he's not retired every 30 minutes.Chuck Warren: Huh?Kiley Kipper: Yeah, every 30 minutes. He was watering because he really wanted Michael Jordan to beat it this year.Chuck Warren: So what we're seeing is he's the poster child for the termination of remote work and get back in the office. Is that what we're telling us?Kiley Kipper: Yes, yes, yes, yes.Chuck Warren: Every time they said he says I'm on a conference call or something. We know he's out watering his pumpkin.Kiley Kipper: He's on mute, but he says that he names all of his pumpkins fantastic. But he names all of his pumpkins off of what's happening in this year. So this year it's 2023, so named after Michael Jordan. But you know Tiger King in 2020 and so so be it. That's how he names him.Chuck Warren: Well Kiley I think this was a needed ending today to our show where there's a lot of chaos going on in the world. Folks, this is breaking bad grounds. We hope you have a great weekend. You can of course find us on Breaking Battlegrounds dot vote. We also ask you to go to anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen to one of our 12 stations that has our radio show on every week. We hope you have a great weekend! Stay safe!- Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds Radio! In this week's episode, we dive deep into a range of thought-provoking topics with our fantastic lineup of guests. First up, we have Thomas Grove, a renowned WSJ reporter, who provides valuable insights into the latest developments in Russia and Ukraine. Then, our friend of the show, Dan McLaughlin, also known as the 'Baseball Crank' on Twitter, joins us for an engaging conversation. Dan shares his thoughts on how to refocus the media's attention on critical issues beyond Trump, including discussions on polling trends for both Trump and Biden, the upcoming presidential election next year, and his insights into the Speaker's race.And, of course, we can't forget Kiley Kipper in Kiley's Corner! Tune in to hear Kiley's unique take on various subjects this week, including the mysterious world of Tupac, the Citizen app, and the enchanting puffin season in Iceland. Join Kiley as she unravels the story and discusses its implications, all from her corner of the studio.-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds-ABOUT OUR GUESTSThomas Grove covers the confrontation between Russia and the West for The Wall Street Journal. He is based in Warsaw. Before that Thomas covered Russia for more than a decade and he has traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion. He writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and the Russian defense sector as well as great power competition.He started his career in Istanbul with Reuters writing about the economy and the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP. Thomas has since reported from across Central Asia, the Caucasus region and the Middle East.-Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute. He was formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York City, a contributing editor of RedState, columnist at the Federalist and the New Ledger, a baseball blogger at BaseballCrank.com, BostonSportsGuy.com, the Providence Journal Online, and a contributor to the Command Post. His writings on politics, baseball, and law have appeared in numerous other newspapers, magazines, websites, and legal journals.-Transcription Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, fantastic guests up for you today, folks. We're going to lead things off with Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. He's been covering in depth the confrontation between Russia and the West. And obviously he is based in Warsaw, previously covered Russia for more than a decade. He's traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion, writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and Russian defense sector, as well as great power competition. Thomas, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program.Thomas Grove: Great. Thank you so much for having me.Chuck Warren: Thomas How did you get started in this business? It seems like you've done great reporting, starting with Reuters and now you've just planted your flag out there in Eastern Europe. Was this a career path you wanted or you just sort of fell into it by doing various stories?Thomas Grove: That's a really good question. I studied Russian in college, and I was just fascinated by kind of what was the kind of referred to more frequently at the time as the kind of the post-Soviet space. So all of Central Asia, the caucuses, Russia itself, you know, it was all just wild and fascinating. And I couldn't get enough of it coming out of college. So I basically after that just basically washed up, started with Reuters, and things just kind of took on a life of their own, really. So spent spending ten years in Russia, you know, we left just right before the war, just a few months before, luckily. And I went to I was going to Israel just to kind of start something completely new, turn a new page. And that lasted about 4 or 5 months. And before I knew it, I was back in Ukraine again. I'd covered the 2014 war and and now it was kind of I really didn't expect. However, when I went back in 2022 that I'd be seeing the biggest land invasion in Europe since the Second World War. It was obviously a surprise. At least it was for me. You've been so much for others.Chuck Warren: You've been to Ukraine a lot in person. Do you feel sort of like you're reliving a World War One video from junior high? I mean, is it you know, here's one thing you see on our side. You see these you don't get to see many photos, but you see some about the trenches and the the bloodshed. And then you see Ukraine where it doesn't look like anything's going on. And there are some on the conservative side who say, see, this isn't a big deal. Tell us a little about what you see on the ground when you go.Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, that's a really that's a great question. I think probably the best way of explaining it is is explaining the journey. You know, you have to take to get there. You know, there's no airports in Ukraine. So anybody who who makes that trip, they come from most of the time from Poland. You know, we're just based to and you cross the border and you're in western Ukraine and everything feels, you know, you're in Lviv and things are bustling. You know, stores are open. It's a, you know, a beautiful city full of, you know, 17th, 18th, 19th century buildings. You know, it's it's gorgeous. And you think, well, you know, it is hard to reconcile that with what, you know, lays ahead. And obviously, you know, the closer you get east, closer you the further you get south, you know, it becomes that that reality becomes a lot more dramatic and the scenes are a lot more dire as well. And, you know, it doesn't take long, you know, until. You are in Bermuda and you see things that you simply can't imagine happening in the in Europe in the 21 century.Chuck Warren: That would that would seem to me to be a very interesting article for you to work on, because I think there is this this disconnection here with the American public.Sam Stone: There's definitely not much understanding of what the real conditions.Chuck Warren: And so and I think it's part of the problem with the funding, to be honest with you. I think if more Americans knew what was really going on in the Eastern and south and there was more pictures because we live in a very social media picture, visual society, I think there'd be some difference there because what you see, especially on conservative media, because, you know, Sam and I always have this conversation with people, look, both, you know, Korean Ukraine has corruption and Russia is bad. They're not mutually exclusive. You know, you just can't let a country do this to another country. And people say that and they sort of, you know, nod their shoulders and say, yeah, you're right, you know, But I think that type of thing would happen. So let me talk about something's happened this week, which has been quite amazing, actually. And you wrote about it on October 4th. Russia Withdraws Black Sea fleet vessels from Crimea base after Ukrainian attacks. And my understanding is in your articles is because Ukraine can't use the drones or the missiles from France or England or even the United States to attack outside of certain areas, and especially in the sea Black Sea, that the Ukrainians have created their own missiles. And, you know, tell us about that.Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, what we're seeing is kind of the culmination of a few things here. And, you know, on one hand, you know, we have to think about the fact that in the first weeks of the war, much of the Ukrainian navy was was destroyed. And so, you know, it didn't have the kind of it was certainly not on an equal footing with Russia beforehand in the Black Sea. I mean, the Black Sea fleet. If we could just take a moment to talk about what this is. I mean, this is kind of a jewel in the crown of Russian naval power. You know, it's kind of it is what it is. It is the the Russian empire's power projection, the most important power projection it probably had in kind of the latter part of the Russian empire. So it's in the Russian narrative and the Russian myth. It's an incredibly important fleet. Um, you know, started under Catherine the Great, you know, if you can imagine kind of what that means for people. And so it's only been, you know, vessels have only been withdrawn from Sevastopol three times as far as we know, you know, um, since, since they started to base there and twice during the two World wars, one in the First World War, just after the First World War and the other one right in 1942.Thomas Grove: So you have this incredibly important symbolically and just in terms of capabilities as well, naval power that's there in the Black Sea, which Russia's, you know, has been very proud of. And then you have, you know, the Ukrainian navy, which, you know, they mentioned before, was was kind of wiped out. And so what the Ukrainians have done is they've just been improvising, basically, you know, and I think they kind of did this very early on that was kind of, you know, one of their first impetuses was to to really try to to improvise. They didn't have the the defense industry that that Russia had. So they had to basically kind of try to make things that that would work on the fly. Right. And so what we've seen is these Neptune what are anti-ship missiles but have you know and was used effectively against the Moskva you know Russia's flagship last year, we've seen them start launching their own kind of naval drones, these kind of unmanned surface drones. And so, you know, they have some capabilities of their own. But, you know, two of those, you know, they've added what the British and the French have given them.Thomas Grove: You know, the the storm shadow missiles. And so I think it was a very potent kind of mixture that sorry here, the terrain behind me apologize for that. But yeah, so you had a very potent mixture of of of of weapons that Ukraine was using against Russia in the Black Sea. And so, you know, it made the officers on the ground feel unsafe because they flattened and flattened it. But they, you know, sent, I think, two rockets right through it, the Black Sea fleet headquarters. And then you saw an attack on a submarine and a landing vessel not too long ago as well. And so I think it was it was really a calculation made by the Russians that this is just it's not worth it right now. They weren't really the Russian ships weren't able to affect the grain corridors along the sea as much as they hoped they would. Be able to. And apart from that, I think they realized that if they were to just withdraw a little bit further east, it really wouldn't hurt their capabilities in terms of doing what they were doing before in terms of sending missiles into Ukrainian cities. It doesn't really make a lot of difference.Sam Stone: Their weapons have the range from those ships, regardless of if you move them a little bit.Chuck Warren: With Thomas Grove. Exactly. Thomas Grove, Wall Street Journal reporter. He's based out of Warsaw, Poland. We're going to call him the Indiana Jones of The Wall Street Journal because he seems to be going all the hot zones here in Eastern Europe. Let me ask you a question. In your article that we talked about, about Russia withdrawing from the Black Sea. They moved their ships to, you know, a new port in the Black Sea. And you made a comment that I thought was really interesting. You wrote, While the move may represent only a temporary measure to safeguard against further Ukrainian strikes, the logistical headache of relocating some of Russia's heaviest ships underscores the threat of Ukraine's strike capabilities. Why is that such a logistical headache? And I ask this because I think most people are like, I get on a boat, I turn the key, I leave the dock. Why? Why is this why is this such a logistical headache?Sam Stone: People do not realize.Chuck Warren: Oh, no. So, you know, it's like you always hear the old saying. It's like turning the Titanic. Why is it so hard? Why is it such a logistical headache to move them, though?Thomas Grove: Because I think basically you're talking about several kind of docking issues and you're talking kind of diverting the fuel and the supplies that you would need for for these crews to stay on ship or stay stay on board and maintain the ships. You know, we're talking you know, you're rerouting trains, you know, and you're trying to figure out exactly when that happens, where they come from, where those supplies come from. And, you know, this this is all and as we've seen, logistics has been has been a sore spot for the Russians.Sam Stone: Yeah, there's a there's the very famous military quote, and I don't know who came up with it but but said that bad generals talk tactics, good generals talk strategy and great generals talk logistics. As we're we're coming to the end, We have about a minute and a half left in this segment. We're going to be coming back with more from Thomas Grove, The Wall Street Journal, covering this. One thing I want to get into. Thomas When we come back, is, is there or do you see a solution to this that isn't a negotiated solution that costs Ukraine some territory they had before this invasion? And the reason I ask that and I apologize for kind of springing a lengthy question on you as we come to the end of this segment. But the reason I ask that is, is you just look at the demographics and, you know, there are as many military age males in Russia as there is, you know, total population in Ukraine. That's a really big mismatch long term in a war of attrition. How does Ukraine account for that?Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, I think if you were to talk to the Ukrainians, I mean, they would say that it's about defending your homeland and, you know, basically trying to fight off somebody who is trying to take your, you know, your very house from you, so to speak. So, I mean, I think there's no shortage of guts, as we've seen on the Ukrainian side. But I mean, I think, you know, we do have to acknowledge and I think I think the Ukrainians have acknowledged in conversations with Western officials that it is absolutely necessary to kind of maintain the flow of weapons if they're going to continue fighting. Otherwise, it really does become just just very difficult for the Ukrainians.Sam Stone: There's there's no way for Ukraine to supply its own armament needs in this war. We're going to be coming back with more in just a moment. Breaking battlegrounds. Back in just a second.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: All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone continuing on the line with us in just a minute, Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. But folks, you've been hearing me talk about Y refy for a while now? A lot of people are talking about this investment. So I'm going to just quickly review the basics with you. First off, it's true, you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. That's not correlated to the stock market. You can turn your income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There are absolutely no fees. There is no attack on your principal. If you ever need your money back and you'll get your monthly statement each month, No surprises if you're not sure. If you trust this economy, this secure collateralized portfolio may be a good option for you. Check them out. Invest Y refy.com that's invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888 y refy 24  tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. Thomas Continuing on, I hit you with a big long question. At the end of that, here's 30s. Yes.Chuck Warren: Solve the war for us.Sam Stone: Go ahead. Right. But just continuing on in terms of, you know, without Western support, as you as you alluded to at the end in terms of military support, supplies, civilian and military, there's really no way for Ukraine to stay in this war. They definitely have, as you you mentioned, a significant will to war, which is obviously a big deal when you're being invaded. You have much higher will to war. That historically has been a big decider in these type of contests. But Russia is still a behemoth with manufacturing, with a huge population base and a manufacturing base that far exceeds anything Ukraine has. So continuing on with that, how does Ukraine get out of this eventually?Thomas Grove: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it's a really important question. And I think one that, you know, everybody is probably thinking about right now. I mean, you have I mean, Russia's economy has basically switched to a war footing. And so, you know, you you had you had factories in Russia that were, um, you know, producing, say, a hundred train wagon cars a year and maybe two tanks. And now they're producing no wagon cars and nothing but tanks. So obviously, you know, there's a there's a great industrial capacity here. You know, all of Russia, just like much of the Soviet Union, had a kind of dual use capacity. Everything was there was a civilian capacity to most factories and there was a military capacity. And so you could kind of you could switch back and forth between them. Russia's obviously gone all in with the with the military capacity at this moment. So obviously that leads has left a lot of people wondering about what we do going forward. And so I think, you know, one of the things that's been talked about is a negotiated end to the fighting. And I think whenever we look at that, you know, on both sides, both sides see that as nothing but a pause in fighting. I mean, it's I think it's ultimately unacceptable for the Ukrainians to have Russians on their territory. And I think it will always be unacceptable for Putin and for Russia to have anything less than all of Ukraine. You know, unfortunately, I think a negotiated settlement will help stop things, maybe ease the burden for some time, unfortunately. I mean, I think I think unfortunately for Ukraine, I think a cease in fighting would probably favor Russia more, but it would just buy time for the next round of fighting, which, you know, could turn out very different differently from what we're seeing, you know, last year and this year.Chuck Warren: What a wonderful way to live, really in my eyes. Let's talk briefly here. You wrote about really interesting piece. I mean, you wrote about this in your article that Russia is constrained in the Black Sea due to the decision by Turkey last year to implement an international treaty that bans warring states from bringing additional warships through the Turkish straits, which is a strategic checkpoint, which means Russia can't bring ships that are based in the Pacific or elsewhere in. Right. And exactly. It's always amazing how Turkey pops up in all these conversations now, isn't it?Thomas Grove: Isn't it?Chuck Warren: I mean, it is. It's fascinating. It's fascinating.Sam Stone: They have always been really good at using their geographic centrality to European and Asian conflictChuck Warren: Everything you read about Middle East, the Ukraine war. Turkey is in there somewhere, right?Sam Stone: That's their location. Their literally central. Yeah.Chuck Warren: So. Yeah, exactly. So how has this hindered Russia?Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, so basically what you have to do, I mean, because because Ukraine has been so focused on the Black Sea fleet, I mean, obviously there's a lot of ships that are being that have been damaged right now. Well, you only have so many shops that can repair those various ships that have been hit, you know, And so if you're if you're backed up, if you're if you're if you're backed up, you know, you are it's like, you know, it's like playing a hockey game and you have three, three players out, right? So it's like, you know, quite honestly, if you can't bring more people in, more, more guy. Let me think back to the to the war. If you can't bring more ships in, you know, you're stuck with this huge disadvantage. I mean, you know, Russia has the ships that it needs to continue bombing Ukraine. I mean, let's not forget that. But in terms of what could do operationally in the Black Sea, it's been greatly hindered. And I think part of that speaks to why Russia has been not as effective as it would would like to have been in terms of stopping Ukrainian grain shipments, exports out of out of out of Ukraine and through the Black Sea.Sam Stone: Thomas This is a little bit of a tangent, but our navies around the world, looking at what's happened to Russia with this asymmetrical warfare and the the hits they've taken on so many of their warships from these drones and that sort of thing, are they looking at this and starting to reconsider how they're going to defend their own ships at sea?Thomas Grove: That's a fantastic question. I mean, I think I mean, I think the use of drones here has kind of revolutionized the way we think about a lot of things. And I think, you know, obviously, this isn't the only theater in which we've seen kind of naval drones pop up, but they've they've been pretty effective. And so I think people do have to account for that down the line. I have to admit, I'm an expert in naval power, but I would have to imagine that this is this is something that people who are much more intelligent than I am are thinking about a lot.Chuck Warren: So Russia pulled out of this grain treaty we had so we can ship Ukrainian grain throughout the world and alleviate poverty and food inflation and so forth. So my understanding from reading and I wish everybody here could just have a map of the Black Sea in front of them, which we're doing this on video. So basically the grain export now is they take they hug the coast of Ukraine, right? And then they go past Bulgaria and Romania, which are members of NATO. So Russia can't really do anything, right?Thomas Grove: Exactly. I mean, Russia has played it has played it a little bit dangerous and they've gone very close. Right. I mean, we have seen strikes on Ukrainian grain terminals that literally are miles away from Romanian territory, for example, right on the Danube River. So, I mean, they're they're not they've made some pretty risky moves. But so far we've seen, you know, whether or not it's because of NATO or whether it's, you know, for other reasons there. Yeah, we've seen them. We've seen them back up, but the ships have hugged the coast and that's exactly what they have to do.Sam Stone: Yeah. We have just about a minute left here. Thomas. How do people follow you and your work? Obviously, folks, you should be subscribing to the Wall Street Journal if you're not already. I think that's one of a handful of papers that if you want to be informed, you need to have in your inbox. But Thomas, how can folks follow your work specifically?Thomas Grove: I mean, you know, we still use is it Twitter that X.Sam Stone: I started calling it Twix.Thomas Grove: Twix. I think that looks pretty well. I'm You drove.Chuck Warren: TG Grove. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks. Thomas. Thanks a million. And stay safe out there. And we hope you'll join us again in the near future.Sam Stone: Yeah. Chuck, we're going to be coming back here in just a moment, folks. We're going to have a friend of the program, Dan McLaughlin. He is the baseball crank at baseball crank coming.Chuck Warren: On and National Review, the primary job, baseball, just a hobby. National Review.Sam Stone: Let's talk about the important stuff here, Chuck. We're going to have this guy on and.Chuck Warren: Thomas Grove is fantastic. Oh, he was phenomenal. We got to have him back on. And literally, people really should look at the Black Sea map today. You'll understand a lot more of what he's talking about in Turkey. We got to we got to get flake on. We got to get Ambassador Flake on talking about.Sam Stone: Turkey in just a moment. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Moran and Sam Stone. Thank you to Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. Fantastic information about Ukraine there. And up next, friend of the program. And it's the right time to have this gentleman on. Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at the National Review Institute. He's also on Twitter as at baseball crank, which gives you an idea of the most important topic we're going to discuss today. Chuck and Dan, who's winning this next round of playoff series and who's your World Series pick? Dan McLaughlin: I mean, you know, I think this is one of those years when your presumption has to be that the favorites are going to win, that we're going to end up with the the Braves and of all teams, the Orioles. You know, certainly you can't count out, you know, the real veteran teams like the Dodgers and the Astros, but the Dodgers in particular are just awfully banged up.Sam Stone: The Dodgers pitching is a is a nightmare right now. Like they have nobody. Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, No, they're they're a mess. They're a mess. Um, and you know, I mean, you just you don't want to get into October having felt like you've already burned most of the gas in your tank.Sam Stone: I see. Chuck I'm actually calling it for the Orioles. I think that's just the team that's just scrappy, fiery, tough right now.Chuck Warren: I wouldn't be surprised. I think it's going to be the Braves or Phillies that win it all. All right. So let's talk a little politics here. So last night and this morning, if you turn on any of the cable news or broadcast news, it's all about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. But, you know, we have Iranian spies infiltrating the White House. We got bond yields soaring, China's economic downturn. We've got Ukraine. People can't buy a home. It's 8% mortgage Now. I'm guessing by the end of the year it could be nine. But we just keep talking. Trump How do we get the press serious about serious things? Dan McLaughlin: Um, you know, I think that I think as long as Trump is there, they're not going to be and they're going to be caught by surprise by a bunch of things. I mean, the polling the polling at this point is just comical if you look at the general election matchups. Right? Because on the one hand, you look at like, you know, you look at these polls that are like, oh, you know, Trump versus Biden on the economy. It's like Trump plus 30, right? Trump versus Biden on national security, like Trump plus 25. What's the bottom line of this poll? Biden's ahead of Trump by two, you know, or you get on the other side, you get like voters, you get you know, you get an electorate where they're like. So 67% say that Trump should be in jail. So what if we ask these people who should win? Oh, it's like, you know, Biden 46, Trump 46. Right. So literally, people are just they're looking at the economy and everything that this White House is doing. They're looking at Joe Biden and saying anybody but him. And then they look over at Donald Trump and all the drama and just everything with Trump and they're like just anybody but him. And then you ask them to choose between the two and they're like, Oh, man.Chuck Warren: I literally saw this morning before we started the show a poll that was done of new registered voters the last six months in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. And they have their Trump's winning by five with these new people who moved into the state and registered to vote. So Trump's winning by five in Georgia. He's losing by five of these people. And Arizona, he's basically even with them in Nevada. But what was interesting, the next question was, do you support a Republican majority or Democrat majority in Congress? It was like literally 15 to 20 point Republican majority in each of those three states. So people really.Sam Stone: Are Trump is an enormous drag and people.Chuck Warren: Really are making a decision. I think I mean, I think you're going to see so many split tickets this time unless something dramatically changes. I don't think we've seen it before. And it's going to make every political scientist lose his mind. Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. And I mean, it is entirely possible that that if it's Trump, Biden, you're going to get more money and energy than usual behind third party tickets. I mean, you could easily have three of those tickets, right? Because you got Cornel West, you got RFK Jr, you got the No Labels people who are talking about maybe running Larry Hogan or Joe Manchin. And, you know, it could end up looking like, uh, I mean, you know, I remember the what was it, the Texas governor's race, I think, in 2006 when Rick Perry was running for re-election. They had a four way race. They had Kinky Friedman in there. It was like this wild thing. But, you know, of course, our history with four way presidential races is not good, right? So those have typically ended in chaos or worse.Sam Stone: Yeah. I mean, one one thing, Chuck, is we're heading into this and everyone's pointing at RFK. He seems to be pulling more from Republicans and libertarian leaning folks than he does from Democrats.Chuck Warren: It seems like it.Sam Stone: Is that. Is that. Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. I mean his, his his he he really has succeeded in alienating, I think the Democratic base.Chuck Warren: 100%.Sam Stone: Well, and unless you tow the line 100%, you're going to alienate the Democrat base. I mean, Kirsten Sinema has voted literally like twice in her life outside of outside of the Democrat majority, and they ready to burn her at the stake for it. Folks, we're going to be coming back with more in just a moment from Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review and National Review Institute. He's a fellow there, formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York, a contributing editor at RedState, columnist at The Federalist and the new New Ledger. I can't speak today. And a baseball blogger at baseball Frankcom That's what we're saying is the important stuff and 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 Bad with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, I can't say enough about investing with Y refi. This is a fantastic opportunity. You need to just go and check it out for yourself. Go to their website, invest Y Refy.com. That's invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a ring at 888. Y Refi 24. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. That's not correlated to the stock market, where you'll know what each monthly statement is going to look like, but no surprises. Again, that's invest refi.com or give them a call at 888 refi 24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.Chuck Warren: Dan, you recently came out with an article in the National Review entitled What's a Ban? What's Not a Ban? Talking about what progressives call everything a ban. Now, could you give us a little overview about it? And what, for example, on books, what do they consider a ban? And we'll go from there? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. I mean, one of the leading sources on book banning and there's all this alarm. Oh, book banning. There's all this book banning going on is a group called Pen America, which has at times in the past been a more reliable kind of just pro-free speech group. But they've clearly taken a very partisan tack on this one. And their definition of a book ban extends all the way to anything that is age restricted for very young children. That book has been banned even if they have a book that was already age restricted. And they say, well, you slightly changed what grade it was, you know, it was appropriate for. That's considered a ban, which is ridiculous, particularly when you consider that, you know, I mean, you've got a lot of the books that there are controversies about, you know, sexually explicit books or books that, you know, are otherwise just you would think that everyone acknowledges that these are books that are inappropriate for very young children, you know, and yet somehow this is getting turned into a ban. And my point is that that's, you know, this extremely vague and broad definition of ban not only misleads the reader of these reports when they give statistics, it's also inconsistent with how, you know, left wingers look at what is and isn't a ban in other contexts.Sam Stone: Dan They also want to pretend, I think I think I have two points here, but they also want to pretend that these books are the equivalent of, say, The Catcher in the Rye. But I've been actually getting a bunch of them because this is relevant to a lot of the campaigns here. Reading through them myself, these are not exactly profound literature for the most part that they're talking about. And quite frankly, I can't read any of them on the air here with you. I mean, right now with our adult audience, the Federal Communications Commission would throw this program off the air if I read these things. How has this discussion gotten so out of hand, that saying that that type of book can only be read by a ninth grader and up becomes a ban? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, No, it's ridiculous. And it's yeah, I remember Ron DeSantis did a press conference on this where he was reading out some of the books that were in, you know, lower grade children's libraries. And literally all the TV stations were like, whoa, we got to cut out from this because we can't have him say this stuff on the air. Um, it's it's nuts, but it's, you know, part of it is I think that simply the hunger for partisan point scoring, but part of it is also that there is kind of a, you know, an ideological faction that genuinely wants to indoctrinate kids in a certain sexual ideology. And so, you know, they really, really don't like it when these books get taken out of circulation because they want to push this on kids.Chuck Warren: Which is just weird, right? I mean, let's just call it for what it is. That's weird. The sexualization they're trying to do with kids.Sam Stone: Sexualization of other people's children.Chuck Warren: Yeah, it's.Sam Stone: Really, really odd. Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. No, it is weird and creepy, and we shouldn't be afraid to call it weird and creepy.Chuck Warren: You know what we should do? Dan, we need to fly you out here to Arizona. Then the three of us on a show will start reading. We'll pick 50 of their top books that are banned and start reading, and we'll have an FCC former employee in here and some of the producers of the local TV stations and tell us what we could put on air and what we couldn't. That would be a real interesting show. That actually would be fun. Just tell us, would this pass could you put this on the 6:00 news? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. You know, do it, do it live. So the cops come up and raid you in the middle of it.Chuck Warren: I think we're going to look at doing that. We may get you out here to do that. That'd be fun for us. All right. So Hillary Clinton being the menace. She is came out and said there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the Trump cult members. Your thoughts? Dan McLaughlin: You know, look, I give Donald Trump credit for the one thing that he has genuinely done for the the quality of American politics was to finally put the Clintons out of business. So it is good it is a good thing that she's just giving these interviews instead of, you know, having being speaking from the Oval Office or anything. She's weird and creepy in her own way, in a sort of more menacing way. But it's also she's bitter, you know, She's just bitter. And look, you know, are there people who are Trump supporters who are, you know, absolutely could use to be to be unplugged a little bit from how they follow? Trump? Absolutely. But, you know, when you start talking about it in phrases like, oh, you know, we need formal deprogramming of these people, and you've been in the government for years, that's that takes on a much more menacing cast.Chuck Warren: Oh, very much so. Very, very much so. All right. Let's talk about Biden did a 180 on the border wall and it's been fascinating to listen and watch the various Democrats try to explain this. And first of all, what do you think would have happened if Trump said, I am waiving 26 laws to build the wall just unilaterally? What would been the press reaction? Dan McLaughlin: Oh, yeah, no, there would have been all sorts of stuff about tyranny. And there was I mean, at the time when Trump was trying to do various things to get, you know, a modest, fairly modest amount of the wall built. And Biden is is also building only a fairly small section of wall here. Let's not. Right. Let's not kid ourselves. It's not he's he's just doing what he thinks is the bare minimum.Chuck Warren: But even but even 100 yards is a wall. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, he's doing everything he's complaining about all the time. Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if your position is well, you know, there are better ways to cover the border than a wall, and then you rethink that. Well, okay, that's a bit of a change of position. But people reassess the situation. But when you're like, oh, you know, the wall is like a violation of the poem on the Statue of Liberty. And this is like, you know, fascist, fascist knight falling over the country and everything. Maybe, maybe that's a little bit of a problem when you go turn around and have to do it yourself.Chuck Warren: Well, Dan McLaughlin, he's with The National Review. Dan, Speaker's race, what's going to happen? I mean, this has been sort of a complete cluster in a very untactful way of saying it. But what happens with the speaker's race? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, I can think of a number of ways to describe what's going on, none of which one could say on air. I mean, now. Well, of course Trump had to had to wander his way into that first. He was of course, he was taking in the accolades of a few people who were like, Why don't we draft Trump for speaker? And then he threw his support behind Jim Jordan, who I think is not really well suited to the job and probably not a guy who's going to get the support of the caucus. I mean, we're in a weird position, right? Because if you held a vote just among the caucus, you'd get 210 votes for McCarthy because that's what you just got and eight votes against him. And so it's this it's this weird math where, you know, you can't get anybody elected unless you've got everybody on board. You know, I think Steve Scalise is the most naturally unifying figure there. Obviously, there are some concerns about his health. He's being treated for cancer. But, you know, he seems to feel that he's up to doing this. And, you know, but but now they're going to they're going to have a TV debate, which is just ridiculous. So this is just no way to you know, it's no way to run a circus.Chuck Warren: Well, I mean, how this never was going to end. Well, former Speaker McCarthy, I mean, when you go on, say, one person who has a bugaboo on his tail about it, it's never going to end well. Right? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. I mean, the problem from the start was, I mean, first of all, they have such a small majority that they need to get everybody to agree, which gives an enormous amount of power and leverage to anybody who wants to be disagreeable. And then one of the conditions he agreed to as a condition of being elected speaker was that anybody could bring a vote to the floor at any time to unelect him. And that just that just gave everybody a veto over him, and particularly the people most likely to use it.Sam Stone: You know, and I agree with everything, Chuck, you're getting at there. My one point with this is that the major condition McCarthy agreed to was doing the spending bills individually and in order. And then his leadership, they did not move those forward in a timely fashion.Chuck Warren: And he quickly blamed them for it, by the way.Sam Stone: Yeah, but but at the end of the day, we didn't hear anything about it. So if that's a failure of communication on McCarthy and the leadership's part, okay, but they need to rectify that. I mean, at some point the getting back to regular order was a very legitimate thing for that caucus to demand, and it would be hugely beneficial if they do. What kind of commitment are you going to get from the next speaker to follow through with that? I guess that that would be my question. Is it going to get better or is this just a totally pointless fight? Dan McLaughlin: Well, and the problem is, you know, I think McCarthy was making progress in that direction. I don't think he was meeting all of his deadlines. But, you know, again, you can't meet all your deadlines without the cooperation of a whole lot of people, some of whom threw sand in the gears because they wanted to stop this. I mean, you know, I think it's kind of telling that Chip Roy voted to keep McCarthy because Roy was really among the people who were holdouts in January. He was sort of the leader of the people who were very serious about imposing particular process. Right.Sam Stone: Gosar and Schweikert here in Arizona, same story.Chuck Warren: Yeah. Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. And Roy has been kind of vocal about, you know, obviously he has some things he thought McCarthy should be doing that he wasn't. But, you know, the fact that he voted to keep him suggests that that, you know, he thought that they could still make some progress on the budget.Chuck Warren: Presidential race. So Trump has this huge double digit lead. Okay. Who do you see possibly being the two other candidates right now that could have the possibility of something happens of becoming the nominee that that names, not Trump? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, I mean, I think it seems now pretty clear that I mean, Ron DeSantis is obviously still in the number two slot he has held by any realistic measurement, the number two slot all along. Obviously, there's always the question of whether people are going to drop out if they, you know, somebody like DeSantis decides that he doesn't have the, you know, as many resources as he expected. But but, you know, he's got a lot of money. And I think right now, the person who has edged out everybody else for the number three slot is Nikki Haley. You know, I think she has really used the debates and used her focus on New Hampshire to effectively push Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Chris Christie off to the side. And they're the only other people running who are actually running to win in any sense. I mean, you know, Vivek Ramaswami is really there to to help Trump, to try to improve his brand, to maybe get in a spot in a Trump administration if he's not running to win.Chuck Warren: Right. Right.Sam Stone: With Haley in particular. And I think this truck is Chuck and Dan has plagued DeSantis also. We have just about two minutes before we come to the end of the program here. But has she done enough or have any of these people done enough to actually outline a positive future vision for America? It seems like it's kind of like set talking, stayed talking points and attacks on Trump and not much of a where's the Reagan, where's the hopeful positive future? Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. And I mean, granted, you know, Reagan Reagan established himself as a tough guy before he got around to reminding people that he was also, you know, a genial and optimistic character. I mean, one of the things DeSantis certainly has done and I think that he can do more effectively than Haley, is to just say, you know what, I'm going to govern the way I've governed in Florida. Look at my record, which is sometimes a good predictor, right? I mean, George W Bush, for example, on domestic policy, his agenda in Washington was pretty much exactly what he did in Texas. But I think, you know, I'm not I don't think that DeSantis or Haley has really been ambitious enough in really laying out a full view of what their presidential agenda would be. But frankly, I think, you know, I think the voters I think the voters are at the point where they deserve to have a smaller debate stage where they. Can push the major candidates on that and they deserve to hear from Trump.Sam Stone: Yeah, I thought it made a lot of sense for Trump to skip the first debate, but I was bitterly disappointed in him skipping.Chuck Warren: He's not he's not joining he's not joining any of these debates ever. Dan, thanks a million for joining us again. Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute. You can visit him on Twitter at baseball crank and follow his writings. He does great stuff and really suggests you take a look at the piece on book banning and just the word banning being used by progressives and conservatives and so forth. Yeah, and.Sam Stone: Make sure you stay tuned, folks. We have a podcast segment coming up, if you like our podcast, if you like our show, make sure you're downloading that podcast. It's available wherever podcasts are available. You can also find us at Breaking Battlegrounds. Vote and stay tuned because we've got Kiley's corner coming up. The irrepressible Kiley Kipper, she found good news.Kiley Kipper: I did. I did.Chuck Warren: Dan, thanks a million. Have a great weekend.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: All right. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. We're going to lead off with Kiley's Corner here in just a moment. And then, Chuck, I want to get to something that's happening here in Arizona. You sent me the article. I'd actually already read it this morning. Arizonans are soon going to be drinking their own pee.Chuck Warren: Yep, that's true. Yeah. Kiley, pick up your newspaper and read it every morning. You'll learn things.Kiley Kipper: This was not part of Kiley's corner.Chuck Warren: No, drinking your urine is not part of Kiley's corner.Kiley Kipper: But continue. Okay. Well, the first story I want to start with is I was in Seattle this weekend, and last week I had downloaded an app called the Citizens App, which I've had like a couple of years before, but I don't think it was like as developed as this is now. But you can pretty much see like all the crime that's going on around you and all the registered sex offenders and everything like that. So naturally, first of.Chuck Warren: All, why did you download it?Kiley Kipper: Because someone was telling me how you could see the the sex offenders that are around you because my mom just got a notice in the mail that a sex offender moved into the neighborhood. So I wanted in Arizona or Washington in Arizona. So I wanted to see if there was any that lived in my neighborhood. So was there. Yeah, there's one there's one from a crime in 1990. Um, so I, you know, got to keep my head on a swivel. So naturally, I open it up.Sam Stone: You know what? Look, honestly, if you committed a crime in 1990 and you've done nothing since, you're.Chuck Warren: Probably okay.Kiley Kipper: Well, that's a sexual crime. I don't know about the other crimes.Chuck Warren: That's true. That's true. Right. Don't generalize. All right. Go ahead Kiley.Kiley Kipper:  And it was on children, which.Sam Stone: Yeah, okay. Not.Kiley Kipper: No, but good.Sam Stone: I'm all for just castration, and then we can solve this problem.Kiley Kipper: Yeah. So I open up my app when I'm in Seattle, and I just want to read what was all within less than a mile from me that was occurring.Chuck Warren: And this was at a hotel, right? Yes.Kiley Kipper: So I was at a coffee shop technically, but it was like right downtown.Chuck Warren: But downtown Seattle. Yeah. Okay.Kiley Kipper: Right next to the baseball and football stadium. It says Person fighting security guard at Central Library Report of woman wielding a knife. Body found report of a man armed with a knife steals items from a shop and shoplifting suspect threatened to kill employees at the drugstore.Chuck Warren: You feel like the body found would get a little more detail?Kiley Kipper: Yeah. No, it just says police are responding to a report of a body found.Sam Stone: You know what, though? That's so in the age of fentanyl. Oh, yeah. The police reporting and responding to bodies found. I can tell you from talking to my cop friends here in Phoenix, it's every day.Chuck Warren: It's just a body from a drug or from a drug overdose.Sam Stone: Yeah, there's a body every day somewhere. Basically.Chuck Warren: You have to put that screenshot on.Kiley Kipper: Yeah, I will. But I just thought that was I was just I mean.Sam Stone: One of the things so, so one of the things I actually, I was reading another piece about Seattle and they were talking about the significant rise in ODS and they're going to start having like everybody in the city, they want to start carrying Narcan basically, right?Kiley Kipper: Oh, yeah. Yeah.Sam Stone: And here's the thing. This did not this was not the case five years ago. These new drugs are totally different and they're trying to use these death tolls, whether it's here in Arizona for the heat issues, whether it's in Seattle. They're trying to get in any little litany of liberal policies out of this. But at the end of the day, I got to tell you, Chuck, I have a lot less sympathy for this issue than I used to in that there's resources, there's help available, there's ways to get off the street and get. I don't want it. No, they're not. They're choosing this lifestyle and this lifestyle ends in death because.Chuck Warren: And they don't want to change because they don't want to know. I mean, I mean, you know, some that is going to sound harsh to the audience, but there are people who literally just say, I don't want to.Sam Stone: All the time.Chuck Warren: Yeah. And and what do you do to force somebody saying, but we don't want you to die. Right. Right. We like you around.Sam Stone: Well, this is where and so interestingly for all the bagging on Trump, one of the things I appreciated when he was president was a lot of his policies actually worked. They were kind of common sense. A lot of them work. If you go and look at his current platform, one of his things on on this drug addiction is, look, we need ways to put people in treatment against their will. That is common sense. The left will lose their mind over the idea they have when we put it in Kari Lake's platform here, they have another. But at the end of the day, that's the only solution here to this problem other than just letting them die.Chuck Warren: Yeah, correct.Kiley Kipper: But a great lead way is we were asking about the sex offender that's in my neighborhood is the it was a child crime. So if you guys follow us on Facebook and Instagram or Twitter, you should if you don't. But I posted a poll this week because.Chuck Warren: I then I talked one morning. We want to see if people supported capital punishment for kidnapping a child that they don't know. It's not even a relative.Kiley Kipper: But I said so the question was, do you think kidnapping, abuse, touching a child in any inappropriate way? And I posted this on social media, Twitter. I got. 89% say, yes, they support the death penalty. 5.6 say no and 4.9 said undecided. And then on Facebook, 97% said yes and 3% said no. And as I was reading, because for the no, there was an option to say why. And on Twitter I got no depends or like I didn't get great explanations. But on Facebook they still lean in like no, he should suffer an entire life sentence. Why take him out of his misery or yes, life without parole? Most people, you know, stuff like that. Why are we taking him out of his misery? Make him stay there. So those were the knows where Twitter was. I had some people try to explain it to me. I said, okay, explain it. They want it. But I thought those numbers were.Chuck Warren: How many people replied to the poll?Kiley Kipper: A total of 490 between Facebook and Twitter.Chuck Warren: It's funny about explaining things on Twitter. I got Sam involved in a little discussion this week because, as you know, my big thing right now is this national debt. I think everything that is that is the hub. Everything else is spoke to the wheel, right?Sam Stone: Like, for instance, we were talking about Ukraine in the first segment with Thomas Grove and continuing to fund their operations. Right. Right. That's tied up in our debt discussion right now. That's tied up. If we did not have the national debt crisis, we have funding, Ukraine would be a nothingburger.Chuck Warren: So so Sam and I sometimes I respond to people and I especially do they have a Ukraine flag on it. Now, folks know I'm a conservative who does not think Russia should be in Ukraine. So I'm not going to back away from this belief. But we talk I put a comment on somebody saying we need to focus on the debt. Right. The national debt. And so this person goes and starts. He says we need to raise taxes on the rich and raise taxes, period, primarily on the rich, but we want to raise taxes.Sam Stone: He was very specific on the rich. He did not want middle classes because we.Chuck Warren: So then so I asked the follow up question, what would you cut? And they were they were just so minor and so dumb that immediately understood as all these people who I engaged with don't understand the crisis at all. Right. So, of course, Sam jumped on Shea, jumped on the guy.Sam Stone: So he ran into a more intellectual set of Republicans than he was planning.Chuck Warren: But my favorite thing of it was he was going to cut defense as he has a Ukrainian flag and his profile. And does he not understand where that money's coming from?Kiley Kipper: Wanted to cut it in half.Chuck Warren: So it's like these.Kiley Kipper: More than half. Yeah.Chuck Warren: It's like. So I like to ask these questions to see where people are and the lack of knowledge on the most basic fundamental issues facing our country is horrifying.Sam Stone: Oh, it's amazing to you know, he actually brought up something new or that I haven't seen in a while, which was Right. We need to get rid of sugar subsidies. Well, there's no such thing. We have price supports. Right. So so we set minimum prices and then we tax sugar coming into the US.Chuck Warren: And the sugar subsidies are a big deal for liberals because it goes to climate change, right? So what they want to do is get rid of the sugar down in Florida. So when you talk to the people opposed to sugar harvesting down in Florida, where do we get sugar? We'll go from Mexico. Well, don't they have the same problems? Well, yeah, but it's a Mexico. They literally don't care.Sam Stone: No, this is this is a trope. And then he pointed out oil, which, by the way, folks, oil is not subsidized by the federal government. No.Chuck Warren: He just wasn't bright.Sam Stone:  No. You know, but but this is a bigger point when it comes to oil, like liberals all the time use. Oh, there's $30 Billion in oil subsidies. You know what subsidies they're pointing to? They're pointing to the same business tax deduction as everybody else. So, like, if I spend $1 million in improving my business and buying equipment, it's a write off. What's a write off for the oil company, too? But there's no difference. But somehow they think this is like handing away the cookie jar and then they think they can tax the rich. The taxing the rich is literally a swimming pool and they're demanding an ocean.Chuck Warren: Yeah, 100%.Kiley Kipper: Yeah. He was a no on my poll as well, he commented. He doesn't follow us, but he's sure.Chuck Warren: We've engaged him. He's a follower. I hope he's downloaded. Yeah.Sam Stone: He's got us listed somewhere.Kiley Kipper: He does. Okay. But I want to talk about this Tupac stuff. Okay. Arrest because he's been.Chuck Warren: Dead since the 90s, correct?Kiley Kipper: 1996, Maybe I yeah, maybe I was two years old, so I never like super got into the Tupac like conspiracies, which surprises me. Oh, no, I was.Sam Stone: I was. I was exactly.Chuck Warren: That. It is a true it's a conspiracy like Elvis being alive and living in Mexico.Kiley Kipper: Yeah, it is. Yes. Yes. But they made an arrest last Friday. And as they described it in a long awaited breakthrough in one of the hip hop's most enduring mysteries. So they arrest Keef D and he was a gang leader, but they don't believe he was the actual one that made the shot. Oh, they describe him as he was the ringleader. So he ordered the shot and provided the gun.Chuck Warren: He did the planning.Kiley Kipper: Yes. Which. So I'm going to go back to the long awaited arrest breakthrough in 1998. So a year later, two years later, he doesn't interview, telling a cable channel that he was in the front seat driving the car and he slid the gun into the back seat, of which that's where the shots were fired that killed Tupac. So he didn't Tupac didn't die immediately. He died a week later in the hospital. But. Then he goes on and he releases a memoir a couple of years ago, 2019, a tell all memoir, where he, again admits to these interviews, says he was the one that provided the gun. It was a drive by shooting and basically talks about what happens. So if he hadn't made so he's been talking about it publicly for a while now. So to me, I'm like, where is this mystery up? Because the dude's been talking about it.Sam Stone: But investigators apparently were sitting on it, right? Like letting him incriminate himself further.Kiley Kipper: Yes. So they basically said Davis's own public comments revived the investigation and he and it proved that it was premeditated. So that's what they were trying to prove. That was premeditated, that it was planned. Yeah, because prior to Tupac being shot, he had beat up Davis's nephew.Chuck Warren: But he was shot in a car right.Sam Stone:  No, he was leaving a casino. So he was.Kiley Kipper: Shot in a carjacking?Chuck Warren: No, no. He was shot in a.Sam Stone: Car outside the vehicle when he was shot? No, he was in it. No, no, no. I remember that from the time the photos and all that kind of thing. He was outside.Kiley Kipper: So how everyone's describing it right now, he was shot in a car. Is he was in a black BMW being driven by his record producer. And he was also hit with one of the shots but didn't die. And now he's serving 50 years in jail. This is all gang, by the way, like two gangs, Right?Sam Stone: Right, right. This is a Bloods and Crips rivalry that goes back.Kiley Kipper: So then they say that the white Cadillac, which had four people in it, Davis being the driver or at least described as in the front seat, he and the two people in the back seat shot Tupac in a BMW, a black BMW. That's all I keep finding. So but he's claiming now that he made a deal with La PD that he could make these comments publicly, which is why he's been so public about it and that they couldn't incriminate him because they wanted more information on it.Chuck Warren: I think there was a movie on it this past year.Kiley Kipper: It was 2019.Sam Stone: It was, yeah, a major motion picture.Kiley Kipper: Oh, yeah, yeah.Chuck Warren: No, I mean, it wasn't even an independent.Sam Stone: Documentary type thing. Like.Chuck Warren: Like real actors, you know? Yeah. Sorry for all you struggling actors out there, but people who make a living acting. But yeah.Sam Stone: So that's really it's kind of one of the really interesting thing, not about the origins of rap, which were not really truly gangster. Yeah. But in the 90s there was this breed of actual gangster under Suge Knight and all those folks that really invaded the industry. And that's where this all came with.Kiley Kipper: Because as I'm reading this, they all have the nicknames, the rap names that I, I've never even heard of them before. But when you.Chuck Warren: Get your rap name.Kiley Kipper: K Swizzle.Chuck Warren: Put up on, let's put up on our social media. The survey Is Tupac still alive? And if so, where is he living? All right, all right, all right.Kiley Kipper: So maybe so. Okay, I guess. You saying you remember that he was walking out and it was outside and then now all these reports of them saying he was in a car?Chuck Warren: I've always I've always heard I've always read and heard he was in a car. I mean, I wasn't there. So I don't know.Sam Stone: He was he was going into his car. So the car was pulled out. They watched him walk out and and shot.Kiley Kipper: Him because this was right after he had just beat.Chuck Warren: Up working. He had Sam assignment for next week for you to find the actual documentation. Was he walking in or out of a car? Was he shot in a car? Was driving? Because I think everybody who somewhat knows about this believes he was shot in a car drive by a show. So I'll find out.Sam Stone: But one of the interesting things so I didn't know that he hung on for a week because they announced if I remember, they announced at that time that he had died on the scene. Now, that might have been to protect him, right. Thinking that, you know, a follow up hit would come through so he.Kiley Kipper: Could get away and go live in.Sam Stone: So he could get away and go live in Antigua.Chuck Warren: Yeah, exactly. So.Sam Stone: And drop 75 new albums. Yeah.Chuck Warren: This is fantastic. I want to talk to you about this one last subject. So you probably get it too. I'm pretty stringent when people try to follow me on Twitter. Like you get a lot of these bots. So for example, if you have below 50 followers, I just I block you. I don't want you on. I don't care if you're on my side or not, but I had this person try to jump on Mary DeMaria. She had 2700 following 44 followers. So I go and quickly look at who they are. And I don't mind Democrats. I just don't want insane people. Her first post that I pull up anthropological literature frequently refers to third gender Native Americans.Sam Stone: But blocked.Chuck Warren: Marianne's blocked. Right. I'm just done with her. Really. But that brings me to a case here. The Free Press had a little snippet here that Larry Sanger, the creator of Wikipedia, went on Unheard podcast to slam the website he made. Sanger talked about how Wikipedia had been taken over by a small group of ideological aligned editors who assert their worldview over each entry. Quote, Eastern medicine is basically called quackery in dismissive, quite judgmental language and so forth is done, apparently without any compunctions at all. Then when it comes to Christianity, the viewpoint on Christianity given is the liberal one that would be found in mainline denominations and liberal Catholicism as opposed to the actual by Bible believing fundamentalism. And he goes on and on on. He's right. So, you know, we've talked about Sam's heard me. There's three pillars conservatives have just blown it on public schools, which you can easily take over by winning school boards. That's a that's a two for 2 to 3 cycle.Sam Stone: Thing that and governors.Chuck Warren: Right. But but.Sam Stone: But.Chuck Warren: But still but still school board school boards are a big deal. I mean, especially like state like Arizona and so forth. You should have the school boards, Right.Sam Stone: The one difference, though, is the governor can affect the schools of education in the university. Very true.Chuck Warren: Very true. So that brings me up. The second one is universities. We have just simply what you have is a lot of conservative donors, small business guys who love it. For example, ASU has got a lot of people who went there who have made money there, moderate to conservative. And I've seen it because I give a lot of money. I sit on these committees and they just go and they give money and say, Well, I'm gonna put my secretary on there or something. And they're not representing their values and donors have got to get more, you know, that would be a harder change. But you can start dictating what your money is doing. Well, liberal donors do.Sam Stone: Right? They are very, very specific.Chuck Warren: No, they go through it. They make it their own. And the third one is the third one is journalism. So, you know, they've gone and have a whole industry of putting these young progressives on papers. And what has to happen is conservatives need to do this. But it's not it's not that they just go to like The Daily Caller, National Review. They have to go work at The Arizona Republic, the Provo Daily Herald, The Colorado Springs Gazette, because that's where your news comes from a lot of times and people don't get that. And then the fourth thing is this social media online trolling thing like I'm ever going to accept. I mean, once you start telling me anthropological literature talks about, you know, the. Have a third gender. You're smoking crack. Yeah.Sam Stone: Yeah. No, you are in the service.Chuck Warren: Can really get involved. I mean, I think you can make the quickest change in public schools. And more than people realize. Sam's right about the universities, but the school boards do a lot.Sam Stone: Yeah, school boards do the two things. I mean, look, school boards can do a lot, but you're you're drinking from a poisoned well on two fronts because the teachers are getting from the various education schools are being trained for to be highly liberal. But also the textbooks. Yeah, that's a big textbooks are a big problem. There's basically only three textbook companies that provide the textbooks, and the left made a concerted effort to take them over for their ideology. They've been they've.Chuck Warren: Been smart about it. They've been smart about it.Kiley Kipper: I have one more story.Chuck Warren: Oh, okay.Kiley Kipper: A feel good story. So I can end on a happy note.Chuck Warren: Going to end on a happy note here.Kiley Kipper: Who knew? After listening to last week's episode in the week before, I was like, Man, I'm a Debbie Downer sometimes. So my feel good story. After reading this story, I was like, okay, now I have a new item on my bucket list, so I thought I'd share it with you guys. It's um, so every August and September it's called Puffling season in Iceland. Puffling season Puffling. Yeah, Puffin. So if you don't know. Heard of this? If you don't know what a puffin is, it kind of looks like a penguin. Okay? But basically they hatch on top of a hill and how they get how they live their life is once they hatch, they go into the out to sea and then they live there for like 2 to 3 years. And then they come back and they then they're safe for babies.Sam Stone: Because they're flightless.Kiley Kipper: But because they're flightless. Yes. Yeah. But because the lights in Iceland started confusing them because they would find the ocean by the moonlight. But all the lights from the city are confusing to them. So they'll fly into the city on accident instead of flying out to sea. So they have puffling control patrol where they run around like little families run around. And when you're on puffling patrol, you run around in any puffling you find you take them to a vet to make sure that they can survive before you just throw them off a cliff. But then you take them to the top of a cliff and you throw them off the cliff and then they fly into the sea and you basically save their life.Chuck Warren: Why aren't we doing this?Kiley Kipper: I know.Chuck Warren: I mean, Kiley and I want a baby elephant. Are we going to get a puffling now, too?Kiley Kipper: Yeah.Sam Stone: I saw I saw a network piece on this that was so fantastic. So they're interviewing and it's like it's almost all women that are rounding up the pufflings and tossing them.Chuck Warren: Then count me in there.Sam Stone: And so, yeah, so here's the great part, though. They interview some guy who does it, you know, they see him doing it and they're like, Hey, you're one of the few guys. And he was like, I'm single. Why do you think I'm here?Kiley Kipper: But it's so important. The guy.Chuck Warren: That takes a dog to the park, it's so.Kiley Kipper: Important because they only mate with one puffin the entire their entire life. They're monogamous and they only lay one egg a year. So, like, if they die or if they don't make it out to sea and come back, then they are they could go in danger.Sam Stone: A huge percentage get eaten out at sea anyway. I mean, really.Chuck Warren: Find some clips on that on YouTube and let's post on our social media so we know a puffin is.Kiley Kipper: Yeah they're so cute. Westman Islands is the the most populated one so that's I think where I have to go.Chuck Warren: Who is, who is the natural critter critter that tries to harm them and eat them.Sam Stone: Everything.Kiley Kipper: Probably like meat. Yeah. Anything out in the water.Chuck Warren: That's a tough they're.Kiley Kipper: Not great at.Sam Stone: Raptors, you know what I mean?Chuck Warren: Like that's a tough lie.Kiley Kipper: They're like basically penguins, so they're not great at flying. Like they got a short, but like, you can just throw them like a football.Chuck Warren: They said, Are they as cute as penguins?Kiley Kipper: Oh, yeah. They're might they might be cuter. They have like these big old colorful beaks.Chuck Warren: Why aren't we talking about puffins more?Kiley Kipper: I know what's.Chuck Warren: Going on here. Well, this is a wonderful Kiley Kipper Kiley's corner today to end it on. I appreciate it.Kiley Kipper: You have a big smile on your face. Well, I do now.Chuck Warren: I know there's a puffling out there. Anyway, folks, thank you. We hope you'll go and share the podcast with your friends and family and co-workers. Our episode today is fantastic, especially if you want to learn about Ukraine. I thought the information there was fantastic. This is breaking battlegrounds. You can also find us at breaking battlegrounds dot vote or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great week. Get full access to Breaking Battlegrounds at breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com/subscribe

Congressman Ralph Norman discusses the impact of housing interest rates, inflation, and the looming government shutdown. Political reporter Jon Levine shares his experiences dressing as Senator Fetterman and delves into the complex world of Hunter Biden and the Biden Administration. The show also explores intriguing cases in Kiley's Corner and discusses the unaffordability of homeownership and the importance of accurate statistics.

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 GUESTSCongressman 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.-TRANSCRIPTIONSam 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