Burgess Owens, Jackie Toledo, and Mark DeLuzio on Fighting Wokeness in Congress
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. We're going to jump right into it because on the line we have someone very special in a very special place. You're probably never going to hear this on the radio again. Congressman Burgess Owens of Utah's 4th Congressional District is on the floor waiting for a vote. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, my pleasure. I'm actually in the cloakroom. The cloakroom is the place we've got to pull off to the side a little bit. And we have these five-minute votes that we're going through. So I'm looking forward to chatting with you guys. So what is the vote for this morning, by the way?

Well, there's actually two of them before the left abortion, all-in abortion. It's worse than it was before Roe v. Wade. So we're obviously the party. We're voting no on this one. Is this the one where they say abortion up to birth? Is this the abortion up to birth bill? Yeah.

Oh, my goodness. And actually, it's after the birthday. If you take it to New York, it's after birthday. It's truly, truly radical. And I know they're trying to get a lot of steam off this, but I think a lot of good people, once they begin to realize what the left really does want to have happen, we're just not there. And say goodness, our country's not there. So we're going to push back on this really hard and get the message out of where they're trying to take us on this.

Will there be any amendments introduced during this vote today about exceptions of like rape and then says, you know, those basic standards that people support?

No, there's no amendments right now. We have a couple of suspension votes, but basically a lot of that has already been done in the committee. The things that were voted out, the amendments voted out. So this is pretty much a clean, this is pretty clean. Well, and Speaker Pelosi has basically limited any kind of amendments throughout the last number of years, right? I mean, she just controls these bills, hands them out right before the vote and says, here, go vote.

Yeah. So it's what's amazing. There was a time when the Democratic Party, I think it was the same was rare, exceptional during an exception. But right now they're all in. It's a party of death. And I want people to understand that good people in the Democratic Party know that the Democratic Party is not what it used to be when I was a Democrat.

It's something totally different. They revel in the fact of ending life. And now it's to the point of the bachelor's birthday, the day of birth. They feel okay by ending life at that point. So there's a choice our country has to make. I'm very confident that...

As a nation, we still love life, and we're going to continue to be blessed by it as long as we do that. I mean, this is basically the Roman abortion where you decide after the birth, take a look at the child. If you don't want to keep it, you put it out on the doorstep overnight to die. They're basically at that point with their legislation now. That is vile. Yeah.

It's been identified. And again, I'll say this, as rough as this conversation is, it's tough to see where it's heading off to. I believe, Chuck, that I think the last few years have been able to kind of pull back the curtain. Americans are realizing that we have one side of the aisle that's really radical, is

It's been taken over by the far, far left. I call them Marxists and socialists. And unfortunately, until we the people get it right, so we start having some bipartisan conversations, do what makes sense, make sure we're represented, but we all have to have the same endgame. The endgame has to be a country that protects and rebels in our culture. It has to be that endgame. We might find different ways of getting there, but we have to have that as the endgame. And I think this November,

We're going to get – we the people back engaged, back voting, and we're going to put together legislation that will have us more of a bipartisan moving toward our culture country again. I'm looking forward to being part of that. Well, let's talk about a minute about the wokeness that's going on in culture. So the New York Times yesterday had an article called With a Few Able and Fewer Willing to Serve. It's about the military.

And anyway, so we have this group text, and we were talking this morning, and a friend of our son is in the Army, and he was a number-ranked junior officer in his infantry brigade. He was an undergraduate, and they're booting him out. Can you hear me? Burgess? Hello? Burgess?

No, Burgess, we can hear him, but apparently he can't hear us at the moment. Oh, yeah. Can you hear me OK? Yes, we hear you just fine. Sorry, guys. No worries. No worries. So we were talking about New York Times has an article yesterday about the troubles of recruiting for the U.S. military. And we have a friend that son is in the military. He's number one ranked junior officer in his infantry brigade. And he's an honor graduate of the class. And he's being kicked out because he's not vaxxed. Is this any way to run a military? Yeah.

It is not. I understand the thing about wokeness and the hard left. There's nothing they've ever built. There's nothing they've ever envisioned. They destroy. They break down. And then they have a tendency of not wanting to be held accountable for that. Again, no, the military is not going to work. You have colleges that are no longer working. You have things as simple as that we all should agree, NFL and NBA, sports, that should be working to pull us together. That's not working because you have wokeness.

but again the key is we're waking up this stuff and we're now going to be able to uh... one of the things that we look forward to being able to as soon as we get back into power as a party is address this idea of all these good people good service people men and women doing what they have to do but they caught on the wrong side of the wall and see what we can do to make sure they get the opportunity to be back into the profession they want to be back into those are the things we're looking at

I just know we have a party that understands this and we want to make sure we we right the ship. And it's going to be up to we the people to really show up, show up and be engaged. And we make sure we do it in such a way that the message is clear that we want to get back to normal. Congressman, what I what I think is so amazing and so disconcerting, frankly, is the country, even in electing Joe Biden, did not vote for the woke Democrat Party. They thought they were voting for a Clinton Democrat.

And frankly, Bill Clinton today would be in the Republican Party, along with JFK and every Democrat from the past who's worth their salt. Bill Clinton in the 90s would be. Yeah, Bill Clinton from the 90s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's because it was a different day. I mean, the days of Ronald Reagan and...

And that group, where they can really work bipartisan, is quite different. What's happening is this. And I think part of it was the fact that we had COVID, number one. Before that, we had Trump, which was very, very pro-American. And American people are recognizing we want to get back to that, I

I think the left is so panicked that they cannot progressively move the way they have been for years. They're doing everything that makes absolutely no sense. And people are going through misery right now. They seem to not care. I mean, you look at inflation, you look at gas, you look at the border, everything you possibly think of what they touch is turned to dirt. And that's because they've never built anything. But at the same time, we're no longer talking hypothetically what the left looks like. We don't have to say this is what happened to those socialists right or Marxists right. You can see it.

And I think when American people see it, it's a different understanding of what we need to do now to get it back. We don't want misery. We don't like the businesses. We don't like anger. We don't like destruction. We don't like our churches being burned down. We don't like people being bullied and their business being burned. We don't like that. So now that we see what it looks like, we're going to come back to, again, the direction that we all know we need to be to make sure that our kids can have a great future and we move forward with hope.

Congressman, this is Chuck. Since January 2021, since Biden became the president, has this administration reached out at all to Republicans to try to get them to work on various bills? Have you got any message from the White House? Do they send people down to talk to you and find out what your desires are? Not really. Not really. And guys, I'm so sorry. I'm looking at the floor. They're about to close this vote out. Get in there, Congressman. We need your voting. I'm so sorry.

Go Bo, we appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, you betcha. Thanks, Bo. Well, we still have Mark with us here in the studio. Well, so people have not been introduced to Mark because that's actually the podcast segment we just did, folks. Go introduce Mark real quick and we'll talk about this for a minute. We have in our studio Mark Deluzio. He's a businessman and gold star father running for Congress in Arizona's 2nd Congressional District. And folks, if you normally just listen to us on the radio, I really, really encourage you to go and make sure you download the podcast.

Get that extra segment because Mark had some fantastic things to say. And generally, we have a lot of fun on those segments. Also, Mark, thank you for staying with us in here. We just heard from Congressman Owens. They've got a bill on the floor right now that allows abortion up to birth. Well, oh, by the way, I'm a big fan of Burgess, by the way. I think he's a great guy and I'm glad he's in there fighting the fight.

Again, a successful businessman and also obviously a professional football player, so he knows what fighting is all about, right? He knows how to take a hit and deliver one too. Exactly, yeah. You know, this is what we talked about, I think, on the podcast where there's just an all-out attack on the family. And if you look at a lot of the different initiatives that the left is looking at, whether it's abortion or climate change, there's always a hidden agenda. And people seem to forget that abortion...

was started by Margaret Sanger with Eugenics, and her first Planned Parenthood clinic was in downtown Detroit.

inner city Detroit in the ghetto because she wanted to wipe out the black race and we seem to forget about that. Okay. I'm glad you brought that up because that's something I talk about from time to time and most people don't understand. No, no. The eugenics movement is what spawned both the abortion movement and the radical environmentalist movement. Exactly right. Exactly right. And so there's always another hidden agenda behind what they're trying to do and I think Americans are starting to figure it out. But

But I did some really quick math right now, and the African American community had, going back to 1990,

had all those babies lived, the African-American community aborts almost as many as the white community. They would now be 17 or 18 percent of this population instead of 13, 13 and a half. Okay, if those babies lived. And that's a big shift in political power. It's a big one, right? And they're actually doing their own self a disservice, right? And wiping out

the black population. And they hide it over the woman's right to choose and climate change is all about the environment. No, it's not. It's about taking down capitalism and that's really what it's about when you get right down. There's always a hidden... Population control. Population control. There's a globalist movement here, of course. And I would even say the Communist Party, quite frankly, are useful idiots to the globalists, right? I totally agree. And they don't know it, okay? And

And so all these different programs and movements are really, they're lying to the people who are getting on their bandwagon, you know? And so it's just a big disservice, all the different things with affirmative action, the Now the Woke movement that you guys talked about in terms of, you know, that basically is doing a disservice. When you put somebody as unqualified as Kamala Harris in as VP...

She's unbelievably unqualified because she's there, because she's a woman, and because she's black. Now, what happens when a black woman who is qualified gets a position? How are people going to look at her? That's a disservice to African-American women, women in general, and African-Americans in general. It's just a disservice when you put somebody so incompetent in that position that

There are a lot of incompetent folks in politics, but Kamala Harris makes most of them look terrible, look good. I mean, that's really what we're at. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back in just a moment. We have to go to break here. We're going to keep Mark Deluzio in studio with us. Look forward to continuing the conversation with him in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. I'm jumping right into this one because we've got a jam-packed show today. If you missed the first segment, make sure you tune in on our podcast. Download that. Anywhere podcasts are available. You're also going to get a great segment from our current guest, Mark Deluzio, that is on the podcast-only segment. And for those of you listening on the radio or downloading the podcast and want to get a little more Breaking Battlegrounds in their lives, August 2nd.

8 p.m. Arizona time. For those of you who are in states which are foolish enough to continue to use daylight savings time, that is currently Pacific, 8 p.m. Pacific, 790, oh, goodness gracious, 960 a.m. The Patriot. The Patriot. I'm all over the place today, Chuck. Mark, so...

Describe for our audience what your career really was. How would you describe it? Give us the elevator pitch on that. And then describe for us a great success you felt you had. And then also describe for us a failure you had in business that you learned from. And you can take those skills into your future career in politics and Congress. Yeah. By the way, I think the failures that I've had in my life and in business translate into wisdom.

So you take somebody who's 65 years old like myself, and I think that's a big advantage going into Congress, believe it or not. Well, first of all, could you imagine running for Congress now if you're 35 or 40 versus the experience and wisdom you've garnered now at 65? It's a big gap, isn't it? It's a big gap. Yeah, it's a big gap, you know, because there's a lot of mistakes that these people are going to make that they don't realize, you know. One of the success—well,

I've got a lot of successes. I started out my career in finance. I was a CFO, chief financial officer. I moved into manufacturing. I was part of the team back in the late 80s that

went to Japan and brought the originators of the Toyota production system to the United States. Okay. So how long were you in Japan for? Well, I must have been to Japan 30 times. You know, I've spent so much time over there studying. You know, I did all kinds of stuff over there and working with Toyota and all kinds of other companies. But the senseis that I've learned from are the world's best in what we do. And it's called today lean manufacturing.

But it started at a company in Connecticut and a company called Danaher. And I created one of my successes. I created the man operations. I ran manufacturing. I worked all over the world.

and actually created this thing called the Danaher Business System, which is now the most sought-after lean management system in the world. They teach it at Harvard in their MBA program and all the different programs that they do. I get called all the time to go speak in MIT and Kellogg and all these different schools, Harvard.

and I get calls from the CEO of a company, hey, I just went to Harvard and I heard about you and DBS and we want to do this. And I don't even have to worry about business development, right? Well, that's one of my big successes. But one of the failures I think I had over the course of time is that, oh, by the way, let me just add into that too. One of the big things I've done is

the Federal Trade Commission law where you have to really make your product here in the USA to market made in the USA. There's a lot more gory details to that, but I got my prints on that and I led that charge way back when. It's a major accomplishment. Yeah, it is. Are you featuring that on your campaign? Because if you're not, I mean, I feel he's sort of underplaying it, right? Oh, by the way, I was taking a walk to the park and I did this along the way. Yeah, I'm taking a walk through the park and somehow I ended up on the top of Everest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cold up there, though. Yeah.

I told them only. But one of the failures, I think, is, and maybe it's more of a learning, is that you could have the best idea in the world. And when you're young, like when you're in your 30s, like at one time I was, you come in and I got the answers. And let me tell you, I know how to do that. You could have the most...

Perfect, elegant idea in the world. But if you don't make it somebody else's idea, they're going to push back on you. And I made those mistakes. Like, hey, I got the brightest idea. I just learned from the best in the world. Let me tell you what to do. And that doesn't fly. So being able to use the more Socratic method of asking questions and letting people come up with the answers themselves...

and then they have buy-in and it's their idea. To me, I've made a lot of mistakes like that in the early days, but I'll tell you one thing I also did that was a big mistake. When I was selling product to Hino Motors in Japan, which is part of Toyota, I ran manufacturing, right? I was 100% on-time delivery, never missed a delivery shipment, 100% quality. They never had a quality problem, no warranty. I was perfect.

My first trip over there, I went into their purchasing office because of the diesel engine that we sold to. They had 110 suppliers, of which we were one of them. And I expected me to be – they're going to roll out the red carpet, right, when I get over there, right? These guys, Lahino Motors, part of Toyota, they're the best manufacturing company in the world. Okay, unbelievably the best. And I walk into the office.

And I'm looking at my name and I don't see my name up on top of the list. They had this big chart on the wall, right? Ranked from best supplier to the 110th worst. I'm looking at it and I don't see my name. Ah, they wrote it in kanji characters. That's why I don't understand it. No, I went down the list. I was number 106. How could that be? I was 100%, 100% quality, all this, right? Well, dummy me, I assumed I knew what they wanted. They said to me, no, Mark, here's some other things you're not doing.

100% quality, 100% delivery are just entries to get in to play with us. You've got to have that. Okay? Wow. But you're missing here. You're not doing this. We need you to do this and all this.

And I totally assumed what my customer wanted. So when you get into politics, how you translate that over is don't assume you know what your people want unless you talk to them and listen to them. Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. And people are not being listened to. They're not being represented. Now, I'm not saying that with Gosar's district because a lot of my district is Gosar's old district or its current district.

Gosar works his butt off to get out there and talk to people. He's great. That's one of the things I think few people understand about that guy. He works the part. Well, he does. Well, I don't think a lot of people know much of anything of the people representing for Congress. I mean, you know, so they go get, for example, today, Mark has a wealth of experience. And I think unless you're able to talk to Mark for 40 minutes, how?

How are you going to know that? Well, the press here, for instance, always thinks Gosar should lose his race, and they don't understand that he's shaking the hands that keep him on office. Probably half the district. I told Paul last time I was with him, I said, you know, when they're coming after you, you know you're doing the right thing. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I said that to Meadows, too, so...

But Mark Meadows. But yeah, I mean, so to me, it's like, don't assume you know what your customer, because I would view, you know, the people in this district would be my employer, right? And don't assume you know what they want. I have to serve them, but don't assume you know. You have to ask them and listen to them and find out what they really mean.

Sounds like good marriage advice, too. Well, the man's been married for 42 years, so it's not this time. We have something to say. Yeah, but Chuck, the real key, there's two keys to this, right? One, I wake up in the morning and I apologize, number one. And two, we go out to dinner twice a week. She goes on Tuesday, I go on Friday.

It's not only knowing when to say, but when not to say, right? Yes, yes. And when she wants my opinion, she'll give it to me. We only have about 30 seconds left before we go to break. Mark, tell people how they stay in touch with you and keep up with your campaign. And folks, get involved. Learn about this guy because he's a great candidate for Congress. Deluzioforcongress.com is my website. D-E-L-U-Z-I-O-F-O-R, for congress.com.

And you can Google me on Facebook. And thank you for not using the number four.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have to say F.O.R. because a lot of people do use F.O.R. I know, but don't get me started. All right. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming right back in just a moment. Our next guest is going to be Representative Jackie Toledo, a member of the Florida House of Representatives. And since we're on the air in Florida, it's good to have some more of these Florida guests. Yes, it is. Very excited for her. Mark, thanks a million. We appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. On the line with us right now, Representative Jackie Toledo, a member of the Florida House of Representatives in the 60th District, which includes town and country, South Tampa, and a stretch of the coast in southern Hillsborough County to Ruskin. Single mother of five with an adopted son who is serving. Is that he's serving in the military?

Yes, that's correct. Okay. All I had was serving, so I'm having to make a little bit of a guess right there. As folks know, our show is based out of Arizona, but Chuck and I both do some work in Florida, and we're very excited to have more Florida guests on for all of our Florida listeners on The Answer. And Jackie, thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me. Now, you were born in Lima, Peru. When did you come here? Yeah.

I was five years old when I came to the United States, but my parents came here when I was three. Legally, I made ads and asked for permission and processed us, and it took about two years. So a huge sacrifice for a parent, for us, to be separated from my mom and dad, and my sister and I were in Peru until they could ask for permission to get us here. And thank God we're here because...

We've had so many opportunities and truly living the American dream. Absolutely. Now, your governor, Governor Ron DeSantis, gets a lot of credit for a lot of things he does very well. But frankly, I got to say, the Florida legislature has done a brilliant job in recent years. You guys have really done a great job for your constituents. I don't believe you guys get enough credit for that.

Thank you so much, because there's 120 of us in the House and 40 of us in the Senate. So I think it's easier to, you know, look at one person. And the governor has done a tremendous job of being decisive and bold with his leadership. And of course, we're, you know, making sure that his agenda is passed and we do everything to keep Florida the freest state in the country.

That's fantastic. Jackie, what is something the past legislative session that the press got completely wrong about a bill that passed Florida? Is it the Disney? Is it the university? What are you teaching? What do you feel something the press just does not get right about what you're passing? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I think, you know, they coined the bill, the Don't Say Gay Bill, which was, I think, mislabeled. It didn't say that. It's a very short bill, by the way. And it really just said you cannot talk about sexual...

orientation, gender identity to any child under the age of third grade. So eight years old and under, which I think is the parent's job to have those conversations. And, you know, it was really taken out of context with the media and the left and the woke left.

to try to, you know, divide us. And even though most parents... I'm sorry. Jackie, no, I mean, I was going to say, because even though this bill has been labeled that, the fact is it applies to all education on, you know, sexualization of children who, frankly, should just be kids. Gay, straight, and otherwise. That's right.

Yeah, and they should be focused on learning the alphabet, reading, writing, math, you know, not these things that they want to talk about. You know, it's been odd because more kids know more about their teachers than they do the subject matter, and that's not what we want. We want to make sure we're focused and we're educating children, not indoctrinating them and having them come home and ask questions

to their parents are really not something that maybe some parents want to talk about at that time. So it's truly a parent's responsibility as the first influencers of a child's life. Well, and when you're talking about kids who are eight years old and younger, they naturally do not. Sex is not their concern.

I mean, these issues are not on their table. They're worried about, you know, whatever the latest Pokemon game is. cartoons, baseball, whatever.

Absolutely. Building blocks and pirates. And, you know, it's funny because, you know, most children want to be someone else or something else when they're young, like a princess or a pirate or a cowboy, you know. But not, you know, obviously we don't go and do everything to convert them into those things. We just let them be kids.

So it's way too young to say, you know, someone wants to be another gender or it's OK. That is something something that people should not be talking about. Yeah, absolutely. We have just about 45 seconds here left in this segment. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. How do you how do people follow you and stay in touch with what you're doing? And obviously, when you're campaigning for reelect, how do they keep up with you?

So I'm on social media. My handle is at Toledo for the number four Congress. And I actually always give out my cell phone number, too, on my palm card. And you can find it on my website, which is JackieToledo.com. But I'm pretty easy to read and accessible. I think as a legislator for the last six years, that's been something I've truly been proud of. Absolutely. Jackie, we've got to go to break, but we're going to bring you back when we come back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds Jam Pack show today. On the line with us right now, Jackie Toledo. She is a representative of the member, a member of the Florida House of Representatives for the 60th District. And we are very pleased to have her on this morning. Thank you again for joining us, Jackie. So, Jackie, you're running for Congress now. Yeah. What?

We want to talk about that. Very excited about it. That's great. What made you decide to leave the Florida legislature where you folks actually get things done and decide, I'm going to go up to do Washington and spend cold months in the winter up there in Washington, D.C. instead of Florida? What has inspired you to make this move? Well, I feel like I leave Tallahassee and the Florida legislature in good hands. I feel like we're going to have a red wave and it's going to even further strengthen our Republican leadership in this

And we've done a lot of things to secure our future. But D.C. is broken and I'm a mom on a mission to clean it up. Like, I feel like mom can. And with my engineering background, I think I can get things done just like I got things done in the Florida house.

So I'm going up there with hope that there are things that I will be able to get done, that there are things I'm going to work hard at to get done. And we need people that are passionate. We don't need people that want to be someone but that want to do something. And that's me. And, you know, I believe in term limits, by the way. Everyone always asks me about that. You know, I would have been termed out next year, so I had another term in the Florida House.

again, I self-turned out and I'm doing what I can to secure our country's future and to win our country back. And that's truly what we need is people that are willing to fight. Despite especially the AOCs of the world, I'm Hispanic and

And she does not represent me. We are conservative by nature. And, you know, so often we are told that the Republican Party does not represent us. And that's false. You know, we're pro-life. We are pro-God. We are, you know, pro-family. And those are the values that conservatives stand for. So I want to, you know, make sure that I get that message out there to my fellow Hispanic brothers and sisters that I'm there fighting for them.

And pro-work, because Hispanics across this country are some of the hardest working people. Well, what's amazing, Jackie, and I'm going to get the numbers a little wrong here. I was sent this to Sam yesterday. So there was a poll out that showed that white progressives...

by like a margin of like it was 70 something to 30 do not believe in the American dream and it was reversed for Hispanics so 70% of Hispanics believe the American dream is live and real white progressives do not why do you think that is that's sad well maybe because they don't know because I came from a country where it really didn't matter how hard you work if it if you weren't in the right class then you

then you were never going to make more money than the class that you're in. So coming to this country and just starting with very little and just your work ethic and great attitude, you can really achieve anything. Look at me right now. I'm an engineer. I'm a legislator. I have a business.

And I created that. I did that all through hard work. And I won my first race through hard work, despite what other people, the pollsters, the insiders would say. Oh, she's

You know, she's out, her opponent outraised her, out-endorsed her. But you know what? Hard work does still matter in this country. And we will do everything to make sure it continues to be like that because these handouts, obviously, they don't,

They dissentivize you from doing hard work because why am I going to work hard, be penalized for it when someone else is staying at home and reaping the benefits of government handout? Like that's not what Hispanics want.

You know, that is certainly we want to work hard. We want government out of our life like we had in our countries that we came from. We love this country. We appreciate this country. And we will work hard to make sure we can continue that for our children. We're with Jackie Toledo, representative of the Florida legislature, now running for Congress. And it is a close race, I understand. Like there's three of you that right now is a flip of the coin.

If you're elected, Jackie, what do you feel you're – if you're elected and say you serve for eight, ten years, what do you feel you need to accomplish to feel like you succeeded, that you accomplished something to make America a better place if you get to Congress? Thank you.

Thank you. And when I am elected, I will make sure we secure the border. I think having an open border, which is nowhere else ever in any other country, is we have a porous border. And I've been working on issues of human trafficking, and you know that it's coming right at the southern border. So our safety and security is at stake and at risk here in our country. So securing our border would be one of the first things I work on.

But becoming energy independent as an engineer is something that I'm very passionate about, you know, making sure that we have what we need in our country, that we're not relying on foreign oil. And we were doing that in the past, and we need to get back there. So that's another thing I want to reverse what we've been, the policies that we've had in the last couple years that have failed Americans.

And, you know, now we're dealing with the effects of five to six dollar gas prices. You know, and one thing that may take a while, but I as a math person, as an engineer, want to do and I feel like we can is balance our budget like we do in the state of Florida. You know, I don't know why people think that's such an outrageous thing.

you know, request that we balance our budget and save for a rainy day and stop, you know, devaluing our dollar by printing money that we do not have. I mean, we don't do it at our own homes. We don't do it in the state of Florida. We shouldn't do it in the federal government. So that is something that I'd love to spend time to really understand the budget, understand how we can

streamline, make it more, you know, find efficiencies, to cut out some of the things that are obsolete with technology. There's so many things that we can do better and smarter, and that's what engineers do. Jackie. We look into things. Yeah. Oh, no, no. I actually think I was going to say, if you become someone who truly does understand the budget, that'll make you like one of three people in Congress who...

Who has that level of knowledge? Well, matter of fact, it was an interesting stat I saw the other day. 80% of all U.S. dollars in existence right now have been printed the last two years. That's ridiculous. That's how out of whack Washington is with money right now. 80%, the last two years. 80% of existence, last two years. Goodness gracious.

It's so sad for our future, for our kids, because they're the ones that are going to be paying the price for this lack of oversight over what we're spending. You know, they don't care. Pelosi definitely doesn't care. Her days are numbered, so she doesn't care. So she's spending it like it's, you know, going out of style and whatever.

And I just really want to stop the bleeding because we need to stop and look back and say, just because we've done it in the past doesn't mean we need to continue to move in that direction. We really need to take a step back and really focus on what we need and just our needs, not our wants, you know. Like we would in any household budget. Jackie, you're fighting back against sort of the woke mentality.

the wokeness that the Democrats are trying to push across this country. You said something earlier about your background and coming from a country where people's futures are really dictated by the class they're born into. Isn't wokeism in a certain extent about creating those same sort of class barriers here, dividing people into different classes, different races, and really putting barriers between people and in the way of their economic futures and their growth?

Absolutely. And that's a great parallel because, you know, woke is becoming part of our culture, sadly. And right now we have a vocabulary, I call it, where there are different terms that we're supposed to use. So no one's offended and they cancel people because, you know, we don't believe they're imposing their beliefs on others. And that is not something this country is founded on. And we will push back.

You know, and it doesn't matter what company you are, whether it's Disney or Google. I've discovered a few things about, you know, and I don't want to alert them of things. But, you know, very disturbing things in my work and passion for fighting human trafficking that I think we need to hold these companies accountable that are these woke corporations. So that is something I will definitely get, you know, with.

with the help of the data that I receive, I'm really going to spend a lot of time to discover what they're really actually trying to do with our children and our country.

Yeah, we see it here in Arizona all the time. People are being trafficked through the southern border, but they're not staying just here in Arizona. These folks, whether they are being child sex trafficked, if they're being human trafficked for labor, whatever it might be, these folks are ending up all over the country. This is an issue for all 50 states, maybe other than Hawaii, I guess, 49. Yeah. Jackie, what's it like being a mom of a son serving in the military? Yeah.

Oh, it's very scary right now. I'm very proud of him, you know, because it's something I want all my boys to experience and serve and do their part of giving back to the school.

amazing country. But of course, right now, it's such scary times with Biden. You know, I mean, he doesn't know whether we're at war, where, you know, where he's supposed to turn. So it's a very scary time right now. And, you know, again, we should be making sure that our troops are home, you know, and not participating in

And areas that fighting someone else's war, I should say. We should be protecting our country. What should we be doing about Ukraine? You have a great nonprofit we've had on the station here in Tampa that goes and helps people get out of Ukraine. As Congress, what would be your position on how we handle something like Ukraine? And I think, you know, we all agree Russia is a clear present danger in the world, but what is our role in this?

Well, that's a good question. I mean, we sent a lot of resources to Ukraine, you know, to help them there. But again, these are resources that we needed here. Right now with inflation going through the roof, I mean, those are resources that could have been better used at

at home, you know. So I feel that, you know, there are so many humanitarian organizations that are doing their part, non-for-profit organizations that are doing their part in Ukraine. But that's something that if we are in the situation we're in right now, we should be focused on our country's needs. I think fundamentally this country has not had the discussion in an honest way, Chuck.

about what is our role in protecting other people's borders? Because we don't protect our own, but we're willing to run around the world and protect other people's borders.

And Putin's a bad guy. Russia's invasion is wrong. He's evil. But is it really the United States' role to go in and stop everyone who's evil in the world from being evil? That's a good question. We've never had... And it's a debate we really need to have. Jackie, what would you do about inflation? I am sure... I mean, Tampa...

Tampa has, is just, you know, used to be the place where we talked about where you found a Hooters or a strip club and now it's a tech industry. It's, it's got these great, you know, it's building up these condos and developments and things of that nature. It's really changed and it's really a city that's becoming a business leader. Um, how is inflation affecting your constituents out there? Uh,

Huge, especially for housing. We have a huge housing crisis because the policies, local policies that we're implementing certainly don't help because they're doing moratoriums, which obviously cut out the supply of new homes, but the demand is still there. People are still moving to Florida, so therefore...

Costs of homes continue to rise, and it's becoming unaffordable for most people. Young people, especially those that are middle class and below, were not able to move into the urban core. We're having to move outside in rural areas, which then now with the inflation, the cost of gas, if you're moving outside rural areas, you have to travel further to get to work.

So it's like a trickle effect and a cycle you can't get out of because of the cost of gas, mainly the cost of diesel, which is causing the cost of not only gas, but goods, all goods, because of the transportation cost. Is this the number one issue you hear from your constituents as you're out campaigning? Yes, absolutely. They can't afford groceries. They've had to limit what they buy because of everything.

Everything's going up. And we talk about the highest inflation right now at 9%, a little over 9%. But really, the cost of the basic goods are double that at the very minimum. Eggs, milk, the stuff that are basic needs. People are paying a price for it.

for the printing presses in D.C. Jackie, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. Before we go, I want to give you a chance to give folks the information. How do they keep up with you? How do they keep in touch with your campaign?

Well, yes, please follow me on Twitter, on Facebook, Instagram, at Jackie Toledo for the number four Congress. That's my handle. And look for me online at JackieToledo.com. And thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Breaking Battlegrounds back next week.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. 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 yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now.

Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. First, I want to tell you, tune in August 2nd, 8 p.m. Arizona time. For those of you who are still foolish enough to mess around with daylight savings, it's 8 p.m. Pacific, where we are going to be breaking down all the races here in Arizona and across the country for primary night. Missouri, Michigan, Washington, Kansas.

Kansas should be a barn burner. Yeah, no. So is the majority of the Senate race. But nonetheless, we'll be here to keep you entertained. We have a fantastic guest, someone I'm excited to talk to. He's a baseball fan. That always warms my heart.

Always warms my heart. Mark Deluzio, businessman and gold star father running for Congress in Arizona's second congressional district. Mark, you have an amazing background here as I'm reading this. First in your family to earn a college degree. You went on to be a successful corporate executive advising companies in a whole number of industries on strategy and tactics. Entrepreneur, founder of a global management consulting company.

You've been married for 41 years. That's also an amazing accomplishment. It's now 42 because we just celebrated our 42nd in June. Congratulations. We've got to get your bio updated here. Kylie, what the heck?

The irrepressible Kylie Kipper has just been repressed. So my wife's been traveling with me on the campaign trail, and I don't think Kylie maybe thought we were going to make 42 years. So give her a break. The jury's still out maybe? That is a very good point, Mark, because goodness gracious.

Campaigning is crazy, isn't it? Oh, my God. I always worked hard, but never as hard as this. Mark, what has surprised you about campaigning? I mean, so this is your... Everybody needs to know. You're a businessman. You come from the business sector. You have been brought on to reorganize and get companies crapped together, basically, right? What has surprised you about campaigning? There's a lot of similarities between business and politics, but there's some big differences, right? And one of the differences is just...

understanding what makes people tick, you know, in terms of the psychology of why one person would back a candidate versus another. I get asked all the time, hey, do you like Carrie or do you like, you know, Karen? And depending on what answer you give them, you can alienate somebody, you know, and there's a lot of crazy things going on there. Also...

How, you know, a party that, you know, fundamentally calls for unity in our country is very disorganized and divisive in some cases, right? So the party itself has all these factions. And you go to any one of these towns and there might be five different Republican clubs.

We're all kind of fighting each other, okay? And I'm the most important club, obviously. Yeah, and be careful what you say to that club because it's going to upset you. And then, you know, so it's an interesting—I love psychology and understanding people, you know, and this was great. I mean, seriously, you know, it was— So I imagine you've written a lot of case studies, or you have to for clients, right? This is what we're seeing. Oh, yeah.

This would be an interesting case study when you win. Right. Well, you know, it's funny. Here's the other thing. Like these primary seasons are short, right? In corporate America, people are still out for themselves and they're still, you know, trying to maneuver. But I've got three years to make you look bad and I'm going to take your job in three years. Not in a campaign. Everything's condensed. So you see the minutiae, if you will,

In a lot shorter time period, and it resonates really fast. Well, and assuming you win the primary, hang on for the general because you want to talk about condensed. Oh, yeah. I know. I mean, you have 60 days basically. And the August primary date in Arizona is ridiculous. It's insane. They need to do this in the end of May, give you the summer to –

You know, recalibrate, bring the other factions in, raise money and go after the Democrat opponent. I was lucky, though, because I got in late. I didn't wait to see what Paul Gosar was going to do. And so I didn't get in until January. A lot of my opposition was already in for a few months. And so lucky for me, August in this case was good. Normally I would agree with you, Chuck. What is a question –

that has been consistently asked of you that has surprised you? So obviously people are concerned about inflation. People are concerned about the border. But is there some other question out there that you're surprised comes up with some regularity?

I'm going to write a book. It's going to be called What Are You Going to Do About... And we will have you back on the show to do that. Oh, my God. And one of the ones I got recently was What Are You Going to Do About Putting Morality and Ethics Back into Politics?

Did you tell them to go to church and just work on it themselves with the community? I did tell them I'm going to pass out Bibles, you know, but but I said to the guy I was in front of like 60 people. And I said, I said, well, I'm right now I'm working on making pigs fly. OK, and once I get that done, I'm going to work on that. These are the questions you get. I mean, that's you know, it's a funny question coming from Republicans who you're campaigning with.

that they don't realize that that has to come from the home, from the faith community, them. It does. I mean, do we really want the government telling us what morals are? Oh, my God. Are you kidding me? Well, you know what I said to him? I said, why don't you take care of your morals and ethics? I'll take care of mine, you know, and stop trying to change everybody else. Just take care of your own because everybody has their own baggage they got to deal with. Right. So so take care of yourself and just do the right thing. And then.

Don't try to change Congress. Good luck with that. Well, I really believe Congress is a reflection of the country and the sort of every dog for himself policy.

approach that has taken over instead of national, in place of national unity is reflected in Congress. Well, and I see it, you know, with my businesses, I see it a lot more now, every dog for themselves from staff and colleagues and stuff. It's really changed the last three or four years. It's been disappointing to deal with vendors and people. It's not the same. There's a different urgency. I have to save myself. There's less teamwork. It's been a very discouraging...

So let me ask you this. You've been consulting these corporations, and you're basically, look, you're a reorganization specialist in many ways. Is that fair to say? Yeah, but that has a bad connotation because it's not about putting people out in the street. I won't do that. As a matter of fact, the CEO of GE wanted me to work with him, and I said, if you're going to put people on the street, I'm not working with you. Well, so my question is, though, because you've had these experiences where you're brought in to handle a tough situation. Mm-hmm.

Our country's – Sam and I are the ultimate optimists. I am the Ronald Reagan morning in America. I have great hope for America 10, 20, 30 years from now. I'm with you. But we are in a valley right now. Or to use another analogy, we're in a marathon. Marathon people say 16, 17, 18 miles is the hardest. I think we're at that point right now with a marathon.

What are the skills that you've acquired that are going to help you do a better job in Congress because they're so dysfunctional? So, for example, take the skills that you have that you've been hired to do, and what would you do and translate that to say to fix the border problem? Well, I think one of the biggest – one of the things I really became good at and got trained by my mentors in Japan was how to look at and solve problems. Okay.

And many times the solutions that we come up with, whether they're legislation or bills or whatever, are going as a solution looking for a problem because they're ill-defined problems to begin with. So I'll give you an example, Chuck. So somebody said to me the other day, what are you going to do about the border? Okay. And sometimes I get, what are you going to do about the water situation? And when they asked me those questions, I said, okay, well, let's, I can't answer that. But if you want to talk about fentanyl, that's a separate problem.

The women being raped, the child trafficking, these are all separate problems with different problem statements, okay? You want to talk about crime and MS-13 and the gun running and all that, separate problem. And I can go on and on because there's like 12 of them that you can look at. Then once I look at those problem statements, I want to prioritize those based on a criteria. That criteria to me is our safety, okay? Because that's the number one priority.

The number one responsibility of government is to protect us from foreign and domestic threats. So when I look at this, I say, okay, now I've got all these problem statements laid out, some economic-oriented, some safety-oriented. I want to look at those first because if I don't get those right, the rest doesn't matter. Okay, that's how I think, right? And so you can't just say, well, what are you going to do about the border? People say, well, I'm going to build a wall.

There's no silver. And by the way, I'm for the wall. But there's no silver bullet solutions to these problems are very complex. So people think put up a wall and your problem solved. No, it's not. Take the vaccine. Your problem's up. No, it's not. It's sort of like the gun violence. Well, if we take the guns or we put ultimate universal background checks and solve the problem. And the frustrating thing for me on the gun violence situation is no one's talking about the root problem.

You have a bunch of angry young men who are lost, who have no goals. They're fatherless homes. And, you know, Mike Lee a month ago posted that fatherless homes are a big cause of this. And oh, my goodness, Twitter just went outraged. Are you are you know, you're you're criticizing single moms. Not what he said at all.

I mean, the single moms are doing the yeoman work. He's simply saying when there's not a father around, there's a problem. And studies just show that there's I mean, that is just empirical evidence. You have a 20 times more chance ending up in jail if you grow up in a fatherless home. I'm sorry. That's just a fact. Now, that doesn't mean single moms are bad. That's just a fact. It does not. It does not. And, you know, there's an assault on the American family today.

which, and there's a lot of things along with that, that to me is if you break up, if you take your God, you take your families and you go after your children to corrupt your children's minds, and then all you got to do now is take my gun away and it's over, right? So, you know,

When you look at the assault on the family unit, and it's coming from a lot of different avenues, those are the things I think that people get outraged like that, you know, is just something that we really have to, you know, reconsider what are we doing to this country. And sometimes I think it's intentional. I don't think it's by ignorance.

Sometimes I really do think it's an intentional move. Yeah. Okay? Sam and I have this group of five friends who are all in this business, and that was what we were talking about this morning. We used to not believe that, but we do believe there's a faction who's like,

Let's burn it down. Yeah. No, there absolutely is at this point a faction that looks at this country and looks at generally the world more broadly and wants to tear it apart. And the image they're trying to rebuild it in is one that is so foreign to just about everybody in every Western country. It's hard to understand what their endgame is. Well, it's, yeah, either they're completely incompetent or they have

nefarious designs, to say the least. Well, I think it ties back to the sort of every dog for themselves kind of thing, right? Is these folks, if you're a bureaucrat, if you're a, you know, the UN or the EU, you want more power because that brings more money, more prestige, more for yourself. I always say follow the money. Follow the money. You'll usually get your answer.

So you're a father. How many children do you have? Two. Two. Now, you say on your profile you're a Gold Star father. What is a Gold Star father? I don't think a lot of people understand. We hear it. We know it means something, but what does it mean? Gold Star status is the military status that was developed back in World War I, where mothers primarily would lose their child, and they became Gold Star mothers. Over the years, it's been expanded to the Gold Star families, like a Gold Star brother, a Gold Star wife, husband, or father, like me, and my wife is a mother.

And it means that you've lost somebody in battle or in the military. And we lost our son, Stephen, in 2010. Both my boys signed up for left CPA firms and decided they were inspired by 9-11, right? And they left CPA firms to go join the infantry in the army. And they wanted to fight. And

Didn't even want to become commissioned officers, right? So they were in Afghanistan at the same time, about 50 miles apart. And Stephen got killed in 2010. And Scott, upon learning of his brother's death...

and he got into another firefight right there with the Taliban. And on his mind was, okay, I gotta keep my men safe, but I gotta make sure my parents don't get another knock at the door. 'Cause we didn't know about it

they make sure that nobody knew about it until we were told, but he knew about it. Did they just come to their house like you see in the movies? Oh, yeah. 9.30 at night. Oh, my gosh. We were watching a movie. We heard the doorbell ring, but we thought it was in the movie, like in the background. I said, no, Diane, I think we're laying in bed watching a movie. And I went to our foyer. Our foyer...

We had glass doors, and I saw the two. So I grabbed my Glock because, you know, who— Who's there at 930 at night? Who rings your bell at 930 at night? And I saw the two uniformed officers, so I immediately knew why they were there because it's the only reason they come to your door, especially at that time of night. And the only thing I didn't know was which one, right? So when I opened up the door—by the way, it took, for a three-second walk, it seemed like it was an eternity to walk across that foyer. I imagine. Yeah.

slowed down. So I opened up the door and I said, is it Scott? Because I hadn't spoken to Scott. I see him and I think I just talked to him the day before. I said, is it Scott? First thing I said to him, they go, no, it's Stephen. Wow. And did your wife, was she on top of the stairs? Did she hear this? She followed me afterwards. She goes, who's that, Mark? What's going on? Because she didn't know what was going on, right? And our bedroom was on the first floor, unusual for a New England house, right? But

But we, I immediately went into denial. You know that change curve they talk about? I immediately went into denial like, no, this stuff happens to somebody else, right? You read about it, hear about it on the radio, hear, you know, it can't happen to me. You guys got the wrong house, buddy. You better go check something out. And immediately, right? And then when dying came out, I told her. And, you know, she fell to the floor.

How did the military follow up with you? How did the government follow up with you? The military was phenomenal. Army, they were phenomenal. We had two crisis assistance officers, one for us, a guy named Joe Burke, Sergeant Joe Burke, and another lady named Andrea who was assigned to my son's fiancé. Wow. They were phenomenal. I mean, I can't say enough about them. No. No.

In 2010, I think you remember who was president, and we didn't even get a call from the White House and from the president, which is customary. And we got a letter in the mail, I don't know, a month later or whatever, was a form letter that we compared against other Gold Star families with a stamped signature. It's the same signature, right? It wasn't a... Oh, for... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a Christian program, so I can't really say what I want to say right now. That is...

But remember, though, Michael Brown's mother, the terror of Ferguson, the thug from Ferguson, she got a call. Yeah, that's my son for that president. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. But in 2019, we got a call from the White House, and I thought it was a fake call, right? And they said the president and first lady would like to invite you to the White House. It was the Friday after Memorial Day to honor your family.

So we went to the White House, and we had a full run of the White House. We got to see the West Wing as well and all that stuff. And, you know, he threw out a spread for us and other Gold Star families, and he spent three hours with us. The most powerful guy in the world, Trump, and his wife, Melania, spent three hours with us. No press. Nobody knew about it. It was private. He didn't want to look at me, look what I'm doing, right? No.

And the food, I mean, the dignitaries he had there, he had the Marine Chamber, President's Chamber Band Orchestra, I should say. It was over the top. You know, that to me was such a fundamental difference, frankly, between Trump and Obama, that Obama saw the military as a tool to be used without consideration for the people involved. In fact, to some extent, contempt.

They were the people that were sacrificing. Whereas Trump, I have no doubt at all, really saw people. Oh, he did. The people that were serving, the families that sacrificed, everything. And he cared deeply about them. I'll tell you what happened. So, you know, when we met the president and the first lady, we met him in the blue room. I don't know if you've ever been there. It's a pretty big room.

And he's standing in the middle. And so Diane walked in first. They announced this. And I walked in and Scott, my son Scott. And Trump walked over to Diane and hugged her. He didn't wait for her to come to him. He walks over to her, gives her hugs. Then he looks at me and he points to the sky and he goes, Stephen's looking down right now. He goes like that. So phenomenal.

With that experience that you've had experience that a lot of families don't go through in America. I mean, we seem to be a lot of us, you know, there seems to be a force field around us. We really don't realize the sacrifices people made. Yeah. Well, no, but you, but you've experienced, you know, you, you have sacrificed your ultimate treasure in a lot of ways. How does that make you view when you're in Congress and,

intervening, serving our young men and women and putting them overseas to fight for freedom or to protect allies or whatever the case may be. Well, you know, it's a long story here, but I will tell you this, Chuck. You know, Eisenhower warned us back in the 60s in his farewell speech 60 years ago or so, more than that, about the military-industrial complex.

And in his speech, it said the military industrial congressional complex. He took the word congressional out. He knew that there was money in war and we were going to get into wars unnecessarily and sacrifice our men and women because of the mighty dollar, right? And there's a lot of money. And I truly believe...

I truly believe the reason Trump got such attention in terms of the Russian crap and all the other stuff that happened is because of his resistance to go to war. He did not start a new war. OK. And he's pulling us out. Right. And that's not good when you take away people's gravy train. OK. I really believe that. And I know that we could have won Afghanistan in less than one year.

And I know special forces guys and I know guys at very high levels in the military that told me that how they got pulled out right when they were ready to close the door on the Taliban, they got pulled back from Washington. Now, we were there for 21 years. You're telling me that the greatest military in the world could not beat the Taliban. Right. Give me a break. No, I agree with you. And why did we why did we wipe out ISIS in a matter of months?

Because Trump was running it. Took the gloves off. And I know how they did it. They did it with drones, with special forces and drones. And nobody got killed. Very few people. So we could have done that too. And there's no reason we should have been nation building because we're building. And by the way, the stuff we did there was great. But that's not what we do with the men and women. So as a congressman...

You know, I already met with McCarthy called me in one time. I was working with I was meeting with Mark Meadows and McCarthy heard I was in town. I went to go meet with him. I told him I want to be on three committees. I wrote a letter and gave it to him. But I said to him, Kevin, I said, look, I said, make sure I know you're in a minority. I said, but do not let Biden go to war with our men and women.

unless he comes to you for the War of Powerless Act. It's one of the enumerated powers of the Constitution. That was actually leading into my next question for you is we've seen Congress abdicate its responsibility and the president go around them. On everything. That's why they're freaking about the Supreme Court ruling on the EPA. Right. Well, they also do that, by the way, by violating the 10th Amendment by creating unconstitutional agencies like the EPA, like the Department of Ed, like OSHA,

And what they do is these regulations that get written are fundamentally have the power of law. And who dictates those regulations but the president? Well, and – Because Congress will not pass laws that do those things because they'll get kicked out next day. Well, and having worked in government, I didn't really fully understand the extent of the problem until I was there. But it's not the president that's making those decisions or even his upper level appointees.

It's the people in those agencies. Yeah, but the direct, you know, like Obama puts in DACA, right? The CDC puts a regulation and says that a landlord cannot evict somebody, you know, and they lost their buildings to the corporate guys that donated to them, okay? So you see how it works. And so all this stuff, you know, is being, you know, influenced and directed by the executive branch, which basically means our checks and balances are gone. Right.

Okay. Yeah, you have no checks and balances when you have a president and the agencies underneath him that are making all the decisions essentially for the United States. How do you think we got DACA? Right. Right? That's a great example right there. Well, Waters of the U.S., which is one of the most ridiculous regulation frameworks in history. You know what I tell people? I say, look, my job as a congressman, my number one job is to keep us, federal government, out of your hair here in Arizona.

EPA wise, starting with the Department of Education. That's got to go first. We just got to defund that and get rid of it. There's such a big gap between D.C., the blue states and the red states. Right. If you look around the red states, including Arizona, they're pretty well run internally.

But they spend an awful lot of time and money dealing with federal regulations. I've been out to the mines. I've been out to a helium mine. I've been out to some of the other mines. And the regulation of red tape that's required just to get things done is insurmountable. You know, particularly when we're talking about the EPA, I've always said it's completely ridiculous to me.

That we eliminate and essentially make it impossible to do mining or other extractive activities here in the United States where we have the best pollution controls on those operations, on those mines in the world. But they turn a completely blind eye to a mine in the Sudan that is being mined by slave child labor. Look, it's just out of sight, out of mind. Yeah. Right. And that's how they approach everything. Mark, we've got a couple minutes left here.

I'm grateful for you being on the show. So tell the good people of Arizona CD2 why they should get your vote by August 2nd and why you're the best person to beat this incumbent Democrat. Well, look, all of my competition, they're all great people. They've all done great things, and we all check the same boxes pretty much, right? The difference I think you've got to look at is who has the skills once you get there.

OK, you're not going to get it done with slogans and tattoos. OK, you're not going to get it done there. You've got to know how to ask the right questions. I've got a great business background. I've been a CFO. I have a financial background in operations. I've run manufacturing. I've been on you name the industry. I've been in it. I've seen the underbelly of China. I know how China works.

I've been actually instrumental in changing the FTC laws of Made in USA, where you can't mark your product Made in USA if it's not.

And I led that charge way back when. I understand how China and have prevented China from stealing our technology and our jobs. I know how they work. I think China's our biggest threat, believe it or not. And it's going to rear its ugly head in the next year or two, especially with Taiwan and the silicon chip and the 5G stranglehold they have on us. They own everything, okay?

And I'm really concerned. I understand how the world works and I know how to solve problems. Like President Trump, I'm not a creature of Washington and I'm a successful businessman. Just because you run a business doesn't mean you know business. And I'm a successful businessman and I know how to get things done. So that's the difference, I think, between me and some of the other people in this race. - Well, Mark, we appreciate you coming. Where can people find you on social media?

Well, you go to my website, deluzioforcongress.com. That's D-E-L-U-Z-I-O-F-O-R for congress.com. And I've got Facebook pages and Twitters and everything else. All that fun stuff. You're like some 15-year-old. You got a TikTok?

I'm thinking about when I was 15 years old. You just back-wrapped some memories, man. I am just entirely grateful that I managed to grow up before all of this social media came on the scene because I definitely would not be working in politics right now if that had been the case. Oh, my goodness. I think I'm back at 15, 16 years old. I told my kids, if you did half the stuff I did, I'd kill you.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Says every parent to their kid. Mark, thanks for joining us today. Everybody, the primary is August 2nd. Make sure you vote. Don't be lazy. DeluzioForCongress.com. Check them out. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from GoDaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.