Kari Lake on Putting Truth over Politics
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It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone, Chuck Warren, and

off on an airplane. No Chuck Force One for him. He has to fly coach like the rest of us. But we have a fantastic program lined up for you today. Our first guest has been making news all across the country, but not if you pay attention to the liberal media. They have been trashing you. Oh my gosh, totally. Carrie Lake, she's running for governor of Arizona. Now, I have to start with a

As you know, I am actually working in politics and I work with Carrie Lake. I am her policy director. I'm so lucky to have you on my team, Sam, and I'm really happy to be here today. When it's mutual, because I'm really lucky to work for you, I finally found a candidate who doesn't care about the political establishment, doesn't care about the boundaries they have set.

and just wants to make them better. Well, that's because I'm an outsider, so I don't know all of the rules. It's like, are you supposed to just kowtow to all these different people, or are you supposed to be working for we the people? There's a lineup of rings you're supposed to kiss. Somehow we missed that getting to this point in the campaign.

I am not good at kissing rings, but I am good at speaking the truth. And that's why I left my journalism job, because it became increasingly difficult to speak the truth. And that's kind of how we met, actually, when you were down at City Hall. And I would occasionally have to call you to get information, and I would be bothered by something I was seeing happening in the news and would reach out to you and say, hey, what's the real scoop here?

And a lot of times that scoop was really different than what you'd be getting from the city or from other media covering the city. Right. And you were the only journalist, you and your partner, John Hook, were the only journalists in the entire Arizona media who ever called us to ask those questions.

It's a shame because, you know, there's a lot of power that the mainstream media still has with people. And to think that all of the people working in the journalists, hundreds of them, that not not there was just a two that actually cared to try to get the truth out in the real story. Yeah, there were just shows you so many young people coming in, being trained in journalism school, being trained to be activists rather than journalists.

You know, and that's a really good point because we could reach out with the more experienced journalists. They probably wouldn't reach to us. In fact, they never did. But with some of the ones who've been around for a while, you could reach out to them and you could have a conversation. You could help guide that story and maybe correct it a little bit. Guilt them a little bit. Like, you know, you're old enough to remember how to be a journalist where you tell both sides of the story. Yeah. And they would. But they never reached out and tried to get it. Yeah.

And so you were for 27 years the top anchor in Arizona. I know folks in Florida may kind of not know you yet. I think they will. I think people are going to start talking about you as, you know, you and DeSantis, the two best governors in the country.

Yeah. I think that's where we're headed. That's awesome. Well, I got to win first. And maybe in Florida they do know about me. It's always amazing to me that when I'm out at an airport, I've got people from other states going, hey, Carrie Lake, oh my gosh, we're rooting for you. We hope you win. And I go, how do you know who I am? I mean, you're living in Alaska where they're from. They're from Kansas. They're from New Mexico, wherever they're from. And they're hearing about me in the media. Now, I'm not on the mainstream media. I haven't even had

I think I've had one appearance on a weekend morning show at Fox, but I'm mainly on some of the alternative media. And it shows you how powerful the alternative media is becoming. As people decide to turn off the mainstream media, the corrupt media, they're turning to places like War Room. They're turning to OAN and various other outlets that are right side broadcasting. Broadcasting. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe I'm letting a cat out of the bag. I'm not supposed to.

But when you left your anchor job for Fox 10 here, you were not looking to get into politics. You were looking potentially at some of those type of options to get the news to people. Yeah. I mean, I actually was going to get completely out of media, and I was thinking I would go do media training that I could maybe help people.

some people in organizations that I respected to be better at getting their message out. And so I started to look into things like that. But something strange happened when I put my resignation video out. I did not expect it to go viral. I just wanted to let the good people of Arizona who I had the

honor of covering for 27 years know that I was leaving I wasn't just going off to pursue other opportunities I was leaving for a reason the reason was that I wasn't interested in delivering half-truths and that I was finding it increasingly difficult to be honest with them if I stayed in those confines of the corrupt media and so I I wanted them to know when that video went out it went viral people started reaching out to me and said would you please consider running for office

To which I thought was insane. I'm like, heck no. It is insane. You're crazy. I mean, I think, you know, in a great way, but you have to be to run for these kind of things because as you've seen the vitriol, the anger, the lies that come from the left that are amplified by the media, it's really daunting for people to step into this forum. It is. That's a great word. It is daunting. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and think, wow, all the people who are against us

But then I remember all the people who are for us, and it's the people of Arizona. People against us are the machine. It's the old guard. It is the old consultant class, the McCain machine that's here in Arizona. And you got a little bit of controversy lately again because you pointed out that the- Me? What? I know. It's strange. That seems to keep happening. Yeah.

But you pointed out accurately that the McCain machine still has a outsized influence on Arizona politics. Yeah. I mean, Senator McCain's been gone for years now.

But I use the descriptive – how was I trying to say? I was trying to describe that he still has some power, and I said it's like his hand is reaching out from the grave. Oh, my gosh. The whole state went crazy. Which is nuts because –

of this large vehicle. They controlled the state Republican Party apparatus more or less straight up for 20 plus years. And I don't think the people of Arizona realized how powerful it was. The people on the inside did. You didn't go anywhere without getting the approval of John McCain. And while I respect his military career and his military service,

He was not always the best guy. I mean, he he remember he's the one who handed. I remember when he said build the dang fence or whatever in that ad. Well, and then he fought President Trump when he tried to build the wall. Look, John McCain was a border hawk for six months out of every six years.

Exactly. When the commercials came out, he wanted to secure the border and then he didn't want to do anything. He wanted open borders after that. So you speak some truth about John McCain and everyone gets bent out of shape. But I'm sorry, I'm about the truth. And the truth is that the Republican Party is the Trump Republican Party, like it or not. And this McCain cabal is going to have to deal with that.

Because, and they're trying with this race. They've got somebody on the ticket who is a McCaniac, even though she's not putting herself, painting herself that way. But who we're talking about, folks, is Karen Taylor Robeson. And she absolutely is. She has spent a lifetime in politics in Arizona. Her family are political scions of the state. If you watch her ads, it's like McCain's Borderhawk ads, which were garbage. I mean...

But you watch her. She says she's a conservative outsider. I'm sorry. I'm laughing at that. I know. I'm choking over it because she is the furthest thing from an outsider in any candidate I've ever seen. I mean, she has been a lobbyist and deeply vested in Arizona politics for her entire life.

Right. I mean, her family, the Kunasek family, and now she's married to Ed Robeson, who's been around forever and ever and ever. And who's a major developer here. Billionaire, who's a major developer. And a lot of her support, I believe, is coming from people's ties to Ed. And she's putting out millions in ads. She's got an endless amount of money to spend to put out ads acting like she is a border hawk.

And she's an open borders, I would say, kind of globalist type. I have always considered her a and I've known her for a long time. I consider her a dealmaker. She just wants to go along to get along kind of thing. And that is not what this state needs right now. I agree. And this is one of the reasons I'm running. When when Arizonans reached out and said, would you please run for office? Please consider running.

I thought, well, I don't want to do that. You know, I used to work on the news and we would sit there and have to watch all of the political ads. And most of them were attack ads. And I would look to John and say, who in their right mind would ever run for political? You've got to be crazy to run for political office. And here I am, the victim of attack ads. Almost six million in attack ads have been lobbed at me. And that was at the last campaign finance filing. For perspective, folks, Doug Ducey, the current governor of Arizona, spent more on his campaign.

election run through the general election than anyone had ever spent in the history of Arizona, 7.7 million last time. Karen Taylor Robeson not leading the pack in the Republican primary three months out of the Republican primary has probably crossed that threshold already. Yeah. With six million of it spent attacking you.

Well, no. I think even the $6 million I don't think is coming – well, it might be coming from her, but I'm talking about separate PACs that are attacking me. Oh, yeah. Some of it is her. Some of it might be other people. It might all be her. Who knows? Yeah, no. Look, I don't know if it's all coming from her and Ed or if it's coming from some of their allies, but they have spent –

More money than anyone has ever spent attacking a candidate in the history of the state of Arizona. I'm a danger to that old guard. The old guard is trying to cling on to what they've got. And they're holding on for dear life. And the person standing in the way is me. And we're way ahead in the polls. Our newest internal polling shows us up at 46%, 47%.

And Karen's at 22 percent. So, you know, she says she's a fiscal conservative, but she's sure flushing a lot of money down the toilet right now. Yes, she is. Polls hold. So millions, as a matter of fact. But I guess when you have billions, millions isn't that much. Well, and I want to go to another part about the money in this race, because you out fundraised her in terms of actual donors to your campaign. You out fundraised her.

Yeah, we did. And you've had less than, I think it's like three people have asked for refunds, which is normal in a campaign. You know, and I know one of them was one of those where, you know, you swipe the card at an event and it doesn't go through and you go, you know what, let me try that again. Right. You know, an honest mistake like that. She's had 17,000 refunds. The way she's raising money is so unethical and deceptive.

that it literally gets my blood boiling. Did you just see my whole body language change when you bring this up? Because she's going after people with text messages saying, help Governor Abbott build the wall. Help ensure that President Trump's Truth Social gets a footing in the market. All these BS things, Sam. People click on that. They click on that and they go, I want to make sure Truth Social gets off the ground. Click. Click.

donate. It's a monthly donation. Boom. Next thing they do, they go to their visa statement three months in and they go, wow, who is this Karen person? Why am I donating $100 to her every month? What? And some of them have been elderly people. And the way her site's set up, it automatically enrolls you in recurring donations.

Right. Right. And that is so deceptive, folks. I hope everyone on our side listens to this and stops that because that is a terrible practice. It's unethical. It says a lot about who she is. Yeah. And I don't think we we want to have an unethical person in the ninth floor. Folks, we have just a few seconds before we're going to break. You can follow Carrie Lake, Carrie Lake dot com. You can follow her at Carrie Lake on Twitter.

We're coming right back with her. And if you make a donation, you'll know it's to me. We're not trying to trick you. And she's going to do what she says. Yes. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of studio today, but we have a phenomenal guest in studio with us. Carrie Lake running for governor of Arizona, the leading Republican contender for governor of Arizona.

And something I have had a lot of fun with personally, because when we met, when you started considering this, Ron, and we sat and talked about everything that goes on in the world of politics, how it works, how we would accomplish these things. I've had a lot of meetings like that with a lot of potential politicians and politicians over the years. And every time I started saying, you know, we could try to do something like this. The answer they give us, no, no, we can't do that. That's too far.

We can't we can't we're not going to be able to achieve all those things. But you didn't say anything like that. You sat there and said, no, just tell me how we're going to get it done because we're going to go do all of this.

I think President Trump showed us that you can accomplish a lot. We were led to believe after decades, our whole lives, watching politicians, they make promises. It took them 10, 20, 30 years to get them accomplished, whatever their promises were, if they ever got them accomplished. And mostly they didn't. And mostly they didn't. They came back, oh, we need more money. We need this. President Trump came in and he made all these major, massive promises. And I have to admit-

I was not a never Trumper, but I wasn't anybody but Trumper in that election because I didn't believe those promises. And he made big ones. And he made big ones. And he went in and on day one, he started. I mean, literally, I think the inaugural parade was going on and he was in there getting started. Remember signing off on executive orders and.

Then it continued to move on and he started getting things done. He did exactly what he said he was going to. While the media was attacking him, while the swamp was attacking him, while people in his own inner circle were even attacking him, he pretty much got everything done. Right. And it wasn't easy. He literally went through, I always used to sort of

He derisively talk about Obama's campaign as the campaign of a million promises. Yeah. And he delivered on none of them. Turned it into a million lies. Yeah. A million lies and one really disastrous health care bill. Right. Right. But Trump came out and went literally went down the list, checked the box one after another and did it. He secured the border.

He cut taxes and supercharged our economy. We had the best economy in our history. And, you know, I think even Democrats who didn't like him and even probably some of the Republicans who didn't would look back where we are now and look back and say their lives were better under President Trump. You have to. There's nobody who can't say that. Yeah. I think everybody right now, if they're being honest, even Democrats...

would rather have a few mean tweets than 10% on inflation. Well, and see, I want to bring those similar type policies to Arizona. And while, you know, when I left television, I think the majority of the people in the state loved me and liked me and respected me. The minute you jump into politics, you're going to get, you know, a big chunk who say, all right, all of a sudden we hate her because she's running, she's in politics and she's not on the side that we wish she was on.

And so I, you know, I wish everyone loved me and would everyone would vote for me. That would be fantastic. But that's not realistic. But what is realistic is that the policies that I'm going to put forward that we are going to make sure happen here in Arizona will help all Arizonans and will make their lives better, whether they're Democrat or Republican or somewhere in between. Tell the folks out there if they haven't if they're not familiar with it. What are some of those key things that you've said, hey, I'm going after this?

Well, with the border for sure, we're going to secure the border. And I'm not talking about just surging the troops, as my opponent is saying. I'm talking about on day one, issuing a declaration of invasion. We're going to finish President Trump's wall project. There's about 20 miles left. We're going to use the materials on the border to finish that project on state and federal land. And people would say, wait, you can't do that. Well, yes, you can.

The Constitution lays out a plan and how you can do that. It's Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3. Since our federal government's failing to protect us, we, the state, can step in and protect our citizens. And we're going to make sure we have our guard on the border, Arizona Guard, armed, and we're going to stop people from coming here. There's many more parts of that plan. They can find it on my website. Yeah, and here's the interesting thing about that. Everyone said you can't do that.

You can't do that. But you called it an invasion. That triggers the constitutional principle that allows Arizona to step in. And after you did that, the governor asked the attorney general whether you could call it an invasion. The attorney general came back and said you could. We recently had a member of the Arizona House ask their legislative team the same question. They said you could. So we kind of got the ball rolling, Sam. You're literally already winning this.

this issue, right? I mean, all of a sudden people are looking at doing things that have never been done before. I sent my policy to Governor Doug Ducey before, I think almost before we introduced it. And I said, please take this and enact it immediately for the people of Arizona. We need this.

I didn't care if I got credit. If he took, he could rename it, you know, Ducey's border policy. Just do it for the people. We can't have drugs pouring in. We can't have the cartels maintaining operational control. We have to protect our border for the people of Arizona and for this entire country. This is a 50 state problem. And that's why we're getting donations from all 50 states because they know as governor, I'm going to do exactly what I say, just like President Trump did.

We just put out our education plan yesterday and Sam did amazing work helping put this together. And we're calling for backpack funding.

which means the money stays with the student. 100% backpack funding, no need to worry about a voucher or anything like that. Yeah, you don't have to go through. You know, right now when you're trying to get the funding to stay with your kid, you have to go through seminars and learn how to do it. We're going to make it easy. You tell us where you want your student to go, your child, and we send the money there. We want it to be easy. We want the parent to pick the best fit for their child. And I believe this is the fastest way to clean up some of this garbage curriculum. Yep.

It's basic, you know, free enterprise. Free market. Yeah. And if your school is teaching ridiculous curriculum, you know, telling students that communism is great and America's not, if your student is trying to groom your, or if your school is trying to groom your student, then you just pull your kid out and you put them in another school. Pretty soon that school gets the message when their enrollment goes down, we've got to change things up or we're in trouble.

Well, and you've got these schools now telling girls they're boys, boys they're girls. They are teaching an anti-American curriculum that teaches kids to hate each other. It's so sad. I mean, as a mother –

I know a lot of kids right now are struggling with mental illness. I mean, you add what they've been through the last couple of years, being masked up and crazy stuff they've been through. But teaching this kind of, it's really, to me, mental abuse, what they're putting our kids through. Teaching them all this racism and to judge people, to look at someone and judge them by their skin color, to look at somebody who's a man and he thinks he's a woman and you've got to call him a woman. It's crazy stuff.

And no wonder we have mental illness skyrocketing with our young people. Yeah, look, when you're at the point when they're literally refuting Martin Luther King, they're refuting the principles that he promoted worldwide. It's sick. We need to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, period. And politicians by what they actually do, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's why we're doing so well, to be honest, Sam. I think the people of Arizona know me for 27 years. I've been in their home. I have a relationship with them. It's not like they just know my name. I don't just have name ID. I have a relationship with them and they trust me. And I trust the people of Arizona. And we have just one minute left. I'm going to have you give all the ways people can follow you and donate money to you and all that kind of stuff. But I want to add one more thing just real quick. Folks, I have never met a candidate who went in from day one.

and has been nothing but gracious, nothing but kind to everybody around her on the campaign, and whose policies, frankly, they're not hateful in any way, shape, or form. The things you're talking about doing are not hateful. And who has been treated as badly as you have by the media in a state or in this country. You and Trump are the only two I can remember. I was just talking to our pollster. He said, I've never seen this much attack go on to one person other than Trump.

and their positives go up. So it's not working media. It's not. Folks. Keep trying to attack me, but people know me. Find me at Carrie Lake dot com K.A.R.I. L.A.K.E. dot com. And you can see where I stand on all the issues. If you want to make a donation, we would appreciate it. Carrie Lake. Thank you so much. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back.

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Alright, welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of the studio today in the air on Chuck Force One. Actually, no, he flies coach like the rest of us do. But talking about some folks who have been flying all over the globe and doing some unbelievable things.

first in Afghanistan, now in Ukraine. On the line with us, the folks from Project Dynamo, a nonprofit leading the effort to help U.S. citizens escape from Ukraine as Russia's invasion continues. We're here right now with co-founder Brian Stern. And I apologize, is it Kirillov? Kirillov?

You could say Karelo. Karelo. Okay. Alexandrov, a 27-year-old Michigan native who was safely reunited with his American family Wednesday morning in Poland after being falsely accused of espionage and illegally held captive by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine for more than a month. This is an incredible story that just broke, I think it was yesterday or the day before, Kylie? Yep. I just got the chills when you read that. Yeah. No, I am too. And we're

Brian and Kirilov, thank you so much for joining us on this program. We are incredibly grateful to have you. Tell us what happened here, because this is just an amazing story. So Kirilov's family had established contact with us prior to his arrest by a day or two.

Subsequent to that contact, he was ultimately arrested and charged for espionage by the Russians because he's an American citizen and only because he's an American citizen. All the charges were fake. They were frankly stupid. His wife was arrested as well.

From there, we've been trying to get them out via two different tracks. One was a negotiated release where we worked with functionaries and interlocutors in Moscow and all over Ukraine. And it's a very complicated story to negotiate a release. At the same time, we were setting conditions for a unilateral extraction just to go get them. The negotiations stalled. They never really got negative, but they just kind of got to a spot where it was just not making progress. So then we went in and we took them ourselves.

Unbelievable. Krilo, what do you do for a living? What were you doing in Ukraine before all this happened? I worked online. I was selling religious items and religious jewelry from Ukraine and distributed it in the United States. Fantastic. Okay. And so then what happened to your wife? Because you said they also arrested her. Yeah, she was arrested. They got extremely violent with her. She was interrogated. She was questioned.

So on and so forth. I can't even imagine. But she was released then or she's. She was released. She was released after some time and she was released after after some time in custody. One of the things that's amazing to me is.

just about this whole thing is Carrillo, you know, Carrillo is an American and his wife is a Ukrainian, but still, but, you know, would be an American, but for a piece of paper, right? Well, and has a right to American citizenship, obviously. And he, you know, this family is the first real survivor of war crimes that survived and

Of this conflict and probably in a long time. I can't recall. I actually can't recall a civilian American being a victim of war crimes in quite a while. No, I have never. I mean, I really have never heard of such a thing. What Vladimir Putin and the Russians are doing is unprecedented in so many ways.

Now, tell us as much as you can. Obviously, I understand a lot of the operational elements have to be – you have to maintain some secrecy around that in case you need to use those type of methods again.

Thank you for understanding. Yeah, no, absolutely. But when you go in there and, as you say, take unilateral action, I mean, you were talking about you're putting your team and your folks' lives at risk to do this, which the United States government is failing to do.

We're apolitical, we're not even bipartisan, we're nothing. As it relates to the U.S. government, we notify, as soon as we hear about a case, especially involving a U.S. citizen, the first phone call I made was to the State Department. The FBI had come and visited Carrillo's mother at her home in Michigan.

The U.S. government was aware of all of our moves, all of our actions at all times. When I engage with the government on cases like this, pretty much every call that we do with them, I always ask,

If you need us to get out of the way, we will. If there's another effort going on, I don't need to know, but we'll step aside. I don't want to mess anything up. So if Special Forces are going to come in and do a rescue, I don't want to be there when that happens. I don't want to be there. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brian Stern with Project Dynamo. We're going to bring you right back. We have a much longer segment coming up, and I want to get more into this. Thank you again for joining us, and thank you for the work you're doing. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of studio today. On the line with us, two gentlemen who, one who's doing really amazing, amazing things, and one who's been through something that

I just can't even imagine. Brian Stern with Project Dynamo, they are assisting in evacuating Americans from Ukraine. And with him on the line, Kirill Alexandrov, he was taken hostage by the Russian forces. And Kirill, I can't even imagine what you went through in that experience.

And, I mean, you had to have been seeing your life flash in front of your eyes over and over again. You know, you had to have had thoughts that you were never going to see your family again. I can't imagine what that's like, but tell us as best you can what you went through and what you were thinking as all that was happening. Yeah, my life flashed right before my eyes quite often. I was faced with mock executions. I was beaten, especially while cuffed.

It was very, very disgusting overall. I had a lot of sense of helplessness. I've never felt so helpless in my life. Uncertainty basically just ate me alive and it broke me apart in ways I've never been broke. I can't even imagine. And I can't imagine that anyone would not be broken down by that. I mean, you have to...

Folks, I don't think any of us listening to this or here in this country can really imagine the kind of thing you went through. What was it like that moment when Project Dynamo, your rescuer, showed up? Oh, it was such a huge relief. I knew we had a ways to go, but it was a large rock that just fell off my back and

I knew maybe not at that moment, but very soon my family and I were going to be safe and Brian and his crew completely saved our lives. 100% saved our lives. Wow. That's amazing. And Brian, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and how this organization came about?

So I was, I'm just a career military guy, been in the military for pretty much my entire adult life. Project Dynamo was founded in my living room in August 2021.

in response to Afghanistan and doing rescues. That's kind of where we earned our bones, as we say. So we're actually a pretty new organization. We've only been around like 10 months, and we've been forward deployed pretty much the entire time since August. So we were landing aircraft. We actually landed the first charter airplane into Afghanistan under Taliban control.

So and pulled 120 something Americans out of Afghanistan in September. So we were we're real small. We're real, real, real small. And we only we only really do.

like hard stuff. So we're, we don't, you know, we're not a bus service is what I tell everybody. If you're in safety and you need a ride to the border, that's not us. You know, Carrillo, the Carrillo case, which we called Detroit Lions, that was the internal name that we called this case for Carrillo, his wife and his wife and her mother.

By far the hardest thing that we've ever done from a complexity perspective and a risk perspective. We've never rescued someone who is in captivity for felonious, fake or otherwise charges of national security in the middle of a war zone 100 miles behind enemy lines. That was a new one for us.

Wow, Kylie, I don't even know what to say. I mean, we have had somebody from Project Dynamo on before. I know, Brian, we were trying to get you on and had some difficulties because you were over in Ukraine at that time. But they were talking about the complexity of trying to get people out and how it was actually much more difficult than Afghanistan, where you at least had an airport you could fly people in and out of.

versus Ukraine, you can't use airlift at all. You have to get people out on the ground. Tell us about how difficult that has been for your organization throughout this. So I always tell people, I get asked this question a lot, doing rescues in Ukraine compared to rescues in Afghanistan, they're almost the photo negatives of each other. In Afghanistan, the land borders were all closed. In Ukraine, they're all open.

Right. So Poland, Romania, Hungary have all been very generous with letting people letting people out, letting people into their countries out of Ukraine. Conversely, it's the second largest country in Europe. And you really don't understand how big Ukraine is. I've driven across it probably 40, 50 times already. And it is huge. It's a it's it's it's a big that we spent from safety.

from outside the occupied area to the border with 17 hours in a car. Okay. Wow. And there's a gas shortage and you can't find gasoline in this country. So everything is difficult. Everything is hard. It's a war zone. There is no embassy presence in some parts of the country. You can't find toilet paper.

So you're seeing what's going on there up close and personal. I think we've, we've all seen some pretty hideous images on TV and maybe printed in our newspapers and things, but you're seeing this up close and personal. What, what is this war doing to the civilians and to families and to people like Carrillo and his wife who have been stuck there or who tried to stick it out there? I think, um,

The best way, you know, there are parts of this country. I was a 9-11 first responder. And there are parts of this country that look like ground zero after 9-11. There are parts of this country that look like Haiti after the earthquake. I've seen women. We've evacuated people with their belongings down, whittled down to a shopping bag. Women have been gang raped. Men have been forced to be meat in the Russian army. Schools have been blown up. All kinds of things.

terrible, terrible, terrible things. War, you know, Clausewitz said, you know, war is an extension of politics. And I believe in that. Soldiers fight. That's okay. That is what it is. And the war is left to the politicians and to the military. But stuck in the middle of all that are innocent civilians like Carrillo and his family who did absolutely nothing wrong. They were living happily in Ukraine, minding their own business until the Russian army showed up and changed their lives forever. Yeah.

And I think that's an interesting point about the nature of war. And I've had a little experience visiting Russia. It's the one country where I've always thought, you know, anything goes as long as you can get away with it. Well, I'll tell you this. We initiated our operation on Victory Day and concluded the day after Victory Day. So while all of Mother Russia was watching Putin on TV...

We were taking our American home. That's a real victory. I mean, that is a real victory. Our lead negotiator that we were dealing with in Russia...

called us after we already had him looking to negotiate some more. They didn't even know. Wow. So anything goes, that's right. Anything goes. That's right. Wow. As long as you can get away with it, as long as you can get away with it. And we did. This is just an amazing story, Kylie. And, and, you know, I'm so grateful, Brian Carrillo for you taking the time to join us today, because I think people need to hear these personal stories about Ukraine and

And understand the horror that has been unfolding there. And it is this is something I think many of us thought was was at least in Western Europe and in associated countries done that we would never see this again in our lifetimes. But the horror you're describing is is the barbarism that we associate with the distant past. And it's not.

This war, there's a lot of politics talking about it. It becomes a political issue a little bit. But this war, because of the nature of it, this is a global issue. This is not a Ukrainian problem. It's just not. It's just not. As evidenced by an American citizen as recent as two days ago.

Right. So the idea that at the individual level, this is an American problem. And at a big level, this is an American problem as well. So the idea that the horrors and the atrocities will continue, they will continue unless they are stopped. It's a fact. Well, and it's going to be spreading famine across parts of the globe in all likelihood. I mean, there are.

not to mention what is being done to the civilians there. Brian, how do folks keep up with Project Dynamo? How can they support your mission? We want folks, if you're listening out there to this, you need to go down their website. You need to follow these folks and support them as best you possibly can because, Brian, the work you're doing is beyond words.

So thanks for asking. The project dynamo.org is our website. We are entirely donor funded, entirely donor funded. These operations are incredibly expensive and complicated and we need, we need the generosity of donors to help us with it. There are a lot. We, we got, I have five more cases that came in my lap this morning. So if you can tell us how many, how many people were involved?

With this rescue, how many different people did you have to network or work through to get this done? Right around 45 or so. Wow. That's a huge amount of folks that are needed to do this. And that gives you an idea, folks, of why it's so important to support Project Dynamo's mission.

We need financial help. We have Facebook, like us on Facebook. And I don't do the social media stuff. Someone else does it for me. But we need help. We need the story to stay alive. This war needs to stay alive. It's already losing ground. We're seeing our donations plummet because people are losing interest. And we definitely need generosity. I'm a volunteer. My whole team are volunteers.

I'm not paid. I don't take a salary. Not yet. We're working on that. But but for 10 months, my whole crew, we do this out of the goodness of our hearts. And I just need people to adopt. Every dollar goes to an operation. So a dollar, five bucks, 10 bucks, everything is helpful. Well, you know, last time we were talking, we were talking about all the families that you had helped to get out and to reunite. Here we have a case, maybe the most dramatic case I have ever heard of.

of a civilian organization going in and rescuing someone from custody in a war zone, someone who very likely would never have come back if this hadn't happened. And folks, if you can't get behind that and what these guys are doing, I don't know how you even say you have a heart anymore at that point.

Brian, thank you again so much for joining us. I really, really appreciate you coming on. And I hope you will stay in touch with Kylie, our producer, as you go forward. If there's ever an opportunity that you need to get out a message or something like this happens, that you'll help us inform our viewers about it. And folks, you've got to get behind this mission. I mean, this is really a heart-rending thing.

I really appreciate it. And the biggest thing is just if everyone could just welcome home Carrillo and his family to be, it was a big win for us, but, but you know, there's a good win for everybody, but especially him and his family. Well, and Carrillo, thank you so much for joining us and, and, and welcome. You know, I think we need people like you and your wife and, and, and folks who can tell these stories because it's,

As Brian said, this war is not over and it's going to it's going to the horrors are going to continue for a long time unless we do something about it. Yes. Thank you so much for the support. My family and I really appreciate it.

All right. Fantastic. Guys, thank you again for joining us. We really appreciate having you on. Kylie and I are going to chat for a minute, and then we're going to have a little bit of a podcast-only segment. I'm going to bring Jamie in against her will. She's laughing here in studio. So thankful for the guys from Project Dynamo for joining us. They were absolutely fantastic today. Kylie, thank you so much for being here.

When they reached out to you and you heard about this story, what was your first thought? I was just shocked.

because I hadn't heard about it on and I'm you know we were just talking earlier about the mainstream media and I still watch it because I just like to know what's you know also because you have to get us the guest for this program yes absolutely I need to yeah and so I was just so grateful that Justin had kept us in mind Justin's with your guys's team and and I was you know more than happy to jump on this and get them on the show and move some things around because I thought this is something that needs to be heard and you

I hadn't heard it, so I knew other people hadn't heard it either. I am shocked because I hadn't heard of it either until you did this, and then I did see there's a piece on Fox News and some other things. But folks, I think in a lot of ways this doesn't fit the narrative a lot of people want to have about Ukraine, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the story I was hearing this morning was about Congress getting Peloton use for free. But I still hadn't heard about this story, so...

The really important stuff, free Pelotons for members of Congress. Thank you, guys. Brian Stern, Carilla Alexander, thank you so much for joining us. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back with our podcast-only segment here, so if you're tuning in, make sure you download on Apple, Substack, Spotify, all those good things coming right up. ♪ music playing ♪

Welcome to the podcast-only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your Sam Stone, Chuck Warren, not in studio today. We did have two really fantastic guests. And Kylie, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper, our producer, I want to thank you for both of those. First, I want to get your guys' take on Carrie Lake. Because you're both young women, you are not, you know,

in what she was talking about in here today. The interesting thing with both Kylie and Jamie, Jamie is very political. Oh, yes. Very. Kylie, not so much. No. I would say I'm, I keep, you know, I like to keep up to date. We're dragging you into it. Yeah. And you stay informed. Yeah. Well, I always joke with my parents how I went to public school and ASU and I never got brainwashed. How did that happen? I don't know.

I don't know, but I visit my grandma more than occasionally, and she was watching CNN the other day, and I'm like, they're brainwashing you. She's 96, and she was a huge Trump supporter, huge Obama supporter, and now huge Biden. So it's like every president, she's just like the biggest supporter because she's watching the mainstream media. This was...

she used to not watch CNN. This is very new. So I had to have a conversation that she's not getting the full truth to everything. The Creative News Network. Yeah, she goes, they can't do that. They have to be telling me the truth. They're not ground. Folks, no, no, no. For truth, you have to tune in to Breaking Battlegrounds. Yeah, exactly. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Which she does. She's a listener. She's a listener of the radio show, not so much podcast because she can't quite figure that out.

But so she won't hear this segment. You're going to have to send it to her. She'll be very excited. I'm talking about her. So obviously, as I mentioned at the start of the program, I'm working with Carrie Lake. And it's true. I get a little sentimental about this things at times, but I have spent a lot of years in this business and you get told no a lot. And you get told, no, I don't want to take that risk. Candidates don't want to step out there. Right.

When she's talking about – we rolled this out yesterday. The press is totally ignoring it. They ran a hit piece on her about calling – saying that John McCain was reaching out of the grave to control the Republican Party in Arizona, which I mean frankly it's descriptive. It's a descriptive phraseology but at the same time it's true.

that McCain Network still controls a large part of the Republican Party in Arizona. And so she's being chopped on and over and over about that. Meanwhile, yesterday we rolled out an education plan that has a dual track education after 10th grade, meaning after 10th grade students can choose to go on a four year college career track or they can go earn a technical degree.

in a field of their choice and come directly out of high school into a high paying job. Yeah. Well, I think that's so important because I just toured a manufacturing firm up in Prescott Valley. And he said, if I could hire 50 people tomorrow, I would. But people aren't going into those trade schools and they're getting paid.

so much money in that yeah a lot of money that you would not be making going to college and then graduating bet you the people he's talking about hiring make more than me yeah yeah i i would yeah all of us probably no absolutely i mean

And that's the thing. They're good jobs. People try to look down on them because they want to feel so superior. Oh, I went to college. But no, these are solid jobs. They're important. We need them. They're here. They're not in India or China. And they're probably going to stay here. Hopefully. Well, if we have people to fill them. Yeah. Right. Otherwise, they're going to have to leave. But.

And that's the thing. So that's a pretty radical departure from any education policy plan I've seen another candidate come up with, right? Well, I think it's also important that the Republican Party just, yeah, charter schools, that's important, school choice, but getting more deeper into education as a whole instead of just saying school choice and then kind of leaving it at that. Because again, with the backpack policy, the money's following the kid. That

you're still investing in public education, but also in charter schools, all this kind of thing. And so I think that's really important that it's about the child, not just about funding. Well, and I think one of the interesting things of this plan is we're, you know, kind of putting it together was that,

It's going to be a lot easier for the traditional government public schools to execute the dual track part of it because they have a lot more physical plant space. They have bigger buildings. They have bigger grounds. They can put a lot of this stuff down. So I see that as a huge opportunity for them. But it really gets me because we have put out – and, folks, I'm going to – I'm patting myself on the back a little bit here. Sorry about that.

It doesn't happen very often. But look, we put together policies that are pretty aggressive, whether it's the 100% backpack funding and dual-track education,

Whether it is on the border, the stuff Kerry was talking about, declaring an invasion, stepping in, finishing the wall in place of the federal government, putting Border Patrol armed on the border and telling them just to turn people back. No more of this catch and release into this country garbage. Just turn them back. Those are pretty significant departures from the political norm. Our plan to address homelessness and quality of life.

It goes straight up, says, listen, we're going to build the beds and then we're going to ban urban camping. We're going to get them off the street. We're going to take them up and give them a choice. They can go into treatment and they can get well or they can go to jail or they can go somewhere else and, you know, let Gavin Newsom pay to let them continue to use drugs on the street. Right. Yeah. That's a pretty radical departure from what a lot of other folks are doing.

And I got to say, it's been bothering me a lot that the media here has totally ignored all of that and continues to create these sort of ridiculous controversies like this where they run around to the McCain family members and find one who says they're insulted about this thing. This is not news. It's not journalism anymore. And then you hear someone like Brian and Kirilov and you hear their story.

And it doesn't fit the narrative because it doesn't make the Biden administration look good. So while he's been on Fox News and you see him on these programs, and I know he's very careful to say that he's entirely apolitical, as he has to be.

You're not seeing that if you're watching CNN, if you're watching MSNBC, if you're watching your local nightly news. You're not seeing this stuff. Well, I think it's so important that he probably emphasized that they are apolitical because they're not – you don't know what political party the person is that you're rescuing. It's an American and they want to get them out and safe. And something he didn't know was today in Ukraine they've saved 700 people, which probably more –

From when that when I when I when I read about them. But he said he only takes the most complex cases. The fact that there's been 700 of those complex cases. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. That is 60 rescue missions. And folks, he didn't go into it. But I mean, look, you're talking about a special forces rescue mission guns up.

Yeah. In this case. You know, I mean, a lot of them are more low key than that, where they're making arrangements to get, you know, funnel someone out of the country, that kind of thing, and trying to avoid the Russian forces. In this case, they were going into direct conflict with them. And like an 18-hour high-speed chase. Yeah. Yeah.

And you know that if something happens, the United States government is not coming to rescue you if you end up captured too because that's the whole reason you're there. Right. You are completely on your own. I can't imagine being in that situation. No, there is no – I mean that's the thing. Our soldiers when they're in the field and when they're on an operation can count on the U.S. government to try to extricate them if things go bad. We're going to have –

carriers launching jets and we're going to have helicopters and rapid response teams jumping in to assist them. In this case, these guys are

all by themselves. Well, and I have other questions when he said he was in communication with our government and he didn't want to step on any toes, but apparently there were no toes to step on because he still had to go in and make that rescue. So it's obviously something we weren't going to talk about with them, but more questions that I have of why was that not? Well, and you know, to, to put it on a more basic level, you need to, if you're Joe Biden, you need to, and I don't know if the guy can, cause I think he's,

totally senile at this point. But he needs to have a conversation with Vladimir Putin or someone needs to have a conversation with them and say, any American citizens that you have over there, you better put them in a nice padded seat on a nice bus and deliver them to us in Poland or we are in this war.

And I mean, frankly, we are in this war, whether the Biden administration wants to admit it or not, when you're putting in all the resources that we are, when you're helping Ukraine target Russian generals, when you're giving them the data to help sink their flag, the Russian flagship. We're in the war. If another country was doing this to us, we would have declared war back on them by now. I'm wondering why Russia hasn't done that.

Why have they not declared us an enemy state? Because we are funding. We are giving all of the resources to Ukraine. Technical assistance. It's clear we're training soldiers and various things. And yet we can't step up and do this. And we can't draw the line in the sand that says, listen, Vlad, you are a bad, bad man. And we don't care. We're coming to get ours. Vlad. Bad Vlad.

We're on that nickname. Bad Vlad. Bad Vlad. That's what I'm going to name my next dog. That's what you need on a T-shirt. Well, look, I mean, you know, I'm joking about it, obviously, but this guy is a dangerous man. Yeah. You know, I mean, his background is KGB, but he also understands the value of citizenship. I mean, Russians are very protective of their citizens. I don't know why we feel that we need to be constraining ourselves when it comes to American citizens. Right.

Didn't used to be this way. No. And it really should scare everyone that being an American citizen does not carry the same weight that it used to. It used to be you were pretty much off limits. No one could touch you. We're coming for you. Yeah. Right. No matter where you are, no matter who you are, we're coming for you. Exactly. And we're going to get our people out. That was always our promise to our citizens.

And it's being broken. It was broken in Afghanistan. It's been broken in Ukraine. This is really hard for me to accept and swallow as an American and as someone who loves this country. This would not be happening with Trump in office. I can guarantee you that. I don't think the invasion would have happened in the first place. No. But you certainly would not have us leaving American citizens behind. Nope. Nope.

Well, folks, thank you again for tuning in. This has been a fantastic program. I really want to thank our two guests, Carrie Lake, Brian Stern, Kirillov, Kirillov, Alexandrov. Folks, I know I'm terrible with names. I know.

I'm glad I'm not in your position because I'm worse at names. You're going to just have to bear with me on this one. I'm going to screw them up all the time. It is what it is. As long as you get Breaking Battlegrounds correct. Yeah, I screwed that up last week. I went back with the old show name. You've been doing pretty well on that, though. It's only two screw-ups since we changed the name of the program. I had this whole plan. I was going to put together a montage of every time you screwed it up and make it into a joke. No, it's a really short montage right now. I can't do it.

I'll work on that. I'll work on that for next time. Thank you, Sam. Yeah, absolutely. So broken potholes.

There you go. Okay, that was deliberate. Whatever. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back next week. We're going to have some more fantastic guests for you. Thank you for tuning in today. Be sure to catch us on the air. You can do that 960 The Patriot in Phoenix. Is it 92.3? I'm always forgetting. 92.3 FM in Tampa.

And across Florida, something like that. No, we got to do better than this. Check our social media. It's listed there. I know their name. I know they're called The Answer. 93.7. OK, folks. Yes. But follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Chuck and I actually went down to Eloy with Attorney General candidate Tiffany Shedd. Which was a fantastic piece, by the way. You guys really did a great. Kind of puts that, you know, the illegal immigration kind of into perspective of what you're actually seeing happening.

Being a farmer down there. Well, and Carrie was talking about it. This is not the illegal immigration of 10 or 20 years ago when you had people sneaking across the border for a job. This is cartel organized, and it is a humanitarian crisis for the people that are coming here. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds, back next week.

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