Lt Governor Matt Pinnell on Building Oklahoma's Future
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest on the line today, Matt Pinnell, the 17th lieutenant governor of Oklahoma. Oklahoma elects their lieutenant governor.

Matt, welcome to the program. Hey, well, thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate the time. So, Matt, how has your family reacted to having their dad be an elected official in the public eye? People obviously, I'm sure you go to restaurants, people want to shake your hand or complain about something, probably more complaining. How have they responded, especially the kids? Yeah, you know, we've got four kiddos.

And, you know, I was the chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, run a bunch of campaigns before I was lieutenant governor. So, you know, they knew politics. They had been to political events. But this is different. It is different when we do have people that.

want to talk to us about some burning political issue in the grocery store or restaurant from time to time. But, you know, when dad gets in the car and drives to the state capitol and

You know, it would be like me driving to work at any other job. And so I am blessed from that perspective. The job doesn't affect them too much. They think for the most part, they think it's cool. They like some of the events that I get to go to a lot of the events. They don't want to attend political events, but from time to time we get to do something kind of fun. And they like going with me to to some of those fun events. Do you let them know that you don't want to go to all the political events as well?

He just shakes his head. Chuck, you're not supposed to answer. You're not supposed to put him on the spot like that this early. I'm sorry. You cut out there. What did you say? During COVID, you have really done it. What I have read, you have done a fantastic job on Oklahoma tourism. Now, us being here in Phoenix, Scottsdale.

You know, I don't know. We're a bit snobby about tourism, right? I mean, you know, come out, play golf, see some games. But you've really pushed this. How has that gone and how have you been able to attract a number of people because you've increased tourism?

Yeah, yeah, we have. So, I mean, Oklahoma, very unique state from a tourism perspective. Obviously, our Native American heritage and history is very interesting. And I would say that the same for a state like Arizona as well. I mean, Arizona really leans into Native American heritage and history. You also have some Route 66 miles as well. So actually, I mean, even just talking this out, there's actually... Matt, what we have is spring training. Yeah. Now, there you go. Yeah.

And some golf, which I have frequented a number of times, a number of your golf courses. So I like to say tourism is the front door to economic development.

When you can get people to your state, whether it be a, you know, yes, a baseball game, playing around a golf, Route 66 for us, Native American heritage, cowboys and Indians in some ways. When we can get people to Oklahoma, we sell really well. We have 39 sovereign nations inside of one state, which is actually pretty remarkable to think about. Wow. So that industry, you know, our tourism industry, it's the third largest industry in the state of Oklahoma. Right.

So when we can get people here, we sell well, which then we can have all the other conversations that we want to have with these people that, hey, yes, it doesn't take you an hour and a half to get to work. And we have very friendly people. We're very affordable.

And when people get back in their cars and drive back to wherever they were coming from, they have those conversations. Hey, I'm sick and tired of living in that other city and that other state. And maybe we need to come back to Oklahoma and do a deeper dive because we may want to move there. We've seen a lot of that in Oklahoma. One of the fastest drivers.

growing states over the last few years as far as in-migration growth. And that's something we're really proud of. A lot of people taking a look at Oklahoma for the very first time. Some of that due to COVID. I mean, just people being sick and tired of being sick and tired in other cities and other states. And Oklahoma's reaped the benefits of that. Well, and you have an enormous range of environments in Oklahoma, right?

Right. I mean, you have everything from desert to what what you know, when you're down in southeastern Oklahoma, it's almost a rainforest. That's right. But on top of that, you guys have invested tremendously, especially around the Oklahoma City area in things that draw people that make the quality of living there tremendous. It always ranks near the top of various midsize cities. Quality of living index.

Yeah, I mean, Oklahoma City now is the 20th largest city in America, which, you know, when you say that, I mean, people are pretty wowed by that fact. The modern frontier is what they are trying to sell now in Oklahoma City. Changing some of those perceptions to your point of what is there actually to do in Oklahoma? Well, yeah, we got 12 different ecosystems.

inside the state of Oklahoma. And we've built world-class attractions, world-class quality of life in a lot of our bigger cities in the state of Oklahoma to where, again, when someone visits Oklahoma and they see that, they're thinking to themselves, again, I had no idea Oklahoma

Oklahoma had this. And again, if it takes a traveling sports team or a conference for them to come to Oklahoma City or Tulsa or any of our other communities, small or large, we usually do a really good job of showing off. And that leads that helps us lead to other conversations that we want to have. But the quality of life that we've built, we can put that up against any major city in America today.

We're with Oklahoma's 17th Lieutenant Governor, Matt Pinnell. Matt, so give people what exactly are the responsibilities for Oklahoma's Lieutenant Governor? Yeah, so in Oklahoma, it's different in every state, but in Oklahoma, I'm president of the state Senate constitutionally. I don't preside every day over the Senate, but I preside a number of times throughout our legislative session.

I sit on a number of boards and commissions. I'm on the equalization board, which means I certify all the dollars that the legislature has to spend. But one of my biggest roles is I'm secretary of tourism. And that is not something that every lieutenant governor has had historically. But I asked our governor for that role. I wanted to have a job where I oversaw an agency.

And I certainly have those responsibilities as Secretary of Tourism with this, again, as large of an industry as it is. And so I would say I spend about 50% of my time with the tourism department and the other 50% of my time with our Department of Commerce. Small business growth historically in Oklahoma has been a job of the Lieutenant Governor. The last Lieutenant Governor was kind of the small business advocate on the governor's cabinet.

And I've kind of took that baton from our last lieutenant governor and still actively involved. You know, Main Street program that we have in the state of Oklahoma, I'm very involved in that. And so that's kind of my portfolio, if that's the way to put it, of where I spend my day. Right now I'm at the state capitol because we're in legislative session February through May.

And so I'm here most of that time working on different pieces of legislation. But commerce and tourism is where I spend most of my time. What is some legislation in Oklahoma right now that's being pushed forward that you're excited about?

Yeah, you know, in Oklahoma right now, I mean, the big issue is, I would say, school choice legislation, which Arizona has been a leader on. The governor in the state has been trying to get that done for the last few years.

kind of expanding our school choice inside the state of Oklahoma. We're also trying to do a big teacher pay raise. We have a sales tax on groceries in Oklahoma. We're one of only 12 states that still has a sales tax on groceries. We're trying to eliminate the state portion of sales tax on groceries. Those are a couple of big issues. I'm trying to...

raise the cap on our promotional fund to allow our Department of Tourism to have a little bit more money to, again, invite people to the state of Oklahoma. That's a bill that I'm working on this session. But the big issue that is kind of holding up everything else right now is the negotiation between the House and the Senate on our education bills.

Matt, in that line, you in 2022 launched a look at Oklahoma CareerTech, a video interview series that showcases the education and employment opportunities the state's CareerTech system provides. In working on educational issues around the country, Oklahoma's CareerTech, Career and Technical Education System, is a model for the rest of the country today.

How big a deal has that been for Oklahoma's growth? And what would you tell other states that are looking at investing in that area?

Yeah, you know, I'm a big fan of Mike Rowe. I hope Mike runs for president someday down, way down in the future. But Mike's been in Oklahoma a number of times over the last few years, and I think he gets it. I mean, we should be talking about technical education, technicals, our tech schools, just as much as we're talking about college. I need just as many kids to

in Oklahoma and frankly every other state to close a skills gap that we have in this country. We have far too many kids graduating from high school and college that don't even know how to change a tire or know how to read a ruler anymore.

And that's a problem. We took shop class out of high schools decades and decades ago, and now we've woken up to the harsh reality that there's many small business owners in Arizona and Oklahoma and in every state in between that

that is in desperate need of skilled labor. And in Oklahoma, our career tech system is a model. It is because we have infrastructure across the state of Oklahoma and it's locally funded. They don't rely upon our state capital that much for funding.

And, you know, it's very nimble. We can put curriculum in place and get people trained within 18 months and then put them out into a workforce and make over $100,000 a year. And I'm not just talking about carpentry and, you know, plumbing and those type of skills, which we definitely need. But I'm talking about nursing programs, accounting. Our career tech system in Oklahoma now has multiple career paths.

that we're very excited about because that's helping keep more homegrown talent in the state of Oklahoma. Your high-tech sector, we have just about a minute left before we get a break, but your high-tech sector has actually been growing really fast. Is coding a part of that as well?

Yeah, it is. And we have a number of accelerators and incubators around the state of Oklahoma in that coding space that, again, you talk about the number of jobs in this country in that coding space. We have aviation and aerospace is the number two industry in the state of Oklahoma today, which is I think will be the number one industry today.

in Oklahoma within the next 10 years. Again, from a manufacturing perspective and coding, a lot of those jobs are needed in that aerospace industry as well. Yeah, absolutely. The jobs of the future, Chuck.

are not simple, but you don't need a four-year degree for a lot of the best ones. I was reading the other day there's like 120,000 plus shortage of welders in the country, and those pay six digits. Yeah, those are fantastic jobs. Folks, we're going to be coming back with more in just a moment from Matt Pinnell, the 17th Lieutenant Governor of Oklahoma. I want to touch on the transformation of Oklahoma from blue to red. It's one of the more striking stories Republicans should take note of.

Breaking Battlegrounds will be back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, are you concerned with stock market volatility, especially with Joe Biden in office? What if you could invest in a portfolio with a high fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market? A portfolio where you'll know what each monthly statement will look like with no surprises. You can turn your monthly income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There's no loss of principle. If you need your money back at any time, your interest is compounded daily, you're paid monthly, and there are no fees.

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So Sam had a great question before the break. Oklahoma has been one of those states that has done a transformation from being a blue state to a red state. What do you attribute that to? You know, a lot of it started nationally. You know, the national narrative, I mean, a Democrat party, Republican,

that went so far left that you had, you know, blue dog Democrats in Oklahoma, very rural parts of the state of Oklahoma where, you know, you had very conservative Democrats. Blue dog, blue collar Democrats, right? Absolutely. That's absolutely right. You know, we have 77 counties in Oklahoma, 70 plus, probably 70 of them are pretty rural.

And a lot of those counties 15 years ago were heavily Democrat counties, but those are conservative Democrats. Those were Democrats that they were registered Democrats that they could vote for their local sheriffs.

And when they saw when they started seeing this national narrative from Democrats, I would you know, back then I was the state Republican Party chairman in Oklahoma. Back then, I would start going into some of these very Democrat counties and they would be re-registering as Republican right there. It was kind of that enough is enough narrative.

You know, kind of that Reagan line, right? The Democrat. I didn't leave the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party left me. And that happened in Oklahoma. And it happened very quickly. This was a Democrat registered state less than 10 years ago. And now it is completely flipped.

And every single county is now red. Every single county has a more Republicans than Democrats. Some of the urban areas are more competitive. That's a trend that you're seeing in some other states. But it really started nationally, guys, that, you know, your your blue collar, to your point, your blue or blue collar Democrats in rural parts of Oklahoma are

We're like, this is not the Democrat Party that I grew up around. This isn't the Democrat Party that my mom and dad told me about. And if this is the new Democrat Party, I'm getting out. Well, think about that. So you were chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party, what, a decade ago, a decade plus? A decade ago. Yeah. Okay.

Don't you wish you were dealing with the Democrats then than today? I mean, they've gone further left. I mean, I mean, you almost wish we had those Democrats today. Yeah, no, that's right. That's right. And, you know, it's now it's from a candidate recruitment perspective and some of the culture wars that, yes, we're in every let every cycle is different.

But, man, you're right. 12 years ago, 12, 14 years ago, I was dealing with a different Democrat party. You got some urban Democrats in Oklahoma that are carrying the mantle, they're carrying the narrative and the talking points from a national Democrat perspective. But in about 70 plus counties in Oklahoma, that narrative doesn't work. And it doesn't work in most of our urban areas either.

But it is pretty remarkable how much Oklahoma has changed over the last decade. We're with Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor Matt Pinnell. Matt, when you were elected, you were the 17th lieutenant governor. Did any of your previous lieutenant governors talk to you? What's the best advice someone gave you when you took office? That's proved to be true. Sure. You know, I still – yeah, good point. Yeah.

I still have the note from the previous Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb, you know, who better to give advice, right, than the person that I'm following. He's also served for eight years as Lieutenant Governor. And he had a note, you know, be careful and guard yourself about busyness and being busy just to be active around the state, right?

And how true that is. I mean, I remember getting elected in this position and I just I wanted to be everywhere. I wanted to say yes to every event. And I've had to learn how to say no. I've had to learn how to delegate. It is still, you know, hard at times.

I, you know, I've got four kids and a wife at home and again, and my wife runs a small business. And so she puts up some very good guardrails for me already. But just being busy is doesn't mean you're being effective.

OK, Matt, in the public or private sector, I think that is a very good lesson and one that I continue to try to remind myself of on a daily basis. Matt, I have to ask because Chuck and I have worked on races pretty much all over the country at this point. And I have to say, Oklahoma political events have by far, by far the best food.

Oh, yeah. Any political events in the country. That's important. It's delicious. And you've you've you're still a fit guy. So I need to know the secret of how you've what is the routine? What is the routine? How have you gotten rid of all that brisket? Yeah. And I eat a lot of brisket. I do. I run. I'm a runner. I don't bike. I don't.

I don't really lift a whole lot of weights. It's running. It's stress running. I run a lot. I probably run. My whole mantra is 5K every other day. I run at least a 5K every other day. Some stressful weeks, I run every day, but I don't put that pressure on me. I run a lot. That has kept

That's kept most of the weight off is just running. What is the one advice you would give a first time candidate for statewide office? Something that you thought originally should be, but you learned through the trail. This is what should happen.

Yeah. I mean, for a statewide, um, you know, it is a money game. Unfortunately, I have to say that, um, you know, a lot of times with a statewide race, it's who makes the best 32nd movie, you know, who makes the best 32nd TV ad. Um, and I, you know, you have to develop relationships, uh, with the donor community across the state. Um,

To be able to raise those resources to run a statewide race, which means you have to have your pitch down. If you get a donor on the phone and you think you're going to have a 15-minute conversation about energy policy, you're going to lose that donor pretty quick, at least nine out of 10 of them.

Matt, we have just about a minute before we go to break, but I thought you brought up a really important point there when you talk about going around and cultivating those relationships with the donor community. A lot of times our base is dismissive of those business interests and the people behind them, and that's a huge mistake when that's the case, isn't it?

It absolutely is a mistake. And that's something that in Oklahoma we've done a pretty good job of as a Republican Party is make sure our grassroots base understands how important those businesses are, in a lot of ways, how conservative they are as well. We make sure we combine those two so that the grassroots understands how important the corporate world is, how important that is and how important those jobs are.

Matt Pinnell, 17th Lieutenant Governor who avoids busyness from Oklahoma with the city. Matt, thanks a lot, my friend. It's so good seeing you. It's great seeing you. How do folks follow you on social media? Yeah, I mean, so I'm very active on Twitter, LTGov, Pinnell. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook.

But probably Twitter and Facebook, Instagram as well. Those are kind of the three social media channels that we're usually posting on a daily basis. We'll see you at the turkey hunt this year, my friend. Have a great day, buddy. Appreciate you. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. On the line with us next, Congressman Barry Moore of Alabama's 2nd District, a veteran and small business owner and former member of the Alabama Statehouse. Congressman, welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. Well, thank you. Good to be on. Congressman, this week, Biden's press secretary, Jean Pierre, said that the fentanyl crisis is basically the Republicans' fault.

Could you explain to our audience why this is just a ludicrous statement?

Well, we just know that not to be true. I mean, not that this administration would ever lie to the American people. But, you know, 50 years ago, Nixon started a war on drugs with 6,000 deaths in America. We had 107,000 deaths in the last 24 months since the Biden administration have taken control or not have lost control of the U.S. southern border, I should say. And so that fentanyl is the number one killer. But, you know, for young Americans, 18 to 45 right now and

And it's just unbelievable to me that they can get up there with a straight face and say somehow that's our fault. We have brought tons of opportunities for them to go to the border with us, to see what's going on down there, to observe with their own eyes. And there are testimony after testimony that simply says that Biden has lost

operational patrol, the U.S. southern border, and it's killing American people. And not only that, we're trafficking children for other countries into America, into slavery. It's unbelievable. For the first time in recorded history, people are dying sooner in this country than they used to, and it's really a result of the fentanyl crisis. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. Reading this morning, the Republicans are going to come back from this brief recess and come back and propose some border measures.

measures, some strong legislation to secure our border. What are some of the things that will be in that bill? I think one of the most impactful things is just the asylum claims and how they're painting that such a broad brush right now. We're going to say these children that are coming here and people that are coming to claim asylum,

They need to remain in country like Trump had to remain in Mexico policies, right? And right now, guys, when you come across that southern border down there, our border agents are nothing more than concierge. They just process your paperwork. They make you eligible under some claim for –

taxpayer-funded subsidies, and they give you a cell phone to call you on your court date, but 95% of those people are not taking our calls. And so the process where we just say, okay, you're going to remain in your country, and we're going to try to return those children to their homes, those are things that just need to happen because they know if they come here, we're going to take care of them, we're going to give them government subsidies with a cell phone, and we're going to ship them to wherever. The problem with that is that just encourages people to flow across the border. We've got to put an end to that. So that's one of the things I think is most impactful.

One of the guests on our show had a great idea, maybe you can push this to be in the bill, that unless you come to a port of entry, immediate your asylum request is denied, period. You got to come to the front door, more or less, as she called the port of entry. What do you think about something like that? It's just immediately dismissal of your asylum claim if you don't come to a port of entry.

I think that's an excellent idea because, like you said, that automatically shuts the flow off. It takes the pressure off the border agents and puts the people back to where they should be coming, which is through our port of entry. Congressman, the Biden administration just announced that in response to the end of Title 42, they're looking at opening refugee processing centers or asylum processing centers throughout Latin America.

I guess the concern is if it's like you just said, it's a remain in whatever and we'll process the claim. That's one thing. But this strikes me with this administration in control that you're just going to end up with U.S. chartered flights bringing them here instead of them having to travel to the border.

Yeah, you know, we're just going to remove one step for the cartel. But the cartel always knows how to bypass us on these issues. And guys, you're right. If we set up those claimants and just start flying them directly into cities, then who is taking custody of those people when they land, especially the unaccompanied minors? And that's a huge concern for us right now. We have thousands of children that are being trafficked a day. And I was at the emergency intake center in Fort Bliss.

I'm filming these buses leaving with these kids, and we're shipping them to Google addresses and not background checking the people we're shipping them to. Oh, my goodness. Are you kidding? Are they really doing that? No, I'm not kidding at all.

We don't background check those people, and we have some people that say they're sponsors for 30 children at a time. And guys, they're nothing more than sex traffickers and child slaves. And our government, we are part of the process. We are basically the slave ships of the 1800s right now, and it's the Biden administration shipping these children to people who are going to do God knows what and God knows where.

It's unbelievable. And Congressman, I think you made a great point because a lot of folks out there don't understand you do not come across this border without the cartel's permission. You have to pay them. You have to be part of that. And that often ends up in sex trafficking, indentured servitude, a lifetime of pain and suffering for these people. We have just about a minute before we go to break. Congressman, how do how do folks keep up with you and your work? How do they stay on top on top of the great stuff you're doing? Yeah.

So they can follow us on Facebook. It's RepBarryMoore. And then also we've got Instagram. It's USRepBarryMoore. And we've got a Twitter. My personal Twitter got taken down after Trump's got taken down, but I have an official Twitter that still has a little blue checkmark. I would encourage people to follow us and see what's going on behind the curtain in D.C. And, Congressman, I've got to say, I am impressed that you have the Instagram account going. Not enough of the elected officials on our side have Instagram. No, they do not.

Yeah, and you know, it's one of those ways that we try to do what we can to let people know what's going on. So that's just another tool for us. And reaching a whole different demographic than those other social media. That's fantastic. Congressman Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back with more in just a moment from Congressman Barry Moore. And you're clear.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, are you concerned with stock market volatility, especially with Joe Biden in office? What if you could earn up to a 10.25 fixed rate of return on a secure collateralized portfolio, a fantastic way to protect your money from the risk of the stock market?

Check out our friends at investyrefi.com. That's invest, the letter Y, then refi.com. Or call them at 888-YREFI24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. Congressman, this week House Republicans passed the Limit, Save, and Grow Act of 2023. This will return spending to fiscal year 22 levels, save taxpayers $4.5 trillion, and

And allow, which I think is the most important aspect of this bill, allow 1% annual growth, which is really going to be a big step to taming this budget. Tell folks more about this so they understand what Republicans have done. Because, of course, whenever you propose something that saves money, and in this case, you're still doing 1% growth. So you and I and Sam would consider that a growing budget.

Democrats are saying dogs and cats are falling from the sky. People are going to die. They're going to starve. You know, anytime you don't give Democrats everything they want, you've just cut everybody. Yeah, everybody dies. So tell folks about this, please, and why it's important.

Well, guys, the sky is not falling. But, you know, and I got to tell you, too, yeah, we're just, you know, going back to pre-COVID levels. I mean, the president himself has said, hey, you know, COVID's over. And so, you know, yeah, we're cutting spending a pretty good clip. But honestly, guys, I mean, I don't want to –

pat ourselves on the back too much. It'll be one of the biggest spending cuts in history, but we ran away spending under COVID. We spent more money on COVID than we did fighting World War II in today's dollars. So we have to dial back that spending. And so, yeah, they use fear. They always use fear. But the things we're doing are making sense, clawing back the unspent COVID money, doing away with the 87,000 IRS agents. You know, nobody wants the IRS being weaponized and continue to just come after the American taxpayer and

And this government, when they had money and they continue to abuse power, they're woke and weaponized against conservatives. And so why on earth would we just give them more money to abuse the American taxpayer?

Yeah, I think, too, when you're talking about this stuff, what I liked about the Limit, Save and Grow Act is that it is very – I mean it's unbelievably reasonable. You're not cutting anything. You're leaving room for growth but room for the economy to then outgrow those spending increases. And in 20, 30 years, whatever, we would eventually erase the debt that way, right? Yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, over time, and that's how you do it. You know, we've had this debate. I'm a House Freedom Caucus guy. We've had this debate behind closed doors that, you know, we're not doing enough, we're not doing enough. But you had a valid point. One piece of the pie at the time. We didn't get here overnight, and they abused COVID to get to where we're at. But this thing just doesn't stop with today. We've got appropriations. We've got other things, other tools in our business.

toolbox if you will i like to call it a war chest to come after this runaway spending and guys there is no government program better than just cutting taxes and regulations and letting the american economy capitalism create the jobs in the private sector that my friend grows the government government or grows the tax revenues and grows the economy government we simply print money in dc when we spend it's just ink on paper and as we do that the dollar that you work for every day wherever you're working

gets devalued because we're just producing trouble up here, ink on paper, and it devalues the American consumer's dollar. And when we see that in the grocery store, at the gas station, never mind our domestic energy policy and how horrible it is, we can talk about that at another point. But anything we can do to get government out of the way, free the country to grow the economy,

There's no system in the world like capitalism. Although it's not perfect, it is a really good system. If we let it go, it'll do great things. We've seen with the last three presidential administrations, Obama said 2% growth, 2.5% was the new normal.

Trump cut taxes, cleared the way for a lot of regulatory agencies, got them off of people's backs. We jumped way up over 5 percent again. And now after the post-COVID recovery, we're seeing the GDP growth rate under Biden slip down back into that 2 percent, under 2 percent range.

How do people not see this, and how do we make a better case to the American public that we need to cut taxes and regulations and create that growth for their future? Yeah, you know, one of my favorite quotes was Ronald Reagan said, the government's idea on the economy is when it's moving, you tax it. If it keeps moving, you regulate it. When it fails, you subsidize.

And if we would get the taxes and regulations out of the way – Trump proved this with his tax cuts and just cut – he just cut away a lot of the regulations. Man, the industry and the business, the economy will grow, and it'll do what it needs to do. And I don't know how we do a better job of talking about it. It'd be nice if we had honest media in this country. That would be a good step in the right direction. But honestly, just –

The people need to realize that there is no program that the government can do like a job. And so if we put a family to work, we put individuals to work, there's something about that self-esteem and that opportunity. And they grow. And the business owners, if they've got more money, they reinvest in the economy. Guys, listen, I'm in the garbage business. It wasn't a trash business before I got elected to politics. I tell everybody this.

Easy transition to make, but I saw how the government just crippled industry. And if we could just get government out of the way, it's one of the reasons I ran. Man, the free markets will do wonderful things. And Reagan said that a rising tide raises all boats. I believe that. Everybody's better when we've got less government, less taxes, less regulations, and a free market.

Well, absolutely. I mean, for example, in this bill, in this bill, the Limit, Save and Grow Act, there is I didn't know this. That was passed, obviously, and you're pulling it back. There was an electric vehicle tax break, which a family's making $300,000 can get a $7,500 tax break to buy a luxury electric car. I mean, that's insane. I mean, how do they justify that?

There is no justification. It just cripples the economy. And you know what concerns me? I mean, listen, guys. Joe Biden, those guys, the party has been hijacked by these environmentalist lefties. And Biden's energy policy from day one is he just shut down the Keystone Pipeline. That killed 12,000 American jobs, 8,000 union jobs. And then he gives –

Putin a green light on Nord Stream 2, which I believe caused him, allowed him to invade Ukraine, if you will. And then he begs OPEC to increase production and wants to buy solar panels from China. China's going to control a lot of the rare earth minerals to build these batteries. We're going to continue to make those guys our overlords

in energy if we continue to cripple American economies and try to go to this green initiative where we know the technology's not there in time. But hey, listen, we've got clean energy. We need to produce in it here, and we need to let this economy grow, and we don't need to depend on any other nation. I think we learned from COVID. We better become independent, not only on energy, but in production, manufacturing, and all the above. We're speaking right now with Congressman Barry Moore of Alabama's 2nd District. Congressman

One of the things you touched on there, the EVs and all these subsidies, Biden's administration just announced new CAFE standards that basically make it impossible for manufacturers to continue manufacturing internal combustion vehicles. The problem is

That neither the mining capacity, the battery building capacity or the energy capacity are there to actually achieve those – what they're trying to do in any kind of timeframe like they're trying to do it. How do we push back on that?

So I think we just have to take a common sense approach. And, you know, I've talked to electric cooperatives in my district. They're like, man, for every F-150 electric truck you plug in on the grid, we knock four houses – four neighbors' houses off. And so, you know, people have to realize this is not the panacea. It's not going to be the solution.

And it's like when we were growing up, y'all remember we're going out the door and the parents would say, hey, turn the light off. And at the time we looked at them like, why? It was an economic decision. The older we got, yeah, it's great if we're saving energy, but it's about dollars. And you cannot force economic – the government never does well trying to force decisions like this. Private sector needs to drive these decisions. It does not to be – anytime government gets involved, we kind of mess up society.

supply and demand curves. And the problem is we're going to create a lot of demand with no supply. Prices are going to go through the roof, and it's going to make it harder on actually the middle class and the lower class Americans who just can't simply afford a $60,000 electric vehicle.

60, you'd be lucky. Most of them are over 100, but I assume... Don't you have men shopping? Hey, give us a little time on inflation up here, buddy. We'll have that thing to 150 grand before you know it. And, Congressman, I can tell by your voice and you're from Alabama, there is no doubt where you grew up, you got yelled at for leaving the door open more than once. The door? I was not raised in a barn. I'm going to remind you of that often.

Okay, tell us a little bit about fixing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. What needs to be done to fix that? It seems to be taking a little bit more interest in people's private lives than it should have. Yeah, you know, I think we learned, guys, and I tell you, I believe this truly. If Hillary Clinton had won, we had no idea how weaponized and how abusive

agencies within our government would be against conservatives. I mean, we knew the IRS under Obama kind of came after the Tea Party. We saw that kind of unfold, I think. But man, once they started spying on Trump's campaign and they used these spousal warrants and the Patriot Act and all this stuff,

The more and more, and then they go to these judges and the FBI just abused that power. So we're now looking at how do we limit and make sure that there's oversight, whether it's the inspector general or whoever. Hey guys, we got to make sure that this government cannot continue to spy on American citizens. So there's a lot of things at stake. Jim Jordan asked me to join judiciary.

Like I told you guys, I was actually a garbage man. I said, Jim, this is out of my element. He's like, hey, look, man, Grassley's a farmer and the Senate does a great job. I think you'll be a great team player and be able to help us. But yeah, as we watch this stuff develop, I'm like, yeah, this is really an interesting committee, but also –

you realize just how abusive government has become, whether it's the ATF or the IRS and certainly the FBI, spying on Trump's campaign the way they did. If Clinton would have won, we'd have never known any of this stuff. So if nothing else, I think one of the great things that Trump did is he pulled the veil back on the abuses within the swamp itself.

Interesting tidbit on Grassley. I was talking to a friend who knows him quite well and says, no, Grassley actually has a working farm. The son runs it now. I mean, he's actually a farmer. You know, some people, they're gentleman farmers, as you know, probably plenty of those in Alabama. He's actually a real farmer that produces something. So little tidbit there on Grassley. Let me ask you this quickly about Ukraine. Then I want to move on to the ATF. We've given them $113 billion, you know,

i look i think there's there's legitimate gripes that ukraine is a what has a corrupt government and country in many ways it's also legitimate because it's not mutually exclusive that we just can't let russia do this type of thing because it doesn't stop at ukraine but we've given them 113 billion dollars isn't it time that we just go to our nato allies say guys the next 113 is all on you i mean what do we do for the taxpayer but at the same time tell russia this is unacceptable

Yeah, I mean, you know, I think one thing – and I was in Ukraine before all this happened, guys, before the invasion. And I was talking to the parliament and some of the leaders, and I said, are y'all worried about our energy policy and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline giving Putin money to make war? And I could tell, especially from the parliament –

Not so much the embassy, but from the parliament, those guys will tell you that was going to be a huge problem. And then the way we did in Afghanistan at the end of August, the way it fell, at that point it triggered – then Putin knew that the U.S. is weak and that this is a time to move. And so, yeah, they mobilized. They invaded Ukraine. And as we're sitting here, I'm looking through this process, and I'm like –

But $113 billion is a lot of money for a young democracy. So Ukraine's pretty young, and so there needs to be some oversight. But I certainly agree, and I've been against the funding the whole time because I think there needs to be oversight and I think there's abuses because this is the same group of people that told us $4 billion was too much for a border wall.

And yet we spent $113 billion in Ukraine, and we still don't know if the American taxpayer is going to win on this deal. So for sure we need some oversight. So I've been, let's don't spend any more money over there. But I think you've got a valid point. Hey, guys, the rest is on our allies, and we need to sit back and figure out where all this money went and try to claw some of that back if it's been abused or if it's still out there. Because I have talked to soldiers in Ukraine, in the zone, if you will, and they're just parking equipment at night in fields, and people are picking it up. We really don't know where it's all going.

Well, it comes so fast, and there's no structure, right? I mean, you're a businessman. You ran garbage. You had routes, right? Unless there's a plan, you're picking up the wrong garbage. Guys, it's like the COVID money. I mean, $783 million went to federal prisoners. $1,400 stimulus checks went to some Japanese citizen. You know, when you push money out of the government so fast, dude, corruption's bound to abound. They can't even manage it when they've got time to look it after.

Man, a Japanese citizen can get one and I can't. Imagine that. Yeah, no, if you're paying your taxes, buddy, and doing like you're supposed to, you can hang it up.

Quickly, we have one minute left. Tell us about what you're doing about oversight of the ATF. Yeah, so we're on this pistol brace thing, man. We're about to—we feel like the ATF's kind of abusing that rule. The pistol brace has been around for over a decade, and all of a sudden they're going to try to make felons out of American citizens. And we think there's about at least 10 million people who own these braces who are going to become felons on May 31st. So we're going to try to pass a law to tell the ATF, oh, no, you don't. But we've had some hearings on that, and we've had the director in a couple of times.

And we're going to start reeling some of this runaway crazy gas. Thank you, Congressman, for doing that, because obviously I have a lot of friends who are big Second Amendment supporters who have a lot of weapons. Democrats are so incomprehensible on this issue because they don't understand firearms.

They don't understand how they work. And this is how you get these attacks on things like the pistol brace. Well, they also don't understand human behavior. That's the biggest problem with this. That's exactly right. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Congressman Barry Moore of Alabama, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciated having you on the program. Look forward to having you on again in the future. Folks, you can follow him at Rep. Barry Moore on Twitter or on Facebook. Congressman, thank you again and thank you for all the work you're doing.

No doubt. Thank you, guys. And you're clear. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Fantastic program and guest today, Chuck. Really has been a wonderful conversation so far, and another one coming up right now on the line with us. Ken LaCourte has a fantastic substack that you and I have been following for some time now, and he did what I thought was one of the more reasonable things

insightful pieces on what happened with Tucker Carlson. Treat your viewers right. That's what you called it. So tell us, what did Fox do to him? Well, you know, the tricky thing on this is we don't really know yet why Fox News fired Tucker Carlson. We know it was abrupt. We know that on Friday he said, I'll see you next Monday. And then on Monday they pulled the rug out from him and minutes later sent out a press release. So it was a sandbagging on him.

My gut doesn't tell me that there's going to be some great, oh my gosh, terrible thing that he's done. If I had to guess right now, it is just to the Murdochs, he became more trouble than he was worth. The New York Times does a bashing story on him. Basically every month they redo the, Tucker Carlson is a racist, he's a sexist, he's a bad person, in a crazy, crazy way. Now,

You know, one thing, though, that the Murdochs probably know is the media will always choose the top Fox News person and paint him or her as an awful person. Remember when Bill O'Reilly was the absolutely worst person in the world, according to mainstream media? Yes. Barely a human being. Barely a human being. It just does that. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sorry? He was barely a human being, according to the New York Times or O'Reilly. I mean, he was just the worst guy in the world. Yeah, so in this instance, we don't really know. But what we do know is that Fox is having a trust issue with its audience.

uh... and uh... how do i say i think the the current leadership there uh... got there not through making big bold actions but that they were the management that when bad things happen or the uh... they were the ones that they kept their fingers off off the knives they were the ones that didn't upset them the boat when you have when you have corporate restructuring sits usually the people who've gotten arguments with other people or push something really hard

they're the ones that get wiped out and you're left with a more bureaucratic group, let's say, than the original people. And so I think that there's a lot of

So you've got basically now, you know, Rupert and to an extent his son Lachlan running it. It's basically a family business, even though technically, you know, they don't own the whole thing. They own enough of it to make it a family business. And many of the other executives at Fox News now are what you call lever pullers. Yes, boss, I'll take care of this and do that. And you've seen kind of a lack of vision between business.

Fox understanding its audience and what to do with it. You saw them make some bobbles in the in the last election, not felonies. You know, the Arizona call, for instance, was something they never really fully explained. They you know, Chris Wallace brought a very, very liberal point of view to the to the debate.

In the post, Trump saying the election was stolen, they were caught because all their reporters were saying, look, we're looking into this and there's nothing here. Every time you dig in, and I've done it myself and now half of your viewers hate me, but every time I've dug into this election was stolen and these machines or the Sharpies there, this or that, it always has come up dry for me.

So they had their news division doing that, but then they had a lot of their hosts winking and nodding and playing into that. And it left a dichotomy where now a large number of Fox's viewers thinks Fox is lying to them. And now when you do this, you take a, you know, Tucker Carlson was in people's houses every night of the week for an hour talking to them. You get a relationship with somebody like that.

They yank him out. All of a sudden your best friend is not in your house anymore at 8 p.m. And nobody's telling you why or apologizing or saying, well, but at least he did something awful.

It's a bit of a disrespect to their viewers. So what – you're a former Fox News executive. What happens to the conservative media news outlets? What do you see a trend going in the future? Does Fox do okay, which I think they do long run. I mean I just think that's what happens. But are you really going to go on OAN, things of that nature? I mean what happens?

So look, Fox is in a mathematically wonderful position right now. Half the country likes hamburgers. Half the country likes hot dogs, right? And there's a bunch of other channels selling hamburgers, and they're the only real ones selling hot dogs. So what restaurant, you know, they're going to get about 50% of the cable news audience. And when you look at them over time, they get about 50% of the cable news audience. And CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News, they split up the rest on that. The only real...

way that could be changed. I mean, nobody's going to be like, all right, I've had enough Fox News. I'm going to start watching CNN. I mean, no human being is going to do that. The only option, the only two possibilities are, one, over time, we know cable news will reduce itself in popularity. Your kids aren't going to be watching cable news. They're going to be watching the computers and having Roku and crap hooked up into theirs.

But my dad is never gonna not do anything else. He's gonna sit there, he's gonna sit in front of his chair that he's always sat in, he's gonna grab his remote and he's gonna turn on to one channel. So the only really potential

up short-term I'd say 10-year upsetting about apple cart would be if one of the conservative channels took fire and and and got better up right now I'm so away and is basically fizzle it is out of their news nation is is is a as a new one that most people haven't heard of that's really trying to be kinda like the old Fox a we got liberals got conservatives were fair and balanced we have Hannity and com correct and then and then everybody talks about Newsmax which is the

everything donald trump and republicans say is a hundred percent right and you're an idiot if you don't believe it and positionally it makes sense for them to be to the right of fox but newsmax does every single other thing wrong uh their graphics are terrible their hosts aren't all that interesting their uh their their reporters look like they're little kids who are pretending to shave you know wearing their dad's coat it just and and they

That is the best takedown of Newsmax I've ever heard again. It's kind of true, man. It's totally true. It's like you don't just see like the little five-year-old boy pretending to shave himself. Suits two sizes too big. Exactly. And positionally, they've gone, with the exception of Greta and maybe a couple other hosts there, they've just been like, everything Republicans say doesn't stink. And...

You know, while people kind of want that and they say they want that, they really don't. I know hardcore conservative people who are like, you know what? It feels to me like a GOP propaganda outlet. And I'm hard. I mean, I'm talking like hardcore. Right. I still go to L.D. meetings. I get enough of that.

in person. So, you know, so it's like if CNN actually got fairer and it would take them 10 years to be accepted on that, that could be a problem. I'm not worried about that because they just won't do it.

But if Newsmax got smarter, they could be a potential. And I've told Tucker that he should try to get the old band back together and see what he can do to find Greta, see what O'Reilly's up to. He's on YouTube somewhere. You get Tucker at 8 o'clock on some cable channel,

With a couple of those other people, you take away a third of Fox News. You have a billion, $3 billion. So I tell you what I would love to see is those guys combine their efforts with some of this like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, the left-leaning outsiders. But you're still meeting me. So for example, as you're being a Fox News executive, one other point. So

You know, I have a lot of true blue Republicans like you who just will not give Newsmax or these other ones a time of day. Just first of all, the branding of the name now just says these are whack jobs. These are not my people. I don't want to talk to them. Right. I don't want to hear from them. So, you know, part of this seems to be a branding problem as well. So I think what you're saying is right. If they can somehow figure some something out like that, that probably really takes off. And I do think there's room for that and Fox as well.

Look, conservatives deserve to have more than one big news channel. Correct. That's a thought. Now, look, it's not easy to launch a news channel. You could argue that Fox News was one of the last successful ones done, and that was 27 years ago or something crazy like that. Rupert spent a billion dollars at the gate on that, just in distribution.

It is hard to, you can't just buy that. You can't just say, "Oh, we now have a channel and we want it to be in 70 million households across the country." You can get onto Sirius, you can get onto some of the others, you can try to buy one and flip it, but now a lot of cable operators have gotten wise to that and written into their contracts that you can't do that. That's what current TV turned into Al Jazeera. Certain things like that you just can't do anymore.

So if you're a super, if you're a billionaire type investor, you know two things. You know that, again, my kids aren't going to be watching cable news, so there's a limited window on that. But you also know the short-term money that these, and when I say short-term, I mean at least a month, or excuse me, at least a decade, that you make huge money in cable. I mean, Fox News,

probably is netting around $2 billion a year. That's with a B. That's $2,000 million a year. That's after they pay their bills and their sexual harassment lawsuits and Riley's salary and Rupert's plane. That's a massive amount of money. Everybody's like, oh my gosh, CNN, they're down in the dumps and MSNBC is nothing. Those two operations combined profit about $1.2 billion. So you've got 3.2

Let's just call it $3.3 billion yearly profit for three companies.

That's big money. And it makes me laugh more when I read stories like I'll the Puck about how CNN is cutting travel expenses. Like, we're going to cut our travel expenses $100,000 a year. This is going to turn everything around. Dude, you know, we always did it at Fox News, too, because part of it was, you know, I worked there under the Roger Ailes era. And, you know, Rupert would say, Roger, if you make this much more money, you get this much more of a bonus.

and we're talking millions of dollars a bonus right so he always hit his number so it was like yeah we're using you know it's like if you look at it and it's like we're making money that you just couldn't even imagine seeing a spigot of money this this big in the world and you know we're we're photographing or photocopying paper on two sides to save four cents here and there that's just that's that's the wonders of corporate america two final questions before we let you go for the day first of all in the conservative media universe who

Who do you see arising? Who's a rising star that people should keep an eye on, in your opinion? You know, I had a I had a talk yesterday with one of the Fox News hosts, one of the primetime hosts who was like, who do we get? You know, you look around, you're like, you know, who could replace Tucker? Who could be that? I mean, you know, do you really want to Candace Owens? Do you want to all of you know, it's like I love Brian Kilmeade is a good guy, but nobody nobody's going to be like, oh, I got to I got to get home to see what Brian Kilmeade is doing exactly what he should be doing.

To me, I don't know if I would call them rising stars or conservative. To me, the two interesting choices that Fox News could shake it up, but I don't think they want to shake things up anymore. I think they're a bunch of bureaucrats now. One would be Jordan Peterson.

Oh, and, you know, you'd probably have to pay him 50 million a year. And he's not a I'm going to give you a monologue like like Tucker. But imagine Jordan Peterson coming into your house doing interviews on there. Right. He is wildly popular among the same people who should be and the future people who should be wildly popular with with with Fox News. But.

The other one would be Ben Shapiro, who's, again, got his own deal. He's a fast talking this, this and that. But one of the smartest conservatives out there and says things that you go and click to hear him say. Those are the only two out of the entire market that I know. I'm going to throw someone else in there because we were kind of talking about this before the show today. But what about a guy like Vivek Ramaswamy coming off of a presidential run today?

He's entertaining. He's interesting. And he, you know, and the reason Sam brings that up, we are talking. I've had nine calls the past two weeks from who are just Republican voters. They're not volunteering for a campaign. They're not defending Trump on Twitter. And they have personally asked me about him. I mean, I just called him. That's the question they asked. I said, tell me about him. I find him really interesting.

you know, guys, you cold cock me on here. I don't think I've heard him say five words there. You know, you hear like, oh, some guy you've never heard of is running for president. I'm like, I'm going to run for president so I can just say presidential candidate on my resume. Please do. He may be great. Hey,

Look, here in Arizona, it's like 25 bucks and you can do that. Speaking about running for office, apparently you may you're considering now before I let you go. What do you think? So we have really it seems like a DeSantis Trump war, but I think we have some good candidates like Tim Scott and others. What do you see coming? Is Trump just going to get this no matter what? Do you see somebody else possibly rising and making this interesting? What are your two cents on that?

My two cents are that Trump is probably at around, among Republicans, is probably in the high 40%. Let's say 45% to 48% they're going to vote for him, which means that there's 52%, 53% who won't vote for him because they've had enough, in their opinion, of his nonsense. If that is split up by five candidates, Trump wins and he is the nominee. And then it's like, oh my gosh, you know.

Is it crazy Trump or senile president? It's something crazy. I think that DeSantis right now is the only person who could be the alternative to Trump. And for him to be successful, and these people won't drop out soon, but after the first couple states, just like what we saw in the Democrats last year when Bernie Sanders started taking it away or different, eventually,

If if if the the path forward for DeSantis and I don't think anybody else can do it unless something radically changes, is that the first couple of states, the other Republicans see what's going on and and all of their supporters say, get out of this race or you're going to assure that Donald Trump is still in it. And and if and if he could and if it was a one to one.

DeSantis, it would be a tight fight on that. But with five other candidates drawn 5% apiece, Trump walks away. Well, Sam, any other questions? No, it's great. Distinguished guests go. Great stuff. How do people find your writings? How do they find you on social media? Spread the news.

Sure. Best thing is, as my name is Ken LaCorte, it's L-A-C-O-R-T-E. I've got a sub stack that I write up media stuff and whatnot. And I've got a YouTube, a YouTube page that I'm rebranding to called elephants in rooms, which is just talking about uncomfortable concepts that you're not supposed to talk about, but in a friendly and interesting way. Well, we'll look forward to checking that one out. And we will, we will be pimping that on our social media. So people go visit it. Excellent. We appreciate you. Excellent. And, and,

And I'd love to do this anytime. You guys are fun to chat with. Thank you. We look forward to having you back on soon. Have a great weekend. All right. Take care. Sam, good guest today. Yeah, no, really, really good guest today. I thought all three of them were fantastic. I thought they brought really good viewpoints to the show. It's been an interesting week in politics. It is. Jeremy, why don't you go ahead and run the clip from Randy Weingarten, probably the worst, the enemy of kids of America. Go ahead.

The problem is that teachers actually teach kids. So if it wasn't, if, I mean, look at what happened in Omicron.

when we were able, because of testing, we were able to actually keep schools open. Some schools shut when there were too many teachers absent, but we were able to keep schools open because we understood and used testing as a way to do that. So I think what happened was that people were fearful. You're absolutely right. But even though, thank God,

kids didn't get as sick as adults. Adults were getting sick and adults were dying. And so we were trying to figure out, and I'm not saying that, look, there were people all across America who were taking different positions than, you know, I was at the AFT, including some of my members. And you saw some of those things.

But we were trying to figure out what were the mitigating strategies that were needed to keep schools open. And that's what, you know, and that's what we tried to do from April 2020. And what I produced, I went and I testified in Congress yesterday voluntarily, and I produced...

Much documentation proving all the things that we tried to say. Now, that's why I keep on using the Cuomo administration, because, frankly, Governor Hogan, Governor Cuomo, Rockefeller Foundation, lots of governors, they were working in a really different way than the Trump administration was. And the Trump administration did a great job in terms of vaccines. But in terms of giving...

This woman is awful and every word she's saying is a lie. She wants to blame the Trump administration. She literally lies every day about this topic. Every single day. And the problem is she doesn't realize in 2023...

We have so many comments of her taped, recorded, written that contradict what she's trying to spin now. Well, but she knows that the liberal media is going to spin this right alongside her. They're going to help her try to do that. The problem is you go back. I pulled up an article when we were talking about this. I pulled up an article from the Foundation for Economic Excellence from summer of 2021.

OK. And there she's she's still saying, oh, we need all these preconditions before we can open schools in the fall of 2021. And they're pointing out all the ways at that point that she was opposed to any kind of opening. And she says, if you go on with this clip, she says, well, we didn't get all the information from Trump like we did from, you know, Europe did from their leaders. Bull.

That is absolutely bull. Heritage Foundation did a study also about that same time period, looked at 130 studies on COVID, its impact on kids, its impact on adults and all this sort of thing, the risks for reopening schools. 130 studies all said that.

It's not a problem. You can reopen schools. It's safe. The issue with adults is largely with adults who are, by the way, too old to be teaching in our schools. You don't have a lot of 85 year olds running around public schools. OK, so every word she said there is a lie. And the fact that there that some people are trying to let her get away with this. I mean, if she could, they'd all still go back to blame Bush.

I mean, anything to avoid taking credit for their own bad actions. And accountability is not there. It is not there. She serves one constituency only. She serves a union. She serves her teachers. Yeah.

Yeah.

For two and a half years. I mean, let's be blunt about it. She would have kept school shut down in 2022. Oh, absolutely. No question in my mind. If she had control and there was no pushback, your kids would still not be in school today. They would still be on remote learning today. The only reason she's doing this is because they got caught. She is the worst we have in society, especially when they try to pretend that they truly care about these children's education. Oh, yeah. Look, I can say I think she's a sociopath.

I mean, I really I look at her and I see someone who is actively harming the children of America repeatedly. It's not just the COVID. And this brings up an interesting point. So.

Folks, you can disagree for policy and they're bad, right? But you can't take the Marjorie Taylor Greene approach like, well, you're not a real mom, you're a stepmom. I mean, that's the type of stuff that just absolutely ruins an argument. Stop making such ridiculous claims and insinuations, okay? That's not fair. It's not right. It's not even intellectually sound, right? One last item before we break off today. So...

Dan Clifton crunched some brand new IRS income migration numbers from 2020 and 2021. So as we all know, we have a big presence in Florida. Florida gained a staggering $63 billion in income from migration in those two years.

A 5% boost in state personal income. Texas was second biggest state income gainer at $17 billion. The big losers? California, New York, and Illinois. Manhattan alone lost $31 billion in income. Yeah, look, the real clear reality of America today is that red states are good places to live and work and build a business and a family, and blue states are not. That's all there is to it.

And the argument, hey, look, it's only the kerfuffle around Trump and the elections and all this other stuff and the media landscape. If those things weren't in the way, if people were given an honest accounting by the press of what's going on in this country and around the world and that kind of thing –

Democrats would be run out of office in all 50 states. But we can't get past it when we have people pushing, well, you're a stepmom, so you're not a real mom. No, that's garbage. You have to stop with that kind of stuff, and we have to focus on the basics. Just the issues. Just the issues. Just the issues.

If people knew the actual issues, Republicans would have a majority vote. You're safer walking down the street in a city in a red state than you are in a blue state. Your kids are safer in school in a red state than a blue state. Your kids are getting a more fundamentally basic balanced education in a red state versus a blue state. All of this stuff that they're talking about now, I mean, it's telling.

that the school lobby, the teachers union lobby, rates schools on teacher pay but not on outcomes. Absolutely. No, absolutely. It's incredible. Well, folks, thank you for joining us this weekend. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please check us out at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote and all our social media. Share it with your friends. Give us a good rating. Have a great weekend.

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