Patrick Leddin and Kelly Sadler on Leadership in Business and Politics
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Welcome to a new year of Broken Potholes with your hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. And on the line with us today, we have two more fantastic guests. First up, Patrick Ledden, Ph.D., served as U.S. Army Master Parachutist, Infantry...

Ranger qualified officer, professor at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches corporate strategy, negotiation, advanced marketing, and crisis leadership. Worked as a project manager at KPMG Consulting. Started his own consulting firm with his wife, but also author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Five-Week Leadership Challenge.

which is designed to develop and expand your innate leadership abilities through daily exercises and challenges designed to help you grow into the leader you want to be and prepare you for the job you were made to have.

Patrick, thank you so much for joining us on Broken Potholes. Really appreciate having you on. Before we get going too far down, tell people where they can follow you because our listeners always want to be able to follow our guests here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Happy to do that. But first of all, yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show today. It's an honor and a privilege to have a chance to talk to you and to your listeners. Yes, people can learn more about our content at leadandgroup.com.

It's L-E-D-D-I-N-G-R-O-U-P.com, or they can just follow me on LinkedIn if they're into that. Fantastic.

Right. Well, Patrick, this is Chuck. I want to start off with something. I was listening to you on a podcast and you said something that fascinated me because not many people have this skill. I'm I'm someone that has it as well. You said when you were becoming a ranger and you you expressed and explained how difficult it was due to injuries or the case may be.

And you said that one of the reasons you thought you succeeded in it is you're able to live and adapt to ambiguity. And I think what COVID has brought up the past two years is that most people don't have that skill set. And that is what makes this so difficult for so many people. One reason. How do you think a leader can adapt?

read his constituency, his family, his church, and these times of ambiguity with things like COVID. What are things they can do to build confidence and hope?

Chuck, that's a great question. In fact, as you were asking it and you said, well, I read, I heard you on a podcast one time and then you started the conversation. My mind went to immediately with, I wonder what he's going to say. What did he hear me say? And I was kind of cool with that. I was okay with it because I was like, okay, it's going to go someplace interesting, hopefully. And it did because it, in my mind immediately, I was like, yeah, I do like ambiguity to some degree. Now, I don't think, I don't think I love ambiguity and,

hook way. I think to some degree, we all like to know certain things are going to fall into place the way they're going to fall into place. But the reality is, especially when you step up and you put yourself in a leadership role, regardless of who you're leading or how you're going about it or what type of organization you're in, you're going to be faced with some moments of uncertainty. So the question becomes, you know, how do you learn to deal with that uncertainty?

Is it born into your DNA? Maybe. Maybe some people have a degree of comfortableness, if you will, with the uncertain. But I think we can really put ourselves in positions where we can push the envelope a little bit and test ourselves by not necessarily always knowing how things are going to turn out, but being okay with that. And there's this guy named Jeff Colvin. He wrote a book years ago called Talent is Overrated.

And in his book, he talks about this idea of if you and your listeners imagine like three concentric circles, so kind of like a bullseye, a small circle in the middle, a larger circle, and then outward circle, most on the outside circle. And he would say that that small circle in the middle, what we consider like the bullseye, is our comfort zone, and it's where we spend most of our time. That second circle out, a little bit further out, is your learning zone. It's where you can step out of your comfort and learn and adapt to new things. And then that...

The furthest circle out is kind of your freak-out zone, if you will. Probably not his language exactly, but you get the idea. It's this zone out there where things go way off the rails. So the question becomes for all of us, myself, you, your listeners, the people they lead, is how do we help people step out of their comfort zone and into the learning zone without taking them all the way out to the point where they freak out?

And we do that by putting some safeguards in place, some safety nets in place, if you will. And also we do it by making...

kind of small failures or failures at times. Okay. Because we can learn from it. We make, we do it by creating scoreboards at work where everything doesn't have to be green. Yeah. Everything does. Every pothole is not going to be folded at the same time type of thing. We're learning, we're developing, we're growing, we're improving and recognizing that that space is okay for you to live and resonate. And the more time you spend in that little bit of uncomfortable space, um, I think the better you get at it. And quite frankly, you're serving yourself better, uh,

and the people you work with better in the long run by forcing yourself to be a little uncomfortable at times when you could choose something that's really comfortable. Right. So let's give an example. So something that's always stuck out in my mind is I saw a poll, oh, I don't know, six, seven years ago, where it said that 65% of American workforce have never desired to manage or run a business. They want to go, they want to collect their paycheck, they want their vacation.

Um, the thing I'm getting at that ambiguity is I realized when, when COVID first hit, we made a decision as a business, this podcast and radio shows, a side thing that we want to give some certainty to everybody because they didn't know. So my house is paid for. I went out and took a mortgage on it and told everybody your job is secure for a year. And it seemed to be able to focus everybody on their job instead of worrying, am I going to have a job next week? Um,

And fortunately, I never had to use it, but it was that certainty. So let's say you're a senator or a governor or a principal at a school. No one likes ambiguity, but it's like you said, and I noticed in Rangers, you're okay with it. You can deal with it. A lot of people, it's crippling, right? So how does a leader who no one loves ambiguity, we don't like uncertainty, but as a person who's like, I can roll with the punches here because I have goals long-term. I know what I want to accomplish here.

How do you go and inspire these people to say, look, we're going to get through this together. And this uncertainty you see is just a part of life, but we're going to get through it together. How would you do that? Well, again, another great question. I think that there's a couple of things associated with that to consider. The first part is recognizing what's an individual's baseline when it comes to uncertainty.

So we kind of jump into the conversation and everybody listening to this today is kind of defining what uncertainty looks like to themselves. And there's some people listening to this right now go, yeah, every day I go to work and I open my email or I pick up the phone or I do whatever. I don't know what's going to happen type of thing. And other people are much more measured and they know how their day typically unfolds. So what is uncertain is kind of different if that makes sense for each person listening. So understanding what people's baseline is and

and then kind of helping them build and improve from there. I think COVID has given us, you know, obviously a lot of negative things, and certainly the scales aren't fully balanced on things. But one thing on the positive side is it's given us the opportunity to lead through crisis and also to challenge ourselves as we lead ourselves to deal with the fact that everything's not necessarily in our control. So I think as a leader, there's a couple things you can do to help set people for success. And COVID, again, provided us a great example. The first one is, like you said, you know,

You went an extraordinary length there to take out a mortgage on your home and give people a safety net where they feel like, okay, if I fall, I'm only going to fall so far. There's something there to catch us. So providing a bit of understanding and also demonstrating yourself saying, you know what, I know it's an ambiguous time, but I'm willing to step out and make a move. So demonstrating and modeling and also providing a degree of safety is helpful. I think it's also important that leaders, maybe many have done it throughout the course of COVID,

is recognizing the importance of communication, communicating to your people, letting them know where things stand at any given time. And when you feel like you've said it to an exhaustive extent, say it again, because people are busy and sometimes you think you've said it five times, of course they've heard it. And the reality is they're not even coming around to hearing it right now. They're busy or they've got other things stressing them out. So communicate, communicate, communicate, and then communicate again. Also, when it comes to communicating, realize that there are,

Some things you can share at any given moment and other things for whatever organizational or other reason, legal perhaps, you can't share at a given moment. Don't try to spin it or tell half-truths and act like you're telling the whole story. Just come up to the line and say, I can't tell you any more than this right now. You have to trust me, but there's some reasons I can't. When I can, I will reveal these things to you.

But just being as honest and transparent as you can be. I think we've kind of created this world where I think transparency is like binary. You're either fully transparent or you're not. And the reality is that you can be as transparent as you can be based upon the system you're operating in. And just be candid about that. Additionally, I think it's important for leaders to, in times of crisis or ambiguity or going through COVID situations, which, by the way, we're still dealing with, as you're going through those things,

provide some ports in the storm. And what I mean by that is provide some regularity. When people went to online, many people went to Zoom when COVID started kind of really kicking in. And all of a sudden, you know, maybe the weekly meeting was canceled for a few weeks. That actually isn't a great thing for people. People want to know that there's some degree of certainty of, hey, no matter what, there's certain things we can depend on happening.

And you continue to do those things. I think if I can add a couple more, one more, another one to think about is the idea, especially as I mentioned, virtually, we're in an ambiguous environment and we're not always together at the same time. That creates a whole other degree of uncertainty. And what tends to happen is when people have questions or concerns, if you're not communicating really clearly to them about what's going on and the challenges you're facing, they tend to fill in the blanks themselves.

And when they fill in the blanks themselves, they don't typically do it in the best possible scenario.

So they start saying, well, Chuck hasn't talked to us for a couple of days. Business must be burning down. I better get my resume out. They don't think, oh, Chuck is busy. He's developing great new business for us. No, they think the negative thing. So help them out in that process. So those are some things to think about ambiguity when you're either leading people through it or yourself. And I think the last thing I would say around ambiguity or just dealing with a bit of uncertainty is if nothing else, the last couple of years have taught us

That regardless of what you might think, things aren't always as certain as they might appear. So becoming better at dealing with ambiguity isn't just a, hey, I'll do it when I got the time. It's a critical task for leaders. And it really is a huge investment you can make in your people.

Patrick, this is Sam. We have just about a minute and 20 seconds before we got to go to break. And then we'd love to have you back for the next segment here. But when we come back, I think one of the things you said talking about ambiguity and COVID and the way this has been presented is I think so many of our political leaders are afraid not just around COVID, but around everything to present ambiguity. Everything has to be

a 100% solution every time a politician makes a statement. And I think the expectation that that would be the case is really damaging to society, but also to kind of moving people into a place where they can accept and adapt to ambiguity, isn't it? Yeah, I think that we've gotten ourselves into a position, especially when it comes to like the political world, where

we feel like we can't move off of any position we've previously taken, even if we're completely informed or enlightened by something new. Because in doing so, it suggests that we're flip-flopping or we're not solid in our decision-making. So I think that that's a real problem that we have to contend with because any good leader, any smart leader, when presented with new information –

We'll take that information and give it to you in our in our next segment. Pardon me. We're going to break right now. The 2020 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to do list needs to be securing your name on the Web with a your name dot vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host, Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us today, Patrick Ledin, author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Five Week Leadership Challenge. We are talking about ambiguity, talking about how you handle that in the era of COVID when we went to break. And I apologize for cutting Patrick off. So suddenly he was telling us, talking about ambiguity.

How politicians, when they change their position based on new information, it's seen as flip-flopping. And that's actually a pretty dangerous thing in the world we're living in, isn't it, Chuck and Patrick? Yeah.

Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, Patrick saying this, it absolutely is in regards to if you're going to, if you're going to serve people well, if you're going to serve your constituents well, at times you're going to have to pivot and go new directions because you've learned new things. The question is, have you built the trust with them to be able to explain that to them and have an

enough of them being willing to give you grace or the ability to move forward. It really isn't based upon whether you can make the change in the moment. It's based upon how much trust you have in the bank account with them in the past. That's a good point. That's great. Patrick, what do you think is a quality, and you've written a book, Five Week Leadership Challenge. People can find it at fiveweekleadershipchallenge.com or Amazon or any of your bookstores.

What do you think is a quality or two that current leadership in the corporate world and in the political world are lacking that we don't see and we desperately need? Yeah, I would first say that I don't do a lot of differentiation in my mind when it comes to the environment in which you're leading. Because ultimately...

Ultimately, because ultimately leadership is about trying to influence other people and trying to make effective decisions. I mean, every leader is influencing and making decisions regardless of the environment in which they're doing it in. And most every leader is trying to make decisions or influence people in order to get those people to change their behavior.

And I don't know about you all, but changing your own behavior, that's tough. You can check out the New Year's resolutions some people may have made and see how well they're doing. Changing other people's behavior, one other person's behavior, that's really tough. I've been married 30 years. My wife's been trying to change me for a long time.

And then you can go, okay, now I'm going to change a whole bunch of people's behavior. That's a really challenging thing, but that's the challenge that a leader faces. So I think it's regardless of whatever situation you're in, that's what you're supposed to do, or challenged to do. So the question becomes, you know, how do you work on your decision-making skills, and how do you work on your influence? And both of those things are really critical. So in the book that you mentioned, I really tried to break down the importance of

and decision-making into five key areas, perspective, purpose, priorities, plans, and performance, and then give people little daily nuggets that they could read, stories that resonate with them, and then some questions and things to reflect upon. But I think, you know, I think ultimately if everybody can focus in on saying, how can I make more effective decisions? Like, what's my process? Am I just shooting from the hip all the time?

Am I actually examining and understanding the problem we're trying to tackle and bringing the right voices into the conversation? Coming up with good options, determining how each option aligns with the values we have for ourselves and how we want to move forward. That's a critical thing. And also influencing people. How good am I at asking new questions, listening to what people really have to say, and then responding, ensuring that I truly understand?

Patrick, one of the things you said there I really found interesting is it's a process, right? I think people want to jump to the conclusion all the time, right? But training yourself to do this or working with other people and getting them to start thinking in terms of being able to accept and adapt to risk and new situations, a lot of that comes down to baby steps, right? You really have to get a kind of a program, a plan, and work it.

Yeah, you really do. I mean, the most successful people, I would argue, have a very specific process that they follow. And that's one thing that I did in writing the book. It was I looked at, you know, what I did to whatever degree of success I've had. But really, I've had a chance to go out and speak.

and work with leaders literally around the world. And I watched what they did. And I studied what organizations have done and identified, hey, this is the process that oftentimes we go through. We get our head down straight perspective. Purpose, we're clear on what we're supposed to be doing or where our talents and our passions lie. Priorities, we set up goals that align to them.

We create plans to hopefully execute on those priorities, although we realize that plans aren't going to play out exactly the way we think they are. And then performance is kind of where the rubber meets the road. Then from there, that performance goes right back into informing our mindset.

and revising or revisiting, if you will, our purpose. So it's constantly this process that we move through. And the problem oftentimes is we go from, hey, let's do this, to magically thinking it's going to happen. And the reality is it's step by step. I've had a chance over the course of my career to interview all sorts of people and kind of capture their stories as well. And I can think of, there's this one guy who went to Vanderbilt. He's a shortstop these days at the Atlanta Braves.

And I talked to him one time about, talk me through the ritual you do every game before you even show up at the field. And it's baby steps. Every time it's processed, it's routine, they get to an in the right mindset to do things. Wait, Patrick, are we talking about Dan's B. Swanson by chance? Yeah, Dan's B. Swanson. Okay, yeah, and we appreciate the reference, but here in Arizona, you're just trying to make us cry.

Sorry. I grew up in Chicago. I'm a coach fan. We've been crying pretty much our entire lives. I purposely didn't say your name. It still hurts. It still hurts. We know. You can't fool us and the pain is real.

We're with Patrick Ledin, professor at Vanderbilt University. He has written a new book, Five Week Leadership Challenge. You can find it at fiveweekleadershipchallenge.com. I also highly recommend you follow him on LinkedIn where he posts consistently tidbits and blogging on leadership.

Um, let me ask you this one last question before we take off here. We know you're busy. I was listening to another podcast on you and you mentioned that you had, you were doing, you used to work at Franklin Covey and you were a new course and you had decided that you gave yourself barely a passing grade on your relationship with your dad.

How important do you think that is for all of us now? Because you had a wonderful experience you shared and please feel free to share if you can. But how important is it? Do you think we all need to start instead of just looking at business as business leaders, that we also look at family and saying, okay, do I have a passing grade working with my family?

Yeah, I think it's essential. I mean, underscore, underline, exclamation point. I think that those are the relationships at the end of the day that truly matter. I mean, people won't remember the goal you're working on at work right now, or if you're in a political role, the policy you're trying to put through specifically today. But you'll remember 10 or 15 or 20 years from now what it's like to have worked with you and what it's like to work with the people around you and

More importantly, when you look around 15 or 20 years from now, you look at the relationships in your family and your friends, and hopefully you've been investing in them over the course of time. Very quickly, when I was working with Franklin Covey, I was helping them roll out a new training solution around the world. I got to go to China and all over Europe and throughout Asia and a whole bunch of different places presenting this solution to the world.

And in doing so, there was a part of it where you were asked to assess the various roles that you fill in your life and how well you're doing. And I looked at the role of son or child, and I thought I'm kind of underperforming. I'm not like my parents wouldn't have ever stood up and said, this guy stinks. But they would have stood up and said, yeah, you know, when we really look at it, we talk once a week on the phone. It's mostly about traffic and weather.

And, you know, check-ins. And I just thought, that's not good enough. So I made some conscious decisions to try to change that. I'm sure initially they were like, why is he sending me postcards? But the reality is, picking up the phone and calling them and saying, instead of saying, like, what are you guys doing this week? Let's go through your calendar. Instead of that, I would share with them, like, here's a challenge I'm dealing with right now. How would you tackle it? And I'm sure at the beginning they were kind of like, you're asking us?

But over time, they gave me some great insights and our relationships are stronger because of it. Patrick, thank you so much. Fantastic. Fantastic. Thank you for being on the program today, folks. Follow him on LinkedIn. Five Week Leadership Challenge available on Amazon. Definitely go get that book. It's going to help you out. Patrick, thank you so much.

The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. I want to thank our previous guest, Patrick Ledin, for joining us. And now we have another fantastic guest for you, Kelly Sadler, commentary editor at the Washington Times, Newsmax contributor, former communications director at America First Action, and former special assistant to President Donald Trump. She's

She's also written some pieces that we found fascinating recently that we're excited to talk about. And if you want to follow her, it's at Kelly Riddell. I introduced her as Kelly Sadler. Kelly, thank you for joining the program. Thanks for having me on. And we appreciate you. And for folks, that's actually your maiden name, we were just told, on your Twitter account. Definitely get on there and follow it. Now, we were talking before we came back from the break. You're snowed in.

Yes. Yes. So is that a quarter inch or a half inch? I think it was more like a half inch last night. So the apocalypse is what you're saying. It is the apocalypse. You know, we did actually get, you know, eight inches of snow on Monday. So we've been, the kids have been home from school all week long. Last night, it's, oh, we're going to get, we didn't. But they at least had the plows out this morning. So for that little half inch. Well,

I assume, though, that this whole staying home thing is right in line with the teachers' union wishes. I mean, did they order up this snowstorm so they could not do their jobs again? It worked out well for them. You know, D.C. schools – so I'm in Fairfax County. I'm right outside of D.C. D.C. schools actually had canceled school on Monday and Tuesday. Okay.

So that all the kids could get tested before they formally came back. But then they extended it to Wednesday because of the snowstorm. Because, you know, COVID doesn't travel in a snowstorm. So they've actually been out all week long as well. We still don't know what's going to happen on Monday. Good grief. Now, you wrote two pieces recently. I want to start with one of them. Teachers unions are harming our children.

And you point out 3,200 plus schools around the country announced they were canceling in-person learning as of Monday evening. And as you point out, there's more risk of death to children riding in a car than there is from COVID-19. I mean, this is Syria. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, no. They just don't want to work. We've got to, you know.

we've got to start looking at what they've been doing and calling them out for what they are now not all teachers uh should be targeted in chicago uh chicago voted not to return because of the omicron variant this week they've been out since wednesday uh 12 percent of you know the 2500 members or 25 000 members in that school system decided to show up so that 12 percent good

Good for you. Way to work for the children. The rest of everybody should be fired because the science is clear here that Omicron does not, even the Delta variant, had very minimal impact on our kids. But the consequences of staying at home and this

virtually learning is just having horrible mental health crisis is uh... we've got drug addiction going up we've got children that have fallen behind you know more than a year in their schooling that still have not caught up and this disproportionately affect you know minority children and and and children in poverty

So the tremendous impact of these teachers unions of just refusing to show up to go to work when we now know the Omicron variant. Yes, is it contagious? But is it deadly? Absolutely not. They were pushed up to the front of the line last year to get their vaccination. All of them should be vaccinated, these teachers. And there's a minimal risk to them to return back to the classroom. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, going forward, anytime I hear a teacher, a member of a teacher's union say they care about the kids,

I just want to scream in their face, you're a liar. I mean, it's absolutely the case. Is there any – there's no justification for this. As you said, COVID, Omicron is very mild for children. If you're a vaccinated adult, it's very mild in your case. Teachers are not the oldest population in the country.

How do they continue to justify this? And do you think for I mean, personally, I think for Republicans, this is the greatest electoral gift they could have given us. But I have a hard time celebrating it because it's doing so much damage. Well, yeah, it is a what it's one of its Kelly. I think one of the biggest cons that New York and D.C. media have sold and even local is that.

Teachers care about these teachers unions care about these kids. I believe a lot of teachers do, but teachers unions do not care about these kids. They're a union. They care about their membership and why people just don't get that fact and let them go. I mean, for example, we never go to a corporation when they've done something bad and say, well, we're representing all these employees or the sake or this sector. It's it's really unbelievable what they've allowed to get away with.

Yeah, but I mean, look what happened in Virginia this year with the election of Glenn, the governor-elect Glenn Youngkin.

Teaching in schools, that was the number two issue that drove people to the polls to vote for him. The fact that, you know, we had been closed down for a year in Fairfax County. The teaching of critical race theory, of McCullough just dismissing it as, you know, right-wing conspiracy and dismissing parents' concerns about

about wanting their kids back into the classroom. Democrats are repeating that mistake nationally, and this can be a winning issue for Republicans going into the midterm. And broken potholes will come right back after this message. 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 Broken Potholes with your host Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us right now, Kelly Sadler, commentary editor at The Washington Times, former special assistant to President Donald Trump. We're talking about schools, teachers unions, COVID issues.

And the nightmare that teachers unions are creating across this country for students, particularly students in low income areas, they are just being abused. And there's really no other word for it. These kids are being abused by their schools.

Kelly? Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're absolutely being abused by the schools. And no one, throughout this entire pandemic, our society, unfortunately, has placed children last. They are the least affected by COVID-19. And they've gotten the short end of the stick all throughout the pandemic where we have, you know, harming our children to protect, you know, adults. And I just think that is just morally is a failure.

And it goes further than that. I mean, looking at another piece and I really appreciate your work because I think you're doing some really fantastic work. You said your piece titled Elites Use COVID-19 to Build Wealth, Flaunt Virtue as Middle America Suffers. And I think that's really the same as the children. It is the.

The weakest members of society, the poorest members of society, the most vulnerable members of society who have suffered the burden of COVID while the leadership, you know, primps for a photo with all their masks on and then runs off to Florida so they can hang out. You know, they can throw it in their back pocket and hang out a bar with their friends. They're being served on their yachts by masked servants. I mean, the whole thing is just dystopian in the extreme. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, and I, you know, I did that piece. It was sparked by, you know, the Netflix opening of it was a red carpet with all the movie stars and their glamorous gowns. None of them had masks on, all posing for pictures, talking about, you know, the global warming crisis while all of their staff.

had to wear masks and were in the background. And this is in New York City as Omicron is, you know, you can't have two separate sets of rules here. Either everyone wears masks or no one wears masks. Masks have not been proven effective in preventing, you know, Omicron. Neither have these vaccination passports.

Look what's happening in New York City. Businesses are being shut down. Small businesses with small business leaders are being shut down while the Amazons and the Targets and the Walmarts all thrive. They never had to shut down at all during this pandemic. We are, you know, as a society, you know, the wealth gap has grown tremendously during this pandemic from the haves to have nots. And those the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer.

This is Chuck Warren. We're with Kelly Sadler to hear today on Broken Potholes. She is stuck in this great storm of 2022 in the Washington, D.C. area. Kelly, something that was interesting to me about your career, and I want to talk about it. You did some great work.

in-depth reporting on George Soros giving at least $33 million in one year to support Ferguson protests. And then you also did another report on the Clinton Foundation collecting $26 million in fundraising from Sweden. At the time, they were lobbying the State Department to forego sanctions that threatens business connections with Iran. Besides the great reporting you did, what did you learn about that from your peers, how they reacted to it?

What stuck out in your mind? Well, this was back before, and now George Soros and his funding of DAs and kind of the network that he's done on the criminal justice system, we're seeing...

the effect of that in real time with by rights crime rate in every major city and you know right and homicide rate look at the chicago look at new york look at philadelphia uh... you've got you've got that the broke the a_m_ and france that they would actually going to be up for for reelection or recall election next year because the street at the end of the colorado withdraw that drug addicts homeless people

and crime is running rampant. But this really, George Soros really started doing this back in like 2015, you know, early, early on funding these local races with millions of dollars that Republicans couldn't compete in so they could get these liberal DAs, these progressive DAs that were soft on crime to reduce the incarceration rate, to let the criminals go free, to focus on, you know,

you know, having mental health people replace the police department. We saw this push last year with defund police then became mainstream. And it's just really, it's really something that we should have been paying attention to years ago. And I was, and I just saw how bad his network was between the nonprofits that he sponsored. And, and,

and just the money that he was fueling in this and fueling this social unrest. The social unrest didn't start with George Floyd. You know, it started during the Obama years when the liberal media started hyping up, you know, the cops shooting down, you know, black, unarmed black men. And then the protests that ramped up from that. They were not organic. That was all planned by this network of nonprofits that George Soros funded.

What I don't understand, Kelly, is – and I don't think anyone has made this clear, including George Soros, what his endgame is in this because he's basically making our biggest cities across this country unlivable, dangerous nightmares. What?

Why? I mean, what do they see? What does the other side see in this? Do you know? Because I certainly don't. It's mind-boggling. They like to play up the racial strife and animus in this country. They're looking to divide us.

And this is an issue that, you know, with the noblest of intentions, you know, like, we've got to reduce mandatory minimums, reducing incarceration rates. There's so many people in jail that don't need to be in jail. But it's morphed now into just not prosecuting gun crimes, allowing hardened criminals...

to not be jailed, but to be released on no bail. It is devastating for this country, and it's something that Republicans need to focus on, again, moving into the 2022 midterm election. Yeah, absolutely. If I'm, and I am actually running for office, but I would tell every Republican across this country, education and crime are the two issues Democrats have exposed who they are on these things, and who they are is...

is tearing our country apart. I mean, it's insane. They are abusing our children in schools. They clearly don't care about them. They talk all the time about how much they care about poor people. But those schools are the worst offenders right now. And those communities are suffering the brunt of the impact of their, you know, criminal loving is the only way I can phrase it, criminal loving policies. Right.

You're absolutely correct. And we are seeing, we're seeing the results of their policies. It's a direct result of their policies. And so we've got to kind of take things backward, run on law and order. You know, yes, should we focus on criminal justice reform? Perhaps, but like,

We need to make sure that bails are kept in place, that people aren't being released with minimal bails to go back out into the community and commit these crimes. People with a long rap sheet, like what happened in Wisconsin, the Christmas parade, should never have been put back out on the street.

Absolutely not. Chuck, you and I have talked about this a bunch. But I mean I think we both agree and I think one of the big failures in our country is that we don't really do much inside our prison system to rehabilitate prisoners. But we don't want them getting out unless they are rehabilitated or until they are. And then of course Chuck would put a lot more people to death than currently. Yeah.

I'm a big pro capital punishment guy. My list grows monthly, so I don't know what to say on that. Every time you get a news headline about somebody raping three people, I know I'm about to get a text from Chuck. They need to put him to death. I put a hashtag to it, though. I put a hashtag to it. Kelly, let me ask you a question that's a little bit different here. What do you make of Kamala Harris?

Does she get a bad rap to a degree or is she just as bad as we all think? I think she's just as bad as we all think. She never was good, right? She never got out of the Democratic presidential primary. Democrats don't even like her. She's ineffectual. She's a terrible human being to work, you know, be your boss. Multiple of her staffers, yes, multiple of her staffers have quit, resigned, saying how she doesn't read her

briefing papers she goes to these interviews completely unprepared and then they all get yelled at for not doing the work that she refused to do in the first place she's been totally like she doesn't care about the border even though she's the borders are she won't even meet with her own constituents in texas like henry cuelar who's been who says that she won't even pick up his phone uh pick up the phone calls from him uh to talk about the issue so right now she's

She compared, what, January 6th yesterday to 9-11 in Pearl Harbor, which was completely, just historically inaccurate as she tries to, you know, now she's going to try to formalize or federalize, you know, local elections. That's the Democrats' next big push. So I hope she's, you know, as unsuccessful in that effort as she has been in everything else that she's been tasked with.

She really is sort of the anti-DeSantis in her ability to comprehend and discuss material.

Yeah, I mean, the Democrats are worried. There's many people in this town that are talking about that know that she's not up to the job. And so the vice president is the next isn't the next heir apparent who is for the Democratic Party. I think there's a real dearth of leadership when it comes to the Democratic Party right now. Yeah. Every time they they put up a list of potential contenders, you know, to potentially to replace Biden.

I don't buy into any of these people bringing the country together or exciting anybody. I mean, I think Biden for so many people was a choice just not to be Trump. But what do they have that anyone wants to vote for? Is there any Democrat right now that if you're not on the far left that people actually like?

That is a good question. And I'm sitting here, I'm going through the names, right? You have Andrew Cuomo, who had to step down from New York after his multiple scandals. You've got Gretchen Whitmer, who had the same nursing home problem in Michigan as Cuomo did. And has a Darth Vader sense of...

dress code, I mean. You've got Gavin Newsom, who survived a recall election in California, but his draconian lockdown policies and his hypocrisy when it comes to COVID in terms of

putting all the group in places and breaking them i don't know uh... so if they don't have a really strong rocker of of candidates that have actual expect in governing when it comes to the democratic party but uh... you know i think the democratic party right now is more progressive than ever before so you could be an a_o_p_ take on a chuck schumer schumer look for for the papa office

I don't know. I'm scared at what the future holds when it comes to Democratic leadership. I don't ever believe it'll go back centrist again. It doesn't doesn't. No, no. That's that ship has sailed. That ship has sailed. That's gone. Yeah. Jared Polis comes to mind as about the only one who's demonstrated any sanity at all. And I just wouldn't see him being able to get through one of their primaries at this point.

Yeah, I don't know how you make it through a primary as a blue-collar kind of middle-class centrist Democrat right now with the Democratic Party. Look at what they've done to Joe Manchin. I mean, they don't even want him in their party, and he's the ticket that they hold that gives them the majority in the Senate. Does he switch parties? Does he switch his registration to independent? I don't see him coming as Republican, but does he switch to independent and caucus with Republicans, you think?

I don't think so. I mean, for him, I think he prides himself on kind of being a blue dog Democrat coming from West Virginia. He's been a Democrat his entire life. He's trying with all his might to get the Democrats to come back over to his side. It's a losing battle, but I don't ever think he switches.

his party, even though I'd love him to do that. I just don't think that it's just something that he holds too true to himself in identifying himself as. Yeah, at this point, we would offer an open invitation to Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They are free to re-register. They are welcome in the Republican Party.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Open with open arms if they if they decide to do so. We won't treat them the way the Democrats have been treating them. Kelly Sadler, thank you so much for joining us today on Broken Potholes. We really appreciate you. Would love to have you back in the future. Tell folks how they can follow you and follow your work.

Yes, you can go to thewashingtontimes.com. All of my columns are featured there, as well as follow me on Twitter at Kelly Riddell. Fantastic, Kelly Sadler, at Kelly Riddell. Follow her on Twitter. You're not going to be disappointed. Kelly, thank you so much for joining us on the program today. Look forward to having you on again. Broken Potholes will be coming back in just a moment with our podcast-only segment. Stay in bed.

It's the new year and time for a 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 the podcast-only segment of Broken Potholes. Chuck Warren had to fly.

So I am in the studio, not by myself. Once again, I have roped in the largely unwilling and protesting Jamie Kleszak. Good morning, Jamie. Good morning, Sam. Yeah. So, you know, we actually we should have been recording a few moments ago, folks, when I brought up Novak Djokovic with Chuck because he had some comments. I can't even. I'm not I'm not that good. He nailed it.

But, you know, this stuff that's going on around the world right now, Jamie, and, you know, just talking to Kelly Sadler, who was on the phone here from The Washington Times, this stuff is crazy. Omicron, unless you are at severe risk, Omicron is a really just a cold.

Yeah. Right. Absolutely. Maybe the flu. Yeah. And look, every year people go and get the flu and we tell people to go get the flu shot to minimize their, you know, their chances of ending up in the hospital from it. But that's it. That's all we do. Right. We don't do any of this other stuff. We're not closing schools. Right.

We're not requiring mass testing. We're not locking people in or out of countries or denying them the chance to play in a major sporting event where they're standing by themselves in the middle of a tennis court with no one within 35 feet of them. I mean, these restrictions, I just don't see Democrats letting this stuff go. And I don't think they can because for so long they have lied to their base that

and deceive their base. If you watch any CNN, MSNBC, Whoopi Goldberg in The View was my personal entertainment this week because her triple-vast, masked, shielded, gloved, servant-fed lifestyle did not protect her, and she could not believe that somehow she ended up with COVID.

Welcome to reality. Whoopi Goldberg, you got it. Everyone's going to get it. You get a COVID. You get a COVID. You get a COVID. Everybody gets a COVID. That's where we're at.

Right. Pretty much. And it doesn't seem to be just coming from the unvaccinated people either, which they cannot admit to themselves on the Democrat side. I think their their biggest problem is strategically. They don't realize that this is a sunk cost at this point. And they keep digging themselves in deeper and deeper and deeper. And they're just making it worse. There's nothing further for them to gain.

They need to just admit defeat and move on. See, Jamie hates being on the microphone, but she's freaking good at it, folks. Thank you, Sam. See, this is the problem. So I'm going to keep dragging her in there. But you're right. It's a sunk cost at this point. I mean, look, you're going to COVID is endemic. It's worldwide. It's going to keep going around cloth and paper masks, which many of us has been saying based on the data for two plus years do not work.

They're finally admitting don't work. No, it's a Band-Aid. And if it makes you feel better to have your security blanket or your Band-Aid on a bruise, that's fine. Go for it. But don't force it on everyone else. Well, but what I would say and what I've been saying for months now, at first I just said, look, the cloth and paper things don't work. But then we got to the point you do have N95s available. You can find them in stores. Obviously, in the last couple of weeks, there's been a rush on them.

But those are out there. If you're really concerned, those do provide some significant protection if they're properly fitted, right? But that's it. That's it. I mean, other than that, you're getting it. Pretty much. And we've known that. Folks, if you go back and read the literature surrounding what we were supposed to do during a viral pandemic –

It was, by the way, the right thing because we'd spent decades honing the policy and preparing. And then we threw it out of the window and went with this crazy zero COVID idea that was never, never in the cards. Look at Australia. Look at Wales, New South Wales, all this stuff. They keep locking down, lockdown, lockdown, lockdown. The minute they open up, they have cases. Of course they do.

It's not going away. It doesn't matter how isolated you can make yourself. It's going to come back. Yeah, look, if you are – what was the story? It was one of my favorite stories from when I was a kid of a guy who got stranded in Alaska. I think lost in the wild or something like that, right? And it's up there with him and a bunch of wolves eating mice out of the field to survive. Look, folks, if you're going to do that, you might avoid COVID.

Is it worth it, though? I don't. Mice do not seem like a good dinner, so I would say no. And it sounds really cold. Yeah. Well, Alaska, cold and dark. Yeah. I mean, I lived in Montana, and when you get down to like four hours of daylight in the winter, that's pretty freaking depressing. I can't even imagine what it's like in Alaska. That is the one beautiful place in summer, folks. And if you're listening in Alaska, I apologize. But the fact is, I wouldn't live there for any for all the tea in China. I don't think they want you there. It's OK.

That's why I'm trying to save Arizona. Yes. You know, talking about that, we actually have a redistricting, which we haven't really talked about on this show, but that really has changed things. Last time Republicans got housed in a lot of this, this sort of talk about Arizona being a blue state essentially comes down to the congressional delegation in the U.S. Senate races.

Because otherwise you look around, we're still a light red type state. It's not gone yet. It's not gone yet. And so I think that's going to change things pretty dramatically this cycle. I think you may have five and maybe as many as six Republicans win those seats. And then it's then down to the Mark Kelly in that Senate race. I got to tell you, I think Mark Kelly's in big trouble. Nobody's heard from him in a while. He does. Yeah. Well, I mean, he's never been the guy who was like...

He doesn't inspire you. I know he's got a great, great story, you know, astronaut, military. He makes for a nice ad, but it doesn't really carry on well. No. And really, he's not been much of a force in Washington. No. And now you have some candidates. You know, obviously, Mark Brnovich, I think, is a very good candidate. But without – and I'm not endorsing anyone here, folks. It's far too early for that. It's far too early for that. But I got to say, I like Blake Masters a lot. He brings –

A lot to the table. Oh, yeah. You know, I think Jim Lehman, who brings a lot to the table with his background in energy and, you know, oil, gas, now solar. Blake brings the background in tech.

These people have real stuff to bring to the table, real policy that they can help implement and guide. Absolutely. If we could combine Masters, Brnovich, and Lehman into one person, that would be ideal. Yeah, we have too much talent in that race, right? It's fantastic. Unfortunately, it's split between three people. We actually have a lot of talent in all the big races here in Arizona. And that's one thing. We were talking with Kelly Sadler.

that I was thinking of. I mean, it occurred to me as we were talking and she kind of had the same reaction. Who the heck out there would you vote for on the Democrat side for president? I mean, there's just nobody inspiring who anybody but the hard left base likes. No. And really, if you look across the country, it's not just here in Arizona right now. But one of the things that gives me the most hope as a Republican for 2022 and 24 is that

There's a whole bunch of Republicans that I would very happily pull the lever for in almost any race. Oh, yeah, for sure. And when you look at these races, they're competitive. You have candidates.

A lot of challenges, frankly, even to incumbents where the challenger is a real candidate. You don't get that very often, right? No. And I'm really excited this year. We've got a lot of people who haven't run for office before or are still fairly new. They're not that boring stick in the mud. You've seen them for hundreds of years and they're never going away candidates that we've

I've fairly been criticized for having before. And thank goodness for my own campaign because the paradigms about what you have to do and sound and look like for campaigns have kind of been thrown out the window. People just want honesty, right? Like you want somebody who's going to drop an F-bomb every so often and get bleeped out of this program, which I've managed not to do for over a year. And I'm very proud of this. We're very proud of you, Sam.

Folks, anyone who's talked to me in real life knows how unlikely that scenario really is. This is absolutely a record. Yeah. No, there's no question about it. But but overall, I mean, I'm very hopeful for 2022 politically. But watching this reaction to Omicron when Omicron came out.

And it was very clear early on from South Africa, from England, from other countries that had Omicron waves that hit before ours that this is a much, much milder form of the disease. Oh, yeah. Right. Hospitalization rates are far lower. It's very transmissible, but hospitalization rates are far lower. And, you know, what we're seeing, well, throughout COVID here has been that the average age of a U.S. COVID death is 75 with four comorbidities, right?

I think the average life expectancy in the U.S. is like 73-ish. Is it that low? I thought it was more like 78. But it's in that range. I mean, you're right in that range. We're not talking about 25-year-olds dropping like flies. No, and that's one of the things with our previous guest, Kelly Sadler, that I think, and both guests on the program today, frankly...

You know, the government hasn't been honest about this. It's been all propaganda. And it's been extremely confusing propaganda, too. Yeah. I mean, most people do not know that if you're under 65 and you don't have any significant comorbidities, you're taking more risk every day driving around in your car or riding around on your bike than you do from COVID. Yeah.

I mean, by a lot. It's not even kids. The comparison is literally there are more kids being killed of gunshots in this country. There are more kids dying in Chicago of gunshots than are dying of COVID. That's actually a really sad and awful thing. It's unbelievable. But we've got to shut down for COVID, but nobody can do anything about Chicago's gun violence. Right. Right.

Nobody wants to do anything. Well, they're just going to pass some more laws that don't work, right? No, the first 400 didn't work, so we'll try another three. That's the thing. I understand in some sense gun control in other parts of the country where people don't understand the situation on our border here because I think if you do understand, if you live in Arizona, you live in Texas, you live in New Mexico, I think you're crazy because somehow you keep voting Democrat despite all the evidence. But if you live here and you've seen what's going on,

And you ban guns, you know, or take any kind of limitations on guns. What's going to happen? The cartels are going to step in and fill that void. They're going to provide the product. Right. Well, it's like COVID. Unless you totally isolate yourself. And even then, there's still going to be things coming in. You can't stop it. Yeah. Borders are leaky. Yes. I mean, even the best protected borders are leaky, right? No, there's no way to completely stop things from coming over. The best you can do is limit it. Yeah. Ask the Soviets in Berlin. Yeah.

I mean, literally, there's. And if anybody could try harder than them, it would be scary. Yeah. Let's not give them any ideas, Jamie. Jesus. Gretchen Whitmer's listening. Yeah. Look, she really is Darth Vader. She's terrifying. She is probably the Democrat that scares me the most. Do you think it's possible she is Darth Vader's daughter? No, I'm not going to say that because I like Carrie Fisher a lot and I'm not going to besmirch her memory like that.

Well, yeah, and then they ruined it by turning the emperor's daughter into the hero of the last movie. I could have gone there. That was weird. Yeah, it was a strange ending. It was not good, and I say that as a diehard. Okay, I got to ask. Have you watched the book of Boba Fett? Of course I have. Darn it. I have not renewed my subscription. Sam, I'll send you my login.

Okay. I may have to go that route. Folks, I'm going to cheat because I do want to see it, but I really don't want to give Disney my money. It's pretty good. Is it worth it? It's pretty good. This week was excellent. Okay. Folks, there you have it. That is the final word from Broken Potholes. Thank you, Jamie. She's going to force me to violate my ethics and my conscience and give money to people who I cannot stand because I love Star Wars. We've all been there.

That's why we call it broken potholes, folks. The foundations are crumbling. Everything is at risk. And Bob Iger is going to get my money. And that is an optimistic note. We're back next week.

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