Philip Klein on Jimmy Carter's Legacy and Todd Bensman Explores National Security Threats from Biden's Open Borders
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Jumping right into our first interview of the day, Philip Klein is the editor of National Review Online. You can follow him on X at Philip A. Klein. Philip, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. So let's start off here. We in the studio here are not Jimmy Carter fans, and so we've been following what you've been writing. What do you think Jimmy Carter's legacy is going to be in the Middle East?

I think it's going to be disastrous. He had a legacy of sort of helping to orchestrate the Israel-Egypt peace deal, which has held and deserves credit for. The problem was that Carter, after he was defeated by Ronald Reagan,

He sort of didn't really accept that he had lost and tried to pretend as if he were still president and still had any power as an ex-president. And so he'd go around and attempt to meddle in the Middle East affairs, believing that had he been reelected, he would have been able to resolve the conflict.

He regularly with regard, he regularly promoted terrorism. He became very close with Yasser Arafat, the former terrorist leader of the PLO. And.

The thing is, people had often talked about how Arafat was skilled at sort of fooling the West into thinking he was a peacemaker while actually committing and funding and leading terrorist attacks against Israel. And Jimmy Carter was really a crucial part of that strategy. Carter befriended Arafat.

Arafat and sort of coached him in how to fool Western diplomats into thinking he was a man of peace, even to the point of writing speeches for him that he would give to international audiences and sort of telling them how they told people, you know, to tell people what they wanted to hear. He actually tried to do the same thing with Hamas. He regularly met

Hamas leaders claimed that they wanted to live peacefully side by side with Israel. And throughout his career, he sort of lashed out at Israel. He had an obsessive hatred toward Israel. He had a lot of resentment towards Jewish Americans who he thought caused him infection.

And so I think it's going to be really a negative legacy for Carter. Why do you think he disliked the Jews in Israel so much? Well, in some interviews he had given, he reflected on this idea that he thought Jews

the that Mondale and other Democrats at the time, like Scoop Jackson, were more popular among Jewish Americans. And he never felt like he had enough of their support. And he you know, he had this bizarre, twisted view of the world, which tended to

view with, you know, believe in this narrative as America as this bad imperialist and Israel as part of that extension of that in the Middle East, whereas he regularly had a soft spot for dictators. I mean, it wasn't just Arafat. I mean, it was Fidel Castro, Kim Il-sung in North Korea.

And so he had a long history of really embracing dictators. And so I think there was an element of that within the Israel dispute, as well as personal political reasons where he had a lot of contempt for Jewish Americans. Well, think about his...

his benevolence towards dictators and if Trump had done the same thing foreign policy wise just the difference with the legacy media how they treat it I mean most people don't realize he's that way but if Trump had done it I mean it's a constant mention in every news article

I mean, look, you say if Trump had done it. So in the lead up to the Persian Gulf War, the first Iraq war in 1991, Jimmy Carter was opposed. And on the surface, there's nothing wrong with that. You know, ex-presidents could weigh in and interviews op ed say they disagree with this or that policy. But he actually went beyond that. He actually lobbied other members of the U.S. Security Council to

to try to drop their support for the United States. And actually, days before the U.S. launched its offensive against Saddam to try to push Saddam out of Kuwait,

uh, he actually lobbied all of the, uh, Arab governments to, uh, pull their, the rug out from under the United States, abandoned their support. Uh, the die was already cast at that point on that. We were planning to do something. So all this would have done is put us troops in arms way, um, and, and weakened the United States in a time of war. Uh,

And he did this, and I think it could fairly be described as treason. Now, you talk about if Trump had done it. I mean, imagine if, you know, given all of the stuff about, you know, Russia and everything, what if Trump was sort of out there going to European countries and say, you have to abandon your support for Ukraine? Yeah.

We're speaking with Philip Klein, the editor of National Review Online. Philip, was Carter the first – I know there's a long history of presidents who have been interviewed or spoken out or disagreed with policies of their successors. But was he the first one and sort of created a tradition now that's unfortunately been followed to some extent by Barack Obama in particular –

of directly undermining the policies of his successors on the foreign stage. Yes, there is no precedent for what he did, in part because, you know, I mean, part of it is actuarial. Most, you know, he was the longest living ex-president, longest living president. And he retired or he was booted out of office at a relatively speaking for the time young age.

And so he basically, you know, relatively speaking, T.R., who was the young president, died young. You had obviously JFK didn't have a post-presidency election.

LBJ died soon after. Nixon was sort of resigned to disgrace. So you basically didn't have much of a history of this sort of thing. So in part because Carter left and he was humiliated

humiliated 44 states that Reagan won because of Carter's terrible handling of foreign policy. And one other thing which we didn't even mention in terms of his Middle East failures was Iran. He abandoned support for the Shah and Islamic radicals took over the country, subjugating its people for

you know, now over 40 years and threatening the entire region. And that was all Jimmy Carter's handiwork. We for decades up to that, we had a very close and supportive relationship with the Shah of Iran.

And so I think that there's basically no precedent for what he did, but he was sort of relatively young and was desperate to overcome the humiliation of the landslide defeat to Reagan.

and prove, you know, it's almost like for Godfather fans, when Fredo says, I'm smart, you know, I'm not going to make people say I'm smart, you know. He was kind of out to prove, you know, that he could cut the deal with Johnny Ola and, like, you know, everything would be great and he'd rescue the country and world peace and so forth.

And so that's why I think it's another aspect of his legacy that's misunderstood. He would do these performative things like carry his own luggage and so forth to help create this persona of him as sort of offbeat.

a humble man, when in reality he was deeply arrogant. I mean, George W. Bush left office relatively young. He went back to Texas, you know, took up painting. You rarely hear anything from Bush on any issue. He'll pop up on, you know, funerals or ceremonial events. But we have hardly heard a peep from him.

So that's what Carter should have done. So what he did with the Shah in Iran, I was talking to a colleague last night who's an Iranian dissident here in this country. His premise was because of what he did, he really unleashed Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. And as a result of what he did to the Shah, that you can really attribute that to millions of deaths in the Middle East. Would you say that has some –

Some semblance to it. Before we toss that to Philip, I want to add that that was one of the breakpoints at which the Saudis stopped opposing the Salafi sect in their extreme radicalization also because they had to see the situation. What are your thoughts on that, Philip? I mean, I think it's totally accurate. I mean, if you look, first of all, I mean, there's this sort of popular misconception, you know, that the Shah was, you know,

there's a popular view like obviously I'm no monarch but there's there's this view of that you know

the Islamic rebellion with some sort of popular uprising against the Shah. That's completely inaccurate. Obviously, I'm a proud American, a proud of our constitutional republic, not looking for any shahs. But in the Middle East, which is a tough neighborhood outside of Israel, you often don't have a choice between liberal democracy and

And so in that case, the Shah was an American ally and people in Iran had a lot more freedom before the Islamic fundamentalists took over.

under under the Shah. And I'm not saying there was no oppression. The Shah was perfect, etc., etc. But the idea that the people were rising up against the Shah because they wanted a theocracy in place is just completely ahistorical. Let me stop you right there for a moment, Philip. We're going to be going to break. We're going to be coming back with more from Philip Klein, editor at National Review Online here in just a moment. So stay tuned for that, folks.

You can follow him on X at Philip A. Klein. Breaking Battlegrounds will be right back. Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage, 2K,

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888-Y-REFI-24 or go to again, invest the letter Y then refy.com. We're continuing on now with Philip Klein, editor of National Review Online. Philip, we were talking a lot in the first segment about Jimmy Carter. Want to continue on a little bit with that because there's been, you know, the

the broader legacy media has really been fetting the man since he passed. But this is a guy who played ball, apparently very happy with communists across the globe, whether in Latin America, whether the Islamic fundamentalist who also pitched themselves as communist socialists, Africa, same story across Asia, China. It,

Where was – how much impact did he have on thwarting the US's rollback of world communist aggression?

He was president. You know, his weakness, his idea that we could peacefully coexist with the Soviet Union, his sort of ham-fisted attempt to boycott the Olympics, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that was invited under his watch,

Those were all very tangible problems. And then in his post-presidency period, you had his efforts to try to legitimize evil communist dictators like Castro and Chavez. And as you said, all across the world. I think that, you know, one thing that this highlights, which is sort of the flip side of

of sort of understanding the legacy of how damaging Jimmy Carter was, was how grateful we should be that we got Ronald Reagan in 1980. Because, you know, if it weren't for, if you basically had another term of Carter, or alternatively, some milquetoast Republican,

We could have been staring at something a lot different. But the fact that we had Ronald Reagan, who for decades was convinced that there was no peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union had to be forced into collapse, that they were indeed the evil empire.

was something that we can take for granted now, but that we should all be tremendously grateful to as Americans. I think that's one part of the Carter legacy is that he gave us Ronald Reagan. He gave us the conditions that, quite frankly, extended all

all the way through Barack Obama's presidency and only really started getting torn down at that point. Correct. So I have a pastor friend said, the greatest lies you'll ever hear about somebody is at a funeral. And so we have Carter and they're all blabbering over him. What a great man he was, blah, blah, blah. What do we expect them to say about Joe Biden? Or is that going to be tempered some because they blame him for Kamala losing?

I mean, I think that in the immediate aftermath of, you know, the Biden, you're talking about what Biden's legacy will be. Yeah, I mean, right now, this is the humble guy from Plains, Georgia, blah, blah, blah. What will they say about Biden or what will they try to throw upon us to change the narrative? I think in the immediate aftermath of Biden's death,

that he, I think that we're going to get that he was just, you know, a decent man and, you know, all this stuff about how he overcame the tragedy of his, you know, first, you know, his first wife's death and children's deaths.

in the car accident just before becoming senator, served the country after the tragic death of his

son, Beau, came back and, you know, tried to restore decency to the country and respect and all that sort of narrative, I think, would return. I think longer term, he's done irreparable damage to his legacy, both by deciding to run for a second term, the post-election sort of now it could be told revelations about the

the fact that he wasn't really up to the job from day one and that for years, the, um, the, his advisors have been working with their allies in the media to try to cover up from Americans, just how bad his condition was. Um, I think, and in addition to the corruption, which I think it's just, we're really at the tip of the iceberg in,

in terms of the dealings that Hunter had with foreign countries and the extent to which Biden himself was involved in it. And I think that's one underappreciated aspect of the whole Hunter Biden pardon, which is another scandalous thing that's going to taint his legacy. But look, I mean, I think there is an element, too, of...

You know, victories written by the winners. And, you know, you're a one term president. And, you know, unlike Carter, who had, you know, over 40 years past his death to build a different legacy, which, again, we've talked about how his post presidency was.

was still damaging and bad. But to many people, he did charitable works and habits had, you know, to poor humanity and work on getting worm and sort of he did certain works that allowed him to change perceptions on a lot of people. But Biden is not going to. I

I mean, to have that time. I mean, we hardly see him now as president after the terrorist attack in New Orleans. He emerges that night. I mean, once past January 20th, we're barely going to ever see Biden until he dies at some point. So there's not much room he has to, you know, write his whole memoir, defining his whole career and putting things in his practice or doing anything.

you know, going to Africa and saving people, saving the starving children. He's not going to be able to do any of that stuff. So I think that his legacy is going to be really bad. But, you know, in the immediate aftermath, we'll get some retribution.

return to, well, his misunderstood genius. We have one minute left here, and I want to ask you a question. You wrote a great piece. What is the true scandal of Joe Biden's commutations of the people on death row? I think, to me, the true scandal is that we don't know who actually made the decision. I mean, if starting in 2021, aides and advisors had to kind of shield him

from the public and from cabinet officials and from members of Congress. Where are we now? We saw him on

give us a top four-minute speech that he struggled to get through on the New Orleans terrorist attack? I mean, who's making this decision? Do we think he's reviewing all the cases of these death row inmates and making a measured decision about this? Or do we think a bunch of advisers who are progressive activists are placing something in front of him and basically telling him to sign that? Right.

I think that's exactly what's going on, and it's very clear we have not had an actual president for at least a couple of years now. Philip Klein, thank you so much for joining us. Folks, you can follow him on X at Philip A. Klein and always with the fantastic work at National Review Online. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back with our next guest, Todd Benzman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in just a moment.

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They take it seriously, unlike the big players. So again, that's four, number four, freedommobile.com today and check that out. Our next guest up is Todd Bensman. He is the Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and the author of Overrun, How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in History, as well as America's Covert Border War, the Untold Story of the Nation's Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration. Thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the program, Todd Bensman.

It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Thank you. So, Todd, how many people have crossed the border who are on the terrorist watch list? And what data do we have of who's trying to cross the border? More than 400 in the last three and a half years have crossed the border and were apprehended

who were on the FBI's terrorism watch list. That's the number, that's a historic number. We've never had anywhere near close to that number. But I would point out that we also have had more than 2 million illegal immigrants get away clean into the interior, never got caught at all. So we have no idea really how many more might have been on the watch list that got through.

And then we also know that the government accidentally, in the crush and chaos of the border, freed accidentally at least 100 people.

people who are on the FBI terrorism watch list had to scramble afterwards to go round them up before they could do something. So that's a real problem. How does one get on the terrorist watch list? Can you explain that to our audience? I don't think they realize how you get on that list. Yeah, there's a threshold. The FBI or the there are 17 intelligence agencies that can nominate a person to be on the watch list.

They have to go through several layers of analysis to be approved by the FBI, to be on the watch list.

uh... on the u_s_ watch list typically you have to have some sort of significant association with terrorism or people that are involved in terrorism directly or indirectly uh... but but it it's it's not usually very lightly tangential it's it's going to be pretty solid they've they've increased the threshold uh... the and that the uh...

The analysis that has to go into putting somebody on a watch list in recent years, and the watch list is not that big anymore like it used to be. The terrorist screening database, that's what it's called. So if you're on that list, that's what FBI Director Wray said is a great cause for concern to the FBI if you're on that list.

How many ISIS cells do you believe are in the United States now? I have no idea on that. I used to be in the intel community. Typically, I wouldn't say that...

that they are cells in the way that we traditionally think, like the cells that did 9-11. More frequently now, they're lone wolves or they're people who are lone offenders or people that caught the virus, the ideological virus online and became true believers that way through the propaganda, like probably the guy who did the New Orleans attack.

I wouldn't say he, I don't think he was directed from abroad. I think he probably just decided to do this on his own. But, you know, he probably had people that were egging him on and proselytizing him.

Modern digital communications make those type of actors a little bit more dangerous. I apologize. I'm throwing a larger question here. You only have a minute left. But modern digital communications make those kind of actors a lot more dangerous. And I want to talk when we come back about how –

So how easy it is for international jihadist organizations and individuals to stir up those type of lone wolf attacks and how much more common they have become in Europe and

and whether the U.S. is facing that kind of future here. We also want to talk with you because you've been speaking out a little bit about how the Mexican government has facilitated Islamic terrorism in the United States. And for our show here being based out of Arizona and obviously airing in other states,

That is a major concern going forward, that the actions of that government will not match the needs of the United States or the international community. So we're going to talk about all of that with Todd Benzman when we come back here in just a moment, folks. Make sure you check us out, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, or wherever you like to download your favorite podcast. We're on Substack, all that good stuff. If you download, you get that extra podcast segment at the end. So stay tuned. We'll come back for more.

Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

digital security, and total freedom. And if you use the code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month of service after that. Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND at checkout. Visit 4freedommobile.com to learn more.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're going to be continuing on here in just a moment. Todd Bensman, he is the Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. But before we do, remember to check out our friends and invest the letter Y, then refy.com. Learn how you can earn up to 10.25% in a secure, collateralized portfolio. And if you need your principal back, there is no penalties, no fees. You can get that back at any time. So give them a call, 888-Y-REFY-24, and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.

All right. Continuing on, Todd, right when we went to break, we're talking about two issues. I want to start with the danger of these lone wolf actors and how much easier it is to both radicalize and activate them in the modern in the era of modern social media communications, all these other channels. Europe has had far more of these attacks than people realize. The U.S. may be facing a similar future.

Extremely important. ISIS understands it. Al-Qaeda understands it. All of those organizations understand that the social media and encrypted apps, sort of the dark web places where people go to talk the jihad, are absolutely critical in inspiring and inciting people

people abroad to conduct attacks. I think that that's what we'll find here with the New Orleans guy. But every year in this country, we bust somebody, you know, probably on a monthly basis, one, two, three every month, every year probably 20 or 30 people

who got radicalized online. We caught them before they could do anything. Either they were trying to go overseas or they were sending money or they were actually actively plotting to do something. And thank God the FBI got informants into the mix and put a stop to it. But the

The point is that the old-style cell structure that we were talking about earlier, those are easy to detect now. Too many people talking to too many people and buying equipment and things, there's too many opportunities to get caught.

And so just inspiring somebody, one guy online presents far less detection possibilities. So that's probably how this guy slipped through. When they do slip through, that's usually what the back story is. They're out there taking in all of this incitement, propaganda, and swallowing it and then acting on it.

Let's talk about President Trump's famous travel ban, which everybody called the "Muslim travel ban," which just wasn't true. Do you feel that President Trump will implement the travel ban again? And B, what do people not understand what it actually was?

I do think he's going to, he said he's going to bring it back. I've written about the travel ban repeatedly. It's not really a ban. It's their visa restrictions on certain countries. It is completely valid and legitimate and not at all the way it is portrayed. What the travel restrictions really are is it targets people from countries that have no government.

They are unable to provide intelligence information back to us about whether they're terrorists or criminals or

or something else terrible. Take Somalia, which had no government at all. Anybody born since 1990 didn't even have a birth certificate or a driver's license. There were no police. There was no record on anybody, whether they were involved in terrorism or whatever. You can't just willy-nilly let Somalians get visas to come in here, or Yemenis.

Same thing. Or Libyans. Same thing. These are ungoverned spaces and we can't vet them. This is all about vetting. Can we vet them? Venezuela is hostile to us. Cuba is hostile to us. Syria was hostile to us and probably will be again. And you can't just call them up and get an intel share.

So the safe bet is to just say, look, we're going to just sharply restrict visas to those kind of countries, hostile or incapable of helping us vet people who are applying for visas here. I think the original list of 13 needs to be greatly expanded when they bring it back. Who would you put on it? Who would you add to it?

I would put Congo on it. I would put Afghanistan on it. Oh, absolutely. I would put, yeah, there are a number of countries that are just simply hostile to us, ungovernable, that we didn't put on the first list. And they don't necessarily have to be Muslim. North Korea is on that list. There are a lot of other countries that need to be put on that list.

Well, one thing that has to happen, and you're very knowledgeable on this, so our audience today has probably learned more about this issue than they ever have just besides what they hear on a clickbait headline by The New York Times. What do people who want to have a controlled border, what do they need to do when he comes out and reintroduces his travel ban? He needs to add a few countries, obviously, like Afghanistan. What can people do to get this message out? Russia would be a good one as well. What can they do to get this message out?

Well, you know, I've written about it in favorable, positive terms. You can go to my website and find my arguments in favor of the restrictions. It's not a Muslim travel ban either, by the way. It's just simply an ungoverned country travel ban. You know, nothing wrong with that. It absolutely makes perfect sense.

And you can read my arguments and the administration's arguments when they come out with them, they lay it out. You can find court opinions that upheld it all the way to the Supreme Court.

uh... and and disseminate them and talk about them openly and argue back it's not what they're saying it is their their they're just simply not right to call it a muslim travel ban and it's a religious discrimination issue it's not

It's a vetting issue. It's a national security issue. Very legitimate security issue. And you've talked about something almost no one else has talked about in that regard is we had a person come across the border who was actually on the terror watch list, come across illegally and engage in shooting Jewish people in Chicago, went on a shooting rampage, was taken down by the police. But nobody's been talking about that. There's no attention focused there.

This is the type of person we're talking about who we need to know who they are and not let them in. Yeah, I just returned from Chicago on that story because the perpetrator was a Mauritanian illegal border crosser, came over the Mexican border after a long journey, and they let him right through into San Diego, and he went to Chicago, and about a year and a half after going to Chicago, he conducts this

horrendous long-running 20-minute gun battle terror attack for the jihad

in a Jewish Chicago neighborhood, shoots a Jewish Orthodox man in the back. Thankfully, he survived. Then opened fire on police and paramedics, tried to kill the guy again when they were loading him into the ambulance, etc. And they charged him with terrorism. The state of Illinois arrested and charged him with terrorism after seeing all the jihad propaganda on his cell phone.

And then he hanged himself in his Cook County jail before he could go to trial and get a lot of questions answered for the American public about how did he get in and what did we do to vet that guy? So I've got a three-part series coming up next week with all my findings in it so far. And to just...

serve as a reminder to the public that this thing happened. Terrorists do cross the border. It has happened. There is one on the books now. Blood was drawn. First blood was drawn on this. And if we don't

really excavate and apply introspection to this case, how are we going to prevent the next one of these? There's all kinds of people from Mauritania and all of those Muslim-majority countries who came in in record-breaking numbers and got right into the country without any vetting at all down at the border, and they're here.

We're with Todd Benzman. He is the Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. He also has a great book that came out in August, Overrun, How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.

How would you define, for our audience, mass deportations? That's what President Trump or incoming President Trump has talked about. How would you define it? Do you see them deporting up to a million people under his tenure or more? How would you define it? Well, anything that is greater than what they're doing now and what they've been doing for the last four years could be called mass deportations.

because they all but eliminated any kind of significant deportations, interior deportations in the United States to a historic degree. It's never happened like that before. They just fell off the cliff. So this would really, the better way to put it is that this is just simply a return to normal.

law enforcement, immigration enforcement in the country. The problem with returning to normal is that the numbers that are deportable are absolutely wicked sky high. We have never seen anything like it. So the number of deportations has to go up in order to reverse the damage done to move people like that Mauritanian terror attacker out of the country and trend to Aragua and

You know, all these criminals that are just running around that we know are running around. And I think they can do a million a year. Obama did a million a year during his term in office. The issue with Trend de Aragua highlights another problem with this that you've been talking about and I've seen almost no one else. We've talked about it in the past on this program. But the Mexican government is essentially now complicit with the cartels.

In their border operations, they make no attempt to stop them. They are explicitly their friends. And that is opening us up in a way that has never been before to this type of terrorist and violent criminal infiltration.

Well, yes, I have spoken about that quite a bit. We have a Mexican cartel problem. They control the Mexican side of large areas of the southern border, our southern border. They control all the approaches there.

the smuggling lanes north. And with that, the Mexican government has just sort of ceded the battleground. And they did it a long time ago, years ago, since the Calderon government administration, when they declared war on the cartels and actually set the military on them.

They lost that war because of a lack of, I guess, commitment. There were a lot of casualties in that war. And I argue that we need to see to it that Mexico maybe resumes that war. They have a policy called...

hugs, not bullets. That's the official name of their policy toward the cartels. Like what? Who has a policy like that? And so I argue that they should be made to have a policy of bullets, not hugs from now on. There has to be pressure on them. Now, I do want to just point out that

that it is in the Mexican interest to have a policy like that because they would otherwise be stuck with mass numbers of migrants in their country. They want those migrants to move out of their country and into ours.

They it's in their interest to do that. They don't want to get stuck with millions of people, foreign nationals, because who does what country in their right mind anywhere in the world wants that except the United States under Joe Biden. They were perfectly fine with it and some European countries. So it's the policies of the United States that enabled the Mexicans to push them all through millions of people. Trump's going to end that.

And when Trump does in that, the Mexicans are going to have to get on board with this and do something about those cartels, put their military out there, keep their military interdicting the migrants as they try to cross our border. And if they don't, they may be hit with big tariffs.

Big tariffs, and frankly, the U.S. needs to consider direct action against the cartels. Thank you so much, Todd Benzman. We really appreciate having you on the program. Folks, you can follow him on X at BenzmanTodd and read his work at ToddBenzman.com. Breaking Battlegrounds is coming back on the air next week, but download the podcast, get that extra segment. You get Kylie's Corner, get lots more good stuff. Talk to you soon.

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Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds, and we're diving right into the murder and mayhem and all the fun that Kylie's Corner brings us. Kylie. By the way, talking about murder and mayhem, we need to start covering a little bit on the New York subway murder and mayhem. I just saw a stat, which I'm going to read to both real quick. A tax like how many street days? Well, here's the thing. Richie Torres, Democrat congressman, said before 2020, there were 43 killings over the course of 20 years in New York subways.

Since March 2020, there have been 43 in a span of four years. I mean, the press will keep talking about that crime's under control. It is lawless out there. It's insane. I sort of appreciate Richie Torres' turn on this, but this guy was one of

the let them all free BLM leaders of the bloody movement. Well, I don't disagree, but at least he's being honest. At least he's coming around and realizing reality. I mean, we all find our road to Damascus, right? And that's a Christian reference. Sorry, Sam, but that's what it is, right? So, you know, anyway, what do you got today, Kylie? This one didn't happen in the subway system, but it happened close to home for us because we're in Arizona. The targeting hit an ASU game? Oh, no. That was a crime. That too. Oh my goodness, that was a game. But...

No, this happened on December 23rd. Both my stories actually happened on Christmas Eve, which was quite the day for me as well. But anyways, a man named Paul Clifford, he was home with his family in Benson, Arizona when they got a knock on their door about 1130 p.m. I personally would not have answered the door. However, he did. And it was another man. He was outside and he was saying he was having car problems down the road and asked if they had jumper cables and they could come down there and help him.

So Paul, being the good Samaritan that he is, took his daughter's truck down there and his family stayed back. He went down to help the family. After he did not return after a few hours, they couldn't get a hold of him. Just loan them your cables, Paul. I really hate this story. Just loan them your cables. Yeah, no kidding. So at 1 a.m. on Christmas Eve, they got a report of a vehicle fire in the desert to which they then found Paul Clifford's body burning next to his truck. And it was a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

And it turns out that it was there was three suspects. They barricaded themselves in a mobile home down in Benson and they ended up calling 911 to negotiate a peace surrendering to let themselves out. And it ended up being Jack Uprichard, who is 40 years old, and then Elmer Smith, who is 19, and Wendy Scott, who is 16.

So there's a 19 and a 16 year old. They're all being held. The 16 year old being held on half a million dollars. And then Jack Upchurch and Elmer Smith, they're both being charged on over a million dollars for murder for murder. Yeah.

First of all, no 18-year-old named Elmer should ever be trusted. Can we just be on record on that? I think that's fair. They haven't come out with a motive yet. They haven't come out with how they're connected to each other. Why? He didn't know them at all? He went down? He didn't know them, no. Just not a chance. I'll just say, I'll call 911 for you or something, or I'll call AAA. I'll tell you what, jumper cables are pretty cheap these days. Just if you got some, hand them to them and call it good. I did get some for Christmas. Hopefully I don't have to use those anytime soon. But

He did post on Facebook 19 days prior and just said that he's at rock bottom. Jack Upchurch, the guy who was 40. He said he's at rock bottom. And if anyone plays one more game with him, they better be able to fight because he has nothing else to lose. But for sure there was no connection between these three murderers and this guy. No connection that they're aware of. The family said when he showed up, they all didn't know who this person was. And he just seemed like he needed help. He said his family was back at the car. What the hell?

Yeah, and so originally the police came out and said it was a potential serial killer that was out because they didn't know who it was. But now that they had him, they said this was an isolated incident and not – There'd be a definition of a serial code. There'd have to be – Multiple. Are there killings going around there that we're unaware of? Well, I don't think so because they did interview people from the mobile home and said that it's usually very quiet around there. One guy does say he doesn't take any chances and he's always carrying –

I would. Yeah. I would. By the way, I looked it up. Two Nights Before Christmas is also called Christmas Eve.

Oh. Christmas Eve Eve? No, it's just Christmas Eve. The 23rd and 24th are both called Christmas Eve. Really? Oh. Well, I didn't know there was eight days of Christmas until I read something about that yesterday. Well, we learned that from our Christmas podcast. Yes, we did. The 12 days of Christmas is after Christmas. And because we're not an Orthodox Christian practicing country anymore, this is why we've missed out on this. And actually, but officially in some countries, it's an eight-day thing. That's what I learned yesterday. Okay.

Well, we want you to know, Kylie and I are watching this summer a Santa Has a Podcast podcast. Yeah, you better stay tuned for that. All right, what's the next story you got? Next story, a family of seven also gathering on Christmas Eve, December 23rd. They were just gathering together, having a Christmas dinner that they do every single year. Seven of them. Seven of them. Zelly, she's the usual that cooks the Brazilian Christmas cake for this event. She's a 61-year-old woman. They started eating this cake together.

six out of the seven because one man, he does not like to eat cake. They all started to feel extremely sick. So they called 911. They were all rushed to the hospital. Three of them died because there was a

traces of deadly arsenic within their bodies. Do they think the guy who didn't eat the cake did put him in? No, because Zellie, she's the one who cooked the cake. She also ate the cake. She didn't know. She still... So three people died. She's still in intensive care. They said it's because of how much guilt and how horrific, horrified she is about this incident. She didn't know what had happened. But in Brazil, I guess there was a very...

What on earth?

What a horrible story. I, too, got food poisoning on Christmas Eve, and I thought I was dying. Yeah, I remember talking to you. It was the worst. I'm about to sue this place. You were no bueno. No bueno. I actually— Well, first of all, she went to a popular fast food chain, so, you know, there's some sympathy missing here. I'm still waiting for them to respond. Otherwise, I'm getting a lawyer. I actually have to credit food poisoning for helping improve my diet.

Oh, Kylie does look skinnier. Thank you. I will say it does change your appetite so much. Oh, my God. Yeah. Things just don't taste the same, I feel like. One of the things I used to love, like especially at breakfast, was chicken fried steak. And no longer? And then one morning I had a chicken fried steak at a restaurant. And by that evening, I spent the next three days in, I know what you went through. Chicken fried steak is good for the digestive system.

Yeah, clearly. I will say it gets you really close to your partner. Yeah. You're ill together, gets you real close. Oh, boy, yeah. No, that's maybe closer than you need to be, though. Yes, yes, too close. You know you're married. We're never getting a divorce. You know you're married because you have shared something that you would not share with a normal person, right? Yes, yes. You both shared the porcelain throne together. We did. Yeah.

By the way, you know one way they really can handle E-Verify without making this a violent type situation, which there's going to be some. Let's be honest about it. Is you just pass – Congress needs to pass a national E-Verify bill. I mean it's really going to probably make two million plus people just self-report and go. Right. And then they need to get an immigration system because, folks, this is the reality, not because certain people don't want to work is –

We don't have enough people to work and you need people who are construction. You need people who are working the farmlands. You need all those people. We have a very specific demographic issue with an aging out population in a low birth rate that to sustain our economy requires people in construction, agriculture, retail, all these other things that we are counting on.

So as you do this, I mean, I think you do need to create a path if you're here and we can now vet you and you have a job and you're not requiring public assistance.

Those are the last people we should be removing because there's a lot of people in front of them. I mean, look, I think first – I loved what Todd said. Mass deportation is just more than what we've been doing, right? Right, right. And I think the first thing is all these people on this ICE list. Yes. I mean there's a half a million people. Get them out.

Yeah, absolutely. And then on top of those folks and folks, Chuck is going to step out for just a minute because he's got a phone call to make. So Kylie and I will carry on for a moment here because I want to get back to some crime stuff related to the big news of the last couple of days and talk about that a little bit. But.

There are so many people here. If you're like the guy, one of the New York attackers, right? Very recently, the subway attacker who lit the person on fire is a migrant who had no job living on the government dime in a hotel. Three meals a day provided for him, cash on hand, which he was using to buy booze and not like.

a street drug but one of those ones you can get at the drugstore that really are pretty awful or the you know corner store that are pretty awful he had no job he had I mean that's the guy we can get rid of right away oh absolutely I just can't care I want to talk about because I'm you know we know you're on top of all the crime beat always

There are so many oddities with the attack in New Orleans and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas. I am sitting here and I mean, none of this really entirely makes sense. I think Todd Bensman had a good point that this New Orleans attacker, we may find out, was simply a radicalized lone wolf. That's what at least the story is. But

I have never in a major crime investigation like this seen reporters let in and given free reign to their house within 24 hours after the event.

As they have been. They had reporters the day after. Yeah, that is suspicious. Walking through this guy's house with cameras. And there's stuff that would relate to the crime. That they're catching on video. That they're seeing that's just left out there. Now this crime scene is contaminated. It's not a real crime scene anymore. There's stuff on the table that would be used in the making of explosive devices. There's the Koran turned to a very specific passage. Like that.

I'm just smelling some sort of rat with that thing. It sounds weird. And I just don't understand the connection with the Vegas, how they're both from the same military base. That's the weird part. From Bragg and served in Afghanistan at the same time. And the incidents happened on the same day. Yes. And then the one in Las Vegas, the questions I have are even more extensive because I

From what we know, this guy was a Green Beret. He was highly trained. And they're saying he committed suicide using a .50 caliber Desert Eagle prior to the explosion. But this was a vehicle pulled up directly in front of Trump Towers Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. If someone blows their head off with a .50 cal in that vehicle, people around it would be reacting to it before the explosion. Right. Period. Two –

On that front, this is a guy who was, again, Green Beret, highly trained in making explosives. And his fellow Green Berets are all attesting, look, this guy could have driven to any Home Depot in the country and put together an explosive device that would have leveled at least the first floor and blown, I mean, completely devastated the first floor, potentially second floor of Trump Tower, just with off-the-shelf stuff. Instead, this was the most...

uh amateur type thing that you could ever get a bunch of big fireworks and cans of gas that is not actually an explosive device in in the sense that this guy could have made one um he was also still on active duty there was no history that we know of and then uh some data came up that his um

I think it was his Slack channel or one of those services. His photo and his security pass code for it were changed after his death. Oh, that's weird. I didn't hear that. The whole thing's weird. The whole thing's weird. The whole thing's really weird. I've just got all sorts of questions about that. Me too. And I don't think we're getting any answers.

Well, we still don't have any answers. You know, I mean, how many years later has it been and we still don't have answers about the Las Vegas shooting? No, no, and never to begin unless somebody – I mean, I do think –

That is something Trump needs to do to get trust with people back into government again is releasing all these files on these various atrocities. Yes. I think the public needs to see them, that there's not some government – if there's no government conspiracy, then just release them. Right. When they don't – because the level of distress is so high.

They need to release these things. And I hope that Trump does that on a bunch of things. I think it's just really important, the transparency now. You know, we didn't get into this with Todd Benzman. And I wanted to kind of talk about this because with Mexico, forget just tariffs. I think the message to them has to be you're going to start governing northern Mexico and reign in and control the cartels or we're doing it. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's again, I highly recommend people watch Lioness on Paramount Plus. They sort of touch that this year. Not that Hollywood's this, but, you know, it's interesting because there's some background there and so forth. One thing I want to close off, it's just to show how stupid Biden is again. So remember when Trump, you know, let out, you know, from the Strategic Reserve office.

And he wanted to refill it at $24 a barrel. And Democrats said, you're just bailing out big oil. Right. Now Biden and Democrats want to do it at $80 a barrel. Yes. He's talking billions of dollars. Yeah. I mean, it's the hypocrisy of this group of people. And what the legacy media refuses to cover is just mind boggling.

Well, and it's not just hypocrisy though, Chuck. I really believe it's in a very important way more nefarious than that because even with the oil companies, they are throwing so much – Democrats have been throwing so much money at them in green initiatives. By the way, the big oil companies are the number one recipients of all this money. Yeah, of course. They are buying the politics.

of these organizations in ways that are really nefarious. So you look at what New York is doing with the congestion pricing. You look at what they are doing with the so-called charge for climate change that is going to be a cost reflected on the gas price for every single American because New York's demanding billions of dollars a year from these companies.

The oil companies have been neutered by cash from our government from fighting back against all this stuff the way they should be. And it's a problem. Well, what Biden's doing should also being considered an illegal campaign contribution. He let go. He let release 180 million barrels because he was trying to keep pricing down because of elections. There wasn't because there was a shortage. No, he was trying to keep them down to keep prices low. Right. I mean, this is purely partisan. And as a result now.

You're going to pay $55 more a barrel. Yes. Simple as that. Billions and billions of taxpayer dollars. Yeah. And the press will not say a peep about it. And Janet Yellen, by the way, folks, is absolutely trying to leave Trump with a recession. And by the way, when Trump proposed that Republicans – the whole bill had been $3 billion. Right. Just $3 billion, right? Right. So triple it now. Triple it, yeah. Well –

Fun show today. Very fun. Interesting. Yeah, I learned a lot. On behalf of Jeremy, Kylie, Sam, and myself, thank you for joining us. Of course, you can follow us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you get your podcasts. You can even watch us on YouTube and Rumble, which appears several thousand of you are every week now. I don't know why, but you are. But thank you and keep doing it.

You know what? Rumble is fantastic because, guys, we got to lean into our Rumble audience. They are rabid. They are into this program. And frankly, Rumble needs the content. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you next week.