The Fight for Freedom: Then and Now
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. Sam Stone is on a well-deserved vacation in the Rocky Mountains. And she's joining me in studio today. Our first guest, friend of the show, great reporter, Alex Hoyer. She is the legal affairs reporter for The Washington Times. And she also has a new book. That's why we have her on today. Lawless Lawfare, Tipping the Scales of Justice to Get Trump and Destroy MAGA. Alex, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. All right. So we're going to hear talk about your book, but since we open email and things happen. So the first thing this morning is the Supreme Court has now limited nationwide orders blocking Trump's birthright citizenship. And this is apparently also put Justice Jackson, one of the progressives on the court, in a total tailspin. And Judge Amy has just just

pounced her back in writing. Tell us about what this ruling means, actually. Yeah, so basically, this is the last day of the term, and we expected some major rulings. It's been a busy, busy month with my book and the Supreme Court closing out its year. They take off for like a three-month recess, so they tried to fit quite a bit in it right at the end. So this was probably, you know, the biggest case of the term, and it dealt with a challenge that

to President Trump's order ending birthright citizenship. But the question actually before the justices wasn't necessarily about, you know, is the ending of birthright citizenship legal? It was about the lower court judges blocking President Trump's policy nationwide. And it was centered on this case, but it basically speaks across what we've been seeing in terms of some of these Biden appointees, Obama appointees,

in large part blocking a lot of the president's agenda, whether it's immigration or education policy, that sort of thing. So in the opinion that basically Justice Barrett, as you noted, wrote the majority opinion, and it was the conservative appointees, the Republican appointees,

six to three of the three democratic appointees dissented uh... but basically she said that you know universal injunctions are relatively new thing that there's really no history history in them right now looking back at like english court and that made that and you know a point that historically uh... you've always kind of seen uh... like judges limit their decisions to the parties before them rather than you know people who aren't even involved in the lawsuit

And so they basically sent the case back to the lower court to limit or fix how broad the injunction is. So it's not like they gave a clear cut, like here's a test for lower courts to use and whether you can issue these injunctions or not, but basically slapped back on some of these, you know, what we've been seeing. Well, I think the funniest thing that I've seen so far about this is Justice Barrett's just basically...

counter to Justin Jackson's argument where she wrote, we observe only this, Justin Jackson,

and imperial executives while embracing an imperial judiciary. It's such a great line. Okay, so besides that, I want to get your book, but we also had that the Supreme Court ruled parents on religious freedom for LBGTQ school book opt-out case, and they just upheld that states can require a check for porn sites. So I don't want to get specific on those cases, but since you cover the court, what do you take of the court's decision

Yeah, I'll just real quickly. Those two cases was to basically protect minors, right? One was with the parents saying, hey, we deserve to offer children out of this required LGBTQ story time. I suggest like people actually go look at that opinion because Justice Alito went through some of the books and they're very it's just.

It's wild that some of them were for, you know, pre-K age. One I reported about was called Pride Puppy, and three- and four-year-olds would have to go pick out vocabulary terms like drag queen, underwear, leather, just kind of odd. So, yeah, that was a 6-3 decision, too. I'm kind of surprised at that one, that there wasn't, you know, more of a majority saying parents deserve an opt-out option. And then the other one was Texas has a law banning basically prostitutes

porn websites from letting everyone access it without verifying their age. So the court said, you know, having an age verification measure doesn't run afoul of like the First Amendment. You know, a state has authority to try to protect children from viewing this material. That's great. All right. Well, let's get into the primary purpose of you being here today. You wrote this book, Lawless Lawfare, Tipping the Scales of Justice to Get Trump and Destroy MAGA.

How bad was it that they are using the judicial system to persecute and prosecute Trump? Yeah, I was just so troubled by what I was seeing as both a lawyer and reporter during the 2024 election. The politics had totally spilled into courtrooms. You know, in America, we defeat our political opposition at the ballot box, not try to imprison them or lock them up.

It was just very disappointing to see the route and some of the precedent that was set during the 2024 election. So I thought it deserved really to be reported about in detail. And I did that throughout the book. There's several chapters. Each takes a look at some of the cases that President Trump faced.

as well as some of his inner circle. And even like supporters just across the country. I highlight a couple out in Texas that had basically a counter protest to the Biden bus in 2020. Big, big law and Democrats came after them civilly said that they violated the Ku Klux Klan act and the right to vote. It cost them like hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had to go to trial. They won, but they,

You know, this is one of those things where it's like, no, no, you have a right to counter protest. You have a First Amendment right. And everyone I talked to pretty much, you know, Steve Bannon, John Eastman, Laura Trump, Don Jr., some interesting, you know, inside experts.

insiders take on what they saw transpire and what happened to them. They said that this was meant to bankrupt, you know, silence political opposition. Both Laura Trump and Don Jr. said they came to the realization that, you know, if Trump didn't win, they thought Democrats were going to put him behind bars. And Laura Trump said how, you know, damaging the welfare was to the family. She said it was pretty raw. She

Sure. But she didn't even want to get into it. But to the fact that, like, even getting a mortgage, for example, was difficult for the family. And that's the Trump family, right? Like, it's just you don't think that's what would happen from something like that. Alex, let me ask you something. We have a tradition in our politics that the left breaks some norm and then the right doesn't.

Also, AFL learns from the left and does the same thing, which is – and then the left cries that democracy is dead. But the issue is that usually those norms are pretty good things. And we have, again, left breaks it, right learns from it.

Is this the new normal now? Are we going to just prosecute political opponents? I think it's a good question. And one of the things I asked people I spoke to for the book, like, what do we do? I have one of the chapters is about destabilizing justice and the idea that this could become basically there's another chapter on political tit for tat, like back and forth. Some of the suggestion to try to avoid that was Governor Rod Blagojevich said, you know, in his he talked about his own

experience. And then he was like, you know, my thought would be maybe president Trump puts together a presidential commission, taking a look at how to end this type of lawfare. It can be bipartisan. You know, there's Steve Bannon suggested have holding public hearings to make sure that those that participated in, you know, manipulating the law, trying to expose that are held to account.

you know, I think that there has to be more light shed on it for sure. So we don't repeat this going forward. One of the other big issues I think is totally worth mentioning is the media's coverage of it. Yes. One of the things I saw and I looked at for, it was Alvin Bragg in New York with the Hush Money trial, Letitia James, the attorney general out of New York with the civil fraud issue. And then the Georgia case with Fannie Willis and, you know,

the racketeering charge with Trump and like 17 other defendants. What I noticed out of media research center, they really documented some of the coverage. And in April of 2024, they have a report about ABC and CBS on the Georgia case. They ran 99 stories, but none of them mentioned that Willis, the district attorney prosecuting this was a Democrat. And what's crazy about that is she was actually running for reelection at the time. So it's,

Of course, important to note, you know, the district attorney pursuing the case is running for re-election as a Democrat prosecuting the leading Republican presidential candidate. And, you know, that was absent from the reporting, which is just journalistic malpractice.

We're with Alex Sawyer. She has written a book, Lawless Lawfare, Tipping the Scales of Justice to Get Trump and Destroy MAGA. We'll be posting more about this on our social media, and the first 10 people to DM us or comment on the post will get a free book that we will send to you of her writing. So, Alex, thank you for writing this. What else surprised you as you were researching the book? Yeah, I want to highlight something that I just felt...

I don't know why, but there was so much in here that I thought was troubling. But this one stuck out to me. So, you know, President Trump was under gag orders from multiple courts. The criminal cases had gag orders on him. And that troubled me for a defendant if possible.

anyone in america should be able to speak freely at somebody that you know looking to defend themselves from potentially going to present right and and so that with that aspect was troubling and in fact i looked back at the calendar and he did about ninety campaign rallies while under these gag words from criminal court goodness and i just think that that so you know if you care about the first amendment you care about political speech

It's so troubling that that precedent was even set in our country. Well, the whole thing is just frightening. I know half a dozen people who voted for Trump who would never vote for Trump, but they just saw through this and they just said, I am just fearful that this is going to be a tactic in the future and I'm just going to say no to it now.

And that was really their mindset. They're so right. And some of, I talked to a pollster, Robert Cahaly, and he said, you know, the idea of lawfare or like the term wasn't necessarily like something that regular voters would talk about, but they saw the weaponization basically of the judicial system. They just saw, they saw what they saw and they didn't like it. It was just,

It felt un-American. And, you know, he said even like the conviction where the actual conviction came down with the Manhattan Hush Money trial, he said that people just were like, they thought it was all about paying hush money, you know, not in the weeds of all the issues I'm sure you covered at the time, but that people were like, well, celebrities do that, so what's the big deal? You know, and it's just pretty wild that what we saw transpire. And I just...

It deserves to be further reported and reported accurately. I detail in the books and the instances I had, you know, with other reporters in courtrooms and just kind of I thought, was there a misunderstanding of what the court, the Supreme Court actually ruled? Like, for example, with one of the cases involving the obstruction charge that the feds were trying to hand down against January 6th defendants.

I don't know. Do they not understand the law or does the mainstream media just kind of warp it, especially ahead of that November election? It just was it was extremely troubling. So I don't think they care. I mean, that's the point. And I'm really that's what I'm really concerned about, too. It's like the story this week on the.

Iran attacked and, you know, they jumped to conclusion. I mean, I wouldn't jump to conclusion. I ran the damage for two months. So you actually have people on the ground, but they want to prove this wrong. So, well, Alex, thank you. Tell our audience where they can find your book. Find it on Amazon online, Barnes and Noble online and Target online. And I really appreciate the support. I think it's an important topic.

Oh, 100%. So we get to the question previously, so we avoid the loss there from happening in the future. Well, Alex, we thank you for joining us. Stay on for a minute after the break. I want to talk to you for one second. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We are honored to have with us Don Critchlow. He is the Katzen Family Professor, teaches courses of American political history, political conspiracy, and contemporary American history at Arizona State University University.

Don is just an amazing, amazing man, an amazing teacher, and we're so happy to have him in the studio on this July 4th show to talk about the founding of our country. Don, welcome. Well, good morning and happy 4th of July. Thank you. So what do you think people miss about July 4th? I mean, what is something that you think we don't pay enough attention to when we honor this day?

Well, I think a lot of Americans forget what a momentous time this was in our history and world history when our founders declared independence from England. And by doing so and signing the Declaration of Independence,

they actually were committing high treason. Yeah. So they put their lives and property, families on the line because they had a vision for a new world. Did – you know, something I've never talked about before or checked into, because these men did put their lives on the line. I mean, back in those days, treason was – you know, you get executed. Today, we give you 10 years in prison, it seems like, right? So it's a little less dark now. But –

How did their families react to this? I mean, some of them had spouses, some of them had kids. How did their families – I mean, what pressure did the families get? Do you know? Well, it's important to understand that before the declaration was signed by members of the Second Continental Congress, there was a fierce debate whether we should declare independence or

Even until June, the Second Continental Congress had not decided whether there should be a declaration of independence. So it was a fierce political fight. Many of the colonies were hesitant in declaring independence.

independence, even though there was a war going on. They still hoped that the British crown, George III, would offer some compromise. But instead, George III rather arrogantly wanted to militarily suppress the colonies. And for those who stood up

because they envisioned a new world coming. That's important. They understood that they were going to commit themselves for something new in the world, not only independence for America, but for human rights. The notion that all men...

were endowed by their creator with life, liberty, and property, natural rights, was an extraordinary proclamation. And that they were willing to stand up and put their lives on the line is remarkable. What gave these men that fortitude, that spine of steel? I don't think we have that in this country today. I mean, what gave them this? Was it religious convictions or

Was it experience? What was it that said, I'm going to do this for the better of the world long term? Well, Chuck, I want to disagree with you. I think many, many Americans have a sense of just how exceptional our country is.

Well, no, I'm not saying they don't think it's exceptional. I'm saying, but there's a fortitude saying, I'm doing this and I'm willing to lose my life on this for people I don't know in the future. And now we have a lot of soldiers over, but I'm just saying these are political people. They went in. What gave them that fortitude, that gumption? Well, I think it was a confluence of forces in history. And I think it begins in part because of Christianity under, under,

Biblical teachings said that all men are created equal under the eyes of the Lord, of God. So I think it has deep, deep roots even going back to medieval history. And then England itself was exceptional. It had notions of parliamentary government. It had integral to history.

English culture was that men have rights, men and women have rights. And then there were thinkers such as John Locke and Blackstone, who talked about natural rights. And so it came together in 1776 that

In this period in which there was a confluence of forces, there was a small group, a backward nation of people, not very rich, stood up and said, we want our independence. We have rights as humans. We have rights as Englishmen. And I think it's worth noting, if I may, that

that the idea of revolution was different than we think of revolution today. Revolution was taken as a term from astronomy, that the planets revolve, ending up in their natural place. It wasn't a social revolution. They thought, the founders, those who signed the documents, wanted a restoration revolution.

of their rights as Englishmen and their rights as men and women. That's a wonderful point. We've got about two minutes left in this segment. What was the difference? How was the American Revolution different from the French Revolution? Well, I think that this may be a great misunderstanding. We think of revolution now mostly as social revolutions, one class replacing another class.

Revolution, as I just mentioned, didn't mean for those who signed the Declaration of Independence. They were seeking the restoration of their rights. So they wanted a political revolution, not a social revolution. It was the French Revolution, which began as a political revolution, that became a social revolution. And that's mostly what we've seen subsequently as social revolutions today.

The one example of a political revolution that didn't in our time was the Polish revolt against the Soviet Union. That was a political revolution. But mostly we have social revolutions these days. What's one of your favorite July 4th stories?

Well, I only have two minutes. And then we've got the next segment, so you can always carry on. But tell me one of them. Well, I think one of the amusing stories is Yankee Dougal Dandy, which was a song that the Continental soldiers sang going into battle.

And it originated as a song by the English making fun of the pretenses of the colonialists. Oh, wow. And so Yankee Dougal Dandy went to town. Yeah. And macaroni. So when you hear the song, you wonder, what's the macaroni? What?

Well, macaroni was an English fob in which they had gone over young men and would have taken the continental tour, went over to Italy, and then came back wearing quite foppish, and they were called macaronis.

So it's making fun of the Americans thinking just putting a feather in your cap is going to make you a gentleman. But the American soldiers loved it. They said, yeah, that's what we're all about.

So anyway, I think that's a great story. It's a great story. We're with Don Critchlow. He is the professor, Katzen, Family Professor of History at Arizona State University. We'll be right back to visit Don and talk more about July 4th and things he thinks we should be aware of. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're going to continue our conversation with Don Critchlow. He is the Katzen Family Professor of History at Arizona State University. You can actually follow the Center for American Institution at CAI at ASU. Again, CAI at ASU. Don, thanks a million. Why did Jefferson focus on the pursuit of happiness? Yeah, so in the Declaration of Independence, which he was...

assigned to write by a five-member committee. And the committee wanted John Adams to write the declaration. But John Adams said, let's let Thomas Jefferson write the first draft.

Later, Jefferson and Adams, as we know, became arch-political enemies, but that's another story for another time. And died on the same day, July 4th, 50 years later. And they became friends and started corresponding with one another. Which is a good lesson for all of us, right? That's the point I was trying to make. But so Jefferson was assigned this, and when he –

He wrote, drawing from the historical experience in John Locke, he said that we're all the Cragers and Dowgats with the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Locke actually said life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. So the question is, why did Jefferson use pursuit of happiness instead

Rather than property. And the reason for this, as he later explained in a letter, is that pursuit of happiness meant something larger. He wanted to say that happiness was pursuing a virtuous life beyond materialism. And property connoted just material wealth. And so he changed that. Interesting.

And it was also somewhat related to a large debate going on about slavery. Many in the Continental Congress wanted to talk about ending slavery. Jefferson thought it was going to die a natural death. So by using pursuit of happiness, he was talking about something larger and tried to

avoid or not emphasize the issue of property because black slaves were considered property. So already in the very beginning of our

formation as a nation in our Declaration of Independence. We were grappling with the issue of slavery and I think that's important to note. It was a very difficult situation because slavery was becoming increasingly entrenched in the deeper south, South Carolina, while Jefferson and most of those from Virginia thought

that slavery was going to die a natural death. So anyway, I think that's important to understand that we were grappling with slavery, but Jefferson saw in the pursuit of happiness something higher than just material wealth. He believed, and I think this is important to emphasize and important for our audience to remember,

That in the pursuit of happiness, he thought that meant pursuing a virtuous life. And that's what we've lost when we celebrate the Declaration of Independence. That our founders understood virtue as essential to maintaining liberty. That's fascinating. I didn't recognize that. I didn't know that. That's wonderful.

Of the signers of Declaration of Independence, who's an unsung hero we don't talk about? We always have the big three, right? The Adams, the Franklins, the Jeffersons and so forth. But who do we – with two minutes, who is somebody that's just an unsung hero in this process? Well, I think those who – those delegates who signed were all heroic. And I think that it was only at the last moments –

that some of the delegates from New York were instructed by their stakes to – that they were going to sign the Declaration of Independence. So it was – Declaration of Independence should be seen as a political document but also as historic and had monumental consequences.

They envisioned a new world coming. To think of that extraordinary vision held by the leaders as well as those who fought for

is something extraordinary and perhaps something we can't relate to today in our very affluent, consumeristic, hyper-individualistic world we live in. But if we're going to sustain ourselves as a nation and maintain our liberty, we need to celebrate the Declaration of Independence and understand that these men were heroic individuals

and they envisioned a new future and an America based on virtue of citizens having a sense of a well-ordered liberty. Men that changed the world. Don Critchlow, thank you so much for joining us. You've added so much to the show today and I appreciate your time. Thank you for the invitation. Anytime. And let's all celebrate 4th of July. Absolutely. Folks, this is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battle Gowns. We'll get right to it. We have my dear friend, former Congressman Jason Chaffetz. You have seen him many times. He's a Fox News contributor and used to be chair of the House Oversight Committee. He's the author of several books, and his new book that's coming out is called They're Coming for You. Again, that's They're Coming for You, How Deep State Spies, NGOs, and Woke Corporations Plan to Push You Out of the Economy. Jason, welcome to the show.

Chuck, thanks for having me on. So when you wrote this new book, they're coming for you. Were you angry? My mom says I'm an angry typer. I'm very loud when I type. Were you just getting riled up typing away on this?

Yeah, you just infuriated because you look at what's going on and the amount of data that your government is collecting on you and then selling. That was what was shocking to me. I knew the government was collecting a lot of data, but I didn't realize that they were selling that data. And then the other thing is how much money the government spends buying the data.

Because what they could never do legally and lawfully, you'd have to have probable cause, you'd have to have a warrant, you'd have to have articulable suspicion. They can bypass all of that with all these different departments and agencies by going to data brokers, which is a nearly $400 billion a year industry now.

and buy the data back to know who you are and profile you, and then literally push you out of the economy. So if you're in the meat industry or a poultry business, they want to get rid of you. If you buy a gun, if you shop at Cabela's, if you buy a MAGA hat, that's all in your database. And they're pushing people out of the economy so that only the chosen ones, the ones they like,

which happen to be very woke, progressive kind of ideologies, then they're going to push you out of the economy. And it's happening all around us. And people will be scared and just freaked out on how much data government is collecting from you.

We're with Jason Chavis. You were a former chair of the House Oversight Committee. Did you realize this was a problem then or has it been years later that you sort of discovered how bad this problem is? Oh, no. We started tackling this. What I what I what I didn't realize is how pervasive it was. So, for instance, facial recognition.

We were on that with the FBI, that they were getting out there collecting all this facial recognition. What I didn't realize is that there's companies like Clearview AI, and I'm not saying they did anything illegal, but they have tens of billions of, or I should say hundreds of billions of photos now.

So, Chuck, for instance, if your daughter turned 16 in Florida and had her driver's license picture taken, name, address, telephone, height, weight, eye color, did she wear glasses? The state of Florida was taking that information and selling it. I had no idea that that was happening. And then they can match her photo with all the other CCTV cameras, cameras.

They scrape the internet, so she's on Instagram, Snapchat, Venmo. They're taking all that, and they're building a profile, and then they'll sell that data so that they can tell very quickly, they believe, on which political party. They're gauging her gait, how she walks.

so that they believe they can tell whether that person is gay or straight, whether a person's a conservative or not a conservative. All of this information is built into these databases and then used in a very nefarious way. So there are certain things that she's able to see and not see, do and not do. Her insurance rates are going to be based on that. It's your car is capturing all this information.

Some of the cars will capture how often you look in the rearview mirror to tell what kind of how how good you are in terms of a driver, what speed you're going, what radio station you're listening to. All of this is captured and the government is able to pluck it up, decipher it and use it. So what what should be done about this? What can Congress do? Well, the first thing you got to do is you got to illuminate the problem. That's why I wrote the book.

And then I think once people start to understand how shocking it is, it's not just, hey, yeah, you know, I was talking about buying a couch and suddenly I'm getting all these couch ads. Oh, yes, all the time. That happens to everybody. I mean, I had a conversation with Kylie and a picture pops up on my photos of Kylie and I'm just like, this is weird to me. So, you know, I'm sure your photo will pop up with something of us today on my phone. It's weird. Yeah. And so it's much, much deeper than that. So Congress needs to illuminate it. And then

And like a lot, we spent some time talking about how they manipulate kids. So like for instance, Google will give out Chromebooks to kids in California.

It seems like a nice gesture, and as a parent, it saves you a thousand bucks on a computer. They capture all that data. What do you think they're doing with that data? And they sold it. That's how they're paying for the laptops. Right. They're making money off that thing. They're building a profile on you, and then they're going to sell that information. Well, I'll tell you how bad it is. I was talking to a gentleman the other day whose sibling is visiting a therapist, and the therapist now makes you put your phone in a black bag so it can't capture what's being talked about, even if the phone's

not on or anything. I mean, it's just, this is scary. When I was in Congress, we did investigations on what were called stingrays. Stingray is a brand name for cell phone simulated towers. They're pervasive now. You can do a geo net around a particular place or location. Think about this. Drug cartels have this, all kinds of, of, of people have this. You can go out to a data broker and say, Hey,

Here's this particular address. I want to know every phone that came within 100 feet of that address. You can buy that right now here today. And I just think people have a fundamental right to privacy. I don't think your government should be using that against you. We don't collect your DNA or your fingerprints when you're born, right? Because you're supposed to have this privacy, but that is totally gone now. And law enforcement will use that. And again, it's great when we capture a criminal, right?

Everybody says, hey, how'd we go find that missing kid? That's great. I have a, Jason, I have a question. That's just being a little weird. Right. I have a question listening to this conversation. Can we make it illegal for insurance companies to use that information against us? So they make it illegal for them to buy that information to make my rates different than someone else's. That to me seems like.

I don't know if that's a way, but... We should, but it is happening. And particularly with the automobile companies. And people say, okay, well, we'll just give you a higher rate. But yeah, it's everything from insurance to food. In California right now, if you get a speeding ticket in San Francisco, they're looking at your profile and they're looking at your income and you pay a different rate on your ticket

than somebody else based on that profile. I mean, it's happening right now in real time. Here's what you got to understand.

Private citizens aren't private, but the public sector, the government, is very opaque. We can't see what they're doing, right? The equation is totally opposite. The government knows everything about us. We know very little about the government. That's what this bank is all about. Literally just a couple days ago, the Federal Reserve, what they do is they go out to the banks and the credit unions and they assess your customer base.

And based on what they call reputational risk, they give you different rates on what you can borrow money and how whether or not they're going to allow you to do business. Just in the last couple of days, they said, we're going to get rid of that reputational risk. That's because of Donald Trump. That's the only change. So these banks would look at all of your transactions, like I said at the beginning.

You shop at Cabela's. Oh, you must be a conservative. You must buy guns. You bought a Trump hat. Oh, that's a reputational risk. They already debunked Melania Trump and Barron Trump. They tried to debunk everybody in the in the ag sector that has cows or chickens. They're trying to get them out of the economy. And it's much more pervasive than that.

So if you're James Comer now, who's the head of the Oversight Committee, what would you be doing on this? What should be his action steps regarding this particular matter?

I think you need to continue to go department by department, agency by agency and understand what they're buying, what they're selling, what they're looking at and how are they using it. That's a long term project. It's something I started that we did when we found out that the IRS, for instance, had four of these stingrays. And at the time they were like $250,000 a piece or backscatter machines. You don't have backscatter machines. It's like what you go through in an airport where you can buy a backscatter machine that is

is in a van and it sees through your house. It can tell which room you're in. Now, when you're law enforcement, you're trying to get a kidnapper and you don't have to storm the house. That's a good technology. Or if you're a drug cartel, though, it's a whole different thing. You would think if you're in the walls of your home,

you would have some safety and some privacy. And only if you had a warrant, would they be able to violate that? But that's not the way it works. So, you know, so what you do is you have people that go to movies and see these spy movies and they see that stuff. They say, well, that's not real. But basically you're saying a lot of this stuff is real. It's really happening. It's real. I, it,

If you had the right amount of money and you went to the right data broker, I can tell you exactly who you're talking to, where you've been. Like people, for instance, maybe they're getting cancer treatment or maybe they're going to Alcoholics Anonymous or

Or maybe they're, you know, visit a gay nightclub. That's nobody's business, right? Right. But there are people that are buying and selling that data right now. And that's what's scary. And the facial recognition, and especially for young people. We spent a part of this talking about how they build movies. And they literally went to conservative organizations like the...

The Heritage Foundation, they went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their proclamation of the family, and they took key words and symbols and slogans, or if you will, or phrases. And then they purposely tried to manipulate those and make those the evil statements.

And so, you know, if you have an older person, instead of being revered in their community, they're belittled. If you're a heterosexual male in a traditional family, they're going to mock that person. But if you're a gay family and there's two dads in that household, oh, they're revered. They're funny. They're great characters. But this didn't happen by accident. It wasn't like it was, hey, we're building a scenario on modern family and we just want to have some fun. Oh, no, no, no. This is...

They're trying to do this on purpose. And there's a reason why Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, very first thing they did is sign this deal when they came out of office, pretty close to it, with Netflix to build kids things. And the effort to manipulate kids right out of the chutes, it's pervasive. Does your book have action items that the readers can take? Yeah. So at the end, I try when I write these books. So they're coming for you.

Okay, so what am I going to do about this? Like, how do I, I really think there needs to be, for instance, legislation on the right to be forgotten. You've entered into this contract as a 13 year old to give all this data to your social media company. What if I wanted to turn that off?

Why should you get my information and use it against me for the rest of my life? What consideration is there? Legally, I know of no other contract that lasts in perpetuity without consideration of the other party. We were just talking about today the e-commerce company I'm with, and they're saying, well, after you get a 10-3-month contract, do you want to renew automatically? Like, no, we've got to get their permission. I'm not going to charge their credit card again. And it should be the same thing for this information. They monetize me.

and all of my data, which grows every day. And yet, if I want to stop that contract, I can't.

Like that there's something wrong with that. And I think whether it's a lawsuit or or there needs to be legislation about this. And then I think the ability to spy on Americans, what data can be collected, not collected. It really we got it. And think about where it's going with deep fakes. Yeah. Artificial intelligence. I mean, this stuff is moving so fast.

Jason, we have one minute left. So tell us what give us why America is still great on this Fourth of July weekend. You know what? Despite all of our problems and challenges, still the greatest country on the face of the planet. We have liberties and freedoms and opportunities nowhere else in the world. And as soon as you travel overseas, you so realize so quickly how blessed we are as a nation.

And we are self-critical. That's why I can write a book. You know, they're coming for you. He criticizes all these leaders and exposes all these problems and nothing, at least in theory, is going to happen to me. Well, there's millions of people have sacrificed their lives to make sure that I have these freedoms. And we have to not just on Fourth of July, but all year. We got to recognize those. Well, I don't my favorite holidays we have. I don't think you could write this book in Britain right now.

No, there's no way. I mean, no. I mean, they would criticize you on it. I think you made a good point here as we got like 30 seconds left is –

You know, Smartless, who are the, I forget the actress, he goes, he's a Democrat. Jason Bateman, he says, every time I leave the country to come back, I love America more. And you and I both have traveled overseas. We've been fortunate. I feel the exact same way every time. Yeah. I love this country. It's my favorite. Just love it. Well, Jason, happy 4th of July. Give our best to your family. Folks, this is Breaking Backgrounds. Thank you for joining us. Have a great 4th of July weekend.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds, the podcast's extra bonus session. I'm here with my dear friend, Kylie Campbell. Kylie, hello. Hello, hello. How'd you enjoy the July 4th show this week? I liked it. It was really good. I like doing theme shows. Me too. I'm a themed person. I like themes. Folks, this is a good time for us to announce as well, on July 25th,

We are releasing a new podcast from the Breaking Battlegrounds family called Santa Has a Podcast. You can learn about it at santahasapodcast.com. We'll have over 20 episodes with Santa Claus answering questions and talking about Christmas traditions.

And it's something we wanted to create for families to listen to together, especially parents of younger children. As we've done the show now for four years, we have found this type of entertainment lacking in the podcast space. So, again, SantaHasAPodcast.com. Keeping it easy. Santa has a podcast. Santa has a podcast. It's going to be fun. So, Kylie, what do you got for us today? For Kylie's Corner, of course, right? Yes, yes, yes. There it is. Let's go.

So come and take a spin and listen in.

Well, for this section, you have actually asked me, because we were going to talk about our favorite memories and stories from the Fourth of July. And when I was thinking of my favorite stories from the Fourth of July, a lot of them actually resulted in injuries. And I don't know if they were my favorite stories or ones that just stuck with me. They're memorable. They're memorable. It was like when we'll play some songs at the end here, and as I was going through it, they're...

America the Beautiful and the National Anthem, or Star-Spangled Banner by Whitney Houston and Ray Charles. They were all during the first Gulf War. So it was a very patriotic time. So they're memorable, right? They're memorable. So yours deal with accidents, which make that particular fourth more...

And it somehow seems to be a couple fourths in a row. So, you know, one year we always spend our Fourth of Julys growing up with other families. We would travel either to Rocky Point or we always would rent a house on Mission Beach and always spend time there, which those memories were like some of my favorite. Sure.

instance, one time we were on the boardwalk. The house was always on the boardwalk and there was a group of teenagers and I was probably maybe like 10 to 12. I felt like I was old, but I definitely was not. And my dad was a principal at a high school at this time. And a group of teenagers happened to be the kids that were at his high school, but they got into a fight. And my mom was like, you need to go break it up.

And my dad's like, I'm off duty. I don't need to do anything. But it was getting pretty bad. They were bashing a kid's head into the sidewalk. And so my dad had to go and like he ripped one kid from his backpack. And your dad is a tall man. Yes, he is a 6'6". He's a big man. Big man, yes.

And so he grabs this kid by the backpack and his hand gets stuck in the backpack. And then he, so then the kid rips the backpack to get away. And my dad's hand breaks and it ended up his hand shattered. So he had like three surgeries following this incident because they had to put like a pin in it. They had to put, um, it shot, they had like reconstruct his pinky. His pinky like doesn't even bend. I don't even think it looks like funny now, but that was it.

My dad's always like, that was all because of your mother because she made me go break up this fight. And he's the one that gets hurt. Yes. And he got hurt. Yes, of course. And the kids, I'm sure, just walked away and thought it was fun and whatnot. But hand injuries are actually...

the number one injury on the 4th of July that people go to the ER for, but it's usually because of fireworks. Well, it's the infamous meme that you see every July 4th that says, this is the last weekend somebody will have 10 fingers. Exactly. So actually 42% of injuries are to the hands and fingers on the 4th of July.

And 9,700 people, over 9,700 people in 2023 went to the ER for fireworks related injuries. How many again? 9,700. And I want to point out another stat. 75% of those are males. Oh,

Oh, 100%. Women are like holding the children back. Don't do it. And for those number of people, probably two-thirds, there was a woman in the background saying, Bob, what are you doing? Get away from it. Yep, yep. But nearly half of those injuries are people under the age of 25. Oh, I totally believe it. I totally believe that. And 31% are under the age of 15.

Yeah, you know, I get very nervous on those things, how close people get and so forth. Because they're also fireworks they bought from a stand in a parking lot. I was going to say, we used to buy fireworks in Rocky Point. Yeah, there's probably no regulation at the fireworks. So people just – it would be interesting to know a study of the people who are that bold getting that close. How they do in their careers. Yeah.

Are they just total risk takers? Some are really successful. Yeah, yeah. I mean, probably risk takers, right? No, there was a firework down in Rocky Point called the Cherry Bomb. And you would light it in the middle of the sand and it would all run away and it would like blow up. Yeah, I mean, and it's funny when you think about it now. But, you know, that was probably one of the stats under 25. Absolutely, absolutely. But also on the 4th of July is the number one day for pets to go missing. Yeah.

Make sure you take care of the pets. Well, yes. I don't know about your dogs. You've got Justice for Gary in there now. I bet he goes nuts this year at fireworks. Oh, yeah. This will be our first year. Will you be here for July 4th? We're going to go to the cabin. So hopefully it's a little more peaceful up there. Yeah, I bet you're pretty loud there. And you've got that golf course near you. No, no, no. We're in the middle of nowhere. We're up in Greer. No, I'm talking about your home here in Scottsdale. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So who knows what people will be doing out there. Yeah, no, we're getting Justice for Gary out of there.

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, it's one of my favorite holidays just because I am deeply patriotic. One of my favorite stories is the fact that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July 4th, 1826, which is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That is so awesome. Yeah, it sort of seems...

Divine, doesn't it? Yeah. It sort of seems divine. And what was amazing about that. Yeah, what's amazing about that is that they had become bitter enemies for a while because of politics, which is a good lesson for all of us. But they both appeared to be mature enough to patch up their differences on politics and realize they were friends first. And that's probably, I guess if there's a July 4th lesson.

I would love us more to start realizing with family and friends who have different political views from us that we probably have, not always, like I'm probably not going to agree with many of the socialist followers of this New York mayoral candidate, but many of us have similar wants. Yes. Similar desires. More in common, I would say, than we don't. And so, you know, just learn with your friends who you can talk politics with. If you don't agree with them, you can always leave the room. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you could. Yeah, it's fascinating. You could always scroll. Yeah, you could always scroll. Scroll on.

No, actually, Chuck is so patriotic. I saw a story the other day from your daughter and his granddaughter had picked out books and four of them are all the patriotic books. Oh, yeah. She reads them too. She has a new book now. I mean, she's like 21 months and she has a book, The Constitution for Kids. But she went and picked out her own books and it was all these little patriotic books. Exactly. Exactly. Out of all the books she could choose. It was so cute.

Well, do you have anything else for us today? No, just to stay safe. Stay safe. Don't blow off your hands. If you were a male, remember, they're unpredictable because you body firework at a stand in a parking lot, right, folks? So be careful. We're going to close here with two songs for you just to listen to. These are great. One is...

Whitney Houston singing the Star Spangled Banner. And we will finish up with Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful on behalf of the absent Sam Stone, who is on a sabbatical. Is that what we call sabbatical? Or just like I don't want to be with people. A sabbatical is just I don't want to be with people. That's like you take like your months off. Yeah. Sam Stone on I don't want to be with people sabbatical. Jeremy, Kylie and myself.

Have a happy Fourth of July. Remember, we live in the greatest country in the world. If you don't like it, there's 194 other countries you can move to and you're welcome to. That's what's great about America. You can leave if you want. I love that. So anyway, folks, have a happy Fourth of July. Again, thanks for visiting us. Visit us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or sign up for a subscription on our sub stack or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great weekend.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, So gallantly we watched the

♪ We're so close, we're really strange ♪ ♪ Rocking, rockin' ♪ ♪ The first day of night ♪ ♪ That I'm flying ♪ ♪ But I'm still there ♪ ♪ Oh say does that ♪ ♪ Star-Spangled Banner ♪

Oh, the land of the free and the brave. Oh, beautiful for heroes to give liberating stride. Who more than self their country love?

What I'm saying about this is America, sweet America, and God, till all success be nobleness and

Every day is divine. You know, when I was a little boy, I remember we always sang these words. Oh, beautiful, what a spacious sky. What amber waves of grain. What purple mind. What eminent majesty.

Wait a minute. Okay.

I don't you remember? Sittin' by the hood From my seat to shiny seat You know, I wish I had y'all to help me sing this thing here. America! Because he, he got that good He told me what? Sittin' by the hood

Thank you.