AG Knudsen on Montana’s #1 Public Safety Threat, Patrick Ruffini Breaks Down Populism, and Martin Di Caro Examines the Growing Threat to the Establishment
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I say this every election cycle, and I'll say it again. The 2024 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2025. If you're running for office, the first thing on your to-do list should be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votedomain from godaddy.com, you'll stand out and make your mark. Don't wait. Get yours today. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Morin. I'm Sam Stone.

Our first guest up today is a friend of the show, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudson. Attorney General Knudson, welcome back to the program. Hey, guys. Great to be on. Thanks. Thank you. So let's first talk about the Canada-U.S. border. So over the last four years...

500 people have passed the Mexican-U.S. border that were on the terror watch list. In those same four years, 1,000 have come across the Canada-U.S. border who are on the terror watch list. Also, Canada's government identifies people who should be not allowed in the country or they have concerns about. Canada still lets 50% of those people into Canada.

What should people know about the lapse of security and the gaps in the U.S.-Canadian border? Well, they should know that the Biden administration was actively preventing the Customs and Border Patrol from doing their job. I mean, I have a number of friends in the U.S. Border Patrol. I stay in very close contact with our Border Patrol sector and the officers in charge here in Montana. We've got almost 600 miles of Canadian border area.

with Montana. So it behooves me to stay in touch with those guys. But that was the most frustrated group of law enforcement professionals I have ever seen. They literally were not being allowed to do their job by the Biden administration. So at the outset, there's that. I mean, the good news is

The handcuffs have been taken off. I mean, that really is the takeaway here. The Trump administration has stepped in. They've taken the handcuffs off Border Patrol, off ICE, off Customs. And we are now enforcing our borders as required by federal law. So it's a new day. There's a new sheriff in town. How's the fentanyl problem in Montana right now? Out of control.

It's absolutely terrible. Fentanyl is the number one public safety threat in Montana. Our seizures are up almost 20,000% just in the last four or five years. I mean, that gives you an idea of the level to which the cartels are pushing this product into Montana. It's all cartel. It's all cartel controlled. Primarily, it's the Sinaloa cartel and the

and the new generation Jalisco cartel who've targeted Montana. Um, so yeah, we're, we're being inundated with it. Our, our known overdose deaths. And I say known because these are just the ones that come through that, the, to the crime lab and, and through, through forensics and pathology, we find out for sure. But those overdose deaths are up 2000% just in the last three years. Uh,

I mean, that gives you an idea of what's happening here in Montana. So, yeah, huge problem. Is it coming across the U.S.-Canada border or U.S.-Mexico border? Mexico. Again, I stay in really close contact with Border Patrol and Customs here in Montana. They're federal. They're a different system, but they're very friendly, and they're professionals.

We see very little activity on this sector of the Canadian border. That isn't to say that there's none, but by and large, I mean, the huge majority of our drugs, of our fentanyl, of our methamphetamine, they're coming across the southern border from Mexico. I was seeing a report, I'm going to turn the time to Sam, but I saw a report on a Canadian television that they said there's 100 active criminal organizations in Canada now making fentanyl.

And three of the cartels are actively operating in Canada now. Incredible. Well, yeah. I mean, I think our neighbors... Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, no, no. Go ahead. Please finish. I just can't say, you know, I think the Canadians are dealing with the same things we are. I mean, the cartels have figured out that there's fertile ground up there. There's a market for their product. Certainly, the Chinese know this. A lot of the precursors for making fentanyl we know come from China.

And I think this is strategic on China's part. This is part of their asymmetric warfare. If they can destabilize Western nations, that just benefits them. So, yeah, absolutely. Canada's dealing with the same problems we are. And Attorney General Knudson, as we are ramping up and the Trump administration is ramping up enforcement on the Mexican border, these international criminal cartels and the Chinese are

If we do not secure the Canadian border, they're just going to turn around and start bringing their products in from the north, right? I mean, border security is 360 degrees. It has to include the ports. It has to include our border with Mexico and the border with Canada.

Absolutely. And let me clarify, guys. When I said that Montana's northern border is relatively quiet, that's relatively speaking. And we certainly know that the Canadian border, especially in the northeastern U.S., that border with Canada is extremely active. It's extremely dangerous. And there's a lot of bad actors and

and bad products coming down from Canada. Absolutely. We've got the benefit over here in Montana of being very rural. You know, the provinces in Canada to the north of us are also extremely rural. And, you know, look, it gets really, really cold. It's difficult to come across the prairie and sneak into Montana when it's, you know, 30 below and the wind's blowing. So, I mean, that's just a logistical truth. But absolutely, you're spot on.

Yeah, if you were dealing with the population of Arizona trying to smuggle anything in there in those conditions, no one would ever – there would not be a single thing trafficked across that border because we'd all be in our houses. Right.

I want to move on here because you have sued Bank of America to correct the debanking practices or demanded action from them. And I wanted to talk about that because as we've talked about on this program, Chuck, you have been debanked as part of what's been going on. We know many others on the political right who have been debanked all across this country. How big a problem is this attorney general? Well,

Well, in my opinion, this is a really big problem, and it's pernicious. You know, guys, I have a lot of friends in the firearm space, whether it's in the manufacturing industry, in the accessories industry, I mean, even broadcasting, Second Amendment. But, I mean, I'm a gun guy, so I keep a pretty close finger on that pulse.

A lot of people in that space, a lot of businesses in that space have been debanked or been denied credit, access to credit, financing, insurance. I mean, go down the list.

It's absolutely DEI. This is diversity, equity, inclusion. This is ESG, the environmental social governance. This is the extreme left knowing they can't get their agenda through the Congress and through the U.S. Senate. So they do it through business and try to put these right-wing, right-leaning industries in the poorhouse.

The good news is we've really, since we've shined a spotlight on it, these banks and these industries, they don't like the attention. No. I can't go anywhere without Wells Fargo or Bank of America or JPMorgan Chase grabbing me and assuring me we don't debank.

We're not engaging in this behavior. Please stop investigating us. Don't send us any more demand letters or civil investigative demands. We promise we're not doing this. So, I mean, we are having an effect. But, you know, this is something I think we're going to have to keep our foot on the gas pedal on. 100%.

If less of their own devices, they're going to keep doing it. Yeah, 100%. And that's an absolute lie. It's just a lie. And it's funny. In England, you can see the number of people debanked. They did 100,000 debanked last year in England. You can't get those numbers here in the USA. And as the various reports have come out and talked about it, for example, you know, they would go and you had from –

The weaponization of the federal government committee found out that they had gone in, put in for financial transactions that they have MAGA in their name or Trump. They were debaking those people. It's just – it's a lie and I'm glad you're keeping on it because they need the pressure. They need your cowboy boots on their neck. Well, and I want to add one other element to this, which is all these banks benefit from FDIC insurance, which is a federally funded insurance program created by the taxpayers. Right.

At some point, aren't they getting into what at least should be legal jeopardy when they're taking that kind of benefit, but they're not providing their service to all citizens? Absolutely. And that's an avenue that I hope the Trump administration uses, you know, for our part here in little old Montana and but also the various states. You know, we've got different various state laws, who's got jurisdiction over the banks. But for me personally,

This is absolutely a consumer protection issue in Montana. And that falls squarely within my jurisdiction and my authority. And that's where we've aimed a lot of these civil investigative demands and these investigative letters we've sent to the various big banks.

This is a huge problem. I mean, I've got personal friends who are in the firearm space who've been debanked, who've been denied credit, who've been denied an equity loan to expand their brick-and-mortar footprint when they're absolutely just crushing it in the market. I mean, from a risk standpoint, they're a great risk. I mean, that's somebody that you would lend money to

from a balance sheet standpoint, all day long. So you know the only reason they're being denied is because somebody's left-leaning and they don't like that they're making quote-unquote icky firearm stuff. So yeah, this is a big problem and it's one that I'm keeping a really close eye on. We have two minutes left with Attorney General Knutson of Montana. Let me ask you this question. Wildfire prevention. We are all in the Intermountain West. Wildfires are a real part of life for us during the summer and we're getting closer to spring than you think.

What does the Trump administration mean for your efforts to fight wildfires now in Montana? Well, it's a godsend, I hope. I mean, it's interesting to me that when we see the California fires and L.A. and Pasadena on fire, you know, suddenly that's national news. Guys, that happens to Montana every summer. Right. It grinds our western Montana tourism industry to a halt. If

If Yellowstone Park is on fire, if Glacier National Park is on fire, tourists can't come visit it. If the smoke is so thick that you can't drive your motorhome through western Montana on our highways...

People cancel their tourism trips. This is a huge problem in the West. Montana is 40% federal land, and most of that is national forest that for the last 50 years has not been maintained and is full of dry, dead downfall kindling.

one lightning strike and we've got a massive wildfire and forest fire in western Montana. So this is a huge issue for us. I'm really hopeful that with a western secretary of the interior in Doug Burgum from North Dakota, we're going to get some help with this because this is a huge problem for Montana.

Attorney General Knutson, we want to thank you so much for joining us once again. I personally lived in Montana for a year and didn't stay because of those summer wildfires just literally choking out the summer.

It's a huge issue. We always appreciate having you on the program. How do folks follow you and stay in touch with everything you're doing? Our website, the official website is DOJMT.gov. There's lots of press releases. You can keep track of what we're up to. We've also got a pretty big social media presence. You can follow us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, those are great ways to see what we're up to. Fantastic. Attorney General Knutson, thank you so much. We look forward to having you back on again soon. All right. Imagine this. You're running for president. Yes, president. What

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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.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. If you do not want your information hacked, you need a new phone, folks. Go to 4FreedomMobile.com today.

Learn how you can get a phone with actual digital security and privacy that protects your data and your family's vital information. So, again, that's 4freedommobile.com today. And when you use code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get a 10% discount. It's a fantastic opportunity to check them out. All right. We're continuing on now with Patrick Ruffini, pollster, political analyst, and co-founder of Echelon Insights.

a leading firm specializing in public opinion research and data-driven strategy. So I guess Rubio's laying off a bunch of people at USAID. How will the Trump coalition accept this? Will they like this a lot? Well,

Well, look, President Trump was elected on a mandate. And, you know, it was very clear from his campaign that Elon Musk would have a pretty substantial role in the new administration. This was discussed quite a bit during the transition period. And, you know, I think that, you know, as far as the Trump coalition goes, I think they see...

this president fulfilling, doing the things he said he was going to do on the campaign trail. So I don't think anyone should be surprised.

You know, and especially with Elon Musk's role, I don't think anybody should be surprised by the approach they've taken to USAID or to any of the other agencies that, you know, specifically they're talking about either really reforming or cutting through the Department of Government Efficiency.

Patrick, one of your recent polls, you highlighted the fact that Democrats believe Elon Musk's influence is the biggest threat to America. And you hear a lot of screaming right now about how he was unelected. But as you were just saying, he was a major part of the campaign. And for a lot of people, part of the reason they voted for Trump in the first place. And we had unelected bureaucrats running the government for the past four years under Biden. So how are Democrats so surprised by Biden?

by Musk's actions? I think it's telling because they know at this point it's a tell that they can't go after Trump directly. So in the first term, you know, it was really about, you know, they were going after Trump directly right and left.

And the fact now is Trump has net positive job approval ratings. He didn't have that necessarily in his first term. You know, he's starting out in a much stronger position. So Democrats need to go and find a new boogeyman. Right. They need to go and target Elon Musk.

Then they're going to target, oh, you know, Elon Musk has a bunch of 25-year-old whiz kids working for him. So they're going to, you know, I think it's textbook strategy that they are, you know, really trying to, I think, divide.

Elon Musk from President Trump and to try to sow discord and to try to sow division between the two of them. In that vein...

How much do you think it would help Elon Musk if either or both of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. got confirmed? Because it seems like they would instantly start diverting some of that fire from Musk to one or both of them.

Well, yeah, I mean, look, that's certainly possible, right? And I think the reason why there has been this focus on Elon Musk right from the get-go is he was on the ground on day one. You know, this was not a Senate-confirmed position. You know, he was on...

on the ground, taking action, shining a spotlight on a lot of what these agencies are doing. But it's not just him, right? I mean, I think you've got a lot of people are waking up to just public data that has been posted online that people just haven't paid enough attention to.

over the years about where their taxpayer dollars were going to. And I think the social media outrage as people are finding these examples of these woke spending projects built with billions of dollars focused on DEI and equity and those sorts of things. And I think it's not just Elon Musk, but there's a whole army of people who are really calling attention to these issues.

In that vein, is it beneficial based on your polling for Democrats to focus on targeting Musk because otherwise the noise from all the things these folks are finding would become devastating to them?

Yeah, no, I agree. In the end, I don't know how much of a political benefit this is going to be to them. I don't think it's going to be necessarily the political benefit that they think it is. During the campaign...

And especially late in the campaign, you had Harris and Democrats really try to bring the election back to this idea that Trump was a threat to democracy. And by, quote, unquote, democracy, what they mean is business as usual in Washington.

So you had, you know, Harris on the ellipse the day, you know, the week before the election talking about the threat to institutions, something that we're seeing playing out right now. But I think that what they're actually talking about is not a threat to democracy. It's a threat to bureaucracy. And that's what's being targeted here.

We're with Patrick Ruffini. He is a poster of Echelon, and he has written a great book, Party of the People, Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition, Remaking the GOP. Patrick, when you wrote that book, what surprised you in your findings?

Well, you know, what really surprised me, I started writing this book after 2020 and looking at, you know, Trump's coalition holding up a lot better, I think, than a lot of people expected. And him gaining support from voting groups that had never voted before.

before, such as Latinos in South Texas, in Florida, all throughout the country. And of course,

In 2024, you know, and I said in the book, I think, you know, I don't know if it's going to continue necessarily exactly in 2024, but I think you're going to see more and more of these voters starting to align with the conservative side, the conservative view of things, whether it happens next year, whether it happens next.

down the road and it happened this this time uh... and it was the reason donald trump was elected with the most diverse

most working class coalition after the Democratic Party. And it was surprising to me, right? After the Democratic Party kind of doubled down on wokeness, doubled down what they thought they were doubling down on these constituencies. And I should say, like, maybe it wasn't surprising. It was surprising, frankly,

to Democrats that that strategy completely failed and backfired. And it not only failed and backfired in terms of them losing the election overall, but it failed with the target voting blocks that they were trying to bring back into the fold. It's pretty astounding. We have only about 30 seconds left here, but it's pretty astounding that they still can't move off of any of those positions.

Well, because they're beholden to these people. There's no rational to it. They're just beholden to it. I really have a tough time understanding how you stay beholden to what will be and continue to be a losing position, like all the DEI, the trans stuff and everything else that's been going on. It's insane. We're going to be coming back with more from Patrick Ruffini here in just a moment, folks. So stay tuned. Breaking Battlegrounds will be right back.

Support American jobs while standing up for your values. OldGloryDepot.com brings you conservative pride on premium, made-in-USA gear. Don't settle. Wear your patriotism proudly. Visit OldGloryDepot.com today. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our guest still with us is Patrick Ruffini. He's a pollster, political analyst, and co-founder of Echelon Insights. You can follow him on Twitter at PatrickRuffini, R-U-F-F-I-N-I.

Patrick, talking about your book, I want to go back to a minute. Can you explain to our audience how you would define what a populist is? Because obviously the media wants to make it sound like these are just all evil, aggrieved people. I don't like the word populist. I like to just sort of think of it as people who want crap to work again.

How would you define it? And do we need a better name than populist, like people who want crap to work again? Yeah. I mean, look, there's so many definitions of it. You know, I think the most simple definition of it is you just go and talk to working people in the country. Right. And.

listen to their voices, listen to what they're saying. Certainly, that's a big part of, you know, what we do in polling is trying to listen to folks and really channel that into a governing agenda. And what we've seen, I think, you know, the biggest divide is

not just in the United States, but across Western democracies, has been a huge divide between the elite in these capitals and the working people of the country. With an elite that continues to overtax,

to overregulate, to impose kind of fringe ideologies. And, you know, that has been decisively rejected now. It was decisively rejected in 2024. But we're also just seeing it decisively rejected now.

all over the world. So I think that's the simplest definition. Obviously, like a lot of people, right, are trying to import their own definitions. You know, there's some people who say, well, the Republican Party needs to get more. Let's say we need to start doing class warfare. We need to start raising taxes on certain people.

And I don't think that's quite what the mandate was in this last election. Patrick, before we wrap up here, you had a piece out about a week ago on your sub stack at Patrick Ruffini dot com talking about 2024 is over performers. And one of the things I think Republicans need to be aware of there is you highlight the

Trump won 230 congressional districts, but we had a lot of Republicans lose those districts. Here in our home state of Arizona, Trump won the presidency, obviously won the vote there, but we lost the U.S. Senate race.

How stable are these gains and how much risk would it be for Trump if they can't maintain the majorities in a year and a half or two years here? Yeah, I mean, I think what you're really seeing, and I think all presidents, you know, I think now have gotten this lesson is that, you know, there are headwinds for the incumbent party in the midterms, and especially when something's the second midterm. Now, this is

kind of almost like Trump's first midterm because I think he's coming. And I think that him coming out of the gate so strong and doing so many things, I think is both a recognition of presidents in the modern era have just a very limited window in which to get things done, that you really have to get things moving on day one, the first hundred days, but even more front loaded than that.

So you can have a chance for these things to actually take effect and work their way through the system. The thing that, you know, I think the strategy here that they're pursuing is I do really feel like Republicans are going to have a sense of

of action and things getting done, which I don't necessarily think that they had in the first Trump term. That in 2018, you really saw Democrats on the offense, Democrats on the attack. I think the Democrats are starting to wake up. And it felt like at a certain point in that election cycle that Republicans didn't have very much to show for it.

in terms of progress on building a wall or repealing Obamacare, those priorities, things they said they would do didn't actually get done or didn't get done quickly enough. So I think that, you know, especially as it relates to the midterms, what you're going to see is, I think, you know, I think they're trying to, you know, mobilize Republicans by just saying, look at what we've,

But you're right in that all these gains by Trump need to extend if they're going to, you know, if we're going to institutionalize this majority, if this working class majority is going to be something that exists beyond this election cycle, then, you know, Republicans down ballot need to get smart about.

about understanding that you have, just as Trump understood, that you have a lot of young voters, a lot of black voters, a lot of Hispanic voters who are up for grabs because they are not represented by the left wing of the Democratic Party and really prioritize those voters, trying to bring them out in a year, frankly, that they're not necessarily coming out in, which is a midterm year.

Yep. Thank you so much, Patrick Ruffini. We appreciate having you on the program. Folks, follow him on X at Patrick Ruffini. Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming right back.

In today's digital world, standing out is more important than ever. Whether you're running for office, leading a cause, or hosting a vote for the cutest pet in town, you need a web domain that's simple, memorable, and action-oriented. You need a .vote web domain. It's clear, impactful, and establishes a lasting presence for your campaign.

Don't wait. Head to GoDaddy.com or Name.com, type in your name.vote, and get started today. Because after all, every pet deserves a web address that's as special as they are. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Our next guest up today, Martin DeCaro, is an award-winning broadcaster and host of the History As It Happens podcast, which is a

Part of the Breaking Battlegrounds family. A sister podcast to this one right here. He delves into current events through a historical perspective. You can follow him on X at Martin DiCaro. Martin, welcome back to the program.

Chuck and Sam, it's great to be back, and I'm happy I'm now one of your sisters. So we are... You're our sister with the best voice in podcasts. 100%. 100%. So we're 75 degrees and sunny here today in Phoenix. How are you in D.C. today? You're not 75 degrees and sunny.

And I don't always mean that literally. I'm speaking figuratively. I guess that depends on your politics in a city that's 90% Democratic. Well, certainly it's not sunny if you're one of the...

10,000 USAID employees who were told they are on administrative leave this morning. Yeah, absolutely not. So, folks, Patrick, I mean, excuse me, Martin has become a great friend and he just has a wonderful podcast, which we highly recommend talking about history as it happens.

And you have a new one coming out today about George H. Walker Bush. Could you share with us what it's about? And let's talk about it. Yeah, this podcast falls into a line of thinking I've been engaging in, podcasts I've been engaging in about thinking.

the post-Cold War period or this post-post-Cold War period and where our world is moving, democracy versus authority, authoritarianism rather, and not just in our country and the debate right now, which is a very partisan debate, we have to be honest. Partisan passions are heightened right now and it's always difficult to discuss current events in a historical perspective because of that issue, right? But not just in our country, but across the world.

a resurgence of authoritarianism, some would say dictatorship, or maybe just populism on the right and left, a rejection of the establishment. But this is happening just a generation or so.

after the march of democracy and market economies, democratic capitalism seemed like it had triumphed, right? So that's the framing for the podcast that came out today. The day of the dictator is not over. But I borrowed those words from President George H. Bush's

inaugural address, January 20th, 1989. It was a mild day because no one was wearing overcoats. And he said the day of the dictator is over, if not in fact than in the human mind. And here's a little of what he said. But this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called tomorrow. Great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom. Men and women of the world

move toward free markets, through the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free expression and free thought, through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions

that only liberty allows. You know, George Bush, the father, was not a great orator, but that's some of his best, some might say purple prose, but you get the idea, you get the mood of the times. And this is before German reunification. Matter of fact, the Berlin Wall wouldn't come down until November of that year. Manuel Noriega was still in power in Panama. He would

he would be withdrawn or removed i should say with the u.s invasion later in that year early 1990. the tiananmen square situation hadn't happened yet the solidarity victory in poland's elections hadn't happened yet but you could already sense a wind of change

blowing over the world. So it looked like that the United States had triumphed, the so-called end of history, Francis Fukuyama's Hegelian thesis. This is probably the most popular Hegel had ever been in the United States. And that is that history hadn't stopped, not end as in terminus.

but end as in means to an end, history as development. In the conflict during the Cold War between these two competing ways of organizing society, democratic capitalism had triumphed,

the single-party dictatorial communist state with a command economy had failed. So that's kind of the framing of today's show. And how did we move from there and the triumph of democracy to this deeply cynical period that we're living in now, where, frankly, many people have, if not given up on democracy, they've given up on the establishment because of the establishment's failures? Yes. How else do you explain the rise of not just a Donald Trump in the United States, but

but populists all over the world on the left and the right. That's what I've been thinking about. This is not a complete explanation as to how we got here today, but it's a partial one. No, it's an important topic to discuss, and I'll give you an example. We were talking about it before we got in the studio today, Sam and I and Kylie.

And I think this is a key – this is just a good example of it. I think this boils down to government's not working. We had Patrick Ruffini on before you. He's a pollster at Echelon. And we just said, is there another word for populist? Because the people I talk to would not consider themselves populists who voted for Trump. They just want government to work. They want to get crap done. And so a perfect example of that is you had Zelensky this week say –

We've been allocated $160 billion. I have not seen $100 billion of it. So somebody's not working either on the U.S. side or there's just vast corruption in Ukraine. And I'm going to say there's probably good both mixture of those things. Yeah, I mean the U.S. aid scandal with AIDS, 7%. So we're going to go tell people – and by the way, Sam will say I'm a neocon on the Ukraine situation –

How do we go ask people... Chuck likes killing Russians. Yeah, I do. How do I go about and tell people, we need more American taxpayer dollars for Ukraine when they account for $100 billion, right? And so people say, you're not working. This isn't about authoritarianism. You're just not working. You're not doing your job. And then we have...

You know, this whole thing about Musk, and there was a great thing by Mark Halperin that we read before talking about only Musk could do this job because he's smart, he's aggressive, he doesn't care what people think. But with that also comes the ability not to do the gentle touch. So, like, these government, you know, take your buyout. You know, you could have waited until June, right, and tell people more and spend more time saying this is what we're looking at doing. That's what people with good human skills do. That's not what he's doing. He's taking a buzzsaw to it. But everything...

But everybody on the left is freaking out that they're auditing this agency. And all due respect, even as a person who thinks national security is our number one issue, every department in the United States needs to be audited because people don't think it works. Well, to start with the Ukraine question there, I think there's a general lack of interest in pursuing that war to a full Ukrainian victory, which just seems like impossible.

if not impossible, right now because of some of these other issues about issues concerning the U.S. role in the world, right? And the very optimistic 1990s about the future of those former Soviet blocs and their relationship to the United States and the U.S.-Russian relationship. Now, this is a very, very long story. We don't have time to get into all of it. But if you go back to the early 1990s,

There was an earnest effort, genuine attempts in Russia, including by Boris Yeltsin, even after he turned the tanks on the Russian parliament building, the Russian White House in 1993, to integrate Russia with the West.

to become part of a new European security structure, right? And also for Ukraine to develop along its own lines as an independent nation, a democracy that had embraced capitalism. Now, what happened in Russia was a disaster. The 1990s were a disaster. So,

Take that, you know, the 1990s, the excessive optimism that Russia would become a liberal democratic state with a free press and and and a positive, not a dominating, a positive relationship with its near abroad, including Ukraine, a country or nation state that had dominated for centuries, really. Right.

Take that into the early 2000s and the U.S. global war on terror and U.S. military adventurism. I think right now, and I mean, Trump ran on this, right, in 2016 and just recently. Americans aren't in the mood for this anymore, right? And they see money being spent on Ukraine as better spent in the United States. They're asking, why can't there be some kind of deal? Because Ukraine is a much smaller nation, right? Smaller economy, smaller population can't possibly withstand the Russian onslaught.

I know that's not a full answer to your question, Chuck, but I guess that's the way I look at it. Did the West make a mistake in not more fully pursuing that integration with Russia given the rise of China since then? Because Russia has really helped enable China's rise in many ways and the illiberalism you've talked about.

A lot of it is sort of coming in, creeping into Western governments from things the Chinese government is doing both domestically and around the world.

That's a great question. And there is there are multiple sides to it. So I'm often reminded, a matter of fact, the guest in my episode today, the historian Jeffrey Engel, who's written a fantastic book about George Bush's presidency when the world seemed new. He often reminds me you can look at this as what did the United States do wrong? But you really have to start with what did the new Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin do wrong?

So if you look at the collapse of the Soviet Union as simply an event, and it was so beguiling because it was mostly peaceful, the end of the Iron Curtain, the liberation of Eastern Europe, and the disappearance of the Soviet Union came with relatively little blood spilled. And it looked like for a little bit things would turn out okay. But the collapse of an empire, if you call the Soviet Union an empire...

is a process that plays out over years, if not decades, and the violence would come later. Not in the former Soviet periphery in the Eastern Bloc, but in the lands of the old Russian Empire. Chechnya in the early 1990s. Chechnya again in the late 1990s, first under Yeltsin, then under Putin. Russian forces have never left Moldova.

Russian forces have never left Georgia in that war that broke out in 2008, even though some say that Georgia started it. And Russian troops will probably never leave eastern Ukraine. So from an American point of view and from an Eastern European point of view,

Something that has always rankled the Russian establishment was NATO enlargement to the east. But those countries, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, which is now the Czech Republic or Czechia, and Slovakia as two independent nations, they wanted to join NATO because of

Russian aggression, their history with Russia and what they already saw happening in the early 1990s, a resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia and a rejection of Western pluralism and liberalism.

So you can look at it as the United States pushed too hard on NATO expansion, even though Gorbachev, Yeltsin and then Putin all objected to it. And I was just watching some news conferences the other day from the mid 1990s when Clinton and Yeltsin, the Bill and Boris show was so popular, all those summits they held. They were asked by journalists at these news conferences. They were in Vancouver, Moscow, what have you.

You know, what about NATO enlargement? And Yeltsin made the point clearly, this would be a mistake of historic proportions, right? But at the same time, you just can't take Russia off the hook. You just can't say, all right, well, the U.S. should have done NATO expansion, and that's a one-size-fits-all.

explanation for everything that happened afterward, right? Because that is often used by apologists for the Russian war in Ukraine today, that this was brought on by the West by pushing too hard to the East, right, with NATO and the European Union, right? I think both sides have agency. Yeah, absolutely. We have just about two minutes left here. We're going to be continuing on with more from Martin DeCaro in the podcast segment, so stay tuned for that.

We're also going to have some good stuff from Kylie, as always. She's giving me that little grin that says we have murder and mayhem coming up. We have lots of murder and mayhem today. Okay. My answer is I have to keep them succinct. You know, that's what happens as an old radio guy. I'm on a podcast now. I can talk forever. Here's a question I have for you, and then we can also go into the next segment here about it. There's the great quote, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Have you found that to be true since you started your podcast, History As It Happens? You know, actually, I don't go along with that history repeats itself, but I still, and I don't even think it rhymes because everything in history is unique. However, there are myriad examples of people not learning from history. I mean, you could just take, you know, what we will call loosely history.

The liberal establishment, the liberal foreign policy establishment, right after the global war on terror. And this is a bipartisan thing. So this is not a Democrat versus Republican. There is bipartisan buy in. This was an establishment thing after the global war on terrorism and its many disasters. I mean, have they really learned from that? No. Did Joe Biden learn from that? I don't think he did.

I think he had an Atlanticist, almost Cold War mindset where there was no innovative thinking in his foreign policy. Now, I don't think he got everything wrong. I think it was right to support Ukraine at first. But where was the outside-the-box thinking to try to bring that conflict to a close? I've been deeply critical of Biden's support of Israel's destruction of Gaza.

Not his support of Israel, per se, but the support of Israel, the destruction of Gaza, which has really shredded the international, you know, the rules-based order. If you look at it from the vantage of the people in that region, we may not agree with their point of view. We've got to look at this globally, right? When we talk about this liberal international order, a lot of people across the world just roll their eyes at that. Yeah, they do. And when we come back, I want to get into more on that.

Breaking Battlegrounds. Make sure you're tuning into that podcast segment. Subscribe. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. We'll be back on air next week. Support American jobs while standing up for your values. OldGloryDepot.com brings you conservative pride on premium, made-in-USA gear. Don't settle. Wear your patriotism proudly. Visit OldGloryDepot.com today. I say this every election cycle, and I'll say it again.

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Welcome back to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're continuing on with Martin DeCaro. He is an award-winning broadcaster and host of History As It Happens, our sister podcast that delves into current events through a historical perspective. You can follow him on X at MartinDeCaro. We were talking about changes in the world order, the new world order, the various structures of history.

One thing in there is how much the West hoped that trade and opening free trade across the globe would create global harmony and lead to the end of war. That really hasn't happened, and we seem to be heading in the other direction right now kind of, aren't we? Yeah, free trade is not popular right now.

We shouldn't overlook the benefits of free trade. It's not all been a negative story. We all benefit from cheaper products. However, however, if you again, we started on the radio show talking about a lot of the assumptions that underpinned the optimism of the 1990s about the advance of democracy, political democracy and free market capitalism. If you go back to the early 1990s and listen to what people were saying about NAFTA, this wasn't simply a free trade deal. This was going to work magic.

Here's Bill Clinton at the signing of NAFTA in 1993. We have made a decision now that will permit us to create an economic order in the world that will promote more growth, more equality, better preservation of the environment.

and a greater possibility of world peace. World peace, indeed, right? I mean, it was, or in addition to everything else, world peace. And he went on and on and on there in that news conference in 1993 about everything that would happen on the positive side of the ledger because of this free trade pact between Mexico and Canada. And you can find similar statements like this during the Clinton years from him and other members of his administration when it came to, say, the so-called new economy.

economy, this wondrous high-tech tomorrow that would follow the turn of the century, where we really didn't need an activist state anymore. After all, it was Bill Clinton who said the era of big government is over, right? That we could rely on the public sector. And in maybe a parallel to today with so much talk about Silicon Valley and Elon Musk and what he is doing,

There were already these libertarian strains flowing through Silicon Valley at the time. You might remember that Bill Clinton appointed Al Gore to oversee like a government efficiency task force, right? To try to make government run more like a business. Possibly not the right choice. Yeah. So what happened with free trade? To answer your question eventually, Sam, I get meandering in my answers here. Well, there were positives, but it tore at the fabric of American communities and it

really undermined middle class or working class Americans' ability to negotiate at their workplace because even the threat of moving across the border was enough to hurt your negotiating position. What should they have done differently? With hindsight now, what do you think they should have done differently to make it more palatable to people? That's a great question because during the NAFTA negotiations –

Labor in this country pushed for protections, labor protections, right? Workplace protections. But the whole point of allowing American corporations to freely move part of their supply chain or the assembly line to the other side of the border is that they would benefit from high skilled but low wage labor, right?

Remember when Ross Perot was at that debate with Bush and Clinton in 1992? He said, the most expensive part of building an automobile is paying for the health care of your workforce.

So these protections were not part of the main piece of NAFTA. They were inside agreements and they were never enforced. But again, why would a U.S. auto manufacturer take all the trouble of moving the supply chain and the assembly line to the other side of the border if he's going to have to deal again with the same things he's trying to escape?

Another aspect of NAFTA that has caused a backlash, and this, again, just doesn't go for the United States. Migration right now is an international crisis. Probably more migrants in the world today moving around than at any time in history, in large part because the world's population is larger now than at any time in history. I actually, if I can stop you, I want to throw in a personal theory there. Cell phones and the Internet are showing the rest of the world what life in the West is like. I would agree, Sam. That's a big deal.

Well, you know, Clinton at his New Economy White House conference in 2000, near the end of his second term, said the Internet and the personal computer would do more to alleviate poverty than maybe any other invention in recent history. I mean, has it? I don't know. But again, this just speaks to the mindset of the day, right? This high tech, wondrous high tech tomorrow. So part of NAFTA was to open Mexican agriculture markets to big American agribusiness.

and they could not compete. So the Mexican market was flooded with American agricultural products. Those collective farms, subsistence farms, floated away in the free trade winds. What happens eventually, Mexicans start to move north into cities, and then they continue their move north into the United States for better paying jobs here.

There was a backlash even in the 1990s to illegal immigration from Mexico. And we're living in that reality today. I mean, how else do you explain the rise of a Donald Trump without this context, right? I think when we had you on the first time, you had talked about something that I thought about having grown up partially in small-town America. And I think it ties to what you're saying right now, that those agreements ended up decimating the Mexican subsistence agricultural sector, right?

They ended up damaging a growing area of their economy that could have built up over time. At the same time, they gutted –

the local manufacturing in small towns across America where you had local industry leaders who were very deeply connected to their communities, and they've all been replaced by these international conglomerates that have no connection to any community. And in both cases on both sides of the border, they're really tearing down the fabric that wove our societies together. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. So the actual number of jobs that went to Mexico, and there's a fantastic book written by Nelson Lichtenstein called

who's a historian on the left, but he's very honest about the failures of some of these liberal projects. The book is called The Fabulous Failure. It's about the transformation of American capitalism in the 1990s, not just under Clinton, right? I've talked about more of a bipartisan establishment, maybe global look at these things. So I try to not be partisan on my show. But anyway, it wasn't the number of jailbreakers

jobs that went to Mexico. It was the fact that NAFTA, being the first free trade deal with a low wage economy, a low wage country, set the template for everything that will come after that. That's a great point. Walmart was really in the vanguard here when it came to moving its supply chain overseas. Within years of China's

entry into the WTO. Many, many more jobs, many more manufacturing jobs went to China. Within years of China's entry into the WTO, Lichtenstein has concluded that 80% of the 6,000 foreign factories in Walmart's supplier database were now located in China. And there was a lot of lobbying on the part of ProMaker.

private industry to allow China into the WTO. So it's not just a political thing or a political party thing. There are multinational corporations that wield enormous influence and power in our economy and even today. I had a friend at that time who had a little company in Vermont making wool hats and socks and

And to get into Walmart, which would expand their business tremendously, they went down to Bentonville, Arkansas to a meeting where they straight up told them, we're going to close your factory. We're going to ship it to China. We're going to pay you like five cents per item coming back. You're going to make far more money than you make now.

But every job you have is gone. And this is structural. So, you know, I applauded President Biden's attempt at reviving manufacturing in the United States. You know, libertarians don't like what's called industrial policy. The fact of the matter is only what small percentage of the U.S. economy is in manufacturing now. It really was, I don't want to say misguided. It was directed at the wrong or trying to solve the problem the wrong way. Yeah.

Martin, as we end our segment with you, tell our audience where they can find you and tell what shows you have coming up, including today's. So actually, I have some exciting shows coming up that are very timely, given what's going on in the news right now. HistoryAsItHappens.com is good. But if you have Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts, just search for History As It Happens.

HistoryAsItHappens.com actually takes you to my sub stack and you can listen to the podcast there as well. It's a great morning walk podcast. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. You know, some have said it's great to solve insomnia. I don't know. But it hasn't put me back to sleep when I've gotten up and done it. So I think you're OK.

So yes, next Tuesday, which will be February 11th, I know you're not supposed to say dates on a podcast because people listen to these things at all times. February 11th, I'm going to take a look at the legacy of the Abraham Accords with the scholar Khaled El-Gindi, who works at the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. We're going to analyze President Trump's

or a proposal or this bizarre idea where he wants to have the Palestinians of Gaza go to neighboring countries or who knows where so Gaza can be rebuilt. We're going to talk about that idea in historical context because this is an old story. Palestinians were once driven into Jordan in the 1960s and that ended in a disaster called Black September of 1970, a civil war in Jordan because of the destabilizing effect of then the PLO

Today it's Hamas or whoever. Next Friday, I'm going to speak to the economic historian Phil Magnus, who considers himself a libertarian thinker. He's a fantastic economic historian. We're going to talk about tariffs and the legacy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which was passed by Democrats and Republicans in Congress in 1930 and signed by Hubert Hoover in 1930, which was economically self-destructive.

It was the highest tariff in American history, other than the possible tariff of abominations of 1828. Fantastic. Martin DiCaro, we love always having you on the program. And folks, definitely check out History As It Happens wherever you get your favorite podcasts. We'll look forward to having you back on to talk about more of this in the near future. Absolutely, you guys. Thank you so much. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.

Well, good show today so far, but we still got more to talk about. And now it's time to get into everyone's favorite podcast segment.

Kylie, bring on the blood. Well, first I want to bring on the mayhem. Okay. Because the mayhem's happening at UMass at the women's basketball game on Wednesday night. Wait, what? So there was a college student named Noah. He was participating in the halftime show at a women's basketball, or the halftime event, I guess, at a women's basketball game where you had to make a layup, um,

A free throw, three-pointer, and then a half-court shot. He made all of them. Even the half-court shot. So he won $10,000. That was the award. Honestly, if you can do that, that should be worth more than $10,000. Exactly. All 100 people in the stands went crazy. And he was just notified by the insurance company the next day. He will not be paid out the $10,000 because his foot was on the line at his half-court shot. Oh, garbage. Despite being told...

That was not a rule. Garbage. So the school decided to offer him four tickets to a suite to a men's basketball game.

where he can participate in that halftime show, but he can only win $1,000. No, they should just do it. Oh, come on. They're going to offer him a pair of courtside tickets to the women's basketball game. Ugh. And then... What's that, like $250 in value? I mean, come on. Well, then he gets $100 in gift cards to the concessions there. Okay, please. How are people reacting to this travesty of justice? Well, the internet is not reacting great to it. Um...

They're called odds on promotion is the name of this insurance company. And they say they've paid out over $40 million worth of. Doesn't matter. They need to pay this should be 40 million and 10,000, but it's not, um,

And I think at this point it's $10,000. It's going to be easier than fighting the ex in Twitter trolls. Oh, the bad press on this? Oh, my gosh. This is why we get called mass holes right here. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. But they do want a preference that has nothing to do with the women's basketball and has everything to do with UMass and the insurance company. We're not blaming the women's basketball team at UMass. There were some people that were, but it is the... Oh, okay.

this insurance company. So odds on promotion. Go tell them what you think. People were blaming women's basketball for this. Yeah, they were. People are nuts. I know. That probably, that feeds into something. I know that was, we wanted to talk about that today. Yeah. Yeah. We talked the three of us and we're going to get to Kylie's horrendous murder mystery. Um,

The internet just has a bunch of fools who just smack and have nothing worthwhile or proof. And they're just totally full of it. Yeah. It's like the great thing I saw, there was a bunch of Trump influencers who were pushing this conspiracy that Taylor Swift was not going to go to a playoff game or a game during the year because she has promised since the election of Trump she will not go to a red state.

And I remember writing back one and just saying, you do realize she's in Kansas City for like all the games. Yeah. And Missouri is a red state, which as Carly looked up, Donald Trump got 58.5%. So I think if you're staying north of there in Kansas, it's still a red state. I think Taylor is a Democrat, but I think Taylor really likes money.

I mean, I'm kind of speechless because I can't blame her. No, but I mean, that's the point. She's a businesswoman. She realizes... You're telling me Taylor Swift doesn't realize that probably 60% plus of her audience is...

young women from two-parent households who vote Republican? Of course she does. Yeah, she's never said that. Of course she does. And you hit on something I've always been very impressed by. She is an amazing businesswoman. She is. It's like the Nancy Pelosi thing. Yeah. She fell down. And so now everybody acts like all hell's broken loose. You know, big internet report. She's limping to her car. She just had a hip replacement. I'd be limping too.

Goodness gracious, I'd be lucky not to be in a wheelchair. I'm limping after pickleball. I mean, look, if you want to go after Nancy Pelosi for her insider trading, her votes or her stupid statements, take your pick. There's plenty to choose from.

But going after somebody because they can't walk after a hip replacement is just being an asshole. 100%. And as soon as people do this on the right and the left, but all we really care about is the right right now. Yeah, I don't care how bad they make themselves look on the left. You simply denigrate your authority to speak out on issues that are important. Yeah.

It is morally compromising. Yeah, it's just horrible. And I'm just sick of seeing it. And you see it all the time. And it just drives me nuts. And from the French president's wife, which we will not go into that, but you can just Google or Reddit that yourself, to people on the right saying Michelle Obama is really a man. I mean, just stop it. Just stop it. You're not helping the cause. No. No.

The left will make themselves look crazy themselves, which leads me into...

My next topic. Okay. The Zizian cult. Have you guys heard of them? I have. I have. I want to get into it. It is a radical trans cult is how it's described. And Ziz is the founder. I think you have to be careful when you say I want to get into a cult. Okay. Talking about it. I do not want to get into this cult. I don't think I'll be accepted into this cult. I don't have the same qualifications these people do. But this Zizian cult.

This person is a transgender. Their legal name is Jack Lasoda. They joined or they started getting this following online by talking about ethical and social theories. There was Felix Ophelia Bokholt and they were an award winning youth math genius from Germany. By the way, I'm going to do a lot of reading on this because this is a very complicated cult. So this is what I'm. It's a very high IQ cult from what I understand. Very high IQ, which is I want to talk about everyone's. So this guy's a high math genius from Germany.

And then he was just found. He's the one who shot the Border Patrol agent on January 20th. Okay. Along with...

What is her name? Teresa. And she is a computer science student at the University of Washington. Every single one of these people are extremely high in mathematics, computer science. By the way, people maybe don't know, but the University of Washington, I think because of having Amazon grow up there and having Google grow up there is a –

computer science program. It's one of the best in the country. So Felix said he, well, another member said they became a member of the cult after finding Ziz online and having things in common like effective altruism, criticism of it, ethics, ethical veganism, mathematics, and decision theory.

But Felix Ophelia was shot on January 20th when he was pulled over along with Teresa by Border Patrol agents and there was a shootout. He's now dead. The gun from this incident came from a Michelle Zajocco.

That will come in handy later in the story. So Jessica Taylor, she was a member of this cult. She has since gotten out of the cult, but she says she remembers telling Ophelia that Zizian's, the Zizian's cult was a death cult with a high local death rate. The group tended to choose victims with petty authority,

like landlords, mall cops, parents, and in this case, a Border Patrol agent. So they're saying there's other people they've killed before this Border Patrol agent. Yes. So these people are also connected to a murder. Curtis Lind, which is a landlord from California who was stabbed to death three days earlier

before the Vermont shooting. And he was stabbed to death right before he was supposed to testify in a case because he was a landlord of two members from this cult. They stopped paying their bills. He confronted them. They stabbed him and blinded him with a samurai sword. And then he shot and killed one of them. And then he was killed three days before the Border Patrol and then before they could go to trial. So the person...

Michelle Zajoko back who supplied the gun her parents she's a 22 year old data scientist her parents were found dead in their home just two years prior to both of these incidents wow and she was never charged never charged wow I don't know if they could connect her or so how how old is this cult

They say it's been going on since about 2021. So Ziz began advocating online in 2021 because he wanted to punish non-good people, which was non-vegans. That's how it began. Chuck, you and I are in big danger. Yeah.

What's a vegan going to do? They can't even lift a hammer. So then Ziz and another member of the cult... Apparently they can lift a samurai sword. This is kind of concerning. I know. Want to go get a steak after this one? The worst part is how this is going to end. So Ziz and another member of the cult faked their own deaths in 2022. So people thought they were dead. There was obituaries out for them until January 13th, 2023, when Ziz was arrested for obstructing administrative law and disorderly conduct. He made bail in June, okay? Yeah.

This is law enforcement. This is February 3rd. This is how the story is going to end because I don't know anything else besides this. We still don't know where the whereabouts of the people in this story are who aren't dead or in custody. And we expect them to continue doing murders. Oh, that's heartwarming. Yeah. Wow. That just makes me feel so safe and good. So something else about this cult, it's not a cult where they're like Waco where they're all in one spot. This is an online cult. They're spread out. They're spread out. They're decentralized. Yeah. Yeah.

Global supply chain. Yeah. This is just horrible. Is law enforcement taking this seriously, do you feel? It seems like they're taking it. I think after the Border Patrol, because I don't know if before there was enough. They said they were looking into other cases where members of this were kind of connected. So one of the weaknesses for local law enforcement is that if you're in Washington state investigating a crime and there's something that happened in Vermont or happened in another state-

With a person who is only connected tangentially online, putting those dots together is not easy. Well, and we don't – law enforcement doesn't link their criminal systems together. The same way you were telling me about voter registration doesn't link new move-ins and so forth. And so, again, this is hopefully something –

Elon Musk and Dodge could go and say, you know, law enforcement all should be connected. Look, I had my libertarian concerns with this kind of stuff that have kind of gone away. I think we just have to recognize the world we're in does not have the boundaries, state boundaries that it used to. And I think, yes, you need these databases to tie together. There was the announcement, I think, yesterday by the Trump administration that in May you'll need your real ID, compliant ID to fly. Right, May.

It is time to nationalize a lot of these criminal databases. It's time to nationalize a registration database so we know everybody when they move from state to state, they've moved and we can unregister. I mean, there's a lot now that I think we just have to recognize the world is connected in ways it wasn't in the past and we need to follow it. I agree. Something else I want to know. Speaking of me, I got to lose about 10 pounds. I look good for my picture for the new real ID. Yeah.

I already got my new real ID. I'm on top of it. But one thing else I want to know is Jessica Taylor, the person who got out of the cult, she said that every member is transgender that's recruited. And although some might have financial vulnerabilities, she believes that most of them are acting in their own accord. And this is truly just what they believe. Yeah. No, that's the definition of a cult. Yeah. That's amazing. Folks, we're going to end here. I want to talk about one topic. Jeremy, would you go to clip number two about the job report, please?

The big headline for me is something that you guys haven't talked about yet, but I'd encourage you to, is that we've got this thing going on where the professionals at the BLS keep revising down the data.

And so the headline for me when I'm looking at this is that it was the biggest downward revision. You know, the benchmark goes through last March, the biggest downward revision since 2009. And we're still sifted through the numbers. But, you know, it's really, really big. It could be as much as if you go a little bit beyond the month that the last month, it could be as much as a million dollars.

jobs fewer than we thought after this benchmark revision. And so the thing is that why is it that we keep seeing sort of positive jobs numbers? And then when we look back a year later, it's way worse than we thought. And so I say that what we learned with all these outdoor revisions is that the Biden economy, the Biden jobs market was way worse than markets thought.

And that's sort of consistent with the rest of our views, that their policies were unwise. And there's a lot of cleaning up to do. And I think that if you look at ISM that just came out, the people, market participants believe that President Trump is going to be able to turn things around. And with these big downward visions, we can see that there's actually a lot of work to do. Donald Trump is not inheriting.

A good economy. A strong economy. And now, look, I'm going to say this. I'd rather be here than anywhere else in the world economically. Yes. Okay. So let's just be clear about that. But it's a muddling economy right now for many people. Some are thriving, and that's always going to be the case wherever. I think I sent this to you to our group chat this morning. Revisions to job gains appeared in January's report and have been expected to paint a weaker picture of job creation than previously recorded going back to March 2023.

A preliminary set of revisions released in August showed the economy created about 818,000 fewer jobs than previously thought between April 2023 and March 2024. And something, Chuck, you brought up on this program before is that now subtract government-created jobs out of that. Which were literally a third, a third of the new jobs. Yeah.

Folks, we're going to leave it at that. We're going to sign off here. We're going to leave you with a clip from Senator Kennedy from the Senate floor yesterday or today talking about Dodge. It's strange. People are so upset about Dodge auditing your tax dollars. It's weird. I think most families who are not bankrupt generally do an audit of where they're spending money, right?

You do it. Makes sense. I don't know. I think if you don't want to audit the IRS, you should just donate your entire salary to them. Right, right, right. So we're going to leave you with that clip. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing because there's great points there. But we want to thank our guest today. It was a wonderful show. On behalf of Jeremy, Kylie, Sam, and I, thank you for joining us. You can always follow us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote on Substack or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great week.

I want to try to put in perspective what many of my Democratic friends have been talking about today. They're very, very, very upset at President Trump. And they're very, very, very upset at Elon Musk. President Trump ran for president on a number of issues. One of the issues he ran on

He said it almost every day. He said, if you elect me president, I'm going to go through the entire budget and review all the spending, line by line. If I heard him say that once, I heard him say it a thousand times. And that's what he's been doing. He went out and appointed, through an executive order, Elon Musk, who some people like him, some don't, but he's not a dummy. He's a very successful business person. He's got a top position.

secret security clearance. President Trump issued an executive order and he turned to Mr. Musk and he said, Mr. Musk, I want you to do for me what I said I was going to do in the election. I want you to go through all the spending line by line. Now, let me ask you something, Mr. President.

How are you going to review the spending without reviewing the spending? How are you going to audit the spending by an agency without auditing the agency? That's what I mean when I say common sense is illegal in Washington, D.C. That's what Mr. Musk is doing. He's put together a crackerjack team, and they're going through everybody's spending line by line, item by item. And my Democratic colleagues...

are very, very, very upset. And they've been very eloquent. They've talked about the process and President Trump's executive order supposedly violates the Constitution. And they've accused Mr. Musk of having conflicts of interest. And I've heard people say he's sitting over there with a notepad, copying down everybody's social security number, and he's going to go use it

to make money. I mean, people in this town, not just my Democratic colleagues, they're really upset. They've never said anybody questioned their spending. But that's what Mr. Musk is doing. But you know, I've listened. This has been going on for a week.

People have been screaming like they're part of a prison riot. Oh, my God, look at what Musk is doing. He's looking at the spending. And I've listened to people talk about the process and debate whether it's constitutional and discuss how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pen. But you know what? I haven't heard one single person who's upset with President Trump or Mr. Musk talk about it.

what he's found. They don't want to talk about the spending, the spending porn, the waste of taxpayer money that he's found. I mean, that's the point of all this. I tell you who is interested, the American people, the people in America who get up every day and go to work and obey the law and pay their tax

and try to educate their kids and try to do the right thing by their kids and try to save a little money for retirement and have had to live through 20% inflation under President Biden, they understand what Musk is doing. They understand spending porn.

and wasting taxpayer money. Now, Mr. Musk started with the USAID. That handles a lot of foreign aid for America. American people are very generous. In our country...

You know, when you're homeless, we'll house you. When you're hungry, we'll feed you. In our country, when you're too poor to be sick, we'll pay for your doctor. And we send a lot of money overseas to help our world's neighbors. And the USAID is in charge in large part of that. But I'll tell you what Mr. Musk discovered.

I find it fascinating. He discovered that the American taxpayers are giving money to Afghanistan. He found that we are giving money to Yemen. He found that we are giving money to Syria. I didn't know that.

Some of our foreign aid is going to Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria. He found that the USAID has 10,000 people, 10,000 people, employees. And every year they give away $40 billion. Mr. Musk also found, and I'm not saying that all of this money is,

is wasteful. I'm not. Some of this money, I'm sure, does some good. That's why Secretary Rubio is going to revamp the department and separate the good from the bad. But this is the kind of stuff Mr. Musk found. He found that the USAID

gave money to support electric vehicles in Vietnam. Our money, taxpayer money. He found that USAID gave money to a transgender clinic in India. I didn't know that. I bet you the American people didn't know that. He found that USAID gave $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ group called Grupa Izadagi. I probably mispronounced that. My apologies.

Anyway, they got $1.5 million to, quote, advance diversity, equity, inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business community. What else did Mr. Musk found that my colleagues don't want to talk about? Well, he reviewed a study and then went and checked it. The study was done by the Middle East Forum. They found that USAID spent $164 million to support...

radical organizations around the world. We're not talking Cub Scout troops here. We're talking about radical organizations around the world. They gave $122 million of that to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations. Our taxpayer money.

According to this report in Mr. Musk, the USAID has given millions of dollars to, quote, organizations in Gaza controlled by Hamas. Why aren't my colleagues talking about that? Recipients of the money they found have, quote, called for their lands to be cleansed from the impurity of Jews. That's what we're giving foreign aid to.

What else? I'm not going to spend my whole time talking about this, but nobody else is talking about it. They're just talking about the process and Mr. Musk, and he's a mean guy, and he shouldn't be looking at our spending. Well, he is, and I kind of find what he's found out interesting. He found that we gave $2 million, USAID did, for sex changes in Guatemala.

He found that we gave $20 million to produce a new Sesame Street show in Iraq. He found that we gave $4.5 million of taxpayer money to combat misinformation in Kazakhstan. He found that we gave $10 million.

USAID did, of meals to an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group called the Nusra Front. Mr. Musk found that we gave $7.9 million of taxpayer money to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid violence.

binary gendered language. We took, the USAID took eight million bucks and gave it to a bunch of journalists in Sri Lanka to teach them how to avoid binary gendered language. I don't know what the hell binary gendered language is. I think I do. You think most taxpayers would support that?

Why are we talking about that? USAID gave $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica. They gave $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem. They gave $1.5 million for, quote, art for inclusion of people with disabilities in Belarus. Another $3.9 million for LGBT causes in Macedonia. $8.3 million for equity and inclusion in

education in Nepal. I could go all night. And many of my colleagues are upset. They're really mad.

Mr. Musk. Hell, I think we ought to give him a medal. All he's doing is what President Trump said he was going to do. President Trump said he's going to audit the spending. So Trump goes and hires Musk, again, with the top secret security clearance. Nobody can quibble with his intelligence. You know, the guy's as smart as Einstein's cousin. He's a very successful businessman. Some say he's the richest guy in the world.

And he's doing the auditing. And, man, he's finding a lot of stuff. I call it spending porn. Now, I'm not saying everything that USAID does is wasted. But I'm saying a lot of it is. A hell of a lot of it is. And we ought to be on the floor of this United States Senate thanking Mr. Musk.

And we ought to be asking him to go through every agency and look at everybody's budget. Everybody's budget. That's what the American people want. They don't want to talk about process. They don't want to...

to continue with the Washington way. They want to save some money. Now, let me tell you what's really going on here, too, Mr. President. For four years under President Biden and for, what, eight years under President Obama, I have all the respect in the world for President Biden and President Obama. Tough job. But between them, they spent 12 years in Washington.

And presidents set the tone. They control the questions that are asked. And here's the question that President Obama and President Biden asked for eight years. I heard it every, for 12 years. I heard it every single day. Who needs to pay more in taxes? Is it you? Is it you? Who needs to pay more in taxes?

We need more money. Who needs to pony up more? That was the issue. But that's not the issue today. We have a new president. You know what the issue is today? What the hell happened to all the money? What the hell happened to all the money? And that's what Mr. Musk is finding out. That's all this is about. And I'm just...

I'm just shocked that my colleagues have decided that this is a hill they're going to die on. How can you look the American people in the eye and support this kind of waste, support this kind of spending porn? I mean, the election to me made at least one thing clear, that the American people are sick and tired of people in Washington denying reality.

The last administration tried to convince us that we were living in a crime-free world where inflation was temporary and the border was secure. And the American people didn't buy it. You know why? Because it wasn't true.

And the administration, our last administration, tried to argue that Bidenomics was making our lives better. But the American people knew differently. They understood Bidenomics to mean I get to spend more to live worse. And they voted. Now, I mean, the American people were poorer under the last administration, but they didn't become stupid.

they could see that the government was creating a problem, not trying to fix it. And they noticed the national debt, too. Put up that first chart for me. You know what our national debt is, Mr. President? $36 trillion. Not million, not billion. $36 trillion. It takes my breath away. Highest it's ever been, over 100% of our gross domestic product.

Our debt's growing faster than our economy. And we toss around these numbers, a trillion, a billion, a million. Since 2019, America's population has grown 2%. We're not having babies. 2%. And that's after massive immigration. You know how much our budget has grown? 55%. 55%. Yeah, we've had inflation. But we haven't had 55% worth of inflation. That's how we got to this 36%.

trillion dollars in debt. Put up the next chart for me. Now some of this money we had to spend during the pandemic. And it was a bipartisan effort during the pandemic. Republicans voted for it and Democrats voted for it because we had no choice. I was there. I saw it from the inside. We came this close to losing the American economy. And you know who helped a lot, doesn't get enough credit? Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve. I watched it. The whole world

wanted to go into a cave and retreat. Back in the Great Recession, I remember all the other countries in the world who looked to us. They may hate us, but they know we're the greatest country in all of human history. They look to America. And you know what? Back in the Great Recession, all the other countries wanted our, they wanted treasuries, treasury notes, treasury bonds. Not this time. They were so scared. They didn't want treasuries. They wanted dollars, cash dollars.

So Jay Powell, thank the Lord, he goes over to the Federal Reserve. He opens what's called a currency swap line. And he told every country, you want dollars? I'll trade your dollars for your currency. And everything calmed down. He didn't get any credit for that. But it was a gutsy thing to do. But on top of that, to save the American economy, that wasn't helping the American economy. We had to keep the economy going. We spent a lot of money. But then COVID ended.

And what we should have done was go back to pre-COVID spending. But we didn't do that. President Biden, after the...

the shutdowns and the coronavirus, the pandemic was over, passed the American Rescue Plan. COVID was over. He spent $1.9 trillion. Never let a good crisis go to waste. I didn't vote for it. Then he came back and passed what he called an infrastructure bill. It was really just the Green New Deal. I know what's in that bill. That was another $1.2 trillion. And then he passed the Inflation Reduction Act. I didn't vote for it, but that was another $1.0 trillion. That's

And then he passed the CHIPS Act. This is really special. He said, big tech, the semiconductor companies need our money. They need taxpayer money. They're not making enough money. And he gave them money. He didn't give hardware stores money. President Biden didn't give the health care industry money. He said, I want to help big tech.

And boy, they sucked it up like a Hoover Deluxe. We spent $280 billion subsidizing big tech. And you add it all up, and that's $4.3, almost $4.5 trillion. And that's how we got $36 trillion in debt. And that's why Donald Trump said, I'm going to look at every single light item we're spending. And that's why he gave the job to Elon Musk. And that's why Musk is auditing these accounts. But nobody wants to talk about what he's finding.

Nobody wants to talk about the spending porn except the American people. They get it, Mr. President. They get it. And I hope Mr. Musk continues. My colleague and friend, we had a little discussion in banking today. Senator Warner makes a good point. He wants Mr. Musk to come over and talk to Congress about how he's doing this. I'm all for that. I am all for that. I would love to have him come over.

and walk us through what he's doing and how he's discovering all this spending for. We need all the help we can get on reducing our spending because we can't continue at this pace. I just want to spend a few minutes putting all this in perspective, Mr. President. The world's not going to spin off its axis, folks. Every business that I know of goes through an audit. Now we're being audited, but we're being audited by people.

not by the usual auditors, but we're being audited by a person appointed by the President of the United States. And I'm betting you when he's through, and he's going to go to all these agencies. He's starting on the Department of Education next. I think he'll end up finding that some of our money is being well spent, but he's also going to find that some of our money is being stolen.

and it's being wasted. And that's an insult to every taxpayer in this country. So I'm going to end like I began. We ought to be giving Mr. Musk a medal. We ought to be thanking him. Maybe nobody else wants to hear about this spending porn, but I can't wait to read the book. I hope he finds all of it and compiles it. I hope Marco Rubio, our new Secretary of State...

takes USAID and shakes them by the shoulder and lifts up the good people there and fires the bad people, the people that wasted taxpayer money like this, giving money to terrorist organizations, giving money to organizations that support Hamas. Hope he gets rid of every single one of them. And I think if we listen to Mr. Musk, we can save a lot of money. And I hope he does come over and explain what he's doing.