Andrew Kerr Exposes COVID Coverup, Charlie Shrem Breaks Down Crypto’s Next Move
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds. With yours, Chuck Morin. I'm Sam Stone. Our first guest up today, Andrew Kerr, is an investigative reporter at the Washington Free Beacon. He's been doing some great work on...

Some misdeeds, quite frankly, of the Biden administration as related to COVID and some of the issues around odd spending around that vaccine. Yes. Really, really. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be gone from our government. And then we're going to continue on with him and talk a little bit about luxury homes and luxury cars for members of Congress and the Senate. Getting a little...

Getting a little crazy with these folks. So thank you so much for joining us, Andrew Kerr. Welcome to the program. Hey, thanks for having me on. So, Andrew, let me ask you the first question. You're an investigative reporter. Is this something you always wanted to do? Like you're always questioning your parents when they gave you a chore. You dug into it while they're doing it. I mean, what got you to this point in your life? Yeah.

Yeah, I was always a questioning child. Yeah, I remember clearly always like probing my dad questions. But no, this was not in the cards for me. I studied computer science in college. I worked at one of the big tech firms for a few years as my first job. And I did a complete 180 into reporting around 2017. So my parents thought I was crazy.

Ruining my life, but unfortunately, we're all fortunate that I had the I told you so moment. It's been working out great. That's a very short version of a long story. As a parent, that's always a great fear when you're like, my son has a computer science degree. He's set for life. He'll always have a job. Then you say, you know what? I'm going to become an investigative reporter. Right. I'm going to transition into a dying industry. A dying industry. Yeah.

They probably cried all night. Father's consoling mother, you know, blah, blah, blah. All right. You wrote a great piece is why we dug you up and we're so glad to have you on. Biden administration concealed congressionally mandated report on the earliest suspected American COVID cases, which happened to be seven U.S. service members who were in Wuhan in 2019. Tell us about it. What is the origins of the story and why did they conceal this?

Right. So the first reported cases, the official...

start of the pandemic was December 2019. That's when, if you recall the wet market theory that has been pretty thoroughly debunked at this point that started that first wave of cases in Wuhan. But for months before, there were well-reported suspicions that like, hey, this virus may have been circulating in Wuhan long before that December 19 time period.

And one of those events is the World Military Games, which was held in Wuhan in October of 2019. So two months before the first reported cases. So that's kind of like the Olympics for the military. America sent a delegation there. There were athletes from, I think, over 100 countries. And very early on in the pandemic, athletes from France, Luxembourg, Italy, all over the world,

reported that, hey, we got really sick with something while we were staying at the Wuhan in the World Military Games. There's a French athlete, for example, that was hospitalized and has publicly said that, hey, I got COVID in October 2019 at these games.

Now, so China during the early stages of the pandemic used those reporting that reporting to allege that, oh, it was America that brought COVID to to Wuhan through our delegation. And in 2021, John Kirby, the former Biden administration spokesman, he told The Washington Post that, no, there's no evidence whatsoever that any of our guys got sick that attended those games.

But, you know, questions were raised and Congress included a measure in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act that, hey, we are requiring the military to look into this. You know, did any of our guys get sick? Did you guys investigate this? What did you do about it? And you must make this report unclassified and publicly available by the summer of 2022.

And that was it. And so the Biden administration did the report and they never published it. They transmitted it to the Senate and House Armed Services Committee,

in December 2022, so about six months past the congressionally mandated due date. And it never saw the light of day until a few weeks ago in late March when the Biden administration quietly, sorry, the Trump administration quietly uploaded it to a Defense Department website. And what it revealed was that seven of our guys got sick with COVID-19-like symptoms while they stayed at the Wuhan military games.

So that's bombshell information that nobody has known that, knew that before this report was quietly released. Furthermore, what is astonishing about this is that the report then goes on to say that the military never tested these service members for COVID-19 antibodies after the fact.

They never conducted an investigation into whether there's any connection between these illnesses and the outbreak of COVID-19. And they never informed our allies that, hey, our guys got sick too.

The entire report was just two pages long. And there's a disclosure at the top that says the military spent $4,070 preparing this report, which for the military is not even a drop in the bucket. So, I mean, this thing was completely swept under the rug. And we should have known about these potential COVID illnesses years ago, and we're just learning about them now. So it's, you know,

I described it as bombshell information, and I think that the facts support that. Let me ask you two questions real quick. Sam has one. First of all, why didn't the Armed Services Committee members, especially Republicans, just release this when they first got it? I mean, why didn't they release it? That's a great question. I think they should clarify that. I mean, there should be some culpability on them. I mean, look, I'm not here defending Biden, but obviously Republican members of Congress saw this report.

Yeah, so my... This is speculation on my part. My speculation is that there's two possible explanations. So, one, this exposes the military with, you know, it catches them with their pants down because they just...

They did not do anything about this information. It's embarrassing. And second is that China has already signaled that they're, you know, they tried to use for their propaganda purposes that, oh, America, you know, created COVID in Fort Detrick and they must have brought it to our shores through these military games. And so this was...

clearly sensitive information from the Department of Defense. They did not want it to get out. And, you know, maybe that could explain the reluctance from Republicans in Congress on these committees to not release the report. But I don't know. They have not clarified why they did not release that information. They certainly should. You know, COVID was a

An event that had a remarkable impact on all of our lives. And it's so important to so many people that we we people need answers for closure for this thing that that was one of the most important things to happen to everyone. So absolutely. It's important. So that brings up the point of transparency here. So obviously, the the military Pentagon releases report in March on a Web site.

why didn't the Trump administration and our Secretary of Defense make a bigger deal of this? Or have they, and I've missed it? Or B, did you just dig around and you found it yourself? I mean, how did you get the report in? If you had to find it on the website and no one's talking about it, why didn't the Trump administration make a big deal out of this? Well, I asked the Pentagon and they declined to comment. And it's really quite bizarre.

The report was released into it. There's, you know, DOD has all sorts of report sections. The one that this report was released into was a section of their website that addresses, quote, quality of life and readiness issues for service members and their families. The topics here include children and youth, spouse education and employment, personal and family life of active. The website or sorry, the report is sandwiched between two separate reports on military spouses obtaining occupational licenses and

This is not where anyone would think to look for bombshell information about the potential start of a global pandemic. It's bewildering. And I asked the Pentagon to straight up

Why? Why was it done this way? Why didn't you release this report earlier? Why did you release in the family value section? And they declined to comment. If you were here in the studio with us right now, Sam Stone has the same facial expression as Walter Goggins did in White Lotus when his friend was talking about his Asian experience. He's just I mean, we're both just baffled by.

At the incompetence of everybody, including these members of Congress. I'm actually not. What I'm sitting here thinking, and I'm just going to throw it out there, and I know this is going to anger some folks. Donald Trump, this is his weakness. He botched the COVID response in a big way. And I think their interest is in covering it up just as much as Joe Biden.

So as you've done this investigative reporting and you did this article, what else stood out to you while covering it? I mean, what has left an impression on you as you've covered the story? You know,

Throughout the reporting process of this, I had chats with my editors. This really kind of seems like a big deal. And I think I'm vindicated there by just the report's kind of blown up. Other outlets are covering it. It's getting a lot of conversation online, this new information. And I think this does go to the transparency issue. This is not the only piece of information. Congress has passed laws. There's the 2023 law that, hey, the federal government

The feds, you got to declassify everything you have on on covid origins, you know, to an extent responsible. And, you know, just like just this week, I believe it was the Energy Department put out a report that with just absurd levels of redactions, you know, we're just we're not getting the transparency that we need on on covid origins. And, you know, this this is a.

these potential illnesses, to be clear, we don't know if they were, if it was COVID-19 or not, from these seven service members. The report speculates that, you know, it could have been caused by other respiratory illnesses. We shouldn't know. The military should have tested these guys after the fact. You know, if they had COVID antibodies, that would have indicated that perhaps they did actually get this virus in China in October of 2019.

It's just, it's bewildering to me that as an investigative reporter, you know, all the time, the timeline is really important. Like when did, you know, when did something happen? When did you know it?

What do you know? And either they intentionally or just didn't think to ask like, hey, we've got this global pandemic that broke out in this particular Chinese city. And it just so happened that we had seven of our guys come down with very similar symptoms of this virus in the same city two months before the outbreak of the pandemic.

We don't the report doesn't disclose when the military found out about these illnesses, which is what I'm I really want to to find out. You know, did they not even ask? Did not even reach out to these guys and confirm these illnesses? Like, how long was it? Was it a year or two years? Was it under the Trump administration, the Biden administration? You know, I mean, it could just be like gross negligence. And that's that doesn't make me feel very good. So, yeah.

I would go somewhere else with it, which is that we paid for the creation of this virus. Our health agencies were working on it. This is a government-created virus in a lab in China that should never have happened. The best thing we could have done for that world is drop a nuke on the Wuhan lab. The worst part about that comment, you don't have to have aluminum foil around your head to know that's true. No, no. It's terrible. We're going to be coming back with more from Andrew Kerr here in just a moment, folks. Stay tuned. Breaking Battlegrounds, coming right back.

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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.

digital security, and total freedom. And if you use the code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month of service after that. Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND at checkout. Visit 4freedommobile.com to learn more. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're continuing on now with Andrew Kerr, investigative reporter at the Washington Free Beacon. He's been doing some incredible work that really has caught fire around

what we learned the government put out about COVID military members there. That is, the response there is the dark side of government corruption. All government. It is the worst, maybe it's one of the worst examples of government corruption, but moving to a lighter and more entertaining version of government corruption. So Senator Warnock lives free in a $1 million luxury home purchased by his church. How did that happen?

And do they feel any shame about this at all? Well, I can't speak to whether they feel any shame, but how it happened. Well, Warnock, during his time in the Senate, he continues to serve as a part-time pastor for Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Probably one of the most famous in the country. It's where MLK Jr. preached. The church has a long history of providing what's called a parsonage allowance for its pastors. So they cover the housing expenses for their pastors. And that's not unusual for churches to do that. What's unusual here is that the amount of money that the church is spending on Warnock's housing accommodation as he's serving as a member of the Senate in 2022 is

They purchased a $1 million home, brand new construction, five bedrooms, brimming with luxury, remote control curtains, Bluetooth enabled cooking range. I mean, it's just absurd. And he's been living there for free since at least 2023. It's where he's registered to vote. And, you know, and it comes as Warnock.

on the weekends, he goes back down to Georgia where he preaches on Sundays at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and he's aggressively fundraising the congregation to donate funds. He asked them a few weeks ago, donate your bonus check, donate a week's salary to our ongoing fundraising campaign, which in part is to pay down the church's mortgage expenses. All the while, he's living in this church-owned million-dollar home for free. And the

And the congregation didn't know about it. They didn't know that this is what their donations are paying for. So I checked with Senate ethics experts and since this is technically an employment benefit for his part-time job,

Very long story short, he's probably in the clear there, but politically, yeah, that's something that he needs to answer for, that he's essentially grifting off of one of the most famous churches in the country. But it won't matter to that congregation or Democrats in Georgia. They will turn a blind eye to this. That's the sad part about this. Well, actually, a local activist got –

A man named Dr. Albert Paul Brinson, he was ordained by MLK Jr. in 1965 at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

And Brinson said on camera, it's an interview uploaded to YouTube, that MLK Jr. would have never endorsed the church spending its money this way. No. And he said that, you know, the Parsonage Allowance was not meant to finance a life of luxury for our pastors. It was meant to give them modest housing accommodations so they can focus on tending to the congregation. So I think...

Publicly, will members of the congregation make a big stink out of this? Probably not. But privately, I think a great deal of them are probably enraged that this is how the church is spending their money. Well, I mean, based on your article, you wrote also that this home he's in, that the church, and thereby Warnock, they're exempt from property taxes on this, correct? Yeah.

Yeah, the property tax bill, there's line items for schools, for library bonds, all sorts of things. And it's all zeroed out. They only paid a couple hundred dollars or not $1,000 in property taxes all up in the last year. And compared to the neighbors, it's a pittance. So yeah, schools, libraries, parks, bonds, local government operations,

exempt from all of those taxes that everyone else has to pay. So, I mean, it's a really sweet deal for Warnock. Good for him. So Senator Warnock also, you know, before he moved into this church owned home, he had his own home and sold it. What did he do with the proceeds from selling his home? Well, that's a, that's a great question. He, he, he purchased for himself another million dollar home in Washington, DC and a town home close to the Capitol. And,

In January of 2023. So possibly he used the proceeds for that. But yeah, a big sign here was that something was going on with Warlock's housing situation was that, yeah, he sold his Atlanta home and never purchased a new one. So where is he living in Atlanta? And that's kind of started the investigative process that uncovered this information. Well, we have about three minutes left here. Let's talk about the other piece. You didn't finish on that.

You wrote that Democrats in Congress drive luxury cars on taxpayer dime. For example, our favorite congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett, billed taxpayers almost $12,000 in 2024 for a new car. Can you tell us a little bit about it and how they're getting away with this?

Yes, a neat little employment benefit that members of the House get. They can they can spend up to one thousand of your tax dollars every month to to lease a vehicle, a car allowance, a car allowance, basically. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the data is is fascinating. This is a benefit that's being utilized by a healthy mix of Democrats and Republicans.

But the Republicans are using it in a very different way. So the Republicans that there's 15 Republicans who took advantage of this benefit in 2024. Right. And they represent collectively geographically the most expansive districts in the country that average 18000 square miles each.

And several of those members, their offices got back to me and said, yeah, we lease those vehicles because it's, you know, one member from Louisiana represents a massive district was like said, you know, it's cheaper for us to lease a vehicle, you know, an economy class vehicle to drive around and deliver constituent services instead of like driving my personal vehicle, billing at the IRS rate or doing airfare. The Democrats, on the other hand, collectively are.

there's 27 of them, including Crockett. They represent some of the smallest districts in the country. Yvette Clark, she represents a district that is like no more than six miles across any direction. And, and she's spending, you know, tens of thousands or, you know,

thousands of dollars a year on a vehicle lease. Like, she could walk her district. So, like, why? I mean, it'd be good for her health. Why are you... Walking her district would be good for a re-elector, a re-election chances, too. Just remember, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, quote, government is not in the business of giving out money, end of quote.

Yeah, no, we're paying for her car. There's another benefit where we pay for their they can they can bill taxpayers for their D.C. living expenses. We pay for that. Even her incidental meals. When Congress is in session, she's billing taxpayers thousands of dollars a year to pay for her everyday meals. That's the thing that members of Congress can do. And she's taking advantage of that. So, yes, the government is on the in the business of giving money away to you. But to Jasmine Crockett, it's certainly in that business.

This stuff just kills me. This stuff just kills me. You know, and some of it I get. Look, going to D.C. and having a place in D.C. is expensive. I get it. They make – what is the salary for Congress now? $175,000 a year? Yeah, something like that. I mean I get it. But some of this – I mean there's just – again, they live in such a bubble they don't understand the appearance. Right. Right? And if people knew this – Well, I don't think they care. And if people knew this in their districts, they'd be pretty upset I feel.

Depends on the district. The blue districts aren't going to care. Well, Andrew, you have been fantastic today. We really hope you'll join us again. And when you have a new story, we'd love to have you on. You've been fantastic and love the work you're doing. And I hope your parents are okay with your decision now. Yeah, they are. Thank you. This was fun. Thanks, Andrew.

Folks, we are going to have some fantastic segments. We had a little mix-up with our guest. He's going to be coming on in the podcast, but we've got some great segments coming up. If you're not a podcast subscriber, you can hear Kylie's Corner coming up on the air portion of the program. That is literally why half the people who download our podcast download our podcast. They love Kylie's Corner. She does have a theme song. It's brilliant. Breaking Battlegrounds coming 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. Folks, we have to play a clip for you. You have to hear this. Jasmine Crockett, Jasmine Crock, oh, you know what? Jeremy, run this clip because we're all still floored.

don't have cars, don't have driver's licenses. So it's sort of a vestige of, I think, post-slavery laws where black people had to prove their right to vote. And oftentimes they couldn't vote because they couldn't pass some crazy test or they didn't have the appropriate ID or

It also affects women, women that are married. Maybe your passport reflects something that's different on your birth certificate or on your driver's license. So really the bottom line is voter suppression. And I agree with him 100%. It's a brilliant notion that less voter ID laws allows more people to vote. And most democracies do it that way. We're the only ones that really don't do it that way.

Well, Sam, I want to talk about this in her second comment this week, but first about saying most countries. That's a lie. It is an absolute 100 percent lie. We're the only one in any developed nation that does not require voter I.D. Most countries issue a specific voter I.D.,

That is – she is just the gift that keeps on giving to Republicans. I don't feel they're pushing her out there a month. And I think the one person she makes absolutely happy is AOC.

Because she has taken away the crazy mantle from AOC and put this crown on with great pride. Not only that crown on, but she's apparently also putting on the crown of the former black slaveholders of Louisiana who believe that having free and cheap labor is essential to their future. I mean, my goodness. Unless you're unless you're probably not aware, unless you're on X, which has carried this quite a bit.

Representative Jasmine Crockett from Texas, who continually puts her foot in her mouth, she said this week regarding inflation prices, connect the dots. You cannot afford your home groceries thanks to deportations. I mean, so what she is pushing is

is for slave labor with migrants who cross the border illegally in this country. Yes, that's exactly it. Also, that statement is totally economically illiterate because quite frankly, the explosion of illegal immigration is one of the great drivers of home prices, upward pressure on home prices because there's that many more people in this country. When you bring 10% of the population in in the course of four years –

Homes are going to get scarcer. I hate to introduce Jasmine Crockett to Economics 101, but there it is. Well, she had a further comment talking about this. She was in the Grace Baptist Church in Connecticut, and she appeared to defend migrants by claiming the United States needs them to harvest cotton. Quote, So I had to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country.

Or the fact that we are a country of immigrants. The fact is, ain't none of you all, talking to a black congregation, are going to try and go and farm right now. Okay, so I'm lying. You're not. You're not. We're done picking cotton. We are. You can't pay us enough to find it. Okay, A, cotton's picked by machines these days. Which she probably does not know. No, she probably has no idea of that. You're driving... By the way...

They pay very good wages for the person who drives that machine because you're driving a multimillion-dollar piece of machinery. You have to be trained on it. It's a technical job, right? No. All this stuff. She is – I don't know if she's insane or this is just a shtick. I think she's insane. I mean because if it's a shtick, someone comes – well, let's use it. Let's compare it to tariffs, OK? I mean look. Something has to be done.

to revitalize, to have a restructuring of the American economy. It can't all be the 10% everybody else gets the crumbs, right? And look, you and I believe in trickle-down economics. It does work, right? I mean, ask the people whose homes got burned down. What's the general story on this? And I don't agree with that term. Right. You know, I mean... But free markets are... Market capitalism, yes. But we are not in a free market. Right, no. And that's the problem. And I think that has been...

an absolute mistake of the Trump administration before announcing this. They should have had every congressman, every member of the administration on every podcast, every radio show like ours, every talk radio show explaining. This is why we're at a disadvantage. Not only have we been carrying the world militarily, but we're also letting them take a cause economically. And we originally set up those systems after World War II,

to help our allies get their footing back. Yeah, it was magnanimity. We're 80 years past that now, right? And so there has to be some sort of restructuring. I'm fine with zero tariffs. I don't believe in the tariffs at all. If you can go get zero from the European Union, zero for us, do it. We'll compete. Right. Look, if you get rid of all the non-tariff trade barriers and you get tariffs to zero, the American worker and the Americans, our economy can build things and sell them to other countries and we can compete with anybody.

I think we can out-compete anybody, especially Europeans who are taking eight weeks of vacation a year. Absolutely. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be 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.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Here's Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We were going to have Charlie Shrem, host of The Charlie Shrem Show. He is an early Bitcoin entrepreneur, founder of the Bitcoin Foundation. He has an amazing story. Due to some circumstances, he wasn't able to join us this morning. So we're continuing on. We're going to bring you, for those who are not podcast subscribers, and goodness, why are you not a podcast subscriber if you're not already by now?

If you're listening to this, go on any podcast platform you like. Download the Breaking Battlegrounds podcast. Subscribe to it. Because you're missing the next segment we're going to do. And it is the single most popular segment we have. It is sort of humbling for Chuck and I, I think, that the most comments we get about this show are about Kylie's corner.

Everyone loves a little mystery. They do, and they love Kylie's Corner. And they love a theme song. They do love a theme song. So, Jeremy, hit it. ♪

Kylie's got a corner and she's gonna start spilling out all the true crime in the world we're living in. So come and take a spin listening.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. I have two stories for you today. I'm trying to decide, I was trying to decide that whole song, which one to start with, but I think I'll start with the murder one first. So this story, this one made me mad when I first read it because it was Michael Tanzi. He was just executed for the murder of Janet Acosta in Florida on Tuesday. So

He thinks, or him and his lawyer think he has rights after this is what they did to, after what he did to this woman. So on April 25th, 2000, Janet Acosta was a Miami Herald employee and she was on her lunch break reading a book called

And beloved. Yes. A beloved employee. Yeah. When Michael Tanzi approached her and asking her for a cigarette and then repeatedly started to punch her in the face and try to take over her car, he then put a razor blade to her neck and said he was going to slice her from ear to ear if she doesn't comply. So she moved over to the passenger seat. He abducted her, took her to a wooded area where, you know, he died.

attacked her, assaulted her, and then he drove her to another remote area where he duct taped her mouth, suffocated her, stole her money, and then left her there to die. Pretty quickly, her colleagues reported her missing when she didn't return home from the lunch break. And cops actually saw Michael grocery shopping and he was walking back to her car and they approached him and he was like, I know I did something really bad.

So he admitted to killing her, saying he didn't want to stop because he was having too much fun. And if he let her go, then he would get caught and people would know it was him. He then admitted to murdering another person in 1999. And then right before his death row, then he got sentenced to death row. But right before Tuesday, his lawyer came out and said that he's too morbidly obese and cannot eat.

sustained this type of injection because he will be in too much pain. How heavy was he? He's like 300 and something pounds. So my question is, how long has he been in prison? Since 2000. So why is the prison system letting him have that many calories daily? So actually there is a story behind that.

So it's a way of anesthetizing essentially the prison population. They tend to feed them very – especially the violent ones, the max security prisons. They feed them large amounts of heavy foods. To slow them down? Well, and it – then you have that like food nap. Slow down.

It literally is a way to sort of help anesthetize. It is a systematic, intentional thing. Well, his lawyer said he was too morbidly obese and the medicine would not accurately sedate him before injecting him so he would feel way, in all caps, too much pain. And I want to say that supposedly he did feel too much pain for three minutes because he was alive and his chest was still pounding where a guard actually shook his shoulders to see if he was still alive. But he did die.

But this is the DeSantis world in Florida. As he should. We don't care. No. Yes. I don't care. I don't care either. It's not like you just murdered this innocent person and then you think you're going to be in too much pain before you die? You're a double murderer. Yes. So, Sam, let me ask you a question about that. I don't feel bad for you. Because you see this a lot. And people hate watching criminal procedure shows with me because I'm always like, well, just kill him. Right? I mean, the show would be done in five minutes. I'm like, immediately someone's shot. And he chased like, well, just shoot him. Right? Right.

What would – in your dealings with the Phoenix Police Department and others, let's say a woman is in that situation and the guy is threatening to get in the car. What do they tell you to do? Because I've never heard the story they get in the car and it turns out OK. Your car is a weapon. That is the answer in that situation. Your car is a weapon. So if you're in the driver's seat, especially if your car is already running –

slam it into drive and hit the gas and run their butt over and then back up over them again. I mean, literally, that's the answer. But she was on a park bench. Right. No, no, no. She was in her car. She was reading a book. In her car. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So they just say, just use it as a weapon. Use it. If someone comes after you when you're in your car, your car is a 2,000 pound weapon. Just step on the gas because they're obviously going to have fear about themselves being harmed. Yes.

I'm telling you, I'm doing that work for whatever I have around me. I will be using if they're armed with a gun, you know, get low in the seat, that kind of thing. Swivel back and forth. Just run them over. And any police officer on this in this country would tell you in that situation, just run them over. So women out there.

Remember, your car is a weapon. Do not become a victim. Do it on your own terms. So cars are actually a much more reliable weapon than a firearm in that regard. Well, I remember reading a study during the whole PLM thing. Yeah. And there was a study. Now, as we know, most studies are full of crap a lot of times. But they said that in a shootout with pistols, only 18% of the shots actually hit the target. Right.

That's why we've talked in the past, Kylie, with women having a gun at home. I've said, have a shotgun. You're not going to miss a shotgun. Everybody wants a handgun? No, no. You want like a shotgun. Well, and you can actually get, especially for higher caliber handguns, you can get little shotgun shells for them that are very good home defense. Yeah. They're not really going to kill somebody, but, you know. Well, you want to knock them down. Yeah. Well, that took a morbid turn here. Okay. What do you have next? I like the revolver.

Since we're asking. But a revolver's the same, honey. It's a handgun, right? I know, but to me, it's the easiest handgun to use. Well, right. But if you just had a double-barrel shotgun, it's just boom, boom. Yeah, we got that, too. But that's like, you've got to use two hands for that. If you're just grabbing something real quick. I went out. Okay, I keep by my bed for home defense a bullpup. A what? Bullpup shotgun. What's that? 30-round semi-automatic shotgun. They're loaded alternately with birdshot and buckshot. Okay.

I've got a lot. I've got a lot of things. I'm put in every room of the house. So you've got things. So just so you know, if you're thinking about it, Kylie's like kill bill. Yeah. She just has a weapon everywhere. When I was in Boston last year, I had, there's this thing called go guard, not sponsored, but if you want to go get one, it's a finger knife. And I was walking, I was in the elevator and this girl goes, you know, those are illegal in Boston. And I was like,

the right to protect myself is illegal. Oh, for sure. And I'm like, yeah, I'm willing to take the risk. With Mayor Wu, everything's illegal. I'm willing to take that risk. So I'm walking around with my finger knife. How did Boston elect that bat? Oh, I love she got booed at the Red Sox game. That was great. Thank you, Red Sox fans. My brothers, my brothers and sisters, thank you.

Anyway, what's your next story? Okay, my next one is actually kind of really cool. So scientists did a new thing for the first time ever. They did de-extinction. So they brought back an animal that was extinct. So the dire wolf went extinct 2,000 years ago.

And they took a gray wolf cell, which is essentially 99.5% identical to the dire wolf. And they were able to edit and manipulate the DNA sequence to mimic a dire wolf. And then they came out with two of these wolf cubs that have the exact same DNA sequence. So they said that they look like them, they'll act like them, and they are them. See, here's my thing about this. If you're going to start bringing back extinct animals...

I feel like starting with ones that look at us and salivate is a poor idea. I will say the photo of it looks really scary. I mean, the little that when they were little, the little puppies and he's holding them. That's cute. OK, every canine puppy is cute.

But you're talking about something that gets to double the size of a gray wolf. Yeah. Yeah. Or a timber wolf. I mean, it's – By 2028, we'll have little baby woolly mammoths walking around supposedly. Well, the problem with – Again, they don't eat us. Kylie, I would really like to have a show with an ethics expert on this because I'm really concerned – like we're all using AI now. You use it great. My son uses it great. I don't know how to use it. Yes.

but there's great benefits to it, but there's also great danger in it. And it's the same thing with this cloning stuff. And I, my understanding, China way ahead, way ahead, way ahead of us. And I was listening to genetic engineering. I was listening to somebody at CNBC the other day says we have about three years or they completely just have such a, an advance on us that we can't catch up to it. So it,

It'd be interesting to do a show on that and just about these two areas and the ethics behind AI and this cloning. This cloning stuff concerns me.

It concerns me significantly. Look, there's a lot of reports now that China has been for 20 years engaged in a program of genetic modification to increase the intelligence of humans. That's a real threat to the rest of the world. I don't think humans being smarter is necessarily a bad thing, obviously. I think that could potentially be a good thing. But when it becomes a weapon of war, when it becomes capitalized and controlled by a

a frankly very dangerous government, then that's a problem. Well, it's okay to be smart, but being smart...

is absolutely useless unless you have common sense. The Ivy League schools prove that every day. Well, and a moral structure. Yeah. So we're missing – if we were going to hire somebody that had a moral structure, common sense versus someone with a super high intellect, I'm going to take the common sense and moral structure. Right. And so that's the problem with this. Before we close the show, our friend of the show, Ken LaCourte, had a great article, Why Are Liberal Women So Unhappy? And Kylie, you and I have talked about this before. Right.

Pew Research found that among white women aged 18 to 29, an astounding 56% of the liberals reported being diagnosed with a mental health condition, more than double the 27% rate among conservative women.

And it's not just young women. The same data shows that liberal women in their 30s and 40s also report significantly more mental health diagnosis than conservatives in the same age group. And if you go and follow social media and these rants by liberals, it is always a white woman. I mean, Jasmine Kroc is just dumb.

But the white liberal women, I mean, you're just like, are you going to have a heart attack when you're done filming? Those are the hardest people I think to have a conversation with because they can't fathom. No, you having an independent opinion, except they have an opinion, but they can't fathom you having an opinion.

Well, I think it's even worse than that is that they've been trained to think that anything outside of their belief set is not merely different but evil. Well, it's also where they get their news. So, for example, I have a friend who's in Hawaii, used to work for me years ago. She is a nurse out there and she posted something after the Columbia tariff thing Trump did. And she posted old news two days later about Columbia. And I said –

Yeah, that was literally ended two hours after it was announced. Columbia buckled. Yeah. And I said, well, where did you get your information? Well, it's TikTok, where I get all my information. Right. Folks, if you're going purely, and look, we use social media a lot, but if you're only getting your information from social media and not double checking it-

I would highly recommend you rethink that process. Here's what I would say. If you're consuming news at all, set up a routine where you go from I'm going to look at some traditional news sources. I'm going to look at some social media news sources. And then I'm going to go maybe do some video or I'm going to go to TV or something like that.

You really have to just set up a routine where you go across multiple platforms and sources to try to get your news. Well, and you got to go – and they take a lot of excerpts out when there's a lot of background to it. I do this a lot with conservative influencers because they'll take little snippets and I would like to say they're well-meaning. They're not well-meaning and you just got to go read the whole thing. Right. Right.

And we everybody should do that. That's how you're going to become an informed public. But Democrats are significantly worse at this than conservatives. I mean, they it's just I saw it on TikTok. I mean, I can't tell you how many liberals I've talked to. That is their basis for their study. I see this every day. And their their sourcing of news is so narrow.

Yeah. I mean, take TikTok and then like two, three, you know, MSNBC, CNN and the New York Times. 30 seconds left here. Sam and I sent something this morning about European Union is agreeing to the no tariffs deal with China on electric cars. And Sam and I were laughing. I was walking this morning and we said, which is amazing. First of all,

China is helping fund Russia and their war in Ukraine, which is supposedly a big deal to European Union, which is what I'm told. And then two, North Korea would not send troops to Ukraine unless they got a thumbs up for China. So once again, European Unions are the whores of the universe. Not only that, but...

Let me add in one last little bit on that with them. If I were Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, or BMW, I would be right today. The minute they make that deal, you relocate permanently to the United States 100% of your operation because you are done selling cars in Europe. I agree. I agree. This is Breaking Battlegrounds, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Have a great weekend, folks.

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. 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.vote domain from godaddy.com, you'll stand out and make your mark. Don't wait. Get yours today. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We are so fortunate to have as our guest today, Charlie Shrem. He is an early Bitcoin entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Bitcoin Foundation and partner of Druid Adventures and investor in Byte Federal, one of America's fastest growing Bitcoin ATM networks.

He also is the host of The Charlie Shrem Show and a filmmaker capturing behind the stories of crypto revolution. Charlie, welcome to the show.

Hey, it's good to be here. Thank you. So glad to have you on. You know, we've been trying to find a Sherpa actually on digital currency because we get asked about it a lot. So for our audience who's confused when they hear the terms Bitcoin or cryptocurrency and so forth, what is cryptocurrency and how does it work? If you can give us a dummy's guide to cryptocurrency, that'd be fantastic.

Absolutely. And I'd love to be helpful by kind of breaking it down into a couple of different categories. So from like 2010 to 2014, it was just Bitcoin. From 2014 onwards, it was crypto.

Bitcoin kind of started as this social experiment that if we have this money sitting in an app that people download and enough people want to use it, could it have any value? If people like myself start selling things on the Internet for this Bitcoin thing, maybe one day enough people will want to use it. Again, it had no value for years. A lot of the early Bitcoin guys didn't even want to buy or sell it.

And eventually there was enough demand of people wanting to hold this quirky Bitcoin Internet experiment that over years value started to grow. And it just started as something you just keep your computer running 24 hours a day. And you're participating in this kind of like centralized supercomputer out of that.

cryptocurrency evolved which kind of used the technology that bitcoin used called the blockchain and eventually people started saying oh i can copy bitcoin and do all these cool different coins but do different things with them maybe focus on my guitar currency or my cryptocurrency for furniture or dentist or all these weird wacky things a lot of experimentation weird stuff and then nowadays we see like crypto tokens for debt bankruptcies and secondary

and all sorts of like bonds related, tokenized, different cool stuff that the financial network, it's almost like people are calling it Web3. And the Web3 is like taking all the old technology and old plumbing that was and rebuilding it on these new like blockchain rails that is today. So...

You know, our audience may know this. So there's the gold standard, which is a monetary system where a country's currency is tied to a specific weight or quality of gold, right, or quantity of gold. What is backing Bitcoin or digital currency? I mean, what gives it value?

I was a young, naive crypto guy when I first got into this, and I didn't really understand what gave gold value. I was only in my young 20s. The only thing I understood was that people said it had value for many, many thousands of years. Now that I'm almost reaching my 40s, I understand that gold actually has a value, a change of opinion as life goes on.

But the same thing you could could be said about people who who were born after 2009. They've only seen an existence of Bitcoin that is always existence, has always existed and always has had value that is constantly increasing. So to say to a young millennial, why should Bitcoin exist or why does it have value? They'd be like looking at you like it's always existed in my life. It has always had value, just like gold. OK, yeah.

One thing you hear people question about cryptocurrency or Bitcoin is you can't spend it in most places. What's going to have to happen to make that change? Because so many people bought Bitcoin so quick and it's kind of grown faster than we ever expected it. We kind of joke that maybe Bitcoin will reach like thousands of dollars in like 50 years from now. And here we are, we're like almost at $100,000 again and so many people want to own it.

And because of that, the blockchain networks kind of get congested. And so Bitcoin over time went from something that you buy a cup of coffee with to almost becoming a thing that you spend a large sum of money with or you collateralize some debt with. And so although it costs now, it used to be free. Although it costs like 30 cents to 60 cents to a dollar sometimes to send Bitcoin, it's still being used from person to person. You can go anywhere in the world today

And at any point in time, yeah, you can say I'll give you dollars. But if you say I'll give you a Bitcoin, I'd be hard to press if you could find anywhere in the world that someone wouldn't take that Bitcoin today. And to me, that's success because.

15 years ago, I couldn't even get my grandma to take Bitcoin. Now I can be in sub-Saharan Africa. I could be in Mongolia. I can be in the Middle East talking to a Bedouin and trying to settle a debt across the Silk Road, getting caravans of goods across camels in the Arabian Desert. I can do that with Bitcoin.

I mean, like, come on. That's crazy. That's what gives it its value right there. I mean, who's the football player? It's real money. Yeah, who's the football player in the Philadelphia Eagles that took some, you know, payment from Bitcoin and it's like tripled or quadrupled? I mean, it's made amazing money. I had a friend who's quite wealthy, and the question he wanted me to ask you is, I would like to know when paper money will go the way of landline telephones.

I don't know. It's weird because people really like the feel and use of money. Yes. Physical paper. It's almost like people have hardened in their conviction over the last 10 years. So I don't know. Yeah, that's interesting. People love money. Yeah, they do. They do. I mean, there is something about having cash in your wallet or your money clip. I mean, I get it. I do it. I always have cash. I always tell all my staff, you should have cash on you, right? Yeah.

So we have a new Trump administration. Are they going to be good for Bitcoin, the cryptocurrencies? So far, it's been great. There have been really positive signs through the pardons, through...

Various in the specifically in the Securities and Exchange Commission, we've had we've had troubles how Bitcoin has been classified as as a liability and now it's being classified as an asset. That small stroke of the pen right there was something we've been fighting for for years. Now, Bitcoin companies can kind of exist in the regular financial industry.

the positive signs about what stablecoins can be and how Bitcoin ATM companies and just different crypto token issuers can do things. There's consumer protections.

But there's also a fundamental shift saying now the administration is going to go after the bad actors, the people that are scamming people that are using crypto. And that's amazing that there's a lot of bad people that are using crypto, just like they use cash for bad things. Let's go after those guys instead of over the last 10 years, kind of like enforcement through crypto.

arresting people, arrest the CEO of the exchange, arrest me, arrest all these people over time. And just almost like as a shot across the bow to kind of shift which way we're going in the wind. But there's never been like a direction that we can follow. And that right there is a win for the history books so far we have.

What would be the Trump administration's goal, do you feel, in the community which you're involved with? What is your goal that we will find Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in 10 years from now? What's a long-term goal? This administration, I feel like, really wants to bring back the crypto jobs that were lost. There's like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jobs that

People get paid. They live on a place. They live in a place in America. They spend they live they buy a house. They function in the economy pay taxes and

But because all their work is remote and doesn't require negative implications for the environment, they're not a gas station that has an underground tank. It's positive for the community. Trump wants those jobs back. He wants the mining jobs back. He wants the remote jobs back. He wants all these like so many jobs that don't cost America money for the people to be here. But I mean, you go to Europe. Europe is like the center of the crypto world right now. It's like a Mecca. Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah, as soon as you get there, you go to any airport, you land in the Swiss airport, there is banner ads for Bitcoin. They've been regulated for 10 years. They've been Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs since 2016, 2017. They're five or six years. They have MICA, which is a positive. They came out with a regulation called MICA. I forget when it was. It was right before COVID, right around COVID time. And it's just a generalized EU framework on cryptocurrencies.

That same framework is something that American crypto companies have wanted from the Biden administration forever. And why did the Biden administration not implement this? What were they fearful of?

I don't know. I'm not a political guy. I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. But all I know is there was just a shift change, complete shift change. Maybe they made a mistake. I don't know why they made crypto their enemy when every person is involved in crypto in some way or another. Are we too far behind Europe on this issue?

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. We're Americans. We don't like to be behind. In my view, there's enough to go around. It's not like we have to bring them back. I feel like we can have more here. It's always been the pie can grow. But you ask a great question. You ask a great question. It may take a while to get back for crypto and

the rest of the world in America. But we'll get there. We're with Charlie Shrim. He's an early Bitcoin entrepreneur. He's also the host of The Charlie Shrim Show. And he's also a filmmaker capturing behind-the-scenes stories on crypto revolution. What are meme coins? And how does one make money on them? The only way to make money on meme coins is to be awake at like 3 o'clock in the morning. Go to this website called Dextools.io and wait for the newest one to launch. And if you can like...

Pick 20, the first 20, and in the right timing, one or two of them will hit. And if you know when to sell, you know when to sell. But do not buy the coin your Uber driver tells you. Do not buy the coin your friend tells you. Do not buy the coin anyone you know. And don't tell anyone to buy any coins because they're going to lose money and they're going to blame you. I've been dealing with this my whole life.

So, you know, we've had, based on the tariff wars, we've had some market fluctuations which have frightened a lot of people. Other people are holding steady. And, you know, usually in things like that, investors go to something like gold as a hedge against market fluctuations. Do you have a theory why that's not been the case for crypto as a market hedge? It's interesting to watch. Gold really does have...

such a deep presence in the psyche of all of us. It's old school. It's old school, right? And you really can use it everywhere. And there is utility to it and is a precious metal that can't pretty much be melted. And it's almost detectable. And there's all these like things, jewelry's made, you know, there's all the other things about it. So, I mean, gold is really amazing. There's no reason there can't be like a digital gold. You know, gold Bitcoiners, we found our earliest gold

like blessings from the gold community. The gold conferences were the only ones that would let us, you know, show our wares back in the old days. So it's like, I think only something happened with like the Peter Schiff type folks that were like, oh no, gold is the best Bitcoin or not. But I don't know one that, because like he's like neighbors with the biggest OG Bitcoiner and they play golf every single day. So I think it's just a,

Just something on crypto Twitter. Yeah, interesting. I got this question from a former CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. And he wrote, are you worried that quantum computing poses a long-term threat to Bitcoin security by potentially breaking its cryptographic algorithms? And he's the only one that's going to understand this question because he asked it, but go ahead.

What a great question. It is definitely something that I've been spending almost all my time on over the last seven months. It's really exciting field of study. There's not going to be like a Q day type event where like we wake up and everything is cracked, but it's definitely like a frog in boiling water type of situation.

where slowly, slowly we're going to get closer to it and people need to work on post-quantum resistant algorithms. There's already standards on algorithms that quantum cannot break or can break. It takes too long for them to break. And then eventually things like Bitcoin and crypto can implement those. And really the smartest people in the world are in this. And there's a lot of money in that field too right now. So it's really exciting.

What do you feel, and final question here, what is the best book or website to go to and learn exactly more what cryptocurrency is? Again, it confuses so many people. What do you think are the best places for them to go and just understand more of the basics about it?

There are a couple of good novels that were written about the early days of Bitcoin and also a couple of good documentaries. I tell people to go watch those and it'll kind of like spark your interest and really explain a lot of things about the who, what, where and why. Yes. And once you know that, you know everything else. There's nothing that needs to be explained to you anymore. You just get it. So I would say that go watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime. You have The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin. Okay.

You have Banking on Bitcoin, which is another one. Those two are great. From books, there's a book written by Ben Mesrick called Bitcoin Billionaires. Yes. It's just a fun read. People will read it in a couple of days. It's what you're used to reading. It's like pop culture-y. Yeah. But it works. It gets the message across. He's a really phenomenal author. And then an older book.

That was written in 2015 called Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper. I really like that one. And then another, yeah, there's a third one.

that I like by Brian Patrick Eha, a Bitcoin book. So, I mean, those three have plenty. Two documentaries, three books. Thank you. By the way, if you could post it and tag us on your ex-account, that'd be great. We do have one final question from Kylie Campbell, who's our producer and also runs Kylie's Corner. She has a conspiracy question. Go ahead. I do. So a couple weeks ago, I have a Kylie's Corner, and it's where I talk about mysteries and whatnot. And there was a man who showed up...

And no one could trace back who he was. This was like in 2008, I believe, when Bitcoin was launching. So people have a theory that it was Satoshi Nakamoto. So I want to know who you think he is and if you're allowed to. Who's this person? Satoshi? Yeah, like I want to know that.

Is Satoshi Nakamoto the one who founded Bitcoin? Yeah, someone came to your show and said... No, no, no, no, no, no. She's just reading a story. No, we wish... Yeah, sorry. No, it was a story. There was a guy in Ireland who appeared on a beach and...

it was seen three days prior, he was destroying his identity and everything he had. And so they were never able to trace him back to who he was. So there's just theories on the internet of who he was. And I saw one of someone was like, Oh, you know, maybe it's Satoshi. And I was, I don't believe it was, it doesn't, the two don't match up. But then I started going down the Satoshi rabbit hole. And now I, I draw my, I draw my opinions because I had a lot of early conversations with like the Satoshi group, if you will, as I kind of call it. And, uh,

And just from the way I think that at first, I think it was a couple of people. I don't think it was just one person. And there's really one black and white way to prove that you're Satoshi. And then that part. So I think that key was destroyed. But I also think that there's a little bit a lot of people going around saying that it's a little bit interesting that Julian Assange around the same time that Satoshi never

He never conversed anything political or spontaneous or emotional ever, like in the conversation privately or publicly. They're all published, like people have come out and published. But in those conversations, the only ever time he did was the last thing he ever did before he disappeared was when someone wanted to ask WikiLeaks to accept Bitcoin.

And Satoshi very immediately came out and said, do not take the hornet's nest. And then very quickly after that disappeared. So I think there is a connection between the WikiLeaks and Bitcoin relationship there. Interesting. Thank you. Well, Charlie, go down that hole. Yeah. Oh, trust me. Oh, trust me. She will. We'll share it with you, too. Charlie, thank you so much for joining us today. You have been fantastic. I appreciate it and hope you'll join us again sometime in the future.

Please. Yes. You're wonderful. Have a great weekend. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, folks. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. You can follow us on Breaking Battlegrounds dot vote or wherever you get your podcast. And of course, on various Salem stations across the country. On behalf of Jeremy, Kylie, Sam Stone, they had to leave for this interview because he's negotiating with union employees today and myself. Have a fantastic weekend. We'll talk to you next week.