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cover of episode Beyond the Verdict: Exploring the Trump Trial Impact

Beyond the Verdict: Exploring the Trump Trial Impact

2024/5/31
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Sam Stone: 介绍了俄亥俄州众议员Josh Williams提出的旨在加强对暴力犯罪中枪支滥用的惩罚,同时保护守法枪支持有者的权利的法案。 Josh Williams: 详细阐述了他提出的俄亥俄州众议院法案522号,该法案旨在通过增加对重复犯罪者的惩罚,而非所有枪支拥有者,来遏制枪支暴力。他解释了该法案的起草过程,以及如何争取到执法部门和部分持枪权利倡导者的支持。他强调了该法案的平衡性,既能降低再犯率,又能为那些已改过自新的人恢复其拥枪权。他还谈到了该法案的两党支持情况,以及在立法过程中遇到的挑战和机遇。 Seth Leibsohn: 就俄亥俄州的枪支立法与Josh Williams进行了讨论,并就法案的平衡性、对守法公民的影响以及两党合作的可能性提出了问题。 Josh Williams: 详细解释了法案的具体内容,包括如何针对重复犯罪者,如何平衡公共安全和个人权利,以及如何争取到执法部门和持枪权利倡导者的支持。他分享了他作为刑事辩护律师的经验,以及这些经验如何影响了他的立法工作。他还讨论了俄亥俄州议会关于限制外国公民向竞选活动和公投捐款的立法。

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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren is out of the studio today, so joining us, very graciously granting his time this morning, is my good friend Seth Leibson. He is the afternoon show on 960 AM The Patriot here in Phoenix. And he is one of the smartest people on radio. I always, he's giving me this look. He doesn't love that, but it's true, folks.

Another very smart guy. We're leading off with an interview of somebody whose work I kind of came upon in the course of my professional career going around the country supporting law and order legislation in various states. We were doing some work in Ohio and stumbled across a bill sponsored by our first guest up today, Ohio State Representative Josh Williams. Josh Williams is –

done some amazing things here with legislation that toughens penalties for firearm misuse and violent crimes and aims to enhance community safety and doesn't impact law-abiding gun owners. So with all this debate about the Second Amendment that's been out there for so many years, there really has not been a lot of legislation that very, very carefully targets violent repeat felony gun crime offenders and

without affecting law-abiding Second Amendment owners. I really believe this is one of the best pieces of legislation I have seen in many, many years of doing this work. So, Representative Williams, thank you so much for taking your time today and joining us. Welcome to the program.

Thank you, Sam, for having me on today. I appreciate it. Tell us a little bit about this legislation you've sponsored, how it came about, how it's being supported, because it's a pretty remarkable story and it has real potential to create a positive impact. So let's give the listeners kind of a quick overview. Sure. So we introduced House Bill 522 in this year.

It took about a year to draft this legislation. I'm a practicing criminal defense attorney by trade. I also teach at Adrian College up in Michigan. I teach constitutional law, criminal law, and criminal procedure. So there's been prior attempts at gun legislation here in the state of Ohio to curb gun violence, but when I took office, I knew that I had to take a balanced approach and specifically target the repeat offenders, not only those that are committing violent acts, uh,

with the use of a gun, but those that have prior disqualifications because they have a violent felony on their record and they keep getting caught with guns illegally possessed in our communities.

So we saw an opportunity to increase penalties in those areas because studies showed us that that can cut down on the risk of recidivism, reoffending. And at the same time, we could use that as a tool to help other individuals who may have had one flip up in their lifetime. And now they're being told by the courts they can never own a gun again. We're making it easier for those people now that they have been rehabilitated and have not been, you know, reoffending.

to get their records sealed and their Second Amendment rights restored so they can protect themselves and their families from these violent criminals that are plaguing our community. So that was the approach that we took, and we were able to get the Ohio Attorney General to be supportive of the legislation, several groups, including law enforcement, to be supportive of the legislation. And I look forward to it hopefully being signed into law here in Ohio.

So you're a criminal defense attorney. You've done a lot of pro bono work defending people who may be, you know, charged under this law in the future. One of the things that I think doesn't get talked about enough is that a lot of violent crime kind of tends to be committed by a very small percentage of society who are serial repeat offenders. How did your work as a defense attorney inform your construction of this bill?

Well, I saw that I was representing individuals where I would be in the courtroom while other individuals are being sentenced, and it was always the same story. They would have prior convictions for similar offenses where the statutory maximum is only a few years in prison. Studies show us that a sentence over 60 months, over five years, can cut recidivism rates by 17 to 20%.

But a lot of these people, I'm watching them be sentenced to one year, one and a half years. I had a client myself who did a drive-by shooting. He admitted to it. He did it. And in Lucas County, he was only sentenced to a year and a half, even though he fired onto a porch for five teenagers were present.

Luckily, he didn't hit anybody, and it's the unofficial policy here that if you don't hit anybody during a drive-by shooting, you get one year. So this kid only has a year and a half, and I'm sitting there standing next to this guy like, man, I would hate if that was my kid on the porch being shot at. And then I would also see people that were convicted of manslaughter and felonious assaults with a weapon get out, and within six months they're being caught in illegal possession of a gun.

And in the state of Ohio, the maximum sentence they can get is three years. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, this is absurd. This person has already committed a violent felony in our community with a gun. You're catching him with a gun again before you can commit a new violent felony. And you're only going to put him behind bars for three years. Under my bill, that that person will face a potential 15 year sentence.

Getting us closer to the way that we approach illegal gun crimes, illegal possession and violent gun crimes on the federal level. Which makes a ton of sense. Representative Williams, when you're putting this together, because I think Republicans are very hesitant, Seth, to to to touch any sort of gun crime legislation. They're afraid to cross the Second Amendment lobby again.

There are there. That's a really tough bridge to cross for a lot of legislators. So, Representative Williams, how did you move through that? Because there doesn't seem to be the opposition to that to to with those groups to your bill.

That's correct. Actually, it's the opposite. So we have two major Second Amendment lobbying groups here in the state of Ohio. You have Buckeye Firearm and you have Ohio Gun Owners. And Buckeye Firearm is actually a proponent of the bill, supportive of the bill, and would testify in support of it in committee. O

Ogo, the Ohio gun owners are being neutral on the bill. And what happened is that's why it took a year to draft this because I wasn't going to rush it to the table. Instead, we sat down and we had about a dozen IP meetings going through every single line of what we're trying to accomplish. You know, taking the name firearm out of the title of the bill, making sure the specification that we're creating, it's a three to five year spec, which means mandatory time for any,

for individuals that have a prior violent felony on their record, and they are caught in the commission of a new felony while using a gun, not just possessing it, but using it, brandishing it, threatening to use it, discharging it.

If that happens, you are going to get the maximum penalty for the underlying felony and up to five years on top of that. So when we started to take that direction towards people using guns in the commission of a crime, that's when Second Amendment advocates said, I have no problem with you increasing penalties there because we're targeting actual criminals.

We're not targeting the possession of the crime or the possession of a gun by an innocent person or the ownership of a gun by an innocent person. We're targeting those that are actually committing crimes in our communities and saying, you have this, you know, you've demonstrated to us that you can't be trusted out here in society. You continuously keep reoffending. And before you murder one of our kids, our wives, our mothers, our sisters,

Before you murder someone in our community, we're going to put you behind bars for 10 plus years so you can think about it when you get out whether or not you want to go back to this life of crime. I love that. With this, now this legislation is actually drawn bipartisan support, correct? What is your timeline potentially for getting this into committee and getting it passed and all that sort of thing?

Yeah, it does have bipartisan support. Only one, I think one Democrat signed on to it currently. Other ones have voiced support but wouldn't sign on to it until they saw the committee process go through. Even the minority leader in Ohio said that this is a good piece of legislation, but it's not the only one that needs to move forward. Right now it's in committee. We're hoping to fast track it through committee.

There's really no opponents. The only one that said their opponents right now is our prosecutors association. And they're only opponents of a portion of the bill, that portion that allows for the ceiling of records of criminal histories. They don't, they, they don't like any ceiling of records in Ohio. So they, they oppose that portion of it. But obviously,

But other than that, we have not found one group that is going to come in opposition to this. I'm hoping to get it out of House committee and onto the floor before we break for summer break. It will be mid-late June. And then when we come back in the fall, I'm hoping to get it out of the House, in the Senate, and pass. And we've worked with Senate members, Senate leadership in drafting this over the year.

So we know that we gave them what they wanted. This is a good start moving forward, and this is a narrowly tailored bill that can really make an impact on gun violence and be preventative. We don't need to wait until violent crimes are being committed. Under our bill, if you have an underlying violent felony and you are caught in illegal possession of a gun twice, you face potentially a decade behind bars because you've demonstrated that you're a repeat offender.

It's certainly a strong enhancement, a strong deterrent. And we're going to have the link to that bill and to the work you're doing there up on all of our Breaking Battlegrounds social medias. But before we go, we have just a bit over two minutes left. I want to touch on something else that the Ohio legislature had done recently or is working on, which is some change to who can donate and how to various campaigns. Can you tell us real quick about that also? Sure.

Yeah, so yesterday in a special session, the Ohio House voted to make it illegal for foreign nationals, even if they are green card holders, from donating not only to campaigns but to issue ballot initiatives that we've seen plague us here in Ohio. Everything from issue one, which was enshrining abortion rights in our Constitution up to the moment of birth.

Issue two, they're also pushing for redistricting and getting rid of qualified immunity, attacking our law enforcement officers, trying to force minimum wages, $20 minimum wages down our throats. And we're seeing Swiss billionaires donate $15, $20 million into Ohio to push these leftist agendas. So Ohio House spoke yesterday. The Senate spoke today.

saying that we will not allow these foreign dollars to influence Ohio voters moving forward. That's the strongest approach that any state has taken so far. That's stronger than the federal government did when it comes to donating the campaigns and issue ballot initiatives. I think Ohio is going to set its mark, letting people know that these foreign nationals should not have a role in our elections.

Fantastic. We have just one minute left, Josh. Tell folks how they follow you and your work and how they can support your efforts going forward, because I got to tell you, folks out there, we need more representatives like this in Ohio and in every state.

I appreciate that, Sam. So you can go to my website, joshwilliams4ohio.com, all letters. On social media, I use Twitter a lot. That's Josh Williams OH. And then on Facebook, it's Josh Williams for Ohio. You guys can send me private messages. I respond pretty promptly in regards to issues, and I'm pretty active on social media and when you send emails to me.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Josh Williams, state representative from Ohio doing amazing work. We really appreciate having you on the program. Stay tuned, folks. We're coming back with Dan McLaughlin and Con Carroll talking Trump tropics.

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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.

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My good friend Seth Leibson sitting in for Chuck Warren today. And on the line, our next guest, obviously someone who is a friend of the program. We wanted to bring him on because he's been following very closely everything that's been going on with the Trump trial. Welcome to Dan McLaughlin, senior writer for National Review Online and a fellow at the National Review Institute. You can follow him on X at Baseball Crank. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back to the program.

Let's lead off with what are the ramifications of this trial and this conviction? And then I want to get into some specific questions about what the response from Republicans and generally from the public should be to this. But was this a legitimate conviction in any way? Should this case be going forward? What are you seeing now? Well, first of all, this case should never have gone to trial.

I think it should have been thrown out on the indictment, excuse me, right off the bat. There are simply essential elements of this case missing. I mean, you have to separate a little because there are both ways in which this case was sort of abusive within the law, you know, a norm-breaking prosecution, but it's also a law-breaking prosecution.

I mean, the biggest problem to me is that this is a completely victimless crime, right? The crime is supposed to involve intent to defraud. New York law is quite clear over the years that that means basically that false business records are supposed to be criminalized if they're created for the purpose of deceiving somebody else who sees them. And they're

None of these records were ever seen by anybody else. They were never shown to anybody else. They were never put in a place where they were expected to be reviewed by anybody else except for Trump, Michael Cohen, and people who worked for Trump. So in terms of – because I still have trouble with this. What is the underlying crime that they're accusing him of here, or what is the –

I guess, ultimately, what is the harm to society from the actions they claim he undertook? Right. I mean, literally, he was accused and convicted of lying to his own checkbook. I mean, the false business record statute in its felony version involves three elements.

elements, right? One is you made false business records and they claimed that Trump's checks that he wrote to Michael Cohen and the invoices Cohen sent to Trump and the recording of those on Trump's books, each instance of those involved a false business record because they misrepresented

as a retainer to Cohen, what was really money being passed through to pay off Stormy Daniels for a nondisclosure agreement, which was entirely legal. Um,

The second element is intent to defraud, which I mentioned just doesn't exist here. And essentially what the judge concluded was that Trump intended to defraud the voters in the 2016 election. And this is essentially the case that they made to the jury, was that Trump deceived the voters in the 2016 election by concealing from them the whole payoff of Stormy Daniels. The problem with that

both as a matter of law and common sense, is that none of these records were created until 2017. So there's no possible way in which any of these records could have been used to defraud the voters, even if that's some sort of crime, which it really isn't. And then the third element of the crime, the part that takes it from a misdemeanor to a felony, is that it has to be concealment-

of another, excuse me, that the fraud has to conceal another crime. And they kind of played a mix and match thing where they said, well, maybe he was concealing a tax law violation or maybe it's a state or federal election law violation. But their main theory was

which they finally settled on in their closing arguments, you would think that, you know, an indictment is supposed to tell you what the crime is, not wait until the closing arguments was that Trump violated the federal campaign finance laws because he should have reported the payment to Daniels as a campaign expense. And of course, had he had to do that, he would have been able to use a donor money to pay her off, which he didn't. He used his own money. Um,

This is an upside down and backwards view of the campaign finance laws. It's simply wrong on the law, or at least it certainly has never been established in any court or any FEC proceeding. So they've got the law wrong in those. And honestly, that only is the tip of the iceberg of kind of the legal things they did wrong in this case.

We're talking to Dan McLaughlin, National Review. Dan, do we even know or was it ever proven that Donald Trump even knew what was taking place in the entries of these records? Do we even have the knowledge, the standard knowledge requirement of the defendant here that has been proven to the jury or to the public?

Well, there are two elements of the case that there was very strong evidence on. One is that Trump actually did have the affair with Stormy Daniels, and the other is that he paid to cover it up and knew he was paying to cover it up and knew, in fact, that the money was going – how the money was being routed through Cohen and bundled into these other payments that were made to Cohen.

It was really only now Trump signed the check. You know how much thinking he was giving it to what exactly the check said when he was already president, probably pretty minimal. But ultimately, it came down to Michael Cohen's good word to say, look, Trump knew exactly, you know, how we plan to record these things in the books. But that's the only way we know that he knew is through Michael Cohen, right? Yeah.

Yeah, and there's really, I mean, as flimsy as that is, there's far less evidence that Trump actually believed he was concealing a violation of the federal campaign finance laws. I mean, let's be honest here. How much do you think Donald Trump knows about the intricacies of the federal campaign finance laws? I don't even know how I pay Sam. I would assume not at all. Yeah.

And this is this is apparently this is the first time in history that a state prosecutor has used a violation of federal campaign finance law as the basis for a prosecution. We have just two minutes left. But on that point, one of the key contentions, and I assume this will be part of the appeal that Trump's lawyers have already announced they're going to file, is that their expert on federal campaign finance law was not allowed to testify. Right.

Yeah, Brad Smith is a former FEC commissioner and an expert in campaign finance law. And that's relevant not only to whether the prosecution had the law wrong, but to whether a reasonable person in Trump's position would even know that the prosecution's theory of federal campaign finance law was, in fact, the law.

What did you see? We have a minute left here and then we're going to be coming back with more from Dan McLaughlin of National Review in the next segment here. But what did you see with the judge in this case? Because the rulings were pretty consistently, I mean, from the outside appear to be very consistently biased against even giving Trump the ability to defend himself. Yeah, I mean, he I mean, he didn't rule.

against Trump on absolutely everything, but he ruled against Trump on so many things of such great importance that he really did deprive Trump of a fair trial of notice, adequate notice of the charges against him. He sustained charges he shouldn't have. I mean, the fact that he wouldn't let, you know, the fact that he let in, for example, a guilty pleas by Cohen, um,

And David Pecker, which was at non-prosecution agreement, Pecker of the National Enquirer, you know, was severely prejudicial. I think the whole National Enquirer story shouldn't have been in evidence at all. Fantastic. We're going to be coming back with more from Dan McLaughlin of National Review online in just a moment. Follow him at best at Baseball Crank on X. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back.

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I'm Seth Leipsom, delighted to be here with Sam Stone. We're talking to Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute. Dan, what's your sense of the state of play within the conservative movement, the Republican Party, and your own keen sense of how this should be played? Should Republicans take back the executive office as far as retribution goes, as far as the argument that, OK, the

The Democrats broke it. We now understand the new rules. We will play by these new rules or whether we should try and maintain some form of normalcy that the Dems keep saying we're against. Yeah, I mean, right now people are just furious and rightly so. Look, I think that the Democrats have broken through some key norms here. And I think some of those norms once broken can't be repaired. So in the sense of, you know, should Democrats

the executive branch take a very hard look at what charges could be brought against Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats. You know, that may be inevitable and it may be what the Democrats need to learn their lesson. But I really do think that the better way to do this is for Republicans to stand up and say, you know what, it's time that we cleaned up the books of federal laws and

And state laws as well. And stop having quite so many of these sort of vague, open-ended, multi-part, hybrid, compound criminal statutes that can very easily be abused as weapons. Because at the end of the day, you know, retribution...

is only going to lead to more retribution. And nobody really wants to be in a position where, you know, the people making the decisions about who to charge today end up in the dock tomorrow. I think that's a fantastic point about clarifying, simplifying federal and state law. I hadn't heard anyone else bring that up. But I think that's an incredibly relevant point that we should probably be discussing, is taking away some of the

The interpretive ability of the law to be used against political opponents in terms of the response from the Trump Trump legal team. What is their next steps and what is the timeline for that.

Well, the judge is sentencing for July, July 11th. I believe it's a couple days before the convention. It's going to take time for them to get an appeal up to the – where they have to go from here is to the appellate division, which is the intermediate appeals court in Manhattan. And then from there, they would have to appeal to the Court of Appeals, which is the highest court of New York State. New York has this upside-down system where the top court is called the Court of Appeals and the bottom court is called the Supreme Court.

And only from there could Trump possibly try to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or file a habeas corpus petition, you know, claiming some violation of his rights in federal court.

And all of that's going to take months. So I don't think that there's really going to be much in the way of, you know, a reasonable chance to get an appeal heard on this thing until after the election. Now, if on it's apparently right before the convention, when the sentencing comes up.

If they sentence him to jail, I mean, if they say this is I think the maximum is four years of jail time. Does he go to jail that day? Are they going to take him and book him into prison on that day?

Yeah, I mean, I don't think he would go to jail on that day necessarily immediately. But yeah, I mean, he could easily be sent to jail fairly quickly if the judge is really bent on doing that. Now, you know, potentially his lawyers could appeal and say, look, you know, he should be free on bail while his appeal is pending. But that's kind of a hard argument to make. Yeah.

So, you know, there I mean, there is definitely a significant chance that this could end up with him in prison during the campaign. Dan, how likely do you think a jail sentence would be issued or directed with a first time offender in a nonviolent crime?

With a normal defendant in front of a normal judge, probably very little chance of significant jail time, at least. But with this judge and this defendant and this climate, you know, I hate to say never, because Judge Marchand has really, really looked like he has it in for Trump.

I think we're going to let that be the final word. Dan McLaughlin, always appreciate having you on the program. Folks, you can follow him on X at Baseball Crank and obviously at National Review. He's got some great work up. One of his recent pieces, highly recommend yet another violation of Trump's constitutional rights in the Brad case. He's been following all this work very closely, and we always appreciate him coming on the program and joining us. So thank you so much, Dan, once again.

Really appreciate your contributions. Thanks for having me. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back with more. Up next is Con Carroll. He is going to be joining us talking more about the trial and everything that's going to come from that. Folks, stay tuned.

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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.

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Seth Leipson here with Sam Stone. Delighted to be here and delighted to welcome back to the show Con Carroll. He is, among other things, the commentary editor for the Washington Examiner, great outlet for

And, Con, you may have had the most widely recirculated or widely circulated twix or tweet yesterday. If I understand, if I remember it right, I was quoting it on my show. You said you'd never voted for Donald Trump in a primary. You'd never voted for him in a general. But you would now crawl over broken glass to.

do so. You want to just expand on that for a moment or two? Yeah. I mean, you know, when Trump first came along, I was communications director for Senator Mike Lee. At the time, Senator Lee was not a big Trump fan. He has since changed, but, you know, he led the fight against Trump at that first convention. So, you know, I voted for Rubio in 2016 in the primaries here in Virginia. And then I voted for the Libertarian in the general election.

And then as he got into the Trump presidency, you know, there were some things that I thought he did that were good, but there were others that I thought were bad. I mean, I think the borders, you know, just one example, I think there's a lot of good things he did, like remain in Mexico. But there's other things he did, like the separation policy that were bad. So overall, I guess it was good, but it was still just not something I felt comfortable endorsing. And I just don't personally like the guy.

Let's get that right out there. And I still don't. And actually, I really appreciate it when people can just admit that with Trump. I mean, because I really kind of just don't like him on a personal level either. I'm more supportive of his policies, I think, than you are in general. But let's just be honest about that right up front. We'll just throw that out there. I just never liked him. It's just part of it. And I still don't. And I still don't.

But, you know, and then we head into 2020 and as bad as, you know, COVID and everything was, you know, I think, you know, Biden's done a lot worse with the shutdowns and everything else. But at the time, I did not think he was doing a great job handling it. And I just did not feel compelled again to vote for the man. So I again registered my dissent by voting for the libertarian candidate. Yeah.

And then in the primaries, I thought DeSantis was the better candidate. Most Republican primary voters felt the other way. I again had the opportunity in the Virginia primary election to vote for Trump, and I again declined. I voted for DeSantis, even though he had already dropped out by that point. But I not a big fan of Nikki Haley either, and DeSantis' name was still on the ballot, even though he had dropped out, so I pulled a lever for DeSantis.

And so that was it. I had four opportunities to vote for Trump, and I never felt compelled in any way whatsoever to do so. But then just watching this trial play out and –

You know, it was just the obvious unfairness of it all. The way I mean, there's no crime here. There's no crime here. You know, the fact that the judge didn't allow the federal election experts to testify that there was no federal election crime here just shows that there's no there's

There's no false bookkeeping because what else was he supposed to have described these payments as, right? If he had chosen campaign donations, then that would have been wrong. That's not allowed. So there's no crime, and yet here he is being convicted for crimes that could send him to jail for over 100 years. And it's just so nakedly partisan and political, and it was just an emotional response, an honest emotional response.

And I stick by it. I'm going to vote for the man. It really is more a vote against Biden. But I feel the way they have persecuted him

Trump and use lawfare to get him or try to get him discredited is a threat to democracy. Con, with your tweet that went around the world, Guy Benson said he was getting a lot of emails saying much from people saying much the same as you were saying. What's your sense? Let's just go to the horse's mouth, so to speak, sir. Are you getting a lot of feedback from people who were similarly situated as you were that are also coming to the determination that there's no choice but to vote for Donald Trump?

Yeah, I mean, that's all anecdotal, you know, but, you know, I've had lots of people sending me direct messages and text friends that, you know, I've been contacted for a long time ago saying, you know, oh, I feel the same way or, oh, you know, I have friends that are texting the same way and that's all anecdotal. But I think the

The real, I think it is data. It's looked at the fact that the, you know, Trump website, the WinRed website crashed right afterwards. That shows that people really were trying to get online and donate to Trump. And then Trump ended up having a record $38 million day. I mean, it's spilling over. The NRSC reported a record day. NRSC reported a record day. So people are obviously fired up.

to take on the Democrats over this. And, you know, I think when you look at an election where the majority of the country doesn't like their choices, you know, I don't think on that I'm in the minority. I think when you look at, like, polls, it's something like 66 to 70 percent are just like, I don't like either of these people.

I think that points to an election where whichever side gets fired up the most is the one that's going to win. And I think that this Brad convention really is firing up people to the center of the right. And not just people to the center of the right. I think anyone who is frustrated by the system today and feel that it is rigged against them and is frustrated with what's going on, they are also feeling like, look, Trump's the one to change the system. Yeah.

I had a friend this morning say, and he is very much kind of in the same boat with you, that he has been a never-Trumper all the way along. He said Juan Merchan and Alvin Bragg just did the one thing that Trump could never do, which is unite MAGA Republicans with the never-Trump Republicans. Right.

Yeah, I mean, it clearly is not for everyone. I mean, I haven't seen Pence issue anything yet. McConnell was kind of browbeating into it. But wow, I mean, Susan Collins had a great statement. So I think I think there are kind of certain people, maybe maybe ones who had less of an emotional stake in Trump beforehand. And I think people were kind of ambivalent about Trump for whatever reason, like, you know, what they did to him is really bad.

You were saying, Con, we're talking to Con Carroll from the Washington Examiner. You were saying that it's your sense that in this election, the team that has the more fired up base is going to win or the more fired up voting base is going to win. And you said that there's at the same time a dislike for Biden, a dislike for Trump. Generally, people believe we have a case of insufficient options. But it is eminently true that no one is really fired up for Biden.

Wouldn't you agree? That's very true. Right. He had, he has no, uh, Obama true. There are no Biden true believers. Right. I mean, this was a guy that was, um, neck and neck with a bunch of other failures. I mean, you know, Harris Newsome, uh, uh, the Senator from New York. I mean, he was neck and neck with all of them. It's only because James Clyburn clicked him out and said, okay, this is our guy. Uh,

that the primary voters in South Carolina showed him, and then everyone else fell in line. But no one's in love with this guy. There's no reason. He's been a proven liar for decades now. I mean, he lost many primaries before this. Democratic voters rejected him on more than one occasion. And it was only because all the rest of the candidates in the field were even worse than he was that they were like, oh, okay, we'll finally go with this guy. Con, shifting gears a little bit, John,

One of the things that I came away from this trial with, and I know this does not follow the precedent or letter of the law, but I have to ask the question now and kind of get your opinion on it. Can a Republican defendant consider a jury of Democrats to be their peers anymore?

When we're looking at this case, the J6 cases. I would say, you know, it depends. Like Manhattan or even D.C., I'd say no. But I think it's even worse than that, right? I mean, when you look at the Sussman trial here in D.C. where you had, you know, the special prosecutor for the FBI interference, you know, found that Sussman lied to the FBI and brought him to a jury trial.

here in Washington, D.C. And the foreperson of the jury, this woman, said, yeah, we thought it was just a waste of money to be investigating someone who lied to the FBI. So it's even worse than the fact that Republican defendants can't get a fair trial. You can't convict lying Democrats who admit they broke the law in Democratic cities just because they're so partisan they won't give a good verdict, guilty or not guilty. Is that – I mean –

We've never been in this position in all the history of this country over 200 years. We've never been in this position when I think a reasonable thinking person can look at our justice system and say it is no longer a just system. How do we recover from this?

Well, yes and no. I mean, you know, we have methods to counteract this. I mean, there's a reason why we have, you know, a federal versus a state system. There's a reason why even in state systems you can move trials from New York City to a locality that is more mixed, right?

Right. There are still purple counties. There are still cities or courthouses that are in purple areas. So, you know, if you if you in the judge, unfortunately, the judge in the Trump case denied that that that move to to move it to another county. But we have ways to make the system work where we try to get a jury that is purple, that is mixed, does have a mix of red and blue and is not just a bunch of rabid partisans of one side.

Eli Honig over at the New York Magazine, he's typically at CNN, so you have two liberal commentating outlets here. A CNN contributor writing in the New York Magazine puts it that no state prosecutor in New York or Wyoming or anywhere has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime against anyone for anything, none whatsoever.

I just want to get that out as much as I possibly can, Con, because I think it's hard to explain to people the level of unprecedented nature that we're dealing with here. It's not just a former ex-president. It's a former ex-president where charges were stacked up after they had been invented. Yeah, I mean, there's no there's no.

victim here, right? I mean, this false business keeping charge that is often used, but it's usually used when somebody embezzles from a company and they falsify the records of that company to cover up their embezzlement. So there's a victim in that the company was embezzled from, had their records violated. That's what the statute is designed for. It's not designed to take a leader of the other party's

Tack on some fictional election violation that isn't even a violation, but the judge has just asserted and then magically combine all of that in front of a biased jury to get a conviction. The whole thing is so obvious unfair. I do think a lot of people are going to get fired up by it.

Well, at last. You know, it's always interesting, the immediate passion, the heat that's generated in a news cycle, and in part because of the tweet that you sent out yesterday. To be quite honest, you're going to get a lot of credit for that. I'm going to give you a lot of credit for it. But how long do you think it lasts? I mean, memories do move pretty quickly. We live in a frenzied news cycle. How much of it will sustain? 80 percent? 50 percent?

Oh, you know, I have no idea. I mean, they're always going to have a couple more data points. You know, we're going to have two debates. That first one in June is going to be big. But this just increases the pressure on Biden. And, you know, the reason why he wanted to shriek it from three debates down to two debates, the reason why...

There's a reason why he wanted the debates to come earlier. But there's just not a lot of good news for Biden coming down the pike. I mean, he has a speech out today calling for a ceasefire and the hostages to be returned. But no one cares. That conflict isn't ending soon. Hamas isn't going to give the hostages back tomorrow because Biden said pretty please today. He just looks so weak and ineffectual and his peers broken up on the shores of Gaza Beach. It's you know, there's I just don't see much positive news today.

Coming down the pike for Biden in any way. Before we go, we have just a little over a minute left. Is there going to be any movement in another case in New York without any actual victims? The the other case they're running against Trump for over inflating the value of his properties and for some sort of fraud on a loan that was paid back on time with interest where no one else was harmed either.

Right. So that's civil. I don't think that that's criminal. But they did have a huge fine attached to it. But I think that's going to I don't think the that's going to be that's already in the appeal process. That's why he posted the bond so he could appeal that in court. And I don't think we're going to get a resolution in that case until after the election.

Are there any of the other cases that they're running? It doesn't look now like any of the other cases are going to happen before this election. Would you agree with that? I would agree with that. Legal wise, I think we've maxed out on final jury verdicts.

Okay. Thank you so much, Con Carroll. We always appreciate having you on the program, folks. You can follow him on X at Con Carroll and obviously go to WashingtonExaminer.com. You can get his work there. We always appreciate having Con on the program. His insights are fantastic. Thank you so much, Con, for joining us once again.

Absolutely. Folks, stay tuned. If you are a podcast listener, you're not going to want to miss this next segment. We have our Kylie murder and mayhem update. We even have a sunshine moment coming at the end of it. And Seth and I'll break down all this fun. Breaking Battlegrounds back on the air next week. The 2022 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to do list needs to be securing your name on the Web.

Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds today. I want to thank my co-host today, Seth Leibson, for joining us. Folks, you can tune in to his program. Where can they get that online, Seth? 960thepatriot.com. They can get any show live or archived totally free of charge, or they can listen live from 3 to 6 Monday through Friday. Do you do – and I'm sorry, I've never looked –

Do you pull out your monologues as separate little cuts? Yeah, sometimes we do. If they're truly popular, we will do it. But people can get it to show by the hour. Right. And it's always the top of the first hour. Top of the first hour, so you can start off. Folks...

I got to tell you, I highly recommend you check that out because I think, Seth, your monologues are just brilliant. I mean, I think it's some of the best stuff on radio every day. I always try to tune in for that. You're very kind. People ask me how long does it take you to write them, and my answer is usually 50 years. Yeah.

And they said, well, how do you write them? And I give the answer that Bill Buckley once gave. He used to write a three times a week column. And they asked him how he could do this three times a week. He said, well, I read the New York Times every day and I get ticked off about five times a day. You do that. You got your material. You're good. We have the Arizona Republic here. I mean, you know, you got plenty of material. I know it takes it takes less time to read that. That that thing's a bloody mess is what it is. And speaking of bloody messes.

It's time for Kylie's Corner. Kylie. That was smooth. Thank you. I thought that was good. What is the bloody fun for today? Tell us what we got going on. Well, my first story today, it's not bloody yet, but we have Larry Connor. He's an Ohio real estate developer, and he is the latest billionaire who is planning to go take a submarine down to the Titanic. Okay.

So he's not bloody yet. Good point on that one. He proposed this idea just days after Ocean Gate Titan imploded last June. And that was where five millionaire billionaires went down. The billionaire Titanic. Yes. He proposed this idea because he wants to show people that it's safe to do so and that they're going to do it the right way. So I guess we will stand by and see how this goes. So not with a Nintendo controller. Yeah.

No, not with a Nintendo controller. And supposedly the group that he's going with, Triton Submarines, their CEO or co-founder, Patrick Leahy, had actually tried to persuade Stockton Rush, who was the CEO who also passed away in the Ocean Gate implosion, tried to persuade him not to go do that because their submarine was not safe.

Well, so Triton's a little bit different than the company that built the OceanGate one, because I've heard of Triton before. I know they make a lot of deep sea equipment for the U.S. Navy, if I'm not mistaken. Yes, they do. They seem to be a little bit more qualified. Yeah.

I'd say that's a good thing when you're about to go a mile under the water. I have no truck with any of this. I have no interest, honest to God, in going into places where you cannot breathe. Why would you go in a submergible where the ocean is telling you you can't live here, you can't exist here, you don't have gills to look for something that when it was on top of the ocean couldn't make it?

Fair statement there. I think they're trying to find the diamond. Right. But so I guess we'll see how that goes. Um,

But I have another story. So we have Anthony Hare. He's a San Diego police officer, and he recently resigned after there was an investigation where he failed to follow proper procedures and falsified police records or police reports. So Officer Hare and several other San Diego officers had arrested a woman and another individual who were suspected in car theft on the body cam footage of him driving the woman to the

to the station to book her. You can hear her starting to ask if he's married, if he is single and said that he's not too bad of look, not too bad looking. What would it hurt her to work the system? To which he then said, Don't say that you're being recorded. And after about 20 minutes of driving, the car stopped, his body cam footage went off.

And then 20 minutes following that, he had to call another officer and ask if they had a master key because he got locked in the back seat. I feel like this was a scene from Super Troopers. Was this a scene from Super Troopers? Because I think we've been there before. No, this actually happened in August. Are we devolving? I mean, it seems with these kinds of stories, Kylie and Sam, and...

All you need to do to disprove evolution is do more stories like this. Look, I think people are getting dumber. Well, getting done statistically, this is true. The technology is expanding. Yes, they're getting dumber and how to deal with it. Not knowing things are taped. Things can be found. People can hear you. People are recording you. And by mandate. Here's the question I have. I thought every officer knew that you could not unlock the car from once you were inside the back seats.

Like that's a very standard thing in every police cruiser that comes from the factory with that modification. Kind of important. Yeah. No standard modification on every police cruiser ever built in this country in the last 50 years. Like this guy's an idiot. Yeah. And I know he was thinking with the small head and not the big head, but still that is low IQ even for a small head. Yeah. It's pretty bad. Um,

This was happening at two in the morning. However, you know, he's on the clock. He's working. Nothing good happens after 2 a.m. No, I was always told 10 p.m.

I had a very early curfew. Well, I'm kind of a night owl, so. The sun never sets on us. You're going to bed about the time I'm waking up, typically. Yeah, well, I only sleep about four or five hours. Between us, we can log seven. Yeah, I usually go to bed around one, and I'm up at six. The cat's home. Well, you can't sleep past 6.30 a.m. in my household.

That's not allowed. Because of the felines. Well, 6.30 a.m. It's called feline-less assault. I don't know how they do this, but my cat knows exactly when 6.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. arrive. Because they're aliens. To the minute. Because they're aliens. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

But we don't have an update on the Karen Reed case because there was a scheduling conflict this week. So there was no trial this week. OK, so the Massachusetts police cover up scandal will have updated hopefully next week. Yes. Yes. We will have updates next week and hopefully we'll move forward a little bit and get some experts on the stand. But that would be good because at this point that case.

Everything about that case, Seth, you probably haven't been following at all. Kylie, give folks – because I think sometimes we have folks tuning in who haven't been updated. What was the basis of that case and kind of a quick synopsis of what's gone on?

So very quickly, Karen Reed is being accused of backing up into her Boston police officer boyfriend after she was dropping him off at a party. At the party, the homeowner was a police officer. This actually happened in Canton. So he was a Canton police officer, which is just outside of Boston.

Um, and there was other officers in a town where like the entire police department is his relations, right? Yes. Like the person across the street was a Lieutenant, um, at Canton, his cameras weren't working out in front of his house. Um,

But pretty much everyone has gone on the stand, the prosecution's witnesses, and they're basically saying, yeah, Karen, that next morning after they found the body in the front yard was yelling, I hit him, I hit him. But there's a bunch of suspects, or not suspects, I'm calling them that already, excuse me, but a bunch of witnesses who have gone on and they've had butt dials at two in the morning. One of the witnesses Googled,

How long does it take for a body to die in the snow? She Googled that at two 22. She's saying that she Googled that at six 30 and the time is incorrect. Um, yeah. Cause that happens a lot with, with the internet. Yeah. There's an officer who said that he made a call or that he did not make any calls after midnight. And there was calls at the same time, two 22 in the morning. So something was going on at that time, but none of them remember and that they were all just butt calls or butt dials. Um,

So I roll over on my phone every night. You know how that goes. Yeah. So I think right now, you know, my prediction is if she did do it, this was an accident and that it was not on purpose. But I think the investigation was so botched and screwed up that I don't know if they'll ever come back.

Figure out who actually killed him if she did not back into him. OK, well, before. Thank you, Kylie. As always, we appreciate the update. Before we move on to the sunshine moment, Seth, just a couple of thoughts on on the guest today. Obviously, Representative Williams, we need to encourage legislators like that.

Yeah, absolutely. And he might, you know, when in the 90s conservatism was really rocking and rolling right after the Gingrich Revolution, people

people were looking to a lot of state legislators and a lot of goings on in the state, particularly Wisconsin with Tommy Thompson and welfare reform, a lot of stuff coming out of Ohio. And we were using state legislation as good ideas for national model legislation or model national legislation. This sounds like a good angle and a good way to start kicking off that again with a really good man who deserves more of a national reputation. I agree 100%. And I would add that

When we're – our process right now is so screwed up in terms of who gets promoted to higher office and that sort of thing. It really is just a beauty contest in so many respects. The public would be really well off to start digging in to find out who the really thoughtful legislators in their state are. Yeah.

Who crafts legislation that can bring people together on both sides of the aisle? That doesn't have to be a bad thing. Bipartisanship, because you've crafted legislation like this, Representative Williams has, that appeals to people, that hits needs that everybody sees. Yeah. If you can bring over Democrats to be tougher on crime while preserving constitutional rights and individual and civil liberties, then that seems to me a victory and a win for the conservative movement.

It's a huge victory and a win, and we need to really find these folks. There's a few. You know from my work, we go all around the country. Chuck and I have been doing this. I've been doing it for almost two decades. Chuck, closer to like four. I'm sorry, Chuck. I'm trying not to give away your age. I thought more like five actually, wasn't it?

I won't be back. I'll throw myself out. But in every state, we go and we do legislative work in a lot of different states around the country. So I've been to every state and worked in it legislatively except for Hawaii. And if anyone ever wants to bring me to Hawaii to work on legislation, I am in. Just saying. Put that aside.

In every state, there's two to three. Yeah. And really, that's it. That's right. There's two to three legislators that you have in your state.

who are actually great legislators. They are worker bees. They are none. They're no nonsense. They're very serious. There's never a scandal around them. Very rarely are they the ones that get bumped up the ladder. That's right. That's absolutely right. And we are robbing this country by not finding and promoting and developing those individuals. Absolutely right.

And that's why I really appreciated having Representative Josh Williams on here today. Folks, again, on X, Josh Williams, O-H, Josh Williams for, I think it was for Ohio, he said there. Go there, send him five bucks. It makes a big difference for candidates like this. You know, Jenna's boyfriend, Ari Bradshaw, running for office, he has the potential to be that type of person too. Absolutely.

These are something I cannot stress enough how important it is to start get past this surface politics. Yeah. Yeah. Without the drama and with the seriousness. I mean, I've watched Ari for many years now, and he's right at the peak of where he needs to be to be doing what he wants to be doing and what would be really good for the state. He's a no-nonsense, serious policy guy.

Right. He's the kind of guy that will be a great model in that district, much like his his senator right there. I'm a big fan of Shauna Bullock's. I mean, there's just not a lot of nonsense around here. She is a serious worker bee who returns calls. You know, these are the kinds of people this could be the model district in Arizona. A real legislator. Yeah. A real legislator. There aren't enough of them.

And you need to find them. You need to promote them. You need to help them get to that next level because if we start getting people like this moved up to Congress, we get people like this moved up to the Senate, you get people like this running for governor and AG and all this, it changes everything. It's such an important point, and I rail on this all the time. The parties in –

the states, particularly in Arizona, have never been doing, have never done a good job about recruiting, recruiting candidates. And they will tell you, well, we're not here to recruit candidates. Well, you should be, because that's what matters at the end of the day. If I were the head of the state parties across the country, that would be first and foremost, let's go and recruit good candidates so that we don't have what some of these other people were saying that you and I were interviewing early in the show, a choice of insufficient options on November 3rd or 4th or 5th or 6th, and people saying, how did we get here?

This is how we got here. You weren't involved. Right. You wanted to stay out of the primary. Another bugaboo of mine. I hate it when people say, I'll be there for you in the general. Well, you might not get that choice if you don't act in the primary. That's exactly right. Absolutely. And as for our other guests today, fantastic. Dan McLaughlin, Con Carroll, really appreciate having both of them. Obviously, slightly divergent views, which I appreciate because we're still allowed to have those on the Republican side of the aisle. Yeah.

And on radio shows like yours. The Democrats, seriously, I don't know what they do these days. You know, what is that? Do you remember the there were those scenes from like the Daffy Duck cartoons when when Daffy would be Hitler with all with all the little ducklings marching in order to his his orders? Yes, yes. Fritz Freeling doing the voice. Yeah, yeah. That that to me is the modern Democrat Party.

Yeah, they march in lockstep and people complain that they are very good at circling the wagons and we aren't. I'd rather be us than them because I think with their unified theory of governance, policy, politics and law that is becoming so evident now, I think they're making themselves distasteful. I agree. I agree 100 percent. So on that note, let's move into something more positive before we finish today's show. Jenna, what do you got for us? Bring the sunshine. Bring the sunshine.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. For the sunshine moment today, I have a story about a family that's kind of an unlikely family that formed in one of America's favorite fast food restaurants. Not Taco Bell, which is my favorite fast food restaurant. We cannot be friends anymore. Really? Really.

The protein bowl, they have the best. It's rice, chicken. Jenna, wait a minute. Starting with protein bowl. Starting with every word. I've got to back this up. Okay, hang on. You do realize we live in Arizona, right? You can go to a place that is owned by the person standing behind the counter, and it will be the same price as that Taco Bell any crap.

And it will be massively better. See, I agree. If I want to get real Mexican food, get real pico de gallo, I can do that. But I think Taco Bell is its own category of food. I think it's its own unique brand. Its own unique brand of styrofoam.

We will show you food. Sam and I are good teachers. And next Thursday we will go to the Dirty Drummer and have fried tacos. And you will never go back to Taco Bell. At least not on a Thursday. As I told Seth, because I sit on his program on Thursday afternoons, I have never had a fried taco that wasn't from Jack in the Box after 1 a.m.,

And they're great. So now think of great times 10. I don't know if they're great or not. I mean, they're delicious when you're drunk at 1 a.m. Are they edible when you're not drunk at 1 a.m.? They're perfect. They are great. They're fantastic any time of day.

They have the exact right amount of unction seeping through that hard shell with the right amount of cold cheese and whatever that filler is. They sell more tacos than burgers at Jack in the Box. You know that? I did not know that. Yes, sir. Really? I looked it up. Wow. Big proponent of their tacos, but a bigger proponent of the Dirty Drummers on Thursdays. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, this is a local Arby's nearby. They have the meats, is what I've heard. No woman should ever have to say that line again. Yeah, regretting that.

Yeah, no, but but this is a great crew, a great team at Arby's. They came together around an individual. So there's been a World War Two veteran, Doug Parker, who's been coming into the Chandler Arby's every day. And he's been ordering a roast roast beef sandwich with Swiss cheese and a Coke with no ice every single day around noon.

And he's been doing this since about 2015 when the restaurant manager, Christine Gamage, started working there. And so I believe it was Fox 10 came in and interviewed him and he said, I can't eat any place as comfortable as this place. And he said it was his favorite place. And

So, Christina Gamage, the manager, said that he comes in with a walker and as soon as we see him come to the doors, we try to grab the doors for him. They save a spot at his table. They make sure it's empty for him and he said in an interview, "Well, if that's not a space for me, I'll be happy to sit at the table next door." But, so he's been coming in at around noon every single day since 2015.

And this team came together. They found out that he was walking over from a retirement facility. And this he actually had a stomach issue. And this was the the place that where he could eat that, you know, was comforting and that was was good for his stomach. He wasn't getting an upset stomach from the Arby's roast beef, which is Arby's roast beef is very good.

Yeah, yeah. No, and he was, and he had his, the Swiss cheese and the Coke, and he, so he had it every day. And they all pitched in. They presented it with a $200 gift card for Arby's. And this got picked up by the news, and Arby's presented him with free food for the rest of his life. Oh. I like this notion that eating at Arby's is good for your stomach. Yeah.

they could start a new ad campaign, good and good for you. Well, so actually this is one of my things. Because you set a baseline or what is it? You set an expectation? When I'm...

So actually one of my things when I'm picking out – because I tend to eat a lot of the same things. I'll eat like the same dish from a restaurant. If I found something that's delicious at a restaurant, I will go back and just order that same thing again. But one of my conditions is how does it sit an hour or two later? Like one of my favorite places here in Phoenix is Z's Greek, which has a fantastic, very fresh Greek pita. Sure.

Because I feel good afterwards. Yeah. What's the half-life? Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I don't – my problem with like McDonald's is I eat it and I feel like garbage. It's tasty. Yeah.

But I feel like trash for four hours afterwards. It's also the only restaurant, it seems to me, that if you walk into – and I think Jim Gaffigan was making this point once. If you walk into and see someone you know, you try not to be seen by them and you try not to – It's the only place – it's the only restaurant that comes with its own amount of shame built into it, I think. Well, I think that's true. You don't have that jack-in-the-box. No, you don't. No, you don't.

I will say I have become a bigger and bigger fan over the years of off-brand fast food. Oh.

Which you can find in almost every city. You may have an In-N-Out, but you also have here in Phoenix, it's The Stand, which makes In-N-Out burgers, basically, which are just as good. But I'm supporting a local business. And it may not have anything to do with actually how the food sits in my stomach, but maybe it's the conscious of it that you're like,

I feel better by going to those places than I do to the chains. I think the stand is better. And they have the best milkshake in town, by the way. I have not had the milkshake. Can you drink milk? Are you dairy tolerant? I have to take one of the – Like a little lactate and try their strawberry milkshake, both of you. You will have no better strawberry milkshake ever. I mean the burger is delicious. Everything is good there. But this is the thing I always tell people in general is try to find the local place. You bet.

Not only because it's – I mean first, like franchises, a lot of them they have a local owner. It's not even so much about that. Yeah.

As it is supporting creativity. Yeah. Plus, you and I kind of have talked about we don't like big corporations these days. They're kind of the enemy. McDonald's would be an example of them. It's not a big corporation. Almost every big corporation has given in to DEI. Yep. Exactly. They gave in to CRT. They gave in to DEI. Even ones like Chick-fil-A has had its issues with that recently, right? Whereas local owners kind of are exempt from that for the moment still. Yep.

They don't have a bunch of employees that are whiners and criers that tell them they have to do this or they'll walk out or they'll make a statement. But it leads into something else that I try to tell people is get to know who owns the local businesses around you. Yeah.

meet them, get to know them a little bit. Because, for instance, there is a little Mexican restaurant, Garcia's, near my house, right? It used to be a chain. Then the chain died and the local owner just decided to, you know, sort of rejigger their menu, rebrand a little bit and keep going. I've met him on numerous occasions. He provides food for neighborhood gatherings and all this kind of stuff, right? Is he political? I have no idea. I've never talked to him about his politics. That's not what I'm talking about here.

But I know he's a member of our community who's engaged with it. Right. Find that. I'm going to guess he's political because you don't know his politics.

I'm going to guess that if he were a liberal, you would know it because he would let you know it. You're probably right. General rule. You're probably right. I think generally for me, if someone's banging their liberal drums, I'm not going to be coming back to their restaurant. Is this the Garcia's on Thomas? Yeah. Yeah, I love that. My first job in high school was working for Garcia's when it was on 44th. Oh, really? Yeah. I know the Garcia's. You know what I like about it, Seth? This is –

I like – remember when every restaurant in the country had fajitas on the menu? Yeah, you betcha. I love fajitas. Absolutely. I am a fajita maven from that. And Garcia's makes fajitas the old school classic way. They're not sauced up. Right. They're not overdone. Right. They've embraced the we took something Mexican and turned it into something quintessentially American and it just happens to be on a tortilla. Yep.

And I'll say one other thing about Mexican food in Arizona. I think it's the only place where you can really just get a cheese crisp, which is far better than a quesadilla. Everyone else does a quesadilla. I like the cheese crisp. I think it's only unique to Arizona, if I'm not mistaken. At least it's not widespread elsewhere. The cheese crisp is very good. Yeah, it's much better. Well, quesadillas are done wrong mostly.

Well, yeah. They overstuff them. So the texture and the – Totally right. So for someone who has your issues, you get dairy overload. Right. Yeah. Not good. No, terrible. Any Kylie, Jenna, any last words? We could do this all day. Well, yeah. I think that's great. And like if people are able to come together at Arby's and help out a man at all these local businesses, I mean just people are able to impact other individuals so much. And America is in the name.

I love it. I love it. It's fantastic. All right, folks, thank you so much for tuning in once again. Breaking Battlegrounds, obviously, will be back on the air next week. And if you're not subscribed on this podcast and somehow you're listening to it, click the darn button and subscribe, okay? We got a bunch of you. We know. We know. We can see it. We can track you. We know you are out there. You are downloading our episodes.

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