David Harsanyi Unpacks How the Left Became the Party of Conspiracy Theorists
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Morin. I'm Sam Stone.

Jumping right in, as always, our first guest today, David Harshani. He is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner, nationally syndicated columnist and author of six books. The most recent, The Rise of Blumenau and How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists, seems particularly relevant today. David Harshani, thank you so much for joining us once again and welcome back.

I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So the Bidens announced today they're making a political comeback to aid the Democrats. Is that going to help the Democrats? I don't see how it can help them, no. It didn't help in the last four years. So yeah, I think maybe that's the wrong direction to go in. You've seen this a lot being out there and being a great writer. Are you just always amazed how some of these folks, when their time has passed, just can't

you know, sail off into the sunset, that they just have to keep their name out there? Because I don't know what the Bidens think they're going to help. Yeah. Well, it kind of reminds you of, you know, we call Joe Biden a great athlete, but athletes who can't, you know, hang it up and they just kind of stick around. But those athletes usually provide leadership or, you know, a steady veteran voice in the locker room. I don't really see Joe Biden doing any of that because, frankly, he –

He was the kind of guy who would surrender to whatever trendy ideological things are flying around anyway. So it's not the sort of guy who's going to lead you back to greatness because he was never great to begin with. Before we get talking your book here, what do you think? Do Democrats realize them burning Tesla's that it probably does not help their carbon footprint?

Well, you know, for years I've written about this, going back a while, that, you know, the right wing is always the one where the FBI has some new report where they're warning about right wing violence and this and that. I'm not saying that right wing people never engage in violence, but the left has been

has a propensity for it. You know, going in the 70s, you know, you had terrorist groups blowing up things all the time, in the 60s, obviously, and even into the 80s. And then when Trump became president, you had it, and now you have it. BLM riots were the most expensive that we've ever had in this country. So,

I'm not really surprised by it, frankly. That'd actually be a great article for you to write, just accumulating all the damage they did through their protests during Trump and what they're doing now and the extra law enforcement needed and so forth. I mean, it's just tens and tens of billions of dollars. It's unbelievable. Yeah. So let's talk about your book. What made you write it and what is relevant about it today?

Well, I just noticed over the years, again, that the left is always was always talking, you know, is always talking and framing the right of sort of conspiratorial minded and paranoid and anti science and, you know, on and on. But but in truth, yes.

the Democratic Party, and again, not to say that that doesn't happen on the right, but the Democratic Party was captured by this kind of thinking in a way I think that was unprecedented and what made it even more dangerous. So, you know, there's someone on the fringe, you know, has a podcast or something talking, you know, about whatever conspiracy. I mean, that's not great, but it's different when you have

media organizations that have been around forever, let's say CBS or whoever, spreading a conspiracy theory because they're the ones who are supposed to be tempering that kind of paranoia. But instead, they became the people who spread it. And that's why it was so effective. I think the Russia collusion hoax, I guess, was the most effective

you know, for a short time, the most effective and consequential conspiracy theory we've ever had. I mean, they basically shut down the Trump administration for three years. The problem is now that they've, they burn their brand. No one trusts the media. No one trusts, you know, no one really likes what the democratic party is up to. I feel like they can't even really debate the,

on a sort of factual ground anymore. It's always kind of about if you're a Russian this or if you're, you know, bought by a big business. It's always some conspiracy, some paranoia, never really a debate about facts anymore. And it's increasingly unhinged. I want to read a quote from Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver.

He said, I want to send a message to somebody, Elon, take your musty millions and musty Moscow rights to the moon, because if you don't, we are going to stand up. We are going to speak out. We're going to march and we are going to do anything we need to do. You must your musty hands off our money or go to Moscow. You must eat. Moo, moo, moo. That's an actual quote from a member of Congress.

Yeah. Well, I think we all have to get together and just admit that we don't send our best to Congress, right? We're not sending our best to Washington. We're not sending our intellectual bright lights. I don't know if that's a terrible thing. I want those people in the private sector, frankly. But, yeah, I don't even know what to say. I mean, that's not even a conspiracy. That's just gibberish, right? I mean –

But now it's the conspiracy theories. It's the craziness. Everything is just boiling to the surface with rage. Yeah. I mean, the sooner or later conspiracy theories, because you can't really ever prove them, get

you know, you get frustrated and then it's just rage. So you're calling someone a Nazi. Now, I'm not a historian, but I've read plenty about Nazis. And I can tell you that they were not interested in shrinking government bureaucracies. You know, the right. The idea that the idea you don't have to like Musk, you don't have to like what he's doing. But the idea that he's a Nazi, they jump from A to Z immediately. There's no middle ground anymore. And it's because I think part of it is that, you know,

People don't have religions or churches anymore for the most part, and a lot of people don't, and they turn to government. So when you knock down an agency, it's basically like knocking down a cathedral in their mind. That's how you have to think about their view of this.

Do you know of any of the legacy media – and this is just from the first chapter of your book, so we did read it. But it just stood out to me about when Hillary Clinton, when they came out, the rumors about the affair with Bill, and she just called it a vast right-wing conspiracy that was concocted to hurt her husband and her. Even when it came out, I don't remember any of the legacy media pushing back against her, say, so was this a conspiracy? Did I miss something about that?

No, she was always treated differently, I guess, or maybe she's just treated like a normal Democrat. But yeah, she went on the Today Show, and she said that there was this right-wing conspiracy against her husband. Now, a conspiracy theorist, and I hate that phrase. I don't hate the phrase. That phrase encapsulates a lot of things that we consider conspiracy theories, but might just be a paranoia. I'll give you a quick example. Like when you ask someone to have...

you know, you ask them to provide a ID before they vote, Joe Biden will say that's Jim Crow 2.0. That's, that's a complete paranoia. That's not tethered in, you know, in any kind of real fact or anything like that. So,

a lot of times, like what Hillary Clinton did was just turn the tables and try to basically gaslight you, say that you're, you know, that, that, that there is a conspiracy and that you're, you're nuts for not believing it. But obviously there wasn't. And obviously the Clinton's got into a lot of bad stuff and Bill get into a lot of that personal stuff. But you never have to pay a price. You're right.

So what are the conspiracies that the left is pushing now, and what is it compared to what they pushed in the past that's out right now during Trump's second term? Well, I actually feel like, though they do throw around Nazi a lot, or, you know, Musk will lift his hand up and they'll say that was a Nazi, you know, Hitler salute or whatever. But the thing is, I actually find the Democratic Party at this moment right now, maybe the most...

sort of aimless, feckless party I've seen in my life covering politics. I guess the closest would maybe be 2008 when Obama first, you know, appeared. But I think it's even worse than that. There was just no leadership. There was no real, how can I say, like concerted message or anything like that. Like there used to be with Russia or, you know, Republicans are racist, this and that, or

You know, the other things I mentioned in my book and they happen on the state level, too, and they happen all over with all kinds of issues. But there, you know, or even BLM, which was predicated on the idea that the whole system in the United States is racist and meant to keep black people down. That's a that's a myth. And it's one of the most pernicious ones there is.

because you're telling a whole group of people that they can't be Americans. So I don't really know what they're even talking about. They're out there protesting to protect USAID funding, and if you don't, millions will die. You want to shut down the Department of Education, and they're like, no one will be able to read soon.

Or special needs kids will be on the street. That's the spin now, right? I have an autistic son, and I just sort of laugh at this because, first of all, the public schools don't do a good job with them now. So I just find the whole thing ludicrous. But now it's all these special needs kids won't have what they need, which is like, oh, you mean the governor and the state just doesn't care about them? Only the Department of Education does?

Yeah, maybe if we localized and personalized that care better, it would be better than some bureaucrat in a federal office dealing with it. And yeah, I mean, but they've been doing this forever. So it's kind of like I don't think it's very effective anymore. You know, no, it's funny. You also cover this in your book with various quotes. For example, when when when Ronald Reagan was running for governor in California, Pat Brown, the governor, then said there's a stench of fascism in the air.

And then William Clay of Missouri, when Reagan was running for president, said he's trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts left verbatim from Minkoff. And then you go through how George Soros said George Bush was the supremacist ideology of Nazi Germany and on and on and on. I mean they just love calling that Nazi game. It's unbelievable. Yeah.

Yeah, what makes it crazy, I think, is that the left is far more authoritarian in general. I mean, you know, progressive politics is basically the control of the economy and the control of your children trapped in schools where they teach them a different ideology. I'm not saying these people are Nazis or anything, though I do believe in the horseshoe theory in the sense that I don't really care much for the distinction between whatever kind of tyranny or authoritarianism you like. But, yeah.

the idea that someone who wants fewer regulation, who wants people to have local control of their school is, is some kind of Nazis, the exact opposite of what that kind of thinking was about. Now, if you're now, if you're saying, Oh, you know, you're super nationalistic and that's what Nazis did. Well, you know, I mean, you know, if we can't love our country, just because a bad guy loves this country, doesn't mean good people can't love their country. And, and,

You know, it's just dumb. It's just it's meant for very dumb people. And anyone who falls for it, you know, I'm not saying there aren't a lot of dumb people around. I'm just saying that, you know, I don't they won't fall for it forever. Well, there are a lot of dumb people around. I'm just going to say it. There's just a lot of dumb people. I mean, we were talking earlier. There's a there. The council here is going to vote to increase the sales tax in Arizona and Phoenix.

which is going to be a tremendous amount. And I was talking to some people at Phoenix this morning, and they had no idea it's happening. I don't think 80% just really pay attention to any of it.

No, I think that's 100% right. So people don't pay attention or there's a lot of misinformation out there. I don't want to ban anything, but it's just out there. And what happens is people who pay half attention are easy to manipulate with scaremongering. And that's why the Democrats have leaned into scaremongering in such a way that I don't know that they know how to make other kinds of arguments. I mean, if you think about

any issue. It's always trying to fearmonger people into voting for that. And again, I think that kind of tactic or, you know, that kind of rhetoric has kind of run its course. It just seems really ineffective. Yeah, absolutely. We're going to be coming back with more in just a moment from David Harshani. Folks, stay tuned for that. And we've got a fantastic second guest coming up here, Michael Mazza.

Senior Director of Project 2049 Institute. So stay tuned. Breaking Battlegrounds coming back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're continuing on now with our guest, David Harshani. He is senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Follow him on X at David Harshani. David, you had a great piece recently, Chuck and I both like quite a bit, Goodridden's Mahmoud Khalil, talking about how this isn't a First Amendment issue. In fact, the issue is entirely not the way Democrats are trying to frame it in the broader press.

Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So Mahmoud Khalil was a green card holder, which is the highest level of protection before citizenship. He was a student at Columbia. He was kind of a ringleader, at least I think he was, a ringleader of what I'd call an anti-Semitic movement, a pro-Hamas movement. And Hamas is a terrorist organization.

um, you know, assign that tag by the DOJ, not just by, you know, David Harsanyi or something. And, um, that group killed 35 Americans on October 7th, not to mention many innocent civilians who, you know, are allies. And, uh, he's not a citizen. Now I don't want to stop him from speaking and saying what he wants. First of all, I think he engaged in criminal behavior by, um,

targeting Jewish people, taking over buildings, stuff like that. But Alvin Bragg, the DA of New York City, won't charge him.

So fine, he can speak and he can do what he wants, but he has zero right to be in this country. It's a privilege for him to visit here. And then the idea that the United States has some responsibility to give citizenship, the greatest gift we have to give to a person who hates this country, who hates other people in this country, who wants to import terrible ideas from places that suffer from those ideas already,

is just insanity. It's suicide. And we have, you know, yes, foreigners have rights. He has First Amendment rights to speak here, but he has no right to be here. And the idea, you know, again, they're separate issues. No one's stopping him from speaking. We're stopping him from speaking here. We believe in the First Amendment because it is a natural right

And I hope he has an unfettered right to speak his mind in Algeria or Syria or wherever he is. But we don't have to have him here because he doesn't he would not make a good citizen. He cannot take the oath of citizenship because he doesn't believe in those ideas. And that's, you know, that's just my position.

Well, and frankly, the left's entire – I mean talking about conspiracy, the left's entire view of Israel essentially amounts to one giant conspiracy and flavors this in a way – this discussion in a way that's absolutely insane. You have these GLBTQ rainbow warriors running around in Hamas costume.

touting people who would happily throw them off the nearest building. Well, in the oath of allegiance, I just looked it up again. We all know it, but it's just like, you know, they're pledging loyalty to the United States when you do your oath, right? If you're becoming a citizen, you renounce allegiance to any other country or state or sovereignty. I mean, these are very, he can't do that. No.

No. When my parents were immigrants, they came here from a communist country. They had to promise not just, you know, that they were asked about their communism. They spoke about how, you know, and they were asked if they still believed in that, if they were members of the party, and that they promised not to start insurrections within this country. And that's exactly what this guy was doing. So,

So if you we I'm pro-immigrant, but I want people who are going to make good citizens, not just people who are going to come here and get PhDs in political science or whatever he did. And he has just no right to be here. He also broke the law. I mean, you can argue that the law is unconstitutional, maybe, but it's clear that you can rescind a green card if a person.

joins a group or is a big or is a or speaks for a terrorist organization, which he did. He said he his organization supported the armed resistance by Hamas. You cannot let that guy stay in this country.

No, absolutely not. And one of the things about these protests is the way that they've been covered up for by Alvin Bragg, by so many others, hides the fact that, frankly, these folks are, as you said, guilty of committing very visible, obvious crimes from vandalism,

to threatening and harassing individuals, to assaulting individuals, to taking over buildings, trespass, all these things. These are all crimes. Everyone involved who's not a U.S. citizen should be charged and removed. 100%. 100%. Yeah. Also, their civil rights...

they're breaking civil rights laws by masking themselves and intimidating minority students and so on and so forth. If anyone was doing this to black students or any other kind of students, we would certainly not want them in this country. I would not want them in this country. Or LBGT, LBGT+. If he was doing what he's doing, which he basically is, if you're Hamas. Let me ask you this question, and this is something a little bit different here. You may not have an opinion on it.

So Columbia University has over 20,000 foreign students there, which is 55% of their enrollment. Does the United States need to put a cap on how many foreign students they allow these universities? And I know why the universities do it. ASU is the same story now. I know why they do it because I've dealt with this of ASU. It's not for goodwill. It's because they want the out-of-state tuition, right? It's a money. It's a profit center. Do you think you do cap or just say, no, that's America. We just let you come in and get a degree. I mean, what's your opinion on that?

Yeah, I think we need to start thinking about putting a cap on it. For instance, start by putting a cap on it so that you only let people in who were students in who are going to get STEM degrees, maybe, or, you know, do something useful. And maybe when they come in, they have to, you know, give back in some way as well. I think that's

That's perfectly acceptable. I'm a big fan of free speech, and I think I would never limit a citizen's right to do it. But I'm not sure why we – I don't know what percentage of these people who are doing this stuff are from elsewhere. I don't know. But if it's a high number, yes, I think we should start capping it, maybe cap it from certain countries. Well, 9,000 –

9,000 of it's from China at Columbia. Yeah. I've always said this, that, you know, people always say we need to bring, you know, we need to bring foreigners in and immigrants who have skills and this and that. I think we should be focusing on bringing in people who haven't had a chance elsewhere to achieve the things they can and who want to be good citizens in the United States. Listen,

Listen, it's tough to do that. I don't know what kind of questions you ask or whatever, but just bringing in people because they have rich daddies in Gulf oil states or members of the Chi-Com, you know, party in China, that's not a good way to have immigration policy or student visa policy. I don't think so. Let's talk about this. So, you know, there's anti-Semitism on the left and there's definitely anti-Semitism on the right. And we've got two minutes here.

And they go on the podcast and they say they're historians. Sam and I read a lot, so I guess we're historians too. Why don't you think the right-wing podcaster – I don't like to use the right wing. Conservative podcasters are not pushing back against some of these amateur historians who find something lurking in the Jewish culture damaging the world.

That's a good question. I feel like I have a lot of friends out in that world, not the world of the anti-Semitic podcast, but the conservative world who don't really speak up. And I, you know, and it's, I don't know, maybe because part of the ringleaders, frankly, Tucker Carlson, for instance, you know, has a giant audience and they don't want to upset that audience. You know, this is,

A lot of this is also about money. You know, engagement on social media is money. And saying crazy things gets engagement, anger, approval, whatever. I think that's a lot of that has a lot to do with this. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. David Harsanyi, thank you so much for joining us once again. We always love having you on the program. Folks, you can follow him on X at David Harsanyi. And if you go – how are we giving away the books, Chuck? I don't know.

What are we going to do to Kylie? We'll post it. Kylie will post it this weekend. And the first 10 people that comment on it, we will give send them a mail, my book. OK, fantastic. And you can find the rise of blue and on how Democrats became a party of conspiracy theorists at Amazon and all your favorite bookstores. So definitely check that out.

And then stay tuned because Michael, I hope I'm pronouncing it right because I get everybody's last name wrong. Michael Mazza, senior director at Project 2049 Institute and senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, is coming right up, talking a lot about what's happening in the Far East in the Trump era. Stay tuned for that. 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 with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our next guest up today, Michael Mazza, Senior Director of Project 2049 Institute and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute. Mike, welcome to the program.

Thanks, Sam. Good to be with you and Chuck. You do a lot of work on the Far East, on the security and global military and international politics there. You've done a lot of work around Taiwan. I wanted to start off by asking, in 2021, Admiral Phil Davidson, who was then the commander of Indo-PACCOM, said China would be capable of invading Taiwan by 2027. That is just around the corner right now.

Where do you think stand? Have they built that capability? They are certainly getting closer and closer. So Admiral Papparo, who is now the commander of Indo-Pacific Command, has said he thinks we need to be ready for this at any moment. We've entered the danger zone. Certainly Chinese military capabilities continue to advance, but

We have long said that they have a lot of stuff. We long used to say they had a lot of stuff, but it wasn't all that good. Well, the stuff they have is getting better and better, more comparable to the sorts of capabilities that the United States and other modern militaries have. And so if they're not there yet, they are on target, it appears, to be hitting that 2027 date. That doesn't mean they're going to invade in 2027, but it does look like

they may have the military ability to do so if that decision were to be made. How much do the armed atolls that they've been building throughout the South China Sea factor into the danger for U.S. forces in that type of conflict? I would say they're a concern, although not a predominant concern. So what those atolls in the South China Sea allow them to do is to threaten the

U.S. forces and others, but U.S. forces who may be coming into the region from multiple different directions, right? So you're not just firing missiles at the U.S. Navy coming in to help from Chinese mainland, but also from a bunch of little islands in the South China Sea. Now, our Navy will tell you those are relatively small islands with relatively small armaments. You know, we can take care of them, but it's

it's undoubtedly a complication. So, while there's this threat, and tell me if I'm wrong, Taiwan's presidents had trouble pushing through increased defense spending in their legislature. Is that true? And if it's true, why is he having a hard time getting that increased? Yeah. So, we have seen Taiwan defense spending increase somewhat substantially over the last eight years or so. Many

Many people would say not as much as it should. I would agree with that assessment, but we have seen those increases. But the current president, President Lai, has run into problems. At this point, the legislature in Taiwan, it's called the LY, the Legislative UN, is controlled by the opposition. And they have put a freeze on some sorts of defense spending. They have cut back on the increases that the president requested. And, you know, there are a couple different reasons for this.

Some of this, you know, they claim that the opposition claims is concerns about ways in which that money would be spent. I'm sure some of those concerns are legitimate. I think a lot of this just has to do with domestic politics. You know, this is one area in which the opposition can be oppositional and they're doing it and they're doing it quite effectively. But there is also a lack of consensus in Taiwan on how best to deal with the challenges of

China poses. I would not say that the opposition is a pro-China party or a collection of parties. That's not accurate. But they do tend to see this threat through a different lens. They tend to see it as a bit less urgent. And they believe that

economic engagement may be a better way to manage that threat than with investments in defense. One of the big issues with Taiwan and President Trump that he's talked about, he said Taiwan stole America's chip industry. I would...

contend that's not at all an accurate assessment of what's happened. But Taiwan Semiconductor is making major, major investments in the U.S. right now. There is an effort to nearshore or reshore a lot of those critical industries. And then on the other side, Xi Jinping has talked about a plan to monopolize the supply of critical materials for future technology. How important are chips to the U.S. economy and to U.S.-Taiwan relations today?

And, you know, is part of the consideration by China

in an invasion to try to capture those facilities specifically for a technological advantage? Yeah, both good questions. So on the first one, Taiwanese-produced chips are undoubtedly important to the U.S. economy, to Silicon Valley. You know, they're in everything from our iPhones to our laptops to our vehicles and to our, you know, air defense systems and advanced military capabilities. So losing access...

to the chips that Taiwan makes in Taiwan and nowhere else would be very damaging to the U.S. economy and to America's ability to defend itself. That being said, I don't think it's actually a fundamental aspect of the U.S.-Taiwan relationship. And what I mean by that is... Mike, I'm going to stop you real quick. We're going to dig into that when Breaking Battlegrounds comes back here in just a moment.

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Don't wait. Head to GoDaddy.com or Name.com, type in your name.vote, and get started today. Because after all, every pet deserves a web address that's as special as they are. We're continuing on with Breaking Battlegrounds. Here's Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. On the line with us, Mike Mazza, Senior Director at the Project 2049 Institute and Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute. You can follow him on Instagram.

at Mike underscore Mazza. When we went to the break, we were talking a little bit about everything that's been going on with semiconductors, the future of both the U.S.'s capability and economy to fight a war and how that relates to Taiwan. But I wanted to touch on one other thing also, which is what does the Trump administration need to do right now to support Taiwan? I know they've had some

So they're waffling over military spending, some of the things they're trying to get done. There seems to be some opposition in Congress among Republicans. Also, what do we need to do to protect our ally and secure our interests in that part of the world?

Yeah. So there's sort of two sets of things we can do. There are things we can do to help Taiwan directly, and there are things we can do to, I would say, help ourselves that also help Taiwan. So, you know, on the first side is...

is the provision of arms to Taiwan. We sell a lot of arms to Taiwan. In the past couple years, we've started to loan them money or make available money to them to borrow so they can buy even more weapons. We just need to speed this process up as fast as we can. Now, there are capacity issues. There's capacity issues on our side. How much can we produce in any given year? How much can they incorporate at a time?

but we're talking about a potential war where munitions stockpiles are going to be as important

as anything. And so let's help them load up on everything that they could possibly need just when it comes to munitions. We should also be training with them, right? This is a country that we may one day send American men and women to defend, to put their lives on the line for. And we only train together in very limited capacities.

And that's not good for us. It's not good for them. If we were to be training together, you know, practicing defending beaches against invasion, practicing countering Chinese naval vessels at sea who would be crossing the strait to invade, Taiwan has a lot to learn from us. We have things that we can learn for them, and we can be preparing to face these kinds of challenges together. So that's sort of that first bucket. The

The second bucket, what can we do for ourselves is, you know, I would argue the United States really needs to increase its defense spending and to spend its defense dollars more smartly than it already does. We're already in a position where China is going to

significantly challenge our ability to operate in the Western Pacific Ocean and waters closer to Asia. That's a new state of affairs. I would argue we can reverse that if we make the kinds of investments that we just haven't been making. I want to talk quickly about the foreign policy team of Donald Trump and how this relates to China and Taiwan. So you have Rubio, who's the China hawk.

Mike Waltz is a China talk. And then the person everybody keeps forgetting about, and I don't believe he's been confirmed yet, is that Donald Trump nominated former Senator David Perdue as ambassador of China. And he is a huge anti-China. He's a hawk.

So what role do you think they have playing this? And I think sometimes people make the mistake that, well, look what he's doing in Ukraine, he's doing in China. They're apples and oranges. They're not the same thing. So what do you think those three gentlemen who have the ear of President Trump, what's the influence they're going to have on him on this policy?

Honestly, it's really hard to say at this point. I think from a, you know, to your point, from the perspective of personnel, we would expect this to be a...

an administration which has a hawkish approach to China and which is particularly concerned about national security issues when it comes to China. To date, most of the policy action has been in the economic space. It looks similar to the sorts of things we're doing to other countries in the economic space, the thing about tariffs. And so it's unclear to me where this administration is.

will come down. I do think that if Marco Rubio and Mike Walz and Senator Perdue have the presidency here and are sort of winning arguments within the administration, and it's worth noting here that at this point, a lot of the sort of second rank of officials in the State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council are also China hawks.

That hopefully leads to a situation in which the president is taking some difficult steps and some steps that will entail some risk, because we don't know exactly how China will respond to everything we do. That will put us in a position to win what President Trump, in his last term, described as a long-term strategic competition with China.

Let me ask you this, and this will be a question for our audience. And so you're sort of doing the dummy's guide to China, Taiwan. Why does China want Taiwan so badly? Excuse me. Excuse me. Yeah, so there are a number of reasons for this. This goes back to the end of the Chinese Civil War. So in 1949, the communists declare victory in China.

shanghai check and the nationalists uh flee china head to taiwan set up shop there um and so to the chinese communist party you know the the chinese comes the chinese civil war is still unresolved right they haven't they haven't quite won because taiwan remains apart from the chinese mainland so that there's this this historical reason this ideological reasoning

Xi Jinping seems to serially believe that China is destined for greatness, destined to be the world's number one country, most powerful country, and that Taiwan is a stepping stone to get that. There are also national security and strategic geographic reasons. So if China were to hold Taiwan accountable,

It splits Japan and the Philippines from each other, puts the PLA right in the middle. Those are both U.S. allies. And it also gives the Chinese Navy essentially free access to the Western Pacific Ocean. And that's something that no country in Asia has had since Japan in 1941. How much does the potential conflict between China and Taiwan highlight the need for the U.S.,

to free up our capability for mining, for getting those rare earth minerals from our own soil, from copper, all these other things that take us years or decades to open a mine, where obviously none of those environmental considerations and lawsuits are possible or considered in China. But also, how much does that play into what President Trump has talked about with Greenland, with the Panama Canal, with the flow of goods around the globe?

Yeah, this is a major issue. So we know from years of study now, things that have been produced by think tanks, but also, you know, government studies. I think we're having a little technical difficulties there with Mike. Yeah, it looks like we lost him, Jeremy. Oh, got him back, I think. Mike, sorry, we got cut off a little technical difficulty there. We were talking about the issues with rare earth minerals and all the other things that we need. Let's just continue on there.

that China has a really troubling level of control over things that are multiple parts of the economy, many pertaining to the U.S. military, but not all. And so, you know, we need to get ourselves out from that

that grip. Um, and an important way of doing that, uh, to be sure is, uh, is to invest in our own ability here, not just to mine these things, but also to, um,

to use them and to refine them. Refining is a key missing piece. But I would say it's also important that we look to dependable allies and partners to supply these sorts of materials as well. You know, we can open up our own economy, but that probably isn't sufficient in and of itself. We do need to go abroad. It's just a matter of choosing, being careful in deciding who we purchase from.

What do you think our defense spending should be increased to the next four years to deter these threats? Yeah. I'm not one to put a number on that, mostly because when we talk about numbers that big, I don't even know what they mean. Neither does the Pentagon, by the way. So anyway. That's true. But I can describe what a sufficient...

defense budget would allow if that's helpful yeah please um yeah and by that i i would see direct investments in industrial capacities so the ukraine war has revealed our inability to um produce enough enough of the things that need for a modern war right it's not just a matter of uh

of having to send these things abroad. But even if we were in a war ourselves, there are serious concerns about our ability to resupply ourselves. So I'd invest in industrial capacity. I would want to get our shipbuilding capacity significantly increased so we can go from building, say, one submarine a year to...

two or three submarines a year. You know, similar things for larger surface vessels. You'd want to, again, increase the ability to rapidly build up the size of the Air Force. These are things we just can't do right now. The industrial capacity isn't there and we're

We're not willing to spend enough to encourage industry to make their own capital investments. We need to solve that problem and we need to solve it soon. And unlike World War II, the excess industrial capacity that could be converted is no longer there either. That's absolutely right. What do you think the Biden administration got right on the China-Taiwan conflict and what did they get wrong or not prepare for or not prepare for? Yeah.

So I think that they were broadly right in continuing the Trump administration's approach in identifying China as a strategic competitor. They did a lot of good things when it comes to investing in relationships with allies and partners. So the two premier accomplishments here,

or AUKUS, which is a grouping of the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom to work together to help Australia get advanced submarines and more broadly to cooperate in developing all sorts of sort of next generation military technologies. The second big accomplishment was investing in the Quad. Again, this is something that started during the Trump administration. That's a grouping of India, India,

Japan, Australia, and the United States. And that started off as being very hesitant to touch national security issues, in particular because of the Indians. And that's increasingly focused on, again, on national security issues, increasingly vocal on speaking out against certain types of Chinese misbehavior. So the investment in allies and partners, good thing.

But the Biden administration, to my mind, was, generally speaking, too risk averse. You know, we remember the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about what to do about the balloon flying over the country. The president was too focused on...

making sure that the competition not escalate rather than on putting us in a position to win the competition. And, you know, the president, I would argue, neglected the defense budget. In fact, I would argue sort of downgraded the importance of conventional military force in the

dealing with this challenge. Mike, we have just one minute left here. I want to throw one last question at you. How important are drones to the next generation of Pentagon technology, automated technologies of all types? Yeah, usually important. I think we're seeing that on the battlefield in Ukraine, both on the ground, in the air, and at sea. I think this is something that we had not sufficiently prioritized to date.

I think it's going to be a game changer in the Taiwan Strait. I know Indo-Pekan is thinking hard about this, but it is going to, warfare because of these things is going to look quite different, I think, in the next, even in the next five years, 10 years than it has over the last couple of decades. Fantastic. Mike Mazza, thank you so much for joining us, folks. Follow him on X at Mike underscore Mazza.

Stay tuned if you are a podcast listener. We have a brilliant podcast segment coming up. Matt Evans, who is running for the Phoenix City Council, ran for mayor, talking about an enormous tax increase passed by the Phoenix City Council that they were laughing at. Sort of stunning. And Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air for all of you next week. But if you're not a podcast subscriber and you want to catch that extra segment,

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All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds, everybody. Our guest up next is Matt Evans, a Phoenix native, which makes him pretty darn rare here in Arizona where 83% of the state is from out of state. That's going to change quite a bit in 20 years, I think. I think it is. Yeah, absolutely. We're the locals. Yes.

Former mayoral candidate at the City of Phoenix and current candidate for city council in District 2. The founder of Take Back Phoenix, a grassroots movement working to flip Phoenix red and end the Democratic stronghold on the city. And a proud member of the Dad Army, fighting to end the war on women and children, all good causes. Particularly this week, because Phoenix is totally out of control. Out of control. Matt, tell us...

A little bit about what they're doing or what they have just done. Well, so yeah, in January, the city of Phoenix posted a 60-day notice that they intended to increase the TPT sales tax from 2.38% to 2.8%. And on March 18th, they voted for the trial budget, which is essentially voting for it. It's not official. There is a subsequent vote that will take place. But they effectively have just increased the sales tax in the city of Phoenix by 0.5%.

Well, and it's almost a 25% increase. What is that, like 22 or something like that? Which makes them almost a percent higher than Chandler, Scottsdale. I think they're now going to be the highest. They're going from the seventh to the third highest. Buckeye's 3%. Can you believe that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They did this thing. They passed a luxury tax. They said this is going to raise us all this money. It actually reduced the amount of money Phoenix was collecting because the car dealerships all left, the RV dealerships all left, the high-end art stores all left. I mean the stuff, the big-ticket stuff all went to Scottsdale. It went to Tempe. I mean it went everywhere else.

Yeah, and even the budget director made a comment that the revenues are slowing in the city of Phoenix. So why isn't that a priority? Why aren't we talking about that? Instead, they choose just to throw more taxes at us and make the people pay for it. Matt and Sam, explain to our audience how big the city of Phoenix budget is. You know, I looked up here, the general fund, there's other funds, but the general fund alone is $2.1 billion. Right.

How much is it really, the budget, on top of the general fund? Well, so when I was there, it was about $3.2 billion. And I know it's gone up 60% in total when you add up everything. So it's, what, 4.2?

Eight now, something like that. I mean, as far as the actual budget that they proposed when they were talking about their expenditures, they I think it was roughly around two point one billion. So that's actually the general fund budget they're calling. They're they're they're talking about there. So you have, in addition to that, all the bond funding. Yes, yes. And the dedicated fund for police and fire. Yes. So how much is so how much is that? So that that is about another billion, billion and a half and change per year. So North Dakota's budget is five billion.

Well, in fairness, the city of Phoenix probably does have a larger population. South Dakota's four million. Vermont's five. Yeah. And I know they're bigger, but still. We also have a larger spending problem, too. Yeah. These are state budgets. Yeah. They have to do a lot of things the city of Phoenix doesn't.

Yeah, my thing is they're not being fiscally responsible. I mean, and if we talk about this tax increase, you know, one of the first things that I would say, which is one of the biggest bullet points, is that it's not voter approved, right? So when you look at the TPT tax increases, this is even an acknowledgment of the budget director, Amber Williamson. The city council has the opportunity to take tax increases to the voters, and they have chosen to do that with every time they have increased the tax increase.

And I actually had a, sorry to cut you short, I actually had a meeting with Anne O'Brien following their policy session on February 25th, and I asked her quite briefly, what do you think about the policy that's being put in place?

point blank, why aren't you guys taking this to the voters when every other single tax increase has been taken to the voters? And she essentially just gave me a non-answer. Oh, well, we've been looking at the budget for a while. We feel confident. I trust Amber Williamson and the budget team on what they're doing and

To me, that just fell on deaf ears. I think it's – That's a non-answer. Yeah, it's a non-answer, and it's a shame. And then for Kate Gallego and the city council to laugh at their simultaneous motion when they approve it, it's just so tone deaf to the city of Phoenix. And that's up on your ex, right? Yes, it is right now. So what's your ex account? Matt4Phoenix. Matt4Phoenix. You can go there. You actually see when she proposes – the motion's proposed –

Two, two, was it two members jump? Yes. Like to be the second. They're so eager to raise taxes. So eager to raise taxes. And then she's laughing about it. So tone deaf. Matt, have you taught with your group? Have you thought about putting this on the ballot? You have 30 days after they vote on it to put it to the ballot. You need 60,000 ballot signatures. You can do it in 30 days to put it on the ballot. Has your group thought about doing that?

No, we haven't, to be quite honest with you. That could be a good idea. It's one of those things you probably have to launch Monday. But I would think to believe, I've noticed this before in other states. You can't launch it until they actually formally pass it. So you have some run-ups. So when will they formally pass it? I believe it's July 1st. Okay, so you have July 1st. Matt, I really think this is what your group needs to do. You need to go out and collect those signatures. I think if you get the party, the free enterprise group,

you know, all these other groups involved. I think you can get most of this with volunteers to go out there and do it because people don't want to see their sales tax increase and the business leaders don't want to see sales tax increase because, you know, you're going to lose business. I mean, so think about people in Desert Ridge, okay? And, you know, you're in Waring's district. What are you, a mile from Scottsdale? Do you just skip over and go over down to the different grocery store? Exactly, right? Exactly. That's my point. No, and you will do that when you start doing that much here. So have you, you,

You should really consider doing that. Well, I would like to learn more about this. So when you say when we put it to the vote, does it then go back to the council? So once – no. Yes, and they have to put it on the ballot. Yeah, they have two choices. Once you've gathered the signatures, they can either choose to withdraw the motion entirely, just take it off the table, vote no on it, right? Or they have to send it to the ballot.

And I would announce you're doing that now and see how they respond to that. Well, I think I will then. I think that's a great idea because quite honestly, you know, and I've been talking to my constituents and there's so much I want to do to not have this happen, right? But I've kind of felt, you know, the best option for us is to

put ourselves into position on the city council. And so that's why I've been kind of focusing all of our efforts towards 2026 and just putting us on the city council so we can repeal it in that budget process. As a political strategy, this is the best thing to win those city council seats. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Because you have an issue that affects all people, especially working families.

And them saying councilman so-and-so who I'm running against voted to increase your – because no one knows about it. That's the other thing about it. This morning I was telling some friends at breakfast who are from Phoenix about it. I'm like, well, when did this – when is this happening? I mean people don't know because no one reads The Republic anymore. Well, and the local press covers things in such a way. Yeah. So I'm telling you, if your group really wants to go and make a difference and win these council seats –

Make an effort to refer this to the ballot because that is going to give you the political ammunition.

To go and defeat these incumbents. Well, I appreciate that. And that's something that I didn't consider. And I'm always willing to do that. And I think we're going to move forward with that. I'm going to obviously do some more research after this podcast. But I love that idea. Well, and what you're doing, Matt, I mean, more broadly, is what Chuck and I have talked about needs to happen in every major city is that Republicans need to start taking responsibility for our major cities. We've ignored them. For some reason, we've just...

We've ignored – for some reason, we've allowed our cities to be taken over by these progressive agendas. It becomes these blue zones and not the good blue zone, these blue zones. We've allowed it in universities. Fortunately, Trump is bitch-slapping these people and that we're taking those back, right, and public education as well. Those three things plus journalism, Republicans have frankly been absolutely irresponsible nonstop.

not putting up a counterpunch to these things. And they've just done it. And I agree with that. And so, you know, Gina Sabota, AZGOP, I would love your support. Let's form a partnership. We really have to focus on local politics and stop focusing on just the... I know it's nonpartisan, but at the end of the day, it really isn't. And the top eight out of the top 10 cities in the United States are Democrat mayors, Democrat majorities. And we see the

The paradigm of having that division between the local politics and the state politics. And at some point, we need to take these big metropolitan cities back in our country because one of the things that I really was a proponent of with Trump, I'm a big supporter of Trump, is make America great again and save the American dream. And I feel like we're getting close, but we're never going to get to that full 100% until we take these big local cities back in our country as well.

Well, and one of the things that people don't understand with everything that's going on with Doge and all the revelations from the government spending that's been going to all of these liberal and progressive groups to really supercharge their electoral efforts. The same thing is happening with the city of Phoenix budget. The same thing is happening with the budget of those other nine major cities, all the big cities.

the big blue states, this kind of stuff extends and it has a massive impact when they're giving, for instance, hundreds of thousands of dollars to an activist turnout group to do, quote, business outreach along the South Central light rail line, right? Does a liberal activist group have any experience in business?

No. And it's all a scam. And there's literally when we just look at this tax increase, I mean, there are so many angles that you could cover that just shows how whether it's either blatant corruption or incompetence or a combination of both. But I mean, we could literally talk for hours about all the different things that they've done with this. You know, they didn't even bring a list of budget cuts until the week prior to voting on it.

And if you're really trying to be fiscally responsible, you think you would give the public an opportunity to see what those budget cuts are way in advance. And when I look at those budget cuts, you know, I kind of laughed. One of the things right away was they're cutting funding from the Office of Accountability and Transparency. I was like, man, is that par for the course? Well, it's sort of like, you know, Germany, too much fanfare, has announced they're raising a trillion dollars of spending for military infrastructure.

Then when you read it, half of 500 billion of it goes to infrastructure. And that 500 billion for infrastructure, 100 billion plus is for green initiatives. So, I mean, it's the same thing. I mean, it's the same game, right? We're just cutting things we don't like to put us more accountable for so forth. I mean, I was just looking at this, the combined sales tax rate.

For the state of Arizona, Maricopa County, state of Phoenix, it's 8.6%. Before you add this, if it passes, which will put you close to 9%. That's California. You're getting California-type stuff now. And to your point earlier, Barry Graham, city councilman in Scottsdale, he even posted on X the day after, you know, thanks, Phoenix, for gifting us this ability for people to come and spend money in Scottsdale now. It's just crazy. And one of the things that I also think that is, you know, they did a bait-and-switch in 2023-2014.

They pushed voters to vote for this Go Bond. And now in the same breath, they're saying we need to increase taxes to pay for personnel to support the infrastructure that you guys voted on. Again, how many of these people would have voted on things like this or a salary increase for the city council if they knew just a few months later the city was going to come back and raise taxes and literally make them pay for it?

And while the mayor got a big salary increase, what I have been baffled at and I'm very curious as to the origins of is that she has gone from having a few hundred thousand dollars when she started as mayor to being worth something close to $20 million.

Yeah, I don't know about the $20 million. I was watching her, at least her finance reports in the city of Phoenix when I was running against her, and I think they're around a million and a half. But yeah, she has a lot of out-of-state developers, special interests, political action committees. So the last one she had out was over $12 million. On her Phoenix finance? Yeah. Oh, wow. I'll have to take a look. Yeah, when you look at all the investments and everything else that she had. Okay, okay.

I was just talking about raw donations in that period. But yeah, I see what you're saying.

Raul Grijalva created a real political machine in Tucson where they control all the government jobs and they hand them out to their friends and favored people. They control all the contracts and they hand them out to their friends. Kate Gallego has replicated that structure at the city of Phoenix, which makes the task of taking her on that much tougher because, as I found out,

She'll straight up threaten anybody who's willing to fund the opposition. That's why Harry Reid never had real opponents in Nevada. He would literally, if you were a Republican running against him, he would call your donors a...

this would be a bad idea for you to do. Literally, he would make those calls. And she's the same way. I know she did that when I ran. And that's what excites me because I'm young, I'm full of energy, and I'm ready to challenge her. And we need someone. And that's why I'm a Phoenix native. If it was anybody to stand up and take our city back, it's me. And that's why I'm here. We're actually going to start a podcast for Take Back Phoenix because one of the things that you guys spoke about as well is

I really believe not enough people in the city are educated on what's going on. But I think with social media increasing and with the election that just happened, people are taking an interest in that and they're getting excited. And so if we can give them this medium, we can educate these people and we can really – Well, I think that's a great idea. There's lots of talk radio in the Phoenix metro area. You should go hit them all so they all hear about it. But I'm going to make a recommendation. You will do more by having your group just make a commitment to walk five hours a week.

and hand out collateral what's going on with the budget than you will do in a podcast or radio show. Not that I'm saying you shouldn't do that. No, I think that's a great idea. But you will touch more people one-on-one. As folks have been doing this for years and we've got a following now, it takes a while. And we put some money into this. And our podcast isn't as generic. It's specifically about these city council meetings, these subcommittees are two or three hours. We want to condense it into five minutes and just let you know. And we are grassroots, so I really appreciate that. Yeah, no, because if you have the people do it, it'll be the biggest touch. Yeah.

Our final question here. So how do people follow you? How do they get involved there in the city of Phoenix? Yeah, so go to my website, matt4phoenix.com, and that will give you an ability to sign up and you can sign up for updates. And we're going to be really pushing our organization a lot. We have an actual meet and greet.

at the uh what is it called black rifle coffee company on 44th street in indian school next saturday from 10 to 12 anybody that's in the valley or district 6 we would love you to come out and meet us you send that to kylie and we'll post it on our social media and try to help you out with that we'd love to but yeah we're trying to be present and we're going to show up at the city council meetings these subcommittee meetings you know our goal is to really um educate the

public. And hopefully if we're doing our jobs right, you're going to hear a lot about more about Matt Evans, about the candidates and Take Back Phoenix in the future. Well, again, we appreciate you coming in. And again, I really look at this referendum. That's going to be the best thing you can go and get all your folks elected. And we appreciate the work you're doing because like I said earlier, it is needed.

Oh, my gosh. It is absolutely necessary. 100%. Thank you so much for the opportunity, and that's why I love to come on podcasts like this, so you can get new ideas from people that have experience just like you. I would love to pick your brain some more offline, Sam. Oh, absolutely. And I'm definitely going to follow up with that, and hopefully on Monday we'll have something. Once you figure it out, let us know. We'd like to help you because we've talked about this, and I'm just –

I think this really is a golden opportunity for fiscal conservatives to make some dent in the elections in 2026 because of their irresponsibility. I love it. I love this excitement. Yeah. Matter of fact, you guys could do your own doge.

I've been saying that. That's exactly what we need. We need a Doge for Phoenix. And I know we're out of time, but I just want to give one example for that that I brought today. Please do. Because I think it's important for the public to see this. So the city of Phoenix actually has this FunPhoenix tool. They give you this opportunity to balance the budget, so to speak. And so I went into the spending inventory, and I saw – I was literally trying to balance the budget. And I went into their information technology services, and there's a line item for $11 million for DevOps. Wow.

But that's where it stops. And I had a meeting with Anne O'Brien, the city councilwoman. I said, where do I see the receipts for this $11 million to see where you actually spent it? And she told me, place a public records request.

That's not transparency. It's not accountability. And that's another thing we need to change. We need to put this information into the public. We should have the right to have access to the receipts at the drop of a dime. You know what my bet noir with them on spending is? So back in 2018, it cost us $500 to plant a tree in a sidewalk, $500. Yeah.

It now costs over $2,000. $60 million for tree equity, huh? Yeah, to plant a tree. So without changing what they're doing, they have quadrupled the cost of the activity by hiring a bunch of full-time staffers who sit there and go, I think the tree should be there. Maybe we should paint the streets gray, you know, cool pavement programs, spend another $120 million on that. Actually, you know what? I'll give you a really good easy one.

take the blacktop off and go down to the concrete and leave it. Diamond grind the concrete. It's a perfectly good surface. It'll last for 50 or 100 years. You don't need to be constantly replacing it with blacktop and it doesn't absorb heat and you don't need to do cool pave. Yeah, where you have one study from some students at ASU and then decide to invest $100 million in it. Well, Matt Evans, thank you for joining us. Thank you. I really appreciate it. This is Breaking Battlegrounds.

Matt, what's interesting, and I hope they go and take that referendum suggestion seriously, because I really think if you want to go...

and make a dent in the council, this is sort of the golden issue, right? It's money. It's really hard to break through with the local media environment. This gets you out front on a clear dividing line issue that can separate your candidates from all those incumbents who laughed when they voted for this massive tax increase while people are scrambling to buy eggs. And some asking if there was more needed. Right. Right.

It's just unbelievable. And I got to say, I applaud him that he's taken another run at this because personally, while I wouldn't trade the experience of having run, I don't want to do it again. I didn't enjoy the process. Yeah. No. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. It's also, you know what the worst part is? I can say this on the podcast.

It's people you know don't like you kissing your ass and smiling in your face. I liked those people better when they were honest and giving me the finger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's interesting. So we have a clip. Joy Reid. Joy Reid, everybody's favorite homophobe in America. Yeah.

has made a prediction that Canada would beat the United States in a war. She had this conversation with Don Lemon, the assaulter. Jeremy, go ahead and play it, please. Grampy Trump, let's talk. Let's talk. First of all, you can't make Canada the 51st state without going to war with them.

And let me explain how that happened, how that worked out the last time we tried to go to war with Canada. They burned the White House to the ground in 1814 and won the war. Beat us in the war of 1812. They probably like their chances against us. We're not going to beat them in a war because we have never been able to do that. You'd have to occupy a country.

that is equivalent of the size of the United States in which the top two thirds of it is uninhabited frozen forest land that touches the Arctic. You know how that worked out when the Nazis tried that with Russia, which is the equivalent of Canada on that part of the world? We gonna lose.

We don't have enough troops to occupy. They are a country of 39 million people who have about as many guns per capita as we do.

Well, there's a couple points, and we'll put an opinion piece out on this today. First of all, to comment, they have as many guns as we do per capita. Well, they have 41 million people, which she doesn't even know the number. We have 340 million people. So per capita, if you understand math, means we have more guns.

Well, also, we have – I think it's like two guns per person in this country and they seize most of theirs. But it's just – she's just – oh. Hang on, Chuck. I got to back this up. OK. First, the US won the War of 1812. Yes. Rather famously, Battle of New Orleans, the only battle ever won after a war was ended. In 1814, Canada did not invade the United States. The British landed in Chesapeake Bay.

Yeah.

There is so much of this. For a Christmas book, we could do one of Porler Bears with Guns. Or adult Christmas book. There is so much of this that is just – Well, also the United States is clearly above everybody's ranked number one military in the world. And it's going to get better under Trump. Yes. Right? Yes. Canada's ranked 27th. And what that's like, I will use – because it's bracket weekend, March Madness –

That's like there's the top 25 teams in basketball and then you have the mid-tiers 40 and below. That's basically what their military is. Well, I would go further. This is literally like Duke playing the worst Division III team in college basketball. It's that much of a mismatch. The D3 team that won no games this year has a better chance against Duke than Canada has in a war against the United States. Yeah.

Here's the one thing too about that. So I was reading an article this morning by our guest earlier. It was talking about there's anti-Semitism on the right. Now, there's much more on the left, but there's anti-Semitism on the right. And some of our podcast hosts bring these folks on who claim they're being historians. They're as much a historian as either of us probably. And they put out some of these anti-Semitic tropes, right? And they're –

His comment was, I don't like they don't – I don't mind them being on, but I don't like that there's no pushback. Don Lemon knew that she just did not know what she was talking about. Oh, for sure. I mean – and I think he was just laughing because he almost knew how ridiculous she was.

I mean – I would almost hope so because otherwise that's 100 IQ between the two of them. But they always talk about we're not – the right doesn't push back on these people. That was such an easy one to push back on, to say I don't think you understand history. I don't think you understand World War II. I don't think you understand the differences of size. I don't think you understand the War of 1812. I don't think you understand any of this. And she clearly does not.

Yeah. I mean, it's just unbelievable. There was nothing she said there that was... I mean, not one. Well, that was interesting. Well, Jeremy, it's time for Carly's Corner. Let's get the theme music going here to get people excited. ♪ Talking about crimes and the ones committed ♪ ♪ Murder and mayhem in a world of sin and awe ♪ ♪ Carly's on the roll ♪

and listening

Welcome to my corner. Start spilling. Yeah, we got to go. So what do we got? Well, Chuck sent me an interesting tweet this morning and then it got me derailed from what I was going to talk about. The dogs have not been fed, by the way. I think I want to go down this rabbit hole with you guys because it'll kind of show you how I go down these rabbit holes and the different mysteries that I do find. So the tweet first started out by saying,

It said more than 500,000 people disappear without a trace every year. Now, I had to push back on that because that is actually not true. That's not true at all. At all. It's more of like 1,000 to 1,200 people go missing every year without a trace. 600,000 people do go missing a year in the United States. But they're found. But they're found like a week later. But even 1,000 to 1,200 –

That's a lot. Yeah, just go missing without a trace. So that leads us to the mystery of Peter Bergman. So in 2009, he shows up in Ireland, Sligo, Ireland, with no passport and has no record of entry. He just appears in Ireland, okay? And he's checking into this hotel. He pays in cash. He has like this duffel bag that's worn out. And he said he's from Vienna, or that's the address that he gave the hotel. So he spends three days there.

In this hotel, he leaves each day with a single purple plastic bag with stuff in it and then returns back each day and it's just empty. And CCTV has him walking around town. Apparently, he walked the city of Sligo 13 times in three days, every time returning back to the hotel with an empty bag. So he was never seen lingering in a certain spot, never seen bringing attention to himself. He just always kept moving. He did buy three international stamps.

On his last day, he asked for a late checkout and then ended up leaving at his late checkout, went to the bus station, ordered a cappuccino and a sandwich, sat at a table, and then wrote down on a piece of paper,

And then was seen destroying the paper. So now that night at 10 p.m., he was seen at Ross's Point Beach by a couple witnesses. Someone said hi to him. He just nodded, acknowledged them. And he was just seen pacing back and forth on the beach. Well, the next morning he was found face down in the sand just on the waterline. And he was in a Navy shirt in his underwear and his clothes were folded neatly on the sand.

And so investigators have been looking into him trying to figure out where who this man was. He had no identifying stuff on his body. They never figured out who it was. No fingerprints matched him. No dental records matched him. Literally nothing existed of this man. So which is why they went back and looked at all the CCTV to figure out what what happened. But the autopsy, they said it was no foul play was played.

play was involved and they ruled it as a drowning but there was no water in his lungs there was no signs of a struggle nothing like that it was found that he had terminal prostate cancer and he had a tumor in his bones and had previous heart attacks so there's a theory that he may have just had he was

probably trying to kill himself and then before he wanted to disappear in the water and before that happened he had a heart attack but the eight stamps were never found he was never identified so this led me down the path of like who could this be so I start looking into this and one that people kept commenting this is a tweet Satoshi

Nakamoto, who is the founder of or the creator of Bitcoin, but it's a fake name, which I didn't know any of this. So this leads me down to this new hole, which it's not. I don't believe it's Satoshi because there's communications with Satoshi from 2009 to 2010. And the mystery behind him is

no one knows who Satoshi is. He was always under a fake name, fake alias. And in 2011, he was heard from twice. And his last emails were sent saying, I wish you wouldn't keep talking...

about me as a mysterious shadowy figure. The press just turns it into a pirate currency angle. And then his final text or email said, I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone. And that's the last time Satoshi has ever been heard from. He has over a million bitcoins, which is equivalent to 65 billion today.

And it's never been touched, never been moved, never nothing, never been spent nothing. So then this led me into who is Satoshi. And the person who I think the most compelling story that I was reading about was Jack Dorsey, who was the former CEO of Twitter. And the weird thing. So I'm going to tell you the little things that have connected Jack with Satoshi. So he was forced out of being CEO in 2008, which is when the white papers of Bitcoin were published in 2008.

In 2011, Jack came back into this public sphere, into this public world as the chairman of Twitter, and he launched a new company called Square, which was the thing that you could swipe. Right.

In 1996, he was proven through UMR emails, which is the school he went to, which is University of Missouri, ROLA, which is now Missouri University of Science and Technology. He was confirmed to be a cyber cypher punk, which is activists and technologists who advocate for widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy enhancing technologies to promote social and political change.

And this was apparently the birthplace of Bitcoin. He also wore an Adam Back t-shirt in his yearbook picture at University of Missouri, Rolla. And he is the inventor of Hashcash, which is a key component to Bitcoin's proof of work.

He's also wealthy enough that I could see him leaving aside $65 billion because he has more than a billion from his other things. So the mascot of his school were called miners. And you mine Bitcoins. He's a member of ACM in 1997 to 1999, which is a developer's academic science thing, which is another – they talked about a lot of crypto stuff.

back in 1999. Satoshi was also very... His coding was very clean and apparently it's very equivalent to Jack's coding of X or Bitcoin. I mean, Twitter now. And now...

And now Jack builds developer tools that only supports Bitcoin. It will not support any other currency. You know, I had not heard his name, but that makes sense. It actually, yes. I mean, I've heard other names. I've read about this, but that actually makes sense. His makes sense more than the others. Right? That's what I was hearing the other day. And he's living sort of this hermit type. Right. Very. Ascetic. Ascetic lifestyle now. Yeah. So there.

Oh, there you have it. You know, the moral of the story is I aspire to be as mysterious as these three. And create a currency. And create a currency. Imagine if you just created something this crazy and groundbreaking just under a fake name, and now you're just lit. You know, a show I would like us to do for a full hour...

is have someone come on or some persons come on and just do what exactly is Bitcoin and those other things. I get asked it all the time. And when I was doing a lot of work for Overstock, they invested heavily in it. And I just like, I still don't understand it. I don't understand it. But I'll tell you, I'm not getting left behind. I think there's a movie like that, too, on Netflix, right? I refuse to watch it. There's too many connections. That's exciting. We do need to get you up in August to Idaho for the trial of

of that crazy guy who took the selfie in front of the shower an hour after the murders. Isn't that what he did? Was it an hour or two after the shower? Yeah. In front of a shower. Yeah. I mean, he went back to the scene at like 9 a.m. also. That's crazy. Well... Oh, an update on last week's story. They did let...

Rieb was his last name from The Missing Girl in Dominican. I'm forgetting his first name. Josh Rieb. But now he's stuck in Puerto Rico. Oh, I didn't see that. Why is he stuck in Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico, I saw last night, Puerto Rico won't let him go now.

I really just think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I do too. I don't think he did. I don't think he did anything purposely, but I think something. No, he left. They let him go and he went to Puerto Rico for his layover and they won't let him out of Puerto Rico. I don't know if that's changed today, but I found that very interesting, especially since it's a U.S. territory. So I don't know where Puerto Rico gets where they can start just keeping people, which means is that the U.S. government saying you got to keep them?

Interesting. Well, it was her family that pushed for them to clear him and to just finally say. Yeah, they just thought she drowned. Yeah. And the family is pushing for that. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, Kylie, always interesting. Thank you for that rabbit hole. Dogs got fed this morning, though, right? Absolutely. A little late. Great guest today. Again, folks, you can follow us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You can follow us, subscribe on Substack. We have a bunch of great articles this past week.

You can get us wherever you get your podcasts all over the world. On behalf of Kylie, Sam, Jeremy, myself, thanks for joining us. And by the way, do you know where the 52nd most popular podcast in the Dominican Republic? I looked it up. Really? Number 52. Yeah. I thought I'd like I look, you know, every couple of weeks like what's going on. So I thought maybe it's just the wrong list. No, it's a bunch of Spanish ones. And then there's us.

How on earth did that happen? I don't know, but for our Dominican Republic visitors, guests, and fans, thank you. Yeah, big time. Thank you, thank you. Have a great weekend, folks. We'll be with you next week.