Joseph Chaplik with a Legislative Wrap-Up
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Welcome to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. In the studio with us today, Joseph Chaplick, representative for LD23 here in the great state of Arizona.

Also a man with a very interesting background. He comes from Cleveland. We won't hold that against him. Not too much at any rate. But Joseph, tell us a little bit about yourself. You are really one of the rising stars in the Arizona legislature and someone who, despite being new in the House, has really drawn a lot of attention.

I would say accolades from your colleagues and has become very quickly one of the leaders. Well, thank you, Sam. I did just jump into politics. It's something that I saw happening in this state that I felt I needed to get involved. I come from a background of business. And so a couple of years ago, I decided to run for a seat in our own district, Scottsdale Fountain Hills, Rio Verde. And I was one of the...

I guess individuals that challenged an incumbent of our own party. And I did that for several reasons. One was I did not believe he was going to win the general election and we would have lost a seat to the Democrats here in Scottsdale. And I know that because he barely won in 2018 to the same Democrat challenger. So I got involved. I did the primary and I won. And then I won the general by over 15,000 votes, which is significant.

And now I'm a state representative down at the statehouse. For folks who don't know, how many, what is the Republicans versus Democrats? What's the count in the Arizona? So there are 60 House representative seats for Arizona. It is 3,129 Republicans. So if we had lost that seat, that would have been a big deal. We would not have the majority, correct. We'd have trouble advancing basically anything.

It'd be a different state. Yeah. Yes. And we still run that risk today. Every election we run that risk right now until we safely get back to 37, 38, 39, 40 seats, which we used to have 10 years ago. Well, hopefully with what's going on, people are aware and awake and seeing the craziness coming from the left right now. And that will be the case here soon. Fingers crossed.

Yes, I hope so. I hope more people understand where we are as a state. We are a red state, but we have a lot of risk out there with not staying engaged or following what's happening in our state. So if we don't get out and vote, we could lose our state. We could become Virginia overnight. Virginia, if you don't know, lost the House, the Senate and the governor in one election and went from red to far left blue quickly with policy.

It's scary if that happens here in Arizona. What, Joseph, tell us, what do you feel are the two or three most important issues that the legislature must confront and resolve the next two to three sessions? You know, there's a lot out there in terms of policy, and I think we had a very successful year, although it was twice as long as usual. So I went in as a freshman and came out as a junior. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Also lost all my summer. But the reality is we actually had a very successful session. We did tax policy. We made our state a very friendly pro-business state with a 2.5% flat tax for everyone. We passed a lot of election integrity bills. So we did a lot of reform in terms of criminal justice. We did a lot of...

accountability, and just policymaking to hold people accountable. And so when you look at it, I have a whole list of things that we did in our first 55th legislative session that we can go over later. But I think going forward, we need to continue the election integrity. We need to continue having pro-business policies. And then we need to have more...

I'd say strict policy against the corruption or the criminal activities that are going on. And in one example, you know, these riots, these friendly, peaceful protests, they claim, that end up destroying cities. And we do not want to become a Portland, Oregon, a San Francisco, a Seattle with what happened in the last year in their cities. And I think we need to have that strict enforcement of these laws.

so it doesn't get out of control early. And I think we did a pretty decent job this year controlling some of this, but again, if we don't control it, we're gonna have a huge problem here. - You spent a decade in Portland in business early in your career.

What signs did you see that made Portland from weird, Portland weird, to Portland crazy right now? What signs did you see happening that you're sort of starting to see like in Phoenix? Is there any comparison to what you're seeing? Right. So to back up, I'm a Cleveland kid. I grew up there, went to Bowling Green State University, and then I left town. And from when I left...

Ohio and up to Los Angeles. So I drove across country by myself at 23, ended up in Manhattan Beach. I spent 10 years almost in Manhattan Beach and I got into business. So I worked for Sprint selling long distance to business accounts and quickly went up the ladder as an executive and

ended up relocating to Portland, Oregon. So when I got to Portland, Oregon, very clean town, very nice. Everything you want in a small downtown. Thriving businesses, thriving social world, restaurants, activity moving through the day and night of a downtown that's all positive. Walkable with a festival on every corner. I mean, it was in the 90s. People forget Portland was paradise. No traffic. No traffic.

Okay, no traffic, quick to move around the city, and you live downtown. Everything was rippled out from center out. And so in those 10 years, Chuck, to answer your question, I started seeing one, I hate to say it, but we saw a lot of California plates. I mean, that was the first sign I saw. Cars were coming in, so traffic started getting thicker. Then I started seeing panhandlers.

all around downtown. The panhandlers started to have more homeless. Then we had a homeless problem. And then city council and Multnomah County and the state really didn't do any policy to preventing any of this to continue out of control and spiral as a negative spiral. And

And so within that 10 years, you started seeing more violence, more crime, businesses hurting. And now they overran downtown where I think there's still boards all over the city. Yeah. And businesses aren't surviving downtown. And it imploded. And so the livelihood of a downtown city is dead there. And that's unfortunate. And if you live downtown downtown,

You want to move into the suburbs. Or you want to move out of state. Or you want to get out of state if you have that flexible schedule or means of employment to move. Yeah. Sam and I have a good friend we're on a text chain with every day, and he's lived in Oregon forever. Born and raised, except for the time he went to college and served military. And they're looking to move out, either coming here or Texas. He's heartbroken about it. Would you say that, Sam? Oh, no. He is...

He is having serious pain over that decision. It's almost his homeland, but it's disappeared, and he realizes, I can't do what I want to do in life here anymore. Well, you know, listen, I lived in Los Angeles, and I loved California. It was that opportunity there, right? Go to California, and that's gone in California. Oregon is a beautiful state. Stunning. And most of the state is rural red. It is red country out there, except you have Multnomah County, you have Lane County, and

And they overrun the elections. And so that makes the state Democrat across the board. And you see the policies that have imploded the city, city council in Portland, horrible in the policies and the neglect to just enforcing the law. It's what so much of it comes down to is. And to me, it really starts. You talked about the homeless coming in.

It really starts there because they always start with the argument that, well, we can enforce a lot of our laws because if we do, we're criminalizing homelessness, which sounds like a terrible thing. But the fact is homeless bring a lot of crime with them. They commit a lot of crime. There was a great piece, Seattle is Dying by KOMO in Seattle, that pinpointed really a few dozen homeless individuals who were causing crime.

I think it was over half. What was that article? That was actually about an hour-long TV special that they did about a year ago. You can go just look up Seattle is Dying on YouTube. You'll find it. Yes, I saw it. But, you know, I mean, it was really a few dozen individuals they found are committing a significant proportion.

Well, so now how does that impact the average citizen that lives in these cities, right? Yeah. Because that's what we have to talk about. What happens is nobody wants to go downtown anymore, and they're scared to take their car downtown because there's guaranteed a broken window with something stolen out of their car or just a broken window because they were looking for something to steal. And $1,000 or $2,000 level, the police aren't even going to come out and help you or file anything. So now here you have a downtown city that if you go to, it's your own risk. You're probably going to have a broken window or vandalism to your car.

And you may get mugged. You may get violently attacked. You just don't know. So nobody's going downtown. So that's how it affects the average citizen. And people want to flee those towns. And it's a shame because it was a beautiful city. And when I got married and had two children, I was flexible to have my own business. I'm in investment real estate business.

My wife and I looked at the map and decided that we're not going back to California. We're not going to Ohio. And we put Scottsdale right there in a bullseye and said, I love Scottsdale. We're going to move to Scottsdale, Arizona, and I love Arizona. And so we came here. Well, and a big part of that is Arizona has continued to enforce the law, including through this last year's protest. We were one of the only major cities that actually shut down those protesters without allowing them to get totally out of control. There was one night of protests.

a fair amount of damage and some violence. Well, Scott still had a little hiccup that night at the fashion square and that, that should have never occurred. Scott still PD was not quite ready for that one. Listen, I talked to Jerry Sheridan. He ran for sheriff.

And I used to serve with Sheriff Joe Arpaio in their advisory posse that over. We still oversee the memorial fund that pays out fallen officers, families, about 40 to 50 thousand dollars. A lot of people don't know this. Sheriff Joe started that. It's a memorial fund. And so I'm still active in that. But Jerry Sheridan was running for president. He was in the general election. And he said, if I was sheriff, I would have had my men down there in Scottsdale ready to.

And I would talk to the city police chief and said, if you don't have this under control in 10 minutes, I'm moving my men in. And we would have never had an issue. But the sheriff was not even seen down there. Where was the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department during that night? Not even present. They were standing down. And they needed to be there because Scottsdale PD is not. I mean, look, Scottsdale PD's job is to bust.

frat bros who are drunk and making trouble on Main Street. I mean, Scottsdale's a big town, as you know, so there is things going on. But you're right. They're not equipped to handle an organized riot that's going to do destruction to

and theft and violent crimes. And unfortunately, now we have the DOJ coming to Phoenix to make sure the Phoenix PD isn't prepared to handle those things either, because we've been talking about Portland. Portland is one of the places that has been under a DOJ consent decree from this exact type of investigation that's coming to Phoenix. And they are actually funding via the consent degree there. They are taking taxpayer money and funding the protesters, funding the rioters.

It's unbelievable. Absolutely crazy. I mean, this is something, folks, if you're not paying attention to this going on, this is organized lawlessness promoted by Democrats and the DOJ. I have never imagined our country would get to this place. Do you think we would have that if President Trump was in office right now? Absolutely not. The DOJ would not be coming to Phoenix at all right now. Period.

I'm just amazed no one's raising a big enough stink about it. That's the most surprising thing to me about it. I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness on this one. I'm going crazy. Guys, Broken Potholes is coming right back. It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain.

This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from GoDaddy.com today. Rocking in the free world with broken potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. Chuck Warren in studio with us today. Joseph Chaplick, representative from LD23 in Arizona.

And Joseph, tell us a little bit about your first year, what it's like, what you learned, what surprised you and what's getting done down there. People may not know. Well, it was definitely interesting to learn a lot that happens at our statehouse and just our capital and how we operate as a government. And one of the things, you know, as a freshman on three committees, so you get assigned to committees and.

And I serve on the Commerce Committee from my business background, the Transportation Committee, and Health and Human Services. So I fill three roles there. And then as far as what we do on the House floor, that's where we debate or we pass bills on your vote. And as you mentioned earlier, we only have 31 Republicans, so we need every 31 Republicans to vote to pass a bill. It's very difficult to move bills, as it should be. That's how government is set up, so we can't change quickly as a country.

But when you dig down into it, to move a bill, you've got to get it introduced. You've got to get it heard. Then there's a discussion. It goes to a committee. It's got to pass through the committee. Then it goes on the floor. Then it has to pass the floor vote. Then it moves to the other chamber where, again, it has to be assigned to a committee. It doesn't automatically happen. It needs to go from that committee, pass, and then go to their floor for a vote, pass, and

If there's any changes or an amendment made, it comes back to the House, the other chamber. You have to go through the process again. Then if you sign it off with approval, with the vote, it goes to the governor's office, which then he can sign it or veto it. So to get a bill passed, it is not easy. It's an incredibly difficult process. Most people don't realize. And that's actually one of the reasons I was personally very disappointed to watch Governor Ducey veto, what was it, 27 bills.

Yeah. What happens in the legislature, which I always find amazing, and I tell people this, they say, why can't they just get these things done? And I tell them, in Arizona's case, you have 60 people who all think they're smarter than the governor. So why would you think they're all going to get along on a particular issue? And you could send the most brilliant, clear, black and white piece of legislation, and someone's always going to find something gray,

or something to just moan or groan about it. I mean, you could say the sky is blue and someone's going to say, well, you know, if you've got fires in California, it's obviously not blue, so why would we do that? Is that sort of how it works? Yes, and when you get down into the, I guess, the meat and potatoes of moving a bill, it is a long process. People could make objections. The debate itself gets grueling. And then the constant battling, especially if it's a partisan bill. So I moved four bills this year.

I'm not a big government guy. I don't need to put 80 bills out there. We don't need 80 bills. There's like 2,000 bills every year that get dropped. Thank you. We appreciate that. So what I mean drop means we created a bill, a policy, and then it has to go through that process I explained earlier. So I had four, and I'll tell you the four I did. One was the mask freedom bill, HB 2770, and I needed to get all 31 bills.

on board for that. And it was a challenge. And I'm glad we did, because look what's going on right now with mask mandates and not just for COVID. This protects us for the flu two years from now. It allows businesses to make the choice if they want to enforce the mandate or not. It's a business policy. Absolutely. Without your action, look, these masks, this isn't going away. Correct. I mean, forever, right?

And you would have a hodgepodge of laws depending on which city you were in, depending on which area you were in. So what you did was essentially put it on the businesses and on the individuals. And that is the definition of freedom. Yes. All the all the businesses, private businesses out there. And we pass that through the House. That was the most difficult, long debate ever.

You know, the media rips me by taking content and distorting it and then putting a new headline on it and then pitching it out there all across the media world. And they did that on that. So I get trashed all the time for running tough bills. But I use that for an advantage, and I kept going back to the media saying, you know,

"You guys are making me a rock star in the state of Arizona "because you're sending this article everywhere. "Nobody cares what you write. "They care that we have a bill "that's gonna take the mask off their face." So I'm like, "Thank you for publicizing that "all around the state." And they stopped talking about me. - You have my personal gratitude. - I mean, what's amazing about your bill is you're not saying a business can't require it, right? - Yeah. - I mean, that's the point. They never wanna bring up something like this. You're just saying you have the freedom to either accept

A mask or not. Yeah. Chuck, they always say we're banning masks. We're stripping people off masks. No, we're just allowing the individual to make the decision. Yeah. That's it. If you want to wear the mask, wear the mask. If you don't want to wear the mask, don't wear the mask. But don't put your employees in the firing line of hostile customers because they're not equipped and they didn't take that position as employment to be the mask police for the federal government. Right.

I agree. What's the other bill? A couple other small bills. This one, HB 2838, which is tax relief. So really big bill, actually, as I'm joking here. Tiny, tiny little bill there. This was a tax relief bill to make us a pro-business state and keep us that way, where LLCs, partnerships, small businesses that file under S-Corps

can now have a larger SALT deduction. So what they are allowed to do, state and local tax, they're allowed to write off their state income tax. So if you're paying an enormous amount of state income tax, now you can pass that through to your federal returnees

Return to get a lower payment reduce your federal burden. It does not hurt our state one penny There's no fiscal cost and I think we were the 14th conservative state to do this in the country Great bill ran that through it passed again partisan vote until we got some lobbyists behind it and talked to the Democrats and said this is really good for our state you need to vote for it and they realized that they're hurting small businesses by not voting for it because small businesses are in everybody's district and

So they ended up voting for it. That was a bipartisan. And then I had a couple of fun bills. One was a license plate bill. I think all these states that, you know, you have a license plate on the road, that's a vanity plate with a new design. And those cost the state zero dollars.

And they provide income revenue streams to the to the state. So we already have like 80 plates. We're not going down the one plate anymore. I love the vanity plates. Those are great. They bring in revenue there for nonprofit organizations. So the nonprofit wins. The state wins. It costs zero dollars. We should be voting for all of them. Well, and I got to say, as someone who's deeply involved with policing issues, the idea that you need to have every plate be the same color, the same design, all that sort of thing.

as much as this makes the libertarian in me cringe, is totally unnecessary at this point because every police car has a license plate reader in it that automatically reads that plate and pulls up the information about you and your driving record on their computer. What is a libertarian? They just moan and groan about everything. I mean, isn't that basically what a libertarian is now? Yes, that's exactly what I do.

It's just the curmudgeon party. That's all the libertarians are now. I know they want to say they are. It's like, we're a curmudgeon party. We should never invade another country. And that's basically, you know, let's legalize prostitution and marijuana. I mean, I had a friend that went to Freedom Fest in South Dakota. She's a conservative reporter, and she goes every year to Freedom Fest. This year it was in South Dakota, not Vegas. And I said, what are you talking about? She goes...

legalizing prostitution and marijuana. And I'm just like, that's their platform? She goes, oh, they think it's a winning one. Chuck, I got to tell you, I'm okay with all of that as long as they ban the guy who looks like me in the G-string dancing around on stage. But then, guys, we go back to the Portland, Oregon, and the Seattles, and our cities implode. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's just warning signs everywhere.

That's what has happened in Seattle and Portland that people in Phoenix need to pay attention to and say, these are, I hate the word, but these are triggers. When you start going through these few steps, the ball really starts going down the hill of some momentum, and we need to...

prevent these and be proactive early instead of just waiting for them to happen. And Sam and I have talked about this a lot. Most citizens do not know what's going on in the city of Phoenix who live there or even at the state legislature. It's always amazing to me. I remember last year, 2020, we were organizing. Well, we're going to a quick break. I'll get back to this point in a minute here. This is Broken Potholes.

We're with Sam Stone and Representative Joseph Chaplick from LD23 in Scottsdale, Arizona. We'll be right back. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. In studio with us today, Joseph Chaplick from LD23, Arizona State Representative. And be sure to catch us. There is going to be, from now on, an extra segment on Broken Potholes. If you go on our podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Substack, find us all over the internet, you're going to have an extra little dose of Broken Potholes at the end of this one.

It'll just be us moaning and groaning about things, but it'll be fun for people. That's what we always do. We're like the old men and the Muppets. Joseph, what...

Tell us, what are some of the stories that people presented to you or examples they gave to oppose some of your bills? For example, the mask bill. I am sure you heard some wonderful stories that just make you roll your eyes. Well, yes. And when you're in the committee of the whole, that's where the debate happens. And you get every objection across the line from the Democrats. And this mask freedom bill was contentious because we needed all 31 votes.

But the reality was, you know, they're talking about safety issues and, you know, the seatbelt. I think one of the Democrats said there's headrest on seatbelts now and we need to have headrest on seatbelts, you know, so we should mandate the mask on everybody because that's a safety issue too, or seatbelts and headrests. And I mean, it was just like, it was going, it was spiraling out of control. And the reality was, you know, there's cars out there without headrest. If you have a 1960s muscle car, I mean, so they're...

Their comments were just ridiculous. Did you ever ask any of them, when is it okay to end the mask mandate? Did they ever give a criteria? Because Sam and I have talked about this.

COVID is here to stay. Some strain, this is going to be like the flu or anything else. And again, I want to be very clear. COVID is not the flu. It's a little more dangerous. It's contagious. I don't think anybody here doubts that. But when do they say we don't need a mask mandate? Because does this carry over to the flu? Does this carry over to colds? I mean, when do they say it's okay? I mean, do they give a standard, a metric?

Well, a lot of it was the opposite. They were saying COVID is going to be over. And this was back in like February, March. And they're saying, you know, this isn't going to be law until 90 days after we get out of session. If it gets passed and signed, which it did, we're not going to need it.

And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is going to continue once the emergency declaration is over. Rogue cities will implement mandates for whatever year, two years down the road. So there was that type of discussion of like, we don't even need it. And now fast forward six months, we need it. And we need it going forward next year. And you look at some of the other stuff that happens down there. It is a whirlwind of things.

I mean, the daily activity of when we're down there moving bills, dealing with issues, dealing with Democrat shenanigans because they walked off the House floor for a day. I mean, we were unable to conduct business just because they didn't like the policy that was being presented that day. So the reality here is there needs to be some synergy within the party, the House, the Senate, the governor's office.

you also need synergy with the Democrats because there are bipartisan bills that you need their support. And we can't keep putting the walls up with hatred. And there is a lot of hatred on their side. There really is. I've been down there and I'm not just saying it because I'm a Republican. I see it. Well, polling shows it. Yeah. The polling right now shows it that Republicans by two or three to one are more likely to have a Democrat friend than the Democrats, a Republican friend. I mean, that poll has been all over and it's done twice and everybody's like shocked by it. I'm

Not at all. I got to tell you, either we're passing around the same Democrats or we've got a lot of so-called Democrat friends who aren't, is what that poll tells me. Well, no, but it's like literally 56, 57 percent of Republicans said they have a Democrat friend. It was like in the 20s for Democrats. Right. And there's Democrats that won't vote for a Republican bill. They just will not vote for the bill. No matter what. No matter what. Like some of them even say hi to me because, you know, I'm down there making waves. But I'll tell you this. Not every bill is perfect.

partisan. There are a lot of bills that all of us need here in Arizona. We're representing all people in our districts. And so the fact that they won't even vote for a bill because a Republican put it up, when it's a good bill, like my tax bill that they didn't want to vote for initially, that's a perfect example.

So we have to overcome that. And a bunch of them didn't vote for it in the end, right? There was about a dozen, yeah. And that's just silly. I mean, there's no downside to that bill for Arizona. Because last I checked, Republicans aren't the only ones that own small businesses. Who do you feel some of the most effective legislators are at the moment?

At the Hill? Well, we have a really strong freshman class with myself that came in. And what I've noticed is the individual that has a business background, regardless of what line of industry it is, if they had some responsibilities in life where they had to make a payroll, they had responsibilities in terms of accountability and knows the ins and outs of running a business, uh,

They are the most effective that I've noticed because they understand the guidelines of how to be effective and accountable. So quickly, a name or two. Who are some people you've seen there that you've come in and said, they're a very good legislator. They get stuff done. You know, myself, Jake Hoffman, Travis Gratham, even Wenninger. Jeff Wenninger runs a restaurant. He's very effective. Mm-hmm.

Leo Biasucci, there's a lot of us down there doing good things. And we have that business background that makes us run the government in terms of being accountable and executing and creating the results we need. I think this just highlights why we need term limits, why you need turnover. You need people from the private sector who have experience getting things done. I agree. Broken potholes coming back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with Sam Stone. Today we have a special guest with us, Jeff Murdoch from The Washington Times. He wrote a fascinating piece yesterday called Pathetic and Embarrassing. Biden asked OPEC to up oil output while limiting U.S. energy production. Were you giggling when you wrote this? Because this just seems like a bad Saturday Night Live skit that he's actually doing this.

No, but it's mind-boggling that he's cut all – he's really hamstrung domestic oil production here in the United States. And now he's wondering why the United States doesn't have oil, and he's going to these unstable Middle Eastern countries and saying – basically begging them to start ramping up oil production. It's mind-boggling that anybody –

president would do that. So what he's done, what the Biden administration's done is they have banned drilling on federal property, correct? Correct. They've got rid of the Keystone Pipeline, which I saw the Canadian officials were just, and maybe you can talk about that a little bit, Canadian officials were not happy about that, and they found his request to be ludicrous, to say the least. What else has he done to prevent or simply hamper

domestic oil production, because I believe that maybe I'm wrong, but we were pretty close to being energy independent as of 18 months ago.

Actually, we were energy independent as of 2019. That took a hit with the pandemic because domestic in both international and world production kind of ramped down because workers were unavailable and also demand for gas and oil had dropped significantly because nobody was driving anywhere. So we actually had achieved a point where we were energy independent.

Then President Biden comes in. He issues the executive orders you talk about. And, you know, one of the things that's really devastating is the moratorium on drilling on federal lands in the continental shelf, because that blocks new –

That blocks new drilling. And this comes down to simple supply and demand. Demand for oil and gas is going up, but because Biden has basically tied the domestic oil industry's hands behind its back, they can't move forward to meet that demand. And Biden's turning overseas to meet the demand. Again, I can't even believe I'm saying that. Jeff, this is Sam. This is one to me –

The real farces of the environmentalist movement is we always talk and they love to talk about we are one planet, right? Right. U.S. oil production, as with almost any U.S. extraction, mining and so forth and so on, is done at a very high level environmental standard. We have a lot of controls that we place on those companies. Right.

Those mainly do not exist in a lot of overseas operations. So aren't they at the same time actually increasing environmental damage when they do these kind of things and turn to whether it's the Middle East or China or whoever to – Russia is not following anything. Yeah, no. No.

but now that's exactly right and and you're right that is that is the fallacy here it's a debate the debate that's voting for president biden isn't isn't going to pay attention to that they're going to see what he's doing here in the united states

They're not focused, unfortunately, and they should be, on what's going on in these overseas countries. I think they just look at his executive orders and how he's going after domestic oil producers, and they think that that's fine, and I don't think they ever pay attention to what's going on in these other countries. This is Chuck. What's amazing about this is we obviously now have a tremendous national debt problem. This isn't all Biden. It's been happening for decades.

But we hear often like we're selling our soul and our future to bondholders like China, right?

Well, we're doing the same thing with our energy. We are making ourselves basically hostages to OPEC and people who are a lot of them are bad actors and they want to punish the United States in various ways. And, you know, a lot of people now are too young to remember the 70s gas crisis. But that's when OPEC just ran things and caused this dramatic change.

for the U.S. economy. What needs to happen to sort of turn this around and get people to wake up about what's really going on here? Well,

Well, I'm not – I think it is going to take – and I hate to say it, but I think it's going to take another crisis, another gas line like you had referenced in the 70s, and people not being able to drive to where they're going. I think that's what it's going to take because people – I mean, we've seen gas prices increase. I've not seen –

a lot of criticism of the Biden administration for the rising gas prices, which I find baffling. I see it here and there in different pockets, but I feel like I'm somewhat surprised there isn't more outrage because that is hitting people in their pocketbook. Is it tax increase? Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. It's a tax increase, but they're not calling it a tax increase, and nobody seems to be paying attention to it.

Well, if Republicans or conservatives could ever unite behind a unified message on something that's actually productive, that would be one of the great shocks of 2021 or 22. Well, one of my things watching this is if you wanted to do everything you could to benefit Russia and to benefit Vladimir Putin, wouldn't you start by cutting U.S. shale oil production? So he has more money in reserves. Yeah. No, it's crazy. We're with Jeff Murdoch with The Washington Times. Jeff, what else can you tell us about

what Biden did yesterday, and do you feel any of the other, your colleagues, your peers in other newspapers, get what's happening? Does Wall Street get what's happening, or are they just turning a blind eye to it? I think the press is turning a blind eye to it, and the reason I know that is because I've sat through two press briefings with Jen Psaki, and she's only fielded two questions about this in the last two days.

So, and honestly, I read the next day after this order had come out, I had read the Washington Post. I did not see it. Now, maybe it's possible I missed it. I did not even see this make their paper. It is possible I missed it, but I usually don't miss what they cover. So, no, I don't think the press is really aware of what's happening. If the press isn't aware, then the people are not aware, because that's where most Americans get their news. And I think that's part of the problem is I don't think people realize...

What happened here and how this looks that we have to go and beg these countries, some of which are sworn enemies of the United States. Others are just completely unstable politically and ask them to do us a solid and start ramping up oil. It's it looks bad, especially for the most powerful country in the world. Well, Sam and I were talking last week about the press and one of the problems of the press is there are a lot of them are just working at home. So what do they care about gas prices? It's not affecting them.

I mean, they're the most paranoid group about COVID of any group in the world. And unlike folks that have to drive trucks or do carpools or things, they're just stuck at home typing away, criticizing. And I think that's one problem as well. They're not sort of they're again, they're again in a bubble.

And that...

CNN seemed to care because it affected that. And I know that that's not oil, but it's still the same issue. It's really interesting how these news outlets don't cover something until it does affect them. It's like all of us, though, right? We get concerned about what concerns us, but because they are stuck in their basement home office,

type in a way they're not really experiencing what's going on inflation-wise with gas going up a dollar a gallon in most places. Well, and most of the CNN crew has lived in Buckhead or the areas outlying Atlanta. I mean, they're not in the mix where it is dangerous. Even here in D.C., I mean, most of the press I know take Metro everywhere, so I don't even think they're realizing that gas because I don't even know how many of them really drive.

That's a great point. You said you cover the Department of Justice. We're here in Phoenix, Arizona. The Department of Justice has sent out their folks to go and investigate the Phoenix Police Department. Sam has more details on that. What can the people of Phoenix and Arizona expect when the Department of Justice sends out their lawyers, their investigators to investigate a police force?

You can expect that there will be some findings of misconduct because you need to justify the investigation. So there will be a report, and then you will see the Justice Department take over the Phoenix Police Department for a period of time because, again, they need to justify the report and their actions. And then you will see police leave. You will see police morale suffer because then they are hamstrung because you have the federal government

deciding this one of the things that fascinates me about uh... justice department takeovers of police department nobody's ever happy with that if you look at it you look at that the pro-police keep the put pro-police base are conservatives

They're not happy because you've got a federal government taking over a police department. But you look at the social justice warriors and the liberals, they're also angry because when the federal government leaves, all these problems that they say exist in these police departments, they come right back. So nobody's winning. Nobody's happy. It's just something to say we did it to justify why we did the investigation. And here we are.

Without accomplishing anything. You know, ultimately, I've come to believe that a lot of the protests, not the people on the street, not your average person, but the actual protest leaders, I don't even think this is about justice for them. I really think this is all dollars and cents. And they have a lot of organizations that they want government money for. And they look at these police budgets across the country and they say, well, that's where we can go get it because they're the biggest part of every city's budget.

And and I really think that is driving a lot of the professional activist class. And what's the solution? The only solution that will ever make him happy is roll over and hand him the money.

But I do think there's a push. I do think anti-police sentiment and dismantling police departments, I do think that's a large part of it, because you've got people who've been trained who've basically been anti-police since birth, that now make up the social justice warrior class, and there's such an animosity there. I see it. I do think you're right. It is about shuffling dollars, but...

So it's not – it's very much they're very against police, and if they can punish the police while reallocating that money, that's even better. Jeff, let me ask you this question. I've always wondered, would it be a good idea, since you covered the Department of Justice, would it be a good idea or worth considering putting a term limit on Department of Justice employees and attorneys?

I guess very much so I I believe I don't think that will ever because I don't ever go through but yes you see I I saw it all the time because I covered the Justice Department through multiple administrations and if administration doesn't and if the people working the Justice Department don't want to do the Attorney General's directive they know they're going to outlast that Attorney General even within administrations I mean you see even if an administration runs eight years you

you're usually going to end up with two or three attorney generals. So they all know they can't be fired. They know they're going to outlast whoever the attorney general is, and they can just slow things down and not do it. There's no comeuppance for that. And then when they get somebody and they like, they can just follow them. I mean, it's amazing how many criminal referrals we saw to the Trump Justice Department that never were acted on.

I mean, Chuck Grassley referred the people who lied about Brett Kavanaugh to the Justice Department in 2018. We're in 2021. I've done a FOIA request. I can't even figure out if an investigation has ever been done on it. They even moved his request anywhere. They're like the desert tortoise in Arizona. They live to be 120 years old and outlive two generations of owners. Yes. It's pretty amazing here. What was the difference between the Obama Justice Department and the Trump Justice Department?

uh... with the biggest difference i would say it goes back to support for law enforcement i thought that the trump administration had much uh... had much more support among local police and also supported local police much more than the obama administration and then even or the first couple months of the by demonstration before i was moved to the white house there clearly was an antagonistic approach towards local police

and sort of a bureaucratic approach to local police, rather than considering that local police know their area better than anybody, and these decisions should be up to them. Yeah, we see it here on the local level. I mean, the focus that is coming from Washington since Biden took over has changed dramatically. And, you know, we had had various DOJ officials come through and talk to us at various times the last few years under Trump, but it was always a constructive conversation between

Now you have these half dozen of them coming in with their really social justice warrior mindset. You know, the first thing they put out was a press release telling everyone what the pronouns for each of the Justice Department officials they're sending in are. I mean, that's that's how we get introduced to these folks.

I mean, the first meeting Merrick Garland had with top law enforcement officials, and what I mean by that is, you know, representatives of the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Police Association, organizations like that, major cities' police chiefs, was to tell them, I think it was right after the Minnesota pattern or practice investigation opened up, to tell them, hey, there's more of these investigations coming. Be prepared. We are going to go after local police departments.

Yep, people do need to be prepared. Broken potholes coming back in just a moment. The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now. People rock!

Welcome back. For those of you listening online via Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all sorts of great places to catch Broken Potholes out there. From now on, we're going to have one extra segment available for you here online. And we are going to sometimes be talking with just the hosts in here. And in this case, we have a fantastic guest.

We want to hear a little bit more from Blake Morlock. I'm Blake. Jeff. Jeff Mordock, Washington Times. Jeff Mordock. My apologies, Jeff. Don't worry. I was thinking Blake Masters, who we just had in here the other week. But tell us a little bit about what it was like becoming a White House reporter that first time you're walking into the White House to do that job. What is that like?

It is humbling to walk into the big gates. Regardless of who the president is, it really makes you feel proud to be an American, to walk through those gates and see the grandeur and see that this is one of the most important buildings in the country. It's really impressive.

And now after doing it, I've sort of picked up a little bit on the pattern and who's called on and why they're called on and how much they're called on. And it makes it much easier to navigate and know when to raise your hand and know which question to be asked. So I'm guessing you're not one of the favorites.

I am not. I'll tell you a story. I've not actually told anybody this beyond a couple of friends. I had asked – I found this very interesting. From the Washington Times seat, because every reporter in there has a seat allocated to their outlet. So even if Jen Psaki does not know the reporter –

she will know the outlet she's calling on. And I find this really interesting is probably my second day there, I asked Jen Psaki a question about they were complaining that they have not been able to get Americans in rural parts of the country vaccinated. And they were really struggling. And

One of the things that they don't seem to understand is they keep trotting out Olivia Rodrigo to tell people to get vaccinated, and these people have no idea who Olivia Rodrigo is and don't care what she has to say. So they've not been able to figure that mystery out that Olivia Rodrigo does not have universal appeal. So I had raised the question that –

These individuals are largely supporters of President Trump. And if you would like them to get vaccinated, wouldn't it be prudent to reverse course and give President Trump more credit for the vaccinations? Because that's somebody that these people listen to. That's somebody that they trust. And.

they would be more willing to take the vaccine had they linked it to President, had you linked it to President Trump. And she did not like that question and got extremely snippy with me. Now, what I find interesting is in the three weeks since I asked that question and she got very snippy with me, two reporters from left-wing outlets have asked that exact same question, and they've gotten completely different responses, much more.

much more informative much less snippy it's fascinated me that professional responses enraged her when i asked it seemed to be a normal question when two left-wing reporters asked it don't you find it interesting talking about the vaccine uh the hesitation on some on the right it's not all of them but some on the right when really we would not have had that vaccine without donald trump

Yes. I don't understand it. It's interesting. I completely agree with you. Yeah, it's really interesting. I find it fascinating that there is really no one else in the last 20 years, except maybe people, well, probably a lot of hate mail, except maybe a Mitt Romney who just like cut down this barrier, that barrier, and get this thing out to the market. And the fact that our side just hasn't bear-hugged it and taken it seriously when the person that they love as a leader –

is the one, the reason why the world has it. It's not even just us, it's the world. Well, but this is the problem when you make politics a religion, because had Trump been reelected, you had already heard all sorts of Democrats, including Kamala Harris, number one example. Right? That's exactly the point I was going to make, is this mirrors when Trump was in charge of

uh... though what we heard from the left about how to kill by didn't study i don't trust donald trump kamal harris said it during the vice presidential debate it mirrors the same red work we heard it's just a what because now the democrats are in power

That's incredible. How do you get along with your colleagues there at the Washington Press Bureau, the White House? Believe it or not, they are, regardless of which outlet you work for and how that outlet is viewed by them, they're actually pretty congenial. It's sort of a club that once you're in the club, regardless, they're pretty nice to you and respect you as a member of the club, which is something that honestly has surprised me.

Well, it's a great club. Very few people can say they ever do it. And once you seem to be in that club, you're in that club for a while.

Exactly. And there's a very much acceptance of you. They don't like new people coming into the club. But once you come into the club, there's an acceptance among you, which I was relieved to see. I think that highlights sort of one of the problems we have in our society today, because a lot of people who are in elected office, who are in the media, in positions of power and corporations and so forth and so on,

You go behind the scenes and none of this stuff matters, right? But publicly, there's this public theater of this battle, this constant battle about everything. But it is real for the activists.

Right. And so it's not just real for the activists, but it's also real for the administrations. A great example of that is I noticed under the Trump administration, for as much as they complained about the New York Times and the Washington Post, and we're going to tell agencies not to subscribe to the Times and the Post. Anytime the Trump administration wanted to leak something, they wanted to get something out there. Where did they go? They went to the Times and the Post. So it was really this sort of kabuki theater of, oh, we don't like the Times and the Post. And then

Oh, we need the Times and the Post. Let's give them everything they need. I've been fascinated by that. What have you learned on the job being in the White House press corps? What is something you've learned that surprised you?

What surprised me is how much standing around there is, and I'm told that's not limited to the Biden administration, because standing around in that the president's never on time for anything, I am told that's been a problem under the Trump administration, the Obama administration, and the only president that was ever actually on time for anything was George W. Bush. And also how flexible you need to be. I had travel pool duty, and for people who don't know what pool duty is, there's

there's always reporters it's usually one print reporter went to the reporter one radio reporter couple photographers who follow the president were whenever he traveled somewhere because not every outlook and afford to send all of the reporters and it's just logistically you can't send the white house press was about thirty to thirty five reporters you can't send thirty five reporters now so they they do a poor and then were responsible for giving all the other reporters all of the news

I had a travel pool duty in Wilmington. The president was supposed to stay in Wilmington one night and come back to D.C., decide to stay in Wilmington four nights. You've always got to be flexible. You've always got to be willing to move. And I'm surprised at how much you have to adapt your schedule. It was not that way at the Justice Department. Here, you've got to be extremely adaptable because one day it could turn into four, or you could be brought into the East Room,

For a press conference that starts at 1.15, or I'm sorry, at 11.15, that doesn't start until 1.15. Yeah, you sound like you're an extra in a movie, basically. Yeah. See, Chuck, you kept doing this to me. This is why I learned that Target is the best place to find new underwear and undershirts when you are stuck for three extra days. How long have you been in D.C. now?

I've been in D.C. for four years. And where were you before that? Tell us a little bit about you. Sure. I actually got my start in Delaware covering the Chancery Court, which I don't know if anybody knows what the Chancery Court is in Delaware. No. It is the nation's

premier business court all delaware does not have a sales tax the reason it does is because all these corporations incorporate in delaware because they set up a court system that will resolve their business disputes and they're making insane amount of revenue both in terms of taxes

off of this off of this court in having to register filing fees and all that it's i think i was with the money dollars making campus dollars not this utopia it's unbelievable so i started covering that in new from their story cover criminal courts they moved up from a legal trade to delaware's largest newspaper uh... from there i did a couple stories that i'm not sure about that got a couple of awards

that got the attention of the washington times uh... they brought me down here to d_c_ uh... to to basically to do enterprise reporting and then they moved me to the justice department at the justice department for four years uh... and then they moved me over to the white house about two months ago

Well, congratulations. We are grateful for you joining us today, and we hope you'll join us again in the future. You've been fantastic. Jeff Mordock. I had a blast. I can't wait to come back. Thank you. We look forward to it, my friend. We are definitely looking forward to it. Absolutely. Thanks a million. Well, folks, that is it for today. I want to thank you for tuning in once again. You can catch us if you're in the Phoenix area or online, Saturdays, 3 p.m. on 960 KKNT, The Patriot.

This is broken potholes. It's so anticlimactic. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week. Bye-bye. The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.