Unmasking Media, Battling Regulatory Waves, and Navigating Naval Power
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with Kylie Kipper with me in studio today. Sam Stone is actually out running a living. Can you believe it? I can. Our first guest, fan favorite, Ken LaCourte, former Fox News bigwig. He is the host of a YouTube Elephants in Rooms. Ken, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me, Chuck and Kylie. You had a great write-up today in Substack called, So, Why Are Journalists So Liberal? And we had talked about it on the show a couple weeks ago. You had shared that 3.4% of all journalists in mainstream newsrooms are Republicans. That's it, 3.4%. Not 4%, not 5%, 3.4%. So why are journalists so liberal?

you know it's um... it's always been interesting question even for somebody who worked in journalism most my life i was working at fox practical thought elements of it i think it comes down to three things really what he is

the people who are attracted to journalism and journalists themselves, there's kind of a crusading mentality. They want to save the world. They want to change the world. They want to institute change. And that's kind of a, it's not a conservative notion. It's that's, that's more of a, of a left notion of we see a problem, let's go fix it. Where you often have the conservatives saying, you'd be careful because those fixes might make things worse. I can point to

element after element in our society that kind of break down that way. A second overall notion is just that most newsrooms are in urban environments, and there's no kind of more urban environment than New York City. I mean, when you're there, you get kind of blown away that it's like...

In an hour, you can walk from the New York Times to the head offices of CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox News, and CNN, literally all on a two-by-eight-mile-square bottom half of one small island.

And, you know, I saw this at Fox. It was like, you know, we'd hire young kids. Well, we generally didn't for a starting associate producer job. You know, we generally didn't hire somebody from Montana and coming out there. You hire people who live where you work. And even at Fox, I would say that of the, especially of the younger generation who were, you know, doing a lot of the grunt work there,

they were probably three-quarters to to old well over half half liberal i mean i would say it if you need to go fox news like a bunch of kind of young conservative and had some of that and yet a lot of not the people

But they kind of, you know, they walk to work. They look at the headlines on the newsstands, and most of those were kind of the traditional liberal narrative on the day's news, and that's what they bought and accepted. And then the last macro factor is...

we like people who think like us. Yes. If you're a liberal journalist and most newsrooms are that, and you see that conservative kid out there who actually doesn't think Donald Trump is an existential threat to the United States, you think something's wrong with them. And it's not necessarily open hostility, but you don't promote people who you think

deep down aren't all that smart. And if they think opposite from you on major issues of the day, you have a tendency to think that.

What do you think is the makeup of the best type of reporter? Is that person got to be agnostic? Is that the best type of reporter that's just simply, you know, Kylie here loves good murder mystery. So she's just down Reddit all the time, right? But she's pretty agnostic on it. She's willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but she likes to get the facts. In your career, what has been the makeup, the personality makeup of the best reporters? Yeah.

Sure. So I find if you're smart, you have opinions, right? Now, look, a lot of reporters are in the sports, they're in the entertainment field. You know, they're not that big into politics. But anybody who's bright ends up having opinions. The best type of reporter is the one who is curious.

and who was intellectually honest enough to challenge her own notion. That is huge. I would tell my reporters, so I ran the dot-com for about a decade there. At one point, I was also the number two kind of editorial person at Fox News on the news side. And one of the things that I would tell reporters over and over again, I'm like, get your story, but if you want to find out if it's fair, switch the nouns.

If you're doing a story saying that, you know, going after some politician who deep down you don't like for a second, put a politician's name in there who you like. And does the story still hold up? Does that headline still hold up? You know, you see a headline at CNN. It's, you know, the most dangerous person in America is the white terrorist. And I'm like, change white to blue.

Ran into a little technical difficulty there. Ken is busy. Ken, start over. We lost you here for one minute here. So you talk about switching places. That's okay. Go ahead. Man, you lost some great comments. I mean, pearls of wisdom. Pearls of wisdom. But we'll hopefully recapture them.

But I mean, you know, I try to do that. You know, when I write a piece, it's like, OK, I'm either saying something about Republicans or Democrats. If you swap those out with the party you either like or don't like, things jump right off the paper to you. You're like, well, that's not fair. And am I being fair? And so that intellectual honesty and curiosity, if a reporter has that, he or she will go far and do well. Now, maybe not at all.

at newsrooms that now don't value those things because they're all about like trying to make their side happy. But traditional journalists will do well that way. Well, tell us, you had a great story in your Substack column about John Moody, your former boss, who's right, who is the founding head of news at Fox Channel. Tell us about his litmus test for new journalists.

So he would often say, you know, he would ask why they wanted to become a journalist. And if it was because they wanted to change the world and because they, you know, he would say like, you know, go somewhere else, go join the Red Cross. If your goal in here is if you wake up in the morning wanting to change the world, if you want to wake up telling the truth,

that's a different thing and you're going to go better and you're going to do better in this company and in this field. Now, again, look,

Journalism has lost these concepts these days, right? I mean, being an honest journalist means you often upset your side. Right. And that's hard. And, you know, when you now look that, oh, you're going to write a story and you know how many clicks it's going to get, and you get...

viewer feedback on every single story, well, then reporting something unpopular, you get a lot of negative feedback, and that's why companies have stopped doing it. And they're like, this is our audience. We're going to say just things that make them happy. And it leads to crazy stuff. It leads to

It leads to Russia and a Russiagate story that was just complete crap for the United States for two years. It leads conservative outlets afraid to say, you know all these accusations about voter fraud on these machines? Well, a lot of them are nonsense. But if you write that at Fox News...

You know, you get a lot of unhappy people. And and that's the essence of our primary problem with journalism today is being afraid to upset your own face. Well, you become the Chris Stiewald who ran the election desk right in 2020 and lose basically loses his job. And he's probably one of the great political reporters out there.

I mean, I just, you know, what I really hate about this, and you brought it up, is that we become so tribal. You know, for example, on the conservative side right now, Kyla and I are just rolling our eyes about this whole Kelsey Taylor Swift thing. I mean, what the hell is wrong with conservatives? I mean...

I don't have to, you know, I mean, it's... We're giving them more attention by hating the fact that they get so much attention. Right, but here's the thing, too. The way they're proposing this has come about now is you're... Were you a Seinfeld viewer, Ken? Yeah, everybody was. So remember when Kramer went and had mom and pop's shoe shop and kept taking shoes in to get fixed, and then he'd get a bloody nose, nose that were wiry, and say, hey, what... He kept doing repairs, and finally they had so many repairs that the city shut him down.

because they didn't meet code, right? And so Kramer, finally they took off. They just shut the doors and took off one day. And Kramer says, apparently this was a conspiracy all along. And Elaine goes, so mom and pop get married 50 years ago. They served the community for 50 years, all to scam you out of your tennis shoes. This was the plan, right? And I sort of feel this is the logic being used on Taylor Swift and Kelsey. And look, I...

I'm not a big COVID shot guy. I got my initial shots. I would not do booster now. And I get an executive physical at Mayo every year. And I literally went and said, did you get your booster? No, I'm not doing the booster. And they shrugged their shoulders like, okay, yeah. I mean, he wasn't even fighting the issue, right? But we just seem to lost our mind. It's really frustrating to me. And we've seen it repeat.

multiple times over the last five years. I mean, the fact that if I knew who you voted for, I knew what you thought about the drug hydroxychloroquine, I don't know what that was. Correct. It was just weird. And you're right. Look, it all comes about that our tribes have gotten so tight with each other. There is a complete dis...

Look, the media has, as the media got tribal and said things like, and it started well before Donald Trump, it said, okay, I'm going to set aside the concept of telling the truth because Donald Trump's election is worse for America. So now I'm just going to aim on doing that. Well, all of a sudden, why should anybody believe that?

the other side. And when you lose that kind of trust as journalists, the system gets weird. A friend of mine was like, and this was actually a couple years ago, he was like, oh, I was listening to Alex Jones. And I was like, dude, Alex Jones is insane. What are you doing? And he made an interesting point. He said, well, I don't trust what CNN said, so I'm going to listen to everybody and try to figure it out. And I was like, that sucks, and it's smart.

And we're at that time right now. And each side has their own whipping voice. I mean, look, this story is so retarded that it's just tough to even understand. It is. If you think that Marjorie Taylor Greene is an important, influential person in America, you are so tribal on one side or the other that it's hard to reach you with common sense.

Well, I'll give a perfect example as we close here. We've got about a minute and a half left. I was visiting with a friend who is a major donor, owns a big medical device company, produces it here in America. And so we were there and he had me come in. He had some of his top executives there and he didn't care. He just started talking politics and somehow the border came up and this was back this summer. And he said,

And we were talking about just how the border is out of control. And this one woman who was based in San Francisco said, well, no, the immigration is slowing down. Biden stopped it. And he looked at me and then he gently just said this. And she made a comment. I always remember she goes, well, at least that is what I read in my news sources.

Right, right. Right? And that's where we've come at now. That's where we've come at now. And when we can't even kind of, like, have a similar set of facts, it makes debating things wrong. And you can't blame her, because if you just read...

The mainstream news, watch CNN, you think the problem is solved, you think that Joe Biden is articulate. You watch Fox News and they're just pulling out the parts where he's stumbling over the word and they'll go an hour a day at the border and you think that we have vastly different

Correct. And that's trick. That's tricky. Well, Ken LaCourte, thank you for visiting with us. I know you're in between things, so thanks for jumping on your car. Folks, please visit him on Substack. Subscribe to him. He has a great piece out today. So why are journalists so liberal? Ken explains it. One, two, three. Ken, thanks a million, buddy. We'll talk to you soon. I'd love to be here. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, again with Kylie Kepper. On this segment, we have Andrew Langer. He's a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union. Folks, he's been a longtime activist for free markets and limited government policies. He currently also serves as president of the Institute of Liberty, former radio host. You can tell by his voice when you listen to him. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on, guys.

So the federal government, long story short, is screwing around with Elon Musk. It's very simple. Joe Biden basically called the dogs on him and the dog said, all right, let's do it. And he seems to be being hit side the head every which way possible. Explain to us what's happening with Elon Musk.

specifically Starlink, and just take it from there, my friend. Well, let's take it back just a second, and let's recognize there's something really interesting happening with the Biden administration. My buddy Wayne Cruz of the Competitive Enterprise Institute calls it the whole-of-government approach to regulation and policy generally. And by that, we mean that the administration has an ideological agenda, or they have an ideological goal in mind,

And so they're using whatever tools at their disposal, and sometimes very, and I don't mean this as an approval, but they use very innovative ways to go after their targets or their issues. In this instance, right, it's Elon Musk. They don't like Elon Musk for a lot of reasons. They've gone after him in a number of different ways. In this particular instance, right, we as a people a long time ago decided that

that the federal government should be working hard to provide broadband internet service for those who are unable to get it. And, you know, part of this has to do with what we call in the policy community the last mile or the middle mile problem, which is

It costs a lot of money or it can cost a lot of money to connect a rural farm to a broadband trunk line. And Andrew, let me stop you there. How many people are without this? Is it about 8 million or more? What's that number? It's something like that. I mean, there are several million people out there who are without this. But in this particular instance, we're talking about a smaller number because we're talking

about rural Americans, not Americans who are in inner cities. But we're talking about folks who are who, you know, it becomes prohibitively expensive to run fiber optic or coaxial cable out to their farm or their house or wherever. And as I said, we have a society who decided that we're going to try to find a way to provide them internet. This is where Starlink comes in. For a long time, there were a couple of different competing satellite internet providers, HughesNet

being one of them. But there wasn't all that reliable. There were questions of reliability and questions of cost. But Elon Musk comes around, he develops this Starlink system, which is a very cost-effective way of providing reliable high-speed internet to rural communities.

So rather than go down this road or continue down this road of working with Starlink on this, the Biden administration says, no, we're going to go lay down fiber optic or coaxial cable, and we're going to cost between four and five times as much to the American taxpayer in order to do it. And the only justification that we can really see is that they don't like Elon Musk.

And it's a perfect example of government always spending more money than they need to on a project as well. Well, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. I'm with Andrew Langer. He is a senior fellow at the American Conservative Union.

What else is the federal government doing to Elon that people should be concerned about? Because, you know, while he is a big target, they can do this to anybody. I mean, for example, we recently had on the show the president of Meathead Movers. What he does is hire young athletic college students, and now the EEOC is trying to find him. Was it $12 or $15 million, Kylie? I think it was $15.

$12 or $15 million. And when we got off the interview with him, he was on Zoom and he looked at us and it was just simply like a guy that's been hit like a deer in headlights. Like, I don't understand what's going on with his comment. Let's pull it back a little bit, right? And talk about it generally. We have a regulatory state that has grown by leaps and bounds under Joe Biden.

So Joe Biden inherited a regulatory state that cost the American economy about $2.25 trillion annually. Now we're at about $3 trillion annually. And what we estimate is that there's just over a million separate regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations. So things that every American needs to comply with and has no idea of everything that's in there. The problem of

course is that the more power the government has and the more of these small little mandates there are out there, what it means is that if the government doesn't like you or something that you're doing, this is very much like Lavrentiy Beria, who was the head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." Or as the American political philosopher Henry Silverglades said, "The average American commits three felonies a day without knowing it."

And so that's a really dangerous situation, whether or not you're Elon Musk or the head of Meathead Movers or any everyday American. Essentially, all somebody has to do is shine a microscope or a proctoscope up your posterior, and they're going to find something to get you on if they don't like you. And when we talk about this whole of government approach, this is part of what we mean. So when it comes to the Internet, for instance—

You know, they're going after to try to once again take control of the net through net neutrality. They're trying to implement DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion policy through something called digital discrimination policy. And again, it is about exercising control and finding ways to get to go after the folks that you don't like, that you have an ideological animus against. It's a very, very dangerous time for us all right now. Is

Isn't this why it's important to have this, the Supreme Court rule on this Chevron case? Would you explain to our, we talked about in the show a little bit, but will you explain to our audience why this possible ruling is so important to push back on this regulatory state? So, this,

This is 40 years of this idea that the courts give what's called deference, i.e. they rely on the executive branch agencies' interpretations of things in order to rule on it. And so what that means is the more vague a piece of legislation is. And the example I like to use real quick is the Clean Water Act.

which was created in the early 70s, says you can't pollute a navigable water of the United States. But Congress didn't define pollute or navigable or water of the United States. They left it up to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to determine those things. And that's how, after decades of the Clean Water Act, the EPA could turn around and literally define a dry patch of desert sand in the high desert of Nevada as a navigable water of the United States.

And so it gives enormous power to these agencies. Now, Congress should do better at being more proscriptive in terms of their language, but they don't like doing that. And so this is why the Chevron cases are so important, these fishing cases, to rein in the ability of these agencies. It doesn't take away their ability entirely, but what it means is that the courts need to look a lot more carefully at how these agencies are interpreted.

the languages of statutes when they're creating regulations. We've got about a minute left here. My question for you is, do you feel the Biden administration is frankly implementing the biggest regulatory overreach we've seen from any administration? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, I used to say this about the Obama administration. How much remember the Simpsons where Homer Simpson changed his name to Max Power? Yes, yes, yes. And he said, there's a right way, there's a wrong way, and a Max Power way. And Barth said, well, isn't that the wrong way? And Homer says, yes, only faster.

We are now at the max power way on steroids. And here's the problem, real quick. We are on a path right now. If we do not change our regulatory trajectory, it means that regulations are going to cost the American economy $7 trillion a year by 2030, and that's not sustainable.

Well, frankly, and I tell this to small business folks and donors all the time, you should be more concerned about the regulatory state than our tax rates. 100%. I just don't think they realize. How much does an annual U.S. family spend on regulatory? Well, it's at least $15,000 a year for a family of four. But, you know, the Mercatus Center has really good numbers on that.

That's fantastic. Well, we appreciate you, Andrew, coming on. How do people follow your work? At Andrew underscore Langer on Twitter. Please check me out there. And CPAC.org slash regulatory freedom is the best way to find out the work that we're doing on regulations. Andrew, I hope you will join us again real soon. I've really enjoyed this time. Thank you for sharing the time with us. And we'll be back with you soon. Folks, this is Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. And when we come back, we'll have Seth Cropsey, president of Yorktown Institute, talk about the U.S. Navy and China. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with Kylie Kipper. On this segment, we have Seth Cropsey. He is the president of the Yorktown Institute. He began his career as an assistant to the Secretary of Defense and was later commissioned as a naval officer. He served as deputy undersecretary of Navy in the Reagan administration and acting assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict for George H.W. Bush administration.

He is confirmed by the Senate and became director of the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau under George W. Bush administration. Welcome back, or welcome to the show, Mr. Cropsey. How are you? Fine, thanks, Chuck. So first of all, in this little short segment, explain to people a little bit, what do you do as director of the U.S. International Broadcasting Bureau? I don't think most people even know that's a thing. Well, it's since been changed, but that's normal for...

The United States' efforts to reach foreign audiences, so it goes from Voice of America to broadcasting stations

Board of Governors, to international broadcasting, to global media. It's been in a state of constant flux since World War II. The mission of the U.S. government's international broadcasting is to tell the world the United States' story, to explain what America is,

what the current administration's policies are to give people in places where they have no other access to objective news a source that they can go to if they want to find out what's really happening. So it's a multifold purpose program.

Well, thank you for doing that service. So let's talk quickly. I want to focus a little bit about the Navy. So you worked under the Reagan administration, and at that time we had approximately 460 ships. His goal was to get 600 ship fleet by 1990. What do we have today, 375? I wish. Closer to 300.

And how much more, I mean, most of those were built during the Cold War. So how could that be down to 250 here within a couple of years or 10 years? Well, the Navy, fortunately, is building ships to replace the ones that are aging, but they're not building them at a fast enough rate to keep track of or at least to be able to deter invaders.

All the hot spots that are taking place around the world, from the Taiwan Strait to the Gulf of Aden to the Black Sea, with more threats on the horizon.

Problem is the replacement is not equaling or surpassing the decommissioning of ships that were built many years ago. Explain to our audience why it is important. Not only do we keep pace with new ships, but we need to expand what we have in our arsenal. You know, China is a long ways away if we're really going to be

If there's possible hostilities, do we have a Navy right now that can prevent them from overtaking Taiwan?

Well, we do have a Navy today that is quite capable. And although it would not be easy if there were a conflict in East Asia, in the Indo-Pacific, I think things generally lean in our direction. But the trend line is what I'm worried about. And what should that trend line be?

Well, the trend line should be toward a larger fleet more quickly. To give you an example that I think explains the situation,

Our aircraft carriers, all 11 of them, are the principal means of projecting naval power, naval aviation around the world. And the Chinese have, over the past 25 years, built up an elaborate satellite missile system that is...

able to endanger aircraft carriers that come within, let's say, a thousand miles of China. And that's beyond the range of the planes on our carriers. So that means that the importance of submarines goes way up.

Mr. Cropsby, we're going to stop you right there. We take a commercial break. We'll be right back because I want to continue that conversation. We're with Seth Cropsey. He's the president of Yorktown Institute, an expert in foreign policy and military preparedness. This is Breaking Battle Grounds. We'll be right back to continue this conversation.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. We're with us on our final segment here of Seth Cropsey. He is the president of Yorktown Institute. You can find him also on X at Seth Cropsey, C-R-O-P-S-E-Y. He is the president of Yorktown Institute. Let's continue what we're talking about, what we need to do to prepare and the trends that you are uncomfortable with right now regarding the U.S. Navy.

So the submarines are extremely important because they're stealthy. And our submarine force is supposed to be increasing by two boats a year. They're called boats. Okay. The attack submarines and one nuclear submarine.

missile submarine per year. And we're only building 1.2. And we really ought to be building four in order to keep pace with China's rapid submarine building program and surface ship. And we're not doing that.

And so the balance of power, while it still favors us in East Asia, is shifting. And the Navy's plans don't call for an increase, a sizable increase in the submarine force yet.

for another 10 years at least. And at the same time, you have retired admirals or admirals who are retired officers who

who have been commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, who warned of a possible war between, or a possible attack by China against Taiwan within the next five years, and that was two years ago. So the situation in East Asia is extremely important and increasingly dangerous,

And we need to do a better job to deter something that we don't want to see. The idea is not to go to war, the idea is to prevent it, and you do that by convincing the potential enemy that he doesn't want to go to war. That's the old truism, if you want peace, you have to prepare for war. So...

My understanding is that any given day, about a third of our U.S. Navy is deployed throughout the world. Is that true? That's close to true. Okay. And then in the early 2000s, China had about 37 vessels in their Navy. Now they're 325. Is that correct? And increasing. And increasing. So what do you think our level needs to be and what needs to happen practically for us to meet that challenge?

Well, what needs to happen practically is that we need a larger naval force in that part of the world and in other parts of the world. But that's not all. What's even more important is, or at least as important, is a strategy that...

determines what kind of ships we build and how many ships we build. And that strategy has yet to surface. But that's a real problem. But what do you think we need? If they just said, Seth, you're over this. There's no limit on the budget. You tell us what we need. What does the U.S. need to have the best Navy in the world to counter any threats?

Well, I think we still have the best Navy in the world. It's just that we're being challenged. We're being challenged, right. But if you were king for the day, what would you say this is what the 10-20-year plan needs to be? So you talked about we really need four boats slash submarines built a year, right? Yeah, I think we need a Navy that is between 375 and 400 ships. Okay, okay.

And a significant portion of those need to be autonomous platforms, which is to say subsurface, surface and aerial platforms that...

as the name implies, are not flown or driven by people. But that's part of the equation, and almost everybody recognizes that. There's no dispute about that. But we also need ships, for example, that can take on smaller missions, like the one currently in the Red Sea against the Houthis, instead of having to send destroyers there.

And at the same time, we need a much larger and more robust submarine force than the one we're building or the one that we have the defense industrial capacity to build. This is really an issue that goes beyond combat ships. It involves inextricable from the defense industrial base, which is to say the manufacturers of ships,

from logistics. We don't have enough logistics to supply a major conflict in East Asia. And that means cargo ships and their protection. It's a much larger subject than simply the size of a naval fleet. Correct, correct, correct.

It's one of many.

You have the best submarine force in the world, and if you don't have the ability to repair them or to replenish them, it doesn't do you very much good. You released an article this week in the Wall Street Journal, Biden's Middle East Muddle. To avoid more casualties, the U.S. needs a coherent strategy toward the region and a bigger Navy. Can you explain a little bit about that article and what the Biden administration is not understanding about a coherent strategy?

Well, what the Biden administration does not want to recognize is that the cause of all the issues, the conflict in the Middle East that began on October 7th with the attack against Israel by Hamas,

And the threat that is increasingly posed by Iranian proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis out of Yemen, would not exist without the support and direct assistance of Iran.

So the pinprick efforts that the administration has made to punish the Houthis are not going to have an effect because the Iranians will keep supplying the Houthis, and the Iranians don't particularly care whether the Houthis are killed. If we want to convince Iran that they should stand down,

And Iranian, we need to go after Iranian targets and they need to suffer the kind of damage that convinces them that they don't want, that they don't want to keep supplying their proxies. They're not doing that.

Let me ask you a question here about the Ukraine conflict. I know your specialty is the Navy and other matters, but how important is it or isn't important that the United States see Ukraine through the end on this in defeating Russia? I think it's very important. If...

If the rest of the world, our allies, see that we walk away from Ukraine, we can count on a couple of things. One is that Putin will appear somewhere else in Europe with a military presence.

There are a couple of obvious places, Moldova, other country, NATO countries on the Black Sea, the Baltic states, and the Europeans, even the Europeans are recognizing this right now, which is why they're increasing their defense budget and why they're supplying $50 billion to the Ukrainians. So if we give up

On the Ukrainians, it sends a terrible signal to Russia and sends a terrible signal to Xi Jinping in Beijing, which is that it's an old an old adage that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous and to be a friend of the United States can be fatal.

And in this case, Ukraine was our friend. And if we decide to cut off assistance to it, it will send a signal that will reverberate in American foreign policy and national security for half a century. Are you confident, going back to the Pacific region, are you confident that we're going to build, increase a better communicative alliance with Australia, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea on a defense alliance to Ukraine?

be ready to defend Taiwan or just the region from Chinese aggression? Well, that depends a lot upon us. We've promised the Taiwanese $19 billion worth of defensive equipment, and it's all sitting in a warehouse or in somebody's mind.

The signals that we send on our relationship with Taiwan, our security relationship, diplomatic relationship, are extremely important.

And if our other partners and allies in the region see that we're not going to keep our word with Taiwan and that we're looking for ways to get out and that we're disengaging around the world, they will be less interested in casting their lot with us because we look like we're going to lose.

So your question can only really be answered by U.S. policy. If we're strong, then we attract, we keep our alliances. And if we look weak and weaker, they'll look elsewhere for security. Why does it take them so long to get them the equipment that has already been approved and appropriated?

And so therefore they promise something, it's appropriated, the equipment's ready, but we just sit on it because of fear of China? Why would Taiwan listen to us about anything then? I mean, that's ridiculous.

I think it's ridiculous, too. I mean, no wonder China keeps rattling their sword, right? I mean, they know that we're just paper tigers, basically, of Taiwan then. I mean, it's just like, yeah, yeah, we're going to do it. We get a headline. We're behind you. And then everything's sitting in a warehouse or just not being shipped. Yeah. Well, it's the most unfortunate situation. And...

We're not even faced with the prospect of war here. What we're faced with is the prospect of preventing it. And we don't seem to be up to that task. And that's a reason for concern. Is that the fault of both aisles of Congress, Democrats, Republicans, that people no longer just understand how important America is in the world regarding keeping the peace?

Is that a big part of the problem? I think it's more the administration's, the successive administration's responsibility, fault than it is Congress. There's a fairly strong and large group of members of Congress who understand the strategic importance of Taiwan. They don't have to, they're not worried about foreign policy.

directly and they're not responsible for the conduct of it. So they, generally speaking, do the right thing and the administration, successive administrations have been cowed by the Chinese.

Well, Seth, we sure appreciate you joining us today in Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, you can follow Mr. Cropsey's writings at SethCropsey at X. You can also follow him on LinkedIn. He's also a president of Yorktown Institute. Seth, thank you for joining us today. We sure appreciate your time.

Jack, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much. This is Breaking Battlegrounds, folks. Please stay tuned for our bonus podcast section of Kylie's Corner, and we talk about the events this week. We hope you enjoyed this weekend's show, and we'll be back with you next week. Take care.

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Welcome back to Breaking Paddlegrounds, the bonus section, the podcast section, where everybody finds fan favorite Kylie Kipper. Kylie, how are you? I'm amazing. How are you? It's been a pretty week in Phoenix this week, hasn't it? Except for today. Now we're getting rain to water our trees, which is good. An 80 degree weekend. January is amazing. It was really amazing. Yeah.

Kylie and I and her beloved husband played a little golf this week. We did. And that was a lovely day. It was a beautiful day. It was. Thank you. It was. All right. So Kylie's Corner, tell us what's going on crazy in the world. I got a couple updates for you first. Yay. So I think... Yay. Well, I realize when I'm listening to other podcasts about crime, there's so many cases that don't have an ending. And then at the end of the podcast, I'm just kind of like left like...

Yeah, there's no solution to it. I realize I'm doing that to my listeners. Exactly, exactly. But anyway, so I think the Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito case was the case that Chuck originally figured out that I am obsessed with the Internet and sleuthing these crime cases. And we knew the parents were involved at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you have to assume that. However, it has now been confirmed. The parents have now admitted that they knew.

about the incident prior to Gabby being reported missing. So on the evening that they anticipate her death, he had called his parents with what they describe as a frantic phone call saying Gabby was gone and he needed a lawyer. And so in that moment, his parents then called the lawyer, sent the deposit down,

This was on August 29th of 2021. And then that lawyer then found him a lawyer in Wyoming where Gabby was then found, I think, a month later after she was reported missing. This is all two weeks prior to her being reported missing. Okay. Was the family hiring the lawyer, hiring a lawyer in Wyoming. Yeah.

They then tried to make arrangements for him to leave the country, but those fell through. So they decided as a last minute... Where were they going to send him? Belize or somewhere that had no tradition? I'm not sure. It didn't specify which country they tried to send him to. However, they decided just to take one last family camping trip together. After the murder. Yeah, after the murder, before she's reported missing. They decided to take a family camping trip. Yes. That's a bit weird. Yes. And then it all comes out that...

The family finally reports her missing after his parents block the family from making calls to them. So, yeah, this has all been confirmed. And I just thought that that was a key piece of information that the family knew and they should now save the time for this is going to be controversial comment. But I could see Joe Biden doing that with Hunter Biden. Absolutely. And I hate I could see a lot of parents doing that with their probably two thirds. My parents would not.

My parents, I would kids would say, you're just going to go in. You're going to man up here. Right. And sorry for all our gender friendly people. But I would just say you just need to man up. We'll say adult up. You need adult up on this. But no, I could see Joe Biden doing that. So are they going to charge the parents now? No.

No charges have been brought to them, but Gabby's parents have been suing them, and they just keep adding on. They settled for $3 million, but now they've added this piece onto it, and so they just keep suing. But there's been no criminal charges brought to the parents. I'll bet you...

In DeSantis world in Florida, you're going to see some charges here soon. They better. I hope so. All right, what else? We got an update in that Kansas City case that we've been following for the past couple of weeks. That is everywhere. Yeah, it is now. And it's all because of me. No, I'm just kidding. No, no, no. You're the trendsetter. I started it. You're the trendsetter on this. Back when I couldn't find any information on it, I was like, we need more. It's all part of the Kelsey Taylor Swift, Kansas City chief conspiracy. Yes, yes, yes. And then we got Jordan here, who's a chemist, coming up with all of these things.

Anyway, so... His own Breaking Bad. Yeah, that's basically what it is. So Jordan has now checked himself into a rehab. And people are speculating that he's doing this to use in a case... As a defense. Yeah, as a defense. He doesn't sound smart enough to think of this on his own. So his attorney said, oh, you have an addiction. We need to get you in. So the Toxicology report came back with cocaine, fentanyl, and THC. The fentanyl levels, they say, was three times the amount that it would take to kill someone.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. But the cousin of one of the deceased has come out because they went to the same high school as all these kids. And apparently the three guys were really close, like best friends. And Jordan was kind of like the outlier. But he was known as like, I'm putting this in air quotes, like the chemist in high school.

in high school and college. So he would come up with drugs and this is all allegedly, but supposedly he would mix drugs together and people would take them. And this is like a known thing that Jordan would do. And this is what he was known for in high school. Yeah.

Well, and even after high school now that they're graduated. But this has been so he's basically he was basically the Jesse Pinkman of Breaking Bad. Yeah. So when they say they're friends, it was more of like they knew they could get drugs from this kid. And so then they would hang out with him for that. But the three that actually ended up dying and the fifth guy that was there were really close. And Jordan was kind of just like the outlier. It seems like so based on so it is now the line of thought that he did this on purpose to them.

No, I think the line of thought is still like he just mixes things and did it wrong this time. Let's just start calling the Jesse Pinkman case TM. We're going to TM that TM that Jesse Pinkman case. So, boy, what a tragedy, though. Yeah. Terrible. Horrible. I just. But again, when we were leaving the studio last week or the week prior, I said all of these cases that I talk about have to do with drugs.

They always do. There's an involvement of drugs in some way. And we keep talking about the border, right? And the fentanyl crisis. But you know an easy way not to die from fentanyl is don't take drugs. Yeah. That's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. Wow. Yeah. There's also another case in Florida that happened last weekend, if you'd like to hear about that. Yeah. No, please say it. It's a really quick one. A couple who's been married for 52 years. The husband received a...

from his ex-girlfriend of 60 years ago, to which that made his wife mad, and she tried to smother him with a pillow and bite him and kill him, and so she is now arrested for attempted murder. How old is she? She is 71, Bertha.

Wow. Yeah, she did not like that. There was a jealousy factor there. And that was like five decades ago he got the postcard? They have been married. No, no, no. He just got it. Oh, he just got it. Yeah, he just got it from the ex of 60 years ago. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That's amazing. Wow. Well, in regarding world events, CNN this week called a stunning political shift that Biden said if he could, he would shut down the U.S.-Mexico border right now, which...

is just pure hogwash, right? He has the ability to do a lot of it. I mean, why can't he now? The Border Patrol reported in December that we had 302,000 migrant encounters in December, which breaks the previous record set in September. Among those people, 19 were on the FBI terror watch list. Now, again, as we talked about the watch list previously, as you know, yes, you could be an actual terrorist. You could also be

The cousin of a terrorist, the brother. But nonetheless, these are people with links to terrorism. That should not be done. In 2023, folks, the Border Patrol reported that we had 2.4 million total encounters. This does not count, by the way, the 30,000 migrants allowed each month legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in the parole program. So that's plus another 800,000 getaways. Wow.

So we've got a lot of people coming on. Just remember, in 2018, just that year, middle of the Trump administration, we only had 396,000. For the full year? For the full year. Wow. So anybody who says that this isn't Joe Biden's fault, you just don't want to face the reality that this is definitely Joe Biden's fault, right? Yep. On other good news this week, as you know, that...

You know, the leak of the Trump tax returns and Jeff Bezos and people like that. Charles Littlejohn, who was a contractor who purposely took the job to do this, has been sentenced to five years in prison. Wow. I think a lot of people are surprised that the Department of Justice really went after him, which I think surprised a lot of people. Far as I'm concerned, 10 years is not enough. You've got to put a line in the sand on this. If not, this is just going to keep coming on over and over and over again.

Also, Representative Omar from Minnesota, she had some controversial statements this week. But here's the actual statements. Of course, Twitter right away went and misinterpreted. But these statements are pretty bad. She wrote, she said, we are sisters and brothers supporting each other.

People who know they are Somalis and Muslims coming to each other's aid and aiding their brothers and sisters. Somali belongs to all Somalis. Somali is one. We are brothers and sisters, and our land will not be balkanized. Our lands were taken from us before, and God willing, we may one day seek them. But what we have now will not be balkanized. And so, you know, it's interesting.

People misinterpreted what she first said, but this is just a bat. And I don't understand why she's not expunged or expelled from Congress. She obviously has not taken the oath that the Constitution and protecting America is your first and foremost responsibility. I don't think she cares. No, no. I think she's there to...

advance her own personal agenda. And for a person who keeps hitting the Jewish state, as she does all the time, she feels very comfortable with her own ethno-religious state of Somali, which is quite remarkable just as a person watching it. And that's where the terrorists just got in Minnesota, just got... Yes. He's been in the country one year. Yeah. Again. He's Roman. Again, this borders a real national security problem. Yeah. And the six...

Immigrants that just attacked that police officer in New York that have been released and now heading to California. Yeah. And it shows a typical Laker fan because he was wearing a Lakers T-shirt given the double bird. So that sums up all Laker fans. There is also a new survey this week, Kylie, that finds that Ivy League graduates are really comfortable with enormous government control. So the question was to fight climate change, would you favor or oppose the strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity?

So do you to help fight climate change, support rationing, gas, meat, and electricity. Now, the one way you get around rationing is you can just pay more for those products, so therefore you don't have to ration. So what it really does is hits two-thirds of the public, right? So around voters...

Among voters, only 28% support that. Okay. Okay? Among the elite 1%, those who make about $330,000, $350,000 more a year, 77% support that. Okay. Okay? Among Ivy League graduates, 87% support the rationing of meat, gas, and electricity.

The Ivy League schools are simply utterly a train wreck. Yeah. They really don't believe in freedom. I don't know what they're teaching there, but, you know, that goes back to the point this week. There's also a Taiwan-based journalist called Chris Horton who was promoted or prompted by the Harvard University Press website. He was doing something saying, where's your location? The only option for him to pick was Taiwan, province of China.

Wasn't Taiwan. Taiwan province of China. I mean, it's just Harvard. I don't know when those donors are just going to stop even playing this game and just say, we're done. Yeah, that's the only way to stop it. And I don't know how we let it get this far out of control. I don't know. I mean, I think it goes back. You and I and Sam have talked about this. Donors have a bigger role to play on the direction of these type of activities. Absolutely. And they are really shirking their responsibilities quite a bit. And it's quite remarkable. Yeah.

Friend of the show, Aaron Subariam of the Washington Free Bacon, discovered this week 40 instances of plagiarism in the academic work of Sherry Ann Charleston, Harvard's chief diversity inclusion officer. Again, that's 40 instances. The head of the National Association of Scholars is quoted saying, this is research fraud, pure and simple. So it doesn't stop there.

Harvard's top neuroscientist is playing a little loose with the facts. They found 21 papers where he's created plagiarism. Wow. So Harvard's really quite the academic pillar. Yeah. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't go to Harvard doctor anymore. I would just go to a state school doctor. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm really going to start looking at diplomas. If they say I'm from Harvard or Yale, I'm not going because I don't think they did actual work.

They're very diversified, though. And folks, as you know, a couple weeks ago we discussed we had two Navy SEALs get killed on the line of duty. We're going to post up their GoFundMe pages on our social media. And this week, three American soldiers were killed by an Iranian-backed militia, unless it's called for what is by Iran.

Militias are just simply sponsored by the country. And a drone strike killed three Americans. William Rivers, 46, of Georgia. Kennedy Sanders, 24, of Georgia. And Brianna Moffitt of Savannah, Georgia. We will be posting their GoFundMe pages. These folks, the Navy SEALs are a little bit different. They are a smaller group, so they have real good foundations. I have called around this week. The military really does not do much to provide for families.

When our military men and women die in the line of duty. It's really sad. It's really sad. And so we will post these GoFundMe pages. If you can chip in anything, $5, $10, $20, whatever the case may be. It'll be on our social media and on our website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote as well. We're going to close here with a little segment from The Simpsons, a little prep. Homer was playing a...

a Krusty the Clown imitation and opening of a Krusty Burger and we'll play the segment and explain what it is. Go ahead Jeremy. So I play that clip because

We have a problem now. We want Israel to eliminate Hamas, but Israel is losing support in the United States now. I mean, because what we're seeing day in, day out is destruction. They are estimating that half of all buildings in Gaza are leveled, right? You know, and I'm very hawkish on this. And so I really think the Arab world needs to step up.

But there comes a point where Israel has to start saying, okay, maybe we need to be a little more specific. And I know they're trying because it's very dense. But I think what that little kid saw in the Simpson clip is what half the Americans are thinking now. It's like, okay, they're already dead. Let's stop. And I think this will be a very curious time the next two to four weeks for

If Israel starts paying attention, because they've had overwhelming support here. I think there's still overwhelming support to destroy Hamas. I don't think Americans are opposed to that. But they have to realize everybody has an iPhone. Everybody gets pictures out. You know, you can't keep this. And you go to social media and you see this destruction. And like that kid, stop, stop already. They're dead. Right? And so I think this will be something that we'll need to watch here on the show and across the country. Because it is. I mean, for example...

18% were, for example, Republicans who are very hawkish on this. 18%, I believe, approximately were opposed to what Israel's doing in Gaza. It is now in the mid 30s. And that's been over a month. So when you start losing those Republicans who are inclined to support Israel 100%, they've got to start paying attention to it. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed this week. You learned a little bit about the Navy. You learned about liberal reporters. We learned about Elon Musk being targeted and Joe Biden basically is a dictator. And we also learned that if Hunter Biden killed someone, he'd hide it. Yeah, we did. This is BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You can catch us on wherever you catch your podcasts. And on behalf of Sam Stone, who's gone today working, Kylie Kipper, myself, have a fantastic weekend.