Vice President JD Vance and What Went Wrong with Trump's Secret Service
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, we're jumping right into it with our guests for today. First up, Ryan Gerduski. He is an author, podcast host, political consultant, and journalist. You can read his work on Substack at NatPop. And you can follow him on X at Ryan Gerduski. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program.

Thank you for having me. So, Ryan, you worked on J.D. Vance's U.S. Senate campaign. And while J.D. talked a little bit about his background when he was nominated, why there's a book about him, why there's a movie from him, we would like to know someone who knows him a little bit about him and how his upbringing influences his view of the world and the way America should be going forward.

Yeah. So I met J.D. in 2020. We started speaking then. And then the race for U.S. Senate started fairly quickly afterwards. It was kind of a shock that Senator Rob Portman was resigning.

And I called J.D. and I said, if you're going to make the run, because I know some political ambitions, although I didn't know how I say go at. I said, if you're going to make a run for this, I would like to be on your team. And I went on the sewer pack side of the campaign. OK, so what what I would say is this, but there's about J.D. is that.

In the same way that I think that Trump was considered a class traitor because he was born wealthy and obviously made a lot more money after being born wealthy, was – J.D. was a traitor to the class he was adopted in.

in a sense that he became enormously successful. He was a literary celebrity. So that is very rare. Nowadays, his book sold millions of copies. Obviously it was made into a movie with Oscar nominated actors and Oscar winning director. Um,

You can't get any higher than that in such a very quick time. And you'd be right. He was the toast of the literary circuit. He was toast of the coastal parties and cocktail parties. Every news network had him on all the time. Right. And his opinions mattered in a way that most 35-year-old opinions don't matter. Serious topics. And I think that... I think that...

around them. J.D. told me a story one time about how he had a dinner with several very wealthy people. I'm not sure if they were billionaires or hundred millionaires, but they were all in the same ballpark. And they

And they were talking about how hard it was to get foreign labor and they weren't looking for American labor because they cost too much. And the way they spoke, people around him spoke about people like him. It's briefly mentioned in the movie Hillbilly Elegy where the guy calls him a redneck. And J.D. gets very offended by that. J.D. always had a...

had a famously heated temper according to his book. Even, I think, threatening to fight somebody one time. It was that yell for insulting one of his professors. He

But I think that that upbringing where you saw and he mentioned in his speech where people of both parties were ignoring the plight of not only red state Americans, but red county Americans, specifically people who were.

fought to put George Bush in office for two terms were the ones that really suffered the heaviest during his administration, the latter half of the Clinton administration, and the Obama administration, where they were the ones who normalized Trump.

especially the Bush administration, normalized trade relations with China, didn't go after the Secler family, the Oxycontin family, the Sackler family. They sent their people, kids like JD, off to Iraq to fight for freedom, only to come back and see more and more factories closing, more and more warehouses moving overseas, more and more kids becoming addicted to opioids.

and to buy the time you get the obama era of twenty fourteen j_d_ like three years older than me so it in twenty fourteen i was twenty seven j_d_ must've been thirty uh... you're talking about uh... checking your privilege so after a decade of being told about having every kind of bad economic policy affect the people that

can deal with that kind of change the least are then all of a sudden being told that they're racist. So I think that though, and on top of it, you're dealing with it in your own family. JD's obviously parents were, um, had some substance abuse issues. Uh, there's a line in his book where he said, um, growing up, I think mama was, uh, was, um, uh, no, papa was a mean drunk and mama was a mean non-drunk.

and how they fought at times, whatever. When they would fight, they would really fight. I think there's a story about his grandmother lighting his grandfather on fire when he came home drunk one day. I didn't briefly mention it in the movie. So that's a very tough upbringing. That's somebody that could...

seen it and dealt with it. And I got the pleasure of meeting J.D.'s family throughout the campaign at different events. And his family is very much him. They were up there briefly during the end of his speech when they all came up. I could see the fact that he had extended cousins coming up. And it wasn't just him and his wife, who shows lovely. But it was it was it was the people that, you know, had the hillbilly experience. And I said to J.D.,

I asked him when it came to the movie, I said, what is the oddest thing about someone playing you in a movie? Because you can only imagine. People always say this in regular conversation, who would play me in a movie? But someone literally played him in a movie. And I said, what was it like having Glenn Close play your grandma? And he said, the weirdest thing was, was that she asked us, I guess, in the first meeting that they had, you know, how did she walk? How did she hold her cigarette? How did she do this? How did she talk? And then the second time, the whole family went to see this, I guess,

I guess the first day of filming or whatever, and she came out in full costume, looked so much and acted so much like his grandmother, who had been dead at that point for, I think, 15 to 20 years. They were completely taken aback by how much she resembled

his grandmother. They couldn't believe it. Well, that's why she's, that's why she's gifted at her job. Great actress. That's why she's Glenn Close. Yes, exactly. Exactly. One of the greats. Um, yeah, so that was, um, but that was, I think those experiences really led to his, him, um,

You know, I don't know what everyone, people who come from a certain kind of background and then they grow to go to Yale and they grow to be at work for a tech company and to have been worth millions of dollars and sell millions of books and get to be on television. I think that there was a brief time, and I'm only thinking in my head right now, there was probably a brief time that he thought, this is fantastic, this is amazing, I'm finally where I've always wanted to be.

And then hearing how people spoke about people like him and where he came from, I think really turned him away from them rather quickly. We're speaking with Ryan James Gerduski. He's a New York native, has worked in politics. He is a political consultant, author. He's got a new book coming out here shortly, and he has obviously the experience working with J.D. Vance. Ryan, I want to go back to one comment you made because I think –

This is sort of one of the things you made in passing was talking about how he offered Vance offered to fight potentially someone who criticized one of his professors.

I think in one way or another, this defines the difference between the elite coastal classes and a lot of the people in the middle of the country. And I wonder if this isn't part of what's driving Vance's perception is that the elite coastal classes are just as aggressive. It's simply that they're passive aggressive. It's a very sort of undercutting approach versus the call it the redneck approach of I'm just going to stand in your face and punch you in the nose if I feel like I have to. Yeah.

I don't know if it's a coastal thing, because I know a lot of people on the coast have gotten to a fight or two. It might be more of a blue-collar thing than anything else. But also, J.D. is, and he doesn't talk about this very often, he is a combat veteran. He did see action, and when I brought it up to him one time,

He said, no, the people who did the really hard work aren't with us anymore. He was very humble about it. But I think he mentioned this in the book. He had a couple of fights throughout his time growing up, as I imagine most boys did. But anyway, that is definitely something that he dealt with, and I think that's his approach to it. But I think it is also the...

I think that those life experiences is that it's very, it's very rare that you meet people who have been through almost every level of the socioeconomic ladder from the very, very, very lowest points. And I thought JD was homeless, but nonetheless, they were definitely on food stamps at one point to the point of being a literal celebrity where you're on Stephen Colbert or whoever was David Letterman, whoever it was at the time. And,

And The Atlantic wants opinion pieces from you and you're sitting there with fluff pieces from The New York Times and you're winning awards. And Ron Howard is asking to make a movie about your life all before, by the way, you're 35 years old. That is a remarkable, remarkable growth of something. So to have somebody reflect on every level of life and sit there and say, now, why did I make it? And some people didn't. Certainly it's by effort.

and JD has mentioned this in the past, certainly it's by some of your own actions. You know, somebody, people make bad choices all the time and they have to live with those bad choices. And some of its government actions, the government's out there and made unfavorable economic choices when it came to China, when it came to Mexico and NAFTA and the Sackler family, the opioid crisis, um, massively illegal immigration. They sat there and made, um,

it is hard as possible for people who had just barely enough rope to survive, to survive completely. And a lot of people end up falling through the cracks because of that. And I think that that's really where a lot of his inspiration on policy stuff comes from. So I imagine you saw him interact with voters, correct? A little bit. Okay. From what you witnessed or experienced with him and the background he has,

Is he – we've got two minutes left here. Is he a good listener? I mean does he look a person and just really try to understand who they are and where they're coming from? I mean because some people have that great skill. Others do not.

You know, I was on the PAC side, so I wasn't with him on a lot of campaign events. I did speak to a lot of people. The weird thing, whenever I had dealt with it, the one time I had really dealt with it, talking to him, was the number of people who claimed that they knew him, that they at one point had met him in high school or college, I think, or regular, rather, Ohio State. And

I think his warmness to them, even though he did not remember these people, they had claimed that they had all had known him at one point or another. That was more. He was very, very warm. He's a very warm guy. His he's got three children. His middle son is I mean, he's really the politician. The kid would say, I love you to strangers. I'm like a run up to everybody. So those are the things I really took away from him more than anything else.

was how warm he was to people. I don't know how good of a listener necessarily because I wasn't peeking in across the line. Folks, we're going to be coming back with more from Ryan Gerduski here in just a moment, so stay tuned for that. You can follow him on X at Ryan Gerduski. You can also go to his sub stack. He has a fantastic sub stack that Chuck and I both recommend at NatPop.com.

You can go to his website, RyanGerduski.com. Lots of ways to stay in tune. And I want to touch on the new book he has coming out here in our second segment. They're Not Listening, How the Elites Created the New National Populist Revolution. I think an important topic. So stay tuned for all of that. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Thanks for watching.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're continuing on now with our discussion with Ryan James Gerduski. You can follow him at NatPop on Substack or on X at RyanGerduski.com. He has some experience working with J.D. Vance and the Super Bowl.

pack campaign for his senatorial campaign. He also has a new book coming out here shortly. They're not listening. How the elites created the national populist revolution. Ryan, can you tell us a little bit about the book? And, you know, I think that's actually a really important topic that Chuck and I have talked about, you know, in various ways here on the air.

There has been a lack of responsiveness by the elites on both sides to the needs of their people. That's driving a lot of the conflict in this country. I'm wondering how you see that and how any of that relates to your book.

Well, the book already did come out. That's my old book. I do have a new book in the works, but that was my old book. Uh-oh, so I've got an old bio in front of me, Ryan. I apologize. Yeah, you have an old bio. I have to see where that is and how I can get that updated. But that was my book from 2021. And the book in 2025, hopefully, when it comes out, is a lot of the same things, but a lot of the same topics. But the big thing, I think, with...

when it comes to populism the rise of populism in a global level it in america specifically

is that I think that there is a deep class divide that is the main driver of it. And the class divide, the education divide, have led to a cultural divide. It used to be in America where there was regional wealthy people. So, for instance, Fred Rogers, who everyone knows as Mr. Rogers, was from a very wealthy family in western Pennsylvania. And what

uh... his parents used to do is not be used to do is go to the local hospitals every christmas and pay off the bills of all the people who owed money onto local hospitals for surgeries and whatnot uh... in western new york there was a lot of people who did the same thing to the local philanthropy who felt responsible for those with their regions of the country that they were the wealthiest people love and they had their own you know semi aristocracy

That all changed after really the Cold War, where there was a hollowing out of middle America and wealth consolidated among many few major metro areas, like real wealth, as we understand it, say not a millionaire. There could be a millionaire almost anywhere in this country, but really, really wealthy people really consolidated amongst very few areas and wealth.

There was a big assortment going on. And so when policy was being made to reflect the needs of people who were a lot of times donors, those needs were they didn't have relations with people anymore in the parts of the country that were really affected by it. So when we normalize, I mean, a lot of damage is really done under the book.

Bush administration, W. Bush. I kind of steer him in my book. But when he normalized the permanent normalization and favorable trade status of China was absolutely detrimental. He ignored the mass migration crisis that happened under his presidency and actually wanted to get the mannesty on top of it. The war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan were terrible choices that continued, that killed

It killed a few thousand, but it actually gave PTSD and injured tens of thousands of Americans, and mostly blue-collar Americans who came back home after fighting for "freedom" to come home to places where their entire industry, industrial sector had been completely wiped out. And they gave a slap on the wrist to the Sackler family to allow the fentanyl crisis to really emerge.

And those are the three things. And that social isolation and the decline of cultural capital because of mass immigration, they insisted that we needed at all costs, became the tipping point. And so this fuse was building throughout the 2000s and the 2010s, and Obama made it all the more worse.

uh... because obama dumped the labor sector of the democratic party in favor of cosmopolitan elite and by twenty fifteen you have donald trump walking in with a match and the whole entire country is is the mall pop cocktail ready to to go off someone throws a correctly so that was that really was how it built over those fifteen seventeen years uh...

the late 90s into the mid 2010s is really the fuse that built the Donald Trump legacy. And so the part of my book that I say is that, you know, the people who hated Trump the most were the most responsible for creating him because they ignored so many times the needs of the people that say we want lower levels of legal immigration. Immigration is the main driver of a lot of populism around the whole globe. But we want lower levels of

We want to close the border. We want, you know, our jobs to be protected. We want, you know, we don't believe in these endless foreign wars. And so that's really the main driver. James, let me ask you a question. This is a math question, really. Okay. So Sam and I are proponents that the border, you know, we're in Arizona. I mean, we understand the border. We see it. We go down there. It's a real problem. It's a bigger problem than people realize who aren't there. I went to Arizona on the border, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We have a declining birth rate, which is going to affect people that we're talking about because you don't have revenue for sample Social Security.

Right. What is your proposal or what do you think an idea worth looking at? We won't, you know, I don't like put people in a corner, but what do you think we need to do to make sure? As Chuck puts you in a corner. No, no, no. I love this question. I really do. I think about this question quite a bit. I do. I love this question. So, you know, for us is like.

You know, we have to do something because there's not enough revenue coming in. And even the Democrats are like, well, just get rid of the cap, which I think it should be increasing people who make X amount of money. But that being said, the math doesn't support math. That only covers 40 percent of it. So what what is something like that you propose? Because that's obviously affecting the people we're talking about. This is this is a real math problem here. I don't know.

Folks, stay tuned. We lost Ryan Gerduski briefly, but we've got him back right now. No worries. Ryan, thanks for rejoining us. No problem. Are we on right now? Yeah, we are. Go ahead. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. Thank you. Yeah, so the whole point of the low birth rate. So first of all, yes, we have a low birth rate, about 1.6 children per woman. The entire Western world has a low birth rate. The idea that there is these ample countries where...

with millions of people are just having kids left and right is completely untrue. Mexico has around the same birth rate the United States does. I think it's a tad higher, but not much higher. Almost all of South America and Central America, outside of Guatemala, has a birth rate below replacement level. China is losing 2 million workers a year. India is below replacement level, and they will be a net importer of workers by 2050. Okay.

My understanding is the only continent in the world that still has a birth rate in excess of 1.2 per is Africa. 2.1. Yeah, sorry. It's Africa, but even Africa had its first country this year, Tunisia, which fell under 2.1. Africa will absolutely be with the rest of the world by the end of the century. The only countries left are either the...

you know, dystopianly horrific Muslim countries of like Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa, which have not been known to produce billion-dollar thinkers. You know, what we need to do as a country

as a nation is what Japan started doing back in the 1970s, which is mechanize. You know, there were two countries that hit below replacement levels decades before everyone else did, which was Germany and Japan in the post-war era. Japan decided to mechanize. Germany decided to bring in Turks. And what happens now? Germany burns down the cities every single summer, and they have mass rape issues.

And Japan's so peaceful that they have, you know, news stories of a cat stuck in trees and robots will serve you your McDonald's. Absolutely. Ryan, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. I'm sorry we have to cut you off. We're going to definitely bring you back on because we want to have a much longer version of this conversation coming up soon. But folks, you can follow him at RyanGerduski.com, on X at Ryan Gerduski, and on his sub stack at NatPop. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, stop big tech from tracking your every move. Experience true freedom with 4FreedomMobile. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today. That's the number 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage, digital security, and total freedom. Use code BATTLEGROUND at checkout to get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month after that. Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND at checkout.

Now moving on to our next guest today, Susan Crabtree, a political correspondent for Real Clear Politics, previously served as senior writer for the Washington Free Beacon and spent five years as White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner. You can follow her on X at SusanCrabtree.com, which Chuck and I both highly recommend because we both feel like she is doing the most in-depth reporting possible.

on the aftermath of the assassination attempt of Donald Trump, everything that's been going on with the Secret Service and so forth. So thank you, Susan, so much for joining us. We really appreciate having you on the program. Thanks so much for your interest in this. It's extremely important that you learn from these mistakes, and there are myriad mistakes involved.

I just reported an exclusive aspect of this. It's really disconcerting that there are reasons why there is no exact timeline and it keeps shifting on when a Secret Service and or law enforcement, we don't even know which one first flagged the shooter, Thomas Crooks, so we could track his movements and

the response from Secret Service and law enforcement before he fired off those shots at Trump. This is a critical issue here. And I'm told that, you know, we keep hearing about the radio that people flagged this guy an hour before outside the manometers. And he was acting suspiciously. He had a backpack and then he got out a range finder. All of these details, we did.

the timeline keeps shifting. The reason for that is the secret service sources, two secret service sources that have been exceptional sources for me for more than 16 years, have said that

The radio frequency is recorded. It's usually recorded when it comes to presidents and vice presidents, but unfortunately not when it comes to former presidents, which is just absolutely absurd. Just...

Is that just like an outdated protocol from an era when you had to keep actual physical tapes? Because it seems like in this digital era, that's the easiest thing on earth to do. You would think, but there's a lot of outmoded protocols that we're finding out as I report on this. Donald Trump was not given the same priority. You would think that the Secret Service, all their protective protocols are threat-based. Right.

In fact, we're finding out that's not the case, that the protocols they use for a former president are much different than from a sitting president, even a sitting vice president, even a first lady. So they get more priority and more resources than Donald Trump. I mean, this does not make sense. Well, this, you know, so let me ask you this question for our listeners. There's some thinking, well, look, they've pulled these details. They've pulled these people because it's Donald Trump.

And it sounds like this was just basically standard operating procedure for the Secret Service. If it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense. But it sounds like it's a standard operating procedure. But potentially a very bad procedure. Is that correct? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's correct. So, I mean, there's always rumbling about local motivations, but I don't, I don't want to get into, I, well, I am hearing that, but, and there are, there was evidence in the wall street journal, a very good reporter, Warren Strobel, who was, was, was,

I trust his reporting. He was a former colleague of me in a different outlet. We started out together. He has since written books on the Iraq war. He's an exceptional reporter. He reported that Robert O'Brien asked, he was Trump's national security chief, and

in the White House, and he also was in charge of hostage-taking, trying to get the hostages back around the world during the Trump administration and was extremely successful at that, that he asked for Secret Service more protection or protection in general, and he was denied.

So that story came out a couple days ago. So we don't know if it's politically motivated or they're using old protocols. Of course you hear things that it's politically motivated. It doesn't matter. Somebody was...

shot and killed. And Donald Trump almost lost his life and several others were injured. It is just so many myriad failures here. And real answers are needed, I think, before the country is going to be able to move on from this, because incompetence is something I think too many people have come to accept from our government.

And but that is one explanation. And if it was politics, that is a very different one. We're going to get into more with Susan Crabtree here in a moment, folks. So stay tuned. You can follow her work on X at Susan Crabtree. Obviously, also, you can go to the Real Clear Politics site, rcp.com and get her work there. Stay tuned. Breaking Battlegrounds back with more in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks,

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So, Susan, what have since Saturday and since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, what what are some of the rumors that were out there that are not true? And what are some of the questions or rumors out there that have not been answered yet that you think the public should be aware of?

Well, the ones that I'm focused in on honing in on are whether I reported on Sunday and I was on the plane coming out here. I couldn't get to reporting on it Saturday, sadly, because I had to get ready to leave for the convention that I was already planning to go to. So on Sunday, I got on the plane at 830 in the morning and I started reaching out to the

the Secret Service sources that I've had for many, many years because there was lots of incidents about during the Obama administration. I broke a story that led to July

Julia Pearson, the first female agent chief of the Secret Service, to resign. It was about a man who had a gun, who was a security officer actually, in an elevator with Obama, but he was not cleared to have that gun. You always have to clear the people. And that was a big blow-up. Yes, a big blow-up in...

During that time. That's an enormous lapse in security. It was. It was extremely bad. And Julia Pearson lost her job over it. She was appointed after the Columbia prostitution scandal. And President Obama wanted a woman to show that maybe a woman could clean up the Secret Service agent, the Secret Service, because it was illegal.

Less chance a woman would be buying prostitutes in Columbia? Correct, right. Or that she could somehow – that would have some symbolic meaning after a prostitution scandal. And then she was on for a year and a half. But people really didn't know who she was. She was a veteran of the agency, but she didn't have a –

She wasn't in the top management level. She wasn't a deputy. So people sort of said, well, Julia Pearson who? Anyway, there were so many fence-jumping incidents when she was there, including one in which the White House intruder got into the White House and wasn't shot. It

It just begs the question. So all of this, there's a history here of incompetence and disciplinary problems and low morale, terribly low morale, which is so sad, you know, because when I was growing up, it was like the movie, the Clint Eastwood movie and the Lion's Fire was the standard. And there is a zero fail policy here. You cannot have any problems.

and they've had a string of public failures, and they're meeting out on even discipline so that when people –

see that. Some people are losing their security clearances, some other people aren't over the years. People, whistleblowers start contacting the press and contacting members of Congress. And you saw a flood of that in 2014, and then Julia Pearson was forced to resign. Part of her resignation, I want to point out, was, I broke the story, the Secret Service Communications Office

insisted to me that it was wrong that my information about the man elevator with the gun that was not cleared with Obama that that story was wrong and I said I I'm so sorry but I trust my sources it's extremely detailed it was down in Atlanta you know with the furthest health event of the CDC I mean I really trust these resources so they insisted they were berating me and

The only other reporter that went with the story eventually was Carol Leoneg, and she ended up getting the Pulitzer Prize for her fee-for-service coverage. So the other reporters were saying it wasn't true because the communications team was not in the loop, and that's why Julia Pearson was fired. It wasn't over the incident itself. It was because she lied to the president's staff about whether she told the communications team and kept them in the loop.

So when the communications team now, Anthony Guglielmi, he's the spokesman, has been publicly calling me out saying that my reporting is wrong. He doesn't even know the history of it.

I have defended my reporting. I have said that there are times when the communication office has not been kept in the loop, glaring times. In fact, the Secret Service chief resigned over it. So I am still relying on some of the same sources that provide that information. So as a journalist, I am going to stand by my sources. And one of the key parts of my reporting that

the Secret Service spokesman was disputing, and not to me personally. He did not respond to my six detailed questions that I sent him on Sunday. Instead, he took to Twitter and sort of

I waited for a couple hours to hear back from them. And then I, I went with my, it was such a fascinating story that I went with the, the, my findings that sources, several sources telling me that, um, that,

The assets, resources were diverted from the Trump rally to an event that Joe Biden was having a dinner for the Italian sons and daughters dinner in Pittsburgh at a casino. And that, you know, because they draw a lot from the area field office when there's massacres.

up these events and resourcing these events, and those two were in the same area. Besides, the NATO summit was taking place last week and then preparations for the RNC convention, and there are Secret Service everywhere here and law enforcement everywhere here. You can't go two feet without running into one. So to say that the resources were stretched is an understatement, a gross understatement. They added...

what were temporary, what my sources called temps, people from different field offices around the country that are not part of Trump's regular detail for the event that day. In fact, I'm told that only a handful, maybe even only one, was the special agent in charge of Trump's regular detail, his last name is Curran.

He was the only one regular person on the event. Now, maybe there were a handful of it, but it wasn't. It was mostly staffed by to clarify. I think a lot of people don't understand the Secret Service has a lot of duties beyond just protecting the president and his family and so forth.

So these were agents whose training and experience was in other areas. They were Secret Service agents whose training and experience is in other areas, whether that be Treasury fraud issues, things like that, counterfeiting, so forth. No, I don't think so. I think they're all protected detail. But they provide – I didn't hear that, but I –

I hear they're not desk job people. They don't consider the desk. So, but they, they're just drawing from the field. This team hasn't worked together. They're drawing a team together that had no experience working as a unit to protect. Correct. That's a great way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. And so because of that, um,

They, even the site agent, it's called a site agent. I am told, and this is really disconcerting, that the site agent was a new agent to the Pittsburgh field office with very little experience. That's crazy given the, you know, given the tenor in tone in politics and the intensity right now on both sides. I think that's absolutely crazy news.

Let me ask you this question. So CNN's reporting that they had identified the shooter before.

and that the Trump detail or the Trump team were not notified that there was a suspicious person that they were unable to locate. Is that true? Well, I don't think you would, you mean Trump himself and his immediate people around him. Yeah, that they just weren't notified of it. No, because here's what I'm told. So there's a radio. I mentioned that earlier in the segment. There's a radio frequency where they all this.

It's dedicated and it's manned by the White House Communications Agency. It's dedicated to conversations between local law enforcement, Secret Service and whoever else is assigned to that site that day to protect the president. And they did flat. There's a lot of there's a lot of people. They talk a lot about different people that might be suspicious.

And they say things like, okay, check out this woman who has a backpack at, you know, three o'clock and, you know, as a clock, using the clock as a reference to where they are at the event. You know, this other person has this, and they use, I mean,

The problem also, one of the problems here is that Thomas Crookes was an inside official perimeter. The building was an inside official perimeter, and that's where the magnometers start is the official perimeter. So who's outside the magnometers? Otherwise, the magnometers were likely of...

picked up his gun, his, uh, the rage finder, the weapon, all that. Yeah. All of that. And so, but he, I was told he did get out his range finder, but it was on the ground. Um,

when he was on the ground. So when he got out the range finder, there was a series of events. They first saw him suspicious around the magnometer. And all of this is happening in real time, and people are identifying a lot of different suspicious people. I want you to keep an eye on this person. I want you to keep an eye on this person. So it wasn't just Thomas Crooks, I would think. So then he...

Then they were tracking his movements and he did take out a range finder. And that was a really alarming at that point. And that's when I believe the law, the law enforcement, local law enforcement tried to follow him and he went up on the roof.

And then there was that issue with the local police officer falling off the roof, couldn't get up on the roof fast enough to stop the attempt. Susan, we have just two minutes before we come to the end of the segment here. I wanted to touch on one other piece you put out recently. GOP was investigating Secret Service before assassination attempt. Can you tell us what that was about?

Yes, there were warning signs. Just two months ago, a couple months ago, I wrote a story, broke part of it, that a

A woman, female agent that was assigned to Kamala Harris' detail, protective detail, had a mental breakdown at Joint Base Andrews. And she actually had it was assaulting her superiors and she had her gun in her holster so they had to be wrestled to the ground and the gun was removed and she was escorted off the premises.

But that led to a lot of criticism within the rank and file that she was a DEI hire, diversity, equity, inclusion, because there's a big push in the Secret Service. And Director Cheadle has promoted this 30 by 30 initiative. It's a national initiative that law enforcement agents have 30% female agents by 2030 in their ranks. So...

The reason why I think they thought that about her is there have been complaints. I don't know how they were lodged, but complaints lodged within the Secret Service that she was demonstrating behavioral signs, didn't pass her some training, some key training tests, and that they...

They pushed her forward anyway, and she was assigned to Kamala Harris' protective detail. I think there are lots of areas where you can adjust standards, but is the protection of a human life, a politician's life from assassination one? I have serious questions about whether that makes sense or not, right?

Well, I think Elon Musk probably put it best. I reported that the 5'5 agent wasn't covering a female agent. She did a great job, but she didn't cover his torso. She actually did a good job spreading her arms out. She did what she was trained to do. But I think it was Elon Musk who said, I think that is like having a 5'5 agent covering Trump, who's 6'4, is like putting a Speedo on an elephant.

That's a good thing to end on. Look at you. You're a pro. You're a pro. That is fantastic. Susan Crabtree, thank you so much for joining us today. Folks, you can follow her at RealClearPoliticsRCP.com. You can also follow her on X at Susan Crabtree.

Susan, thank you for joining us. We really look forward to having you back on, hopefully soon, as you continue your investigations there. You're doing brilliant work. We encourage everyone to follow what you're doing there. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me and your interest. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

Folks, stay tuned. Make sure you download our podcast segment. It's always great. We've got Kylie's true crime update coming up today. We have a sunshine moment. We have Chuck and I shooting the you know what. It never want to miss that one. Breaking Battlegrounds back next week.

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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds. Chuck, Kylie,

Do we have it, Kylie? Do we have a true crime update today? Let's just jump right into it. Let's jump. This is why everyone follows our podcast segment based on what I've been told. So let's just let's just get rolling.

What kind of murder, right? We always have stories. People learn. Hey, look. Always acting out. That's why Law & Order's been on two plus decades. Yeah, 20-something. Almost three decades because every week something's written for them. There's so much material that for 20 years they've managed that series plus 10 spinoffs worth of content. I'm going to tell you a little tidbit. So when you see the beginning of Law & Order and they tell you this is not based on whatever the thing is. Right.

The lawyers had them do that for legal reasons because it really is based on something. Of course. Absolutely. All right. It's not coming up with all these crazy stories every time. exactly. But the first thing I want to talk about is give the update on the Alec Baldwin case. Cause right when we ended, there was actually a decision that was made. The whole case was dismissed. Um, and it was dismissed on misconduct of police and prosecutors over withholding of evidence from the defense. Um, so basically, so basically a guy came in March, um,

a man walked into the sheriff's office and said, I have ammo that's related to this case. And they decided that it wasn't related to the case, uh, and that they were going to file it away under another case number and never shared it with the defense. Um,

And when they did look at the ammo, it was... I looked into this. It was the same type of ammo, which is a highly specialized rear type of ammo. Right. But there was zero evidence that that ammo was on set. There was zero evidence. In fact, so it was a former Arizona law enforcement officer, police officer who turned that in, who's a family friend of the father of Helena... What is her last name? The producer. The producer.

Hutchinson, who was the security safety coordinator who was convicted earlier. This thing stinks. This thing stinks to high heck as an absolute. We're just putting this guy off the hook, letting him go because of who he is. And I mean, this I read that was shock. Chuck and Kylie. I read that thing was shock. Yes. No, I don't.

I thought you weren't here last week. So I feel like you would have been on my side last week. But I was like, I think he is. Oh, I think that I think the dad had one of his friends who's a former copy. Like my daughter shouldn't be in jail. And I think, by the way, she shouldn't be in jail for this.

I think it was likely an accident. I don't think either of them should be in jail. I don't either. I think they should have been sued civilly. Yes. I think that's appropriate. They still can be sued civilly. Yes. And he is still being sued. But I still don't understand. Look, I think this is an accident. It was an accident. And that's what's always bugged me about it. I mean, I'm not saying I want to defend Alec Baldwin, but I want, I just, I feel this prosecutor,

had it out for him and her. She wanted a head on her mantle. She wanted a pair of Second Amendment scalps to put over the fireplace. So similar to the Karen Reid case, she was also caught texting other people saying bad things about Alec Baldwin, about how much she doesn't like him, etc. So they used that. She decided she was going to go and stand kind of as a Hail Mary, they said, and said, you know, I didn't know about this evidence, blah, blah, blah. And

And then the judge was like, you don't have to do this. She decided she was going to do it anyways, which it didn't benefit anything. So now she's just hopefully she didn't lie during that testimony. Well, I mean, again, Chuck, like you said, I have no problem with they should never have been convicted criminally in the first place. It was an accident. You can convict of a misdemeanor negligence or something like that. But I don't think they should have been jail time and they should be civilly sued into the ground. But.

But then this, the way this happened, this, this is garbage. Yeah. And her family was actually going to settle with, um, with Baldwin in 2023 last year, but the prosecutor wanted like civilly, they're just going to settle and move on. Um, but the prosecutor wanted to still try the case. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, maybe you sort of credit the judge, Chuck, I guess, with with making sure that ultimately justice prevailed by finding an excuse to toss the convictions. I mean, I guess you could put it that way. But man, all of this episode, Kylie.

This one, the case in Boston, we've been following everything we've seen with Donald Trump. Our justice system is a disaster right now. It's a friggin' mess. It's bothersome. No, it's really bothersome. It's bothersome. I think it goes to the point, and I want to get back to Kylie's time, but

I'm just so concerned nothing works right now. Yeah. I mean, today, you know, there's a security glitch. So planes are not being able to take off. Banks are screwed up. We just tried to buy some data for a project. And the guy said, I can't because of this. So I had to get to you Monday. It's just nothing works. And then the one thing you should be able to trust is our justice system is not perfect. But these two cases have just shown to me –

I mean, I feel like you have to have an attorney on retainer all the time. Yeah. This stuff's really bad. And the...

The disaster of the justice system, I don't even know if I would call it corrupt. I mean, incompetence, incorruption, it's corrupt on the Trump end. These other things, they might be corrupt. They might be incompetence. But what we've seen over and over here is bad procedures. You saw this, the interview we just had with Susan Crabtree, Secret Service operating on outdated, inflexible, poor protocols.

Police departments doing investigations that are not worthy of being called such a thing. And then these type of situations. I mean, the whole thing is very concerning. You have the right word.

I agree. I agree. But this next story that I have, you know, maybe some things the Diplomatic Security Service is working a little bit right now. So I'm going to share this story. So it's Stephen Craig Johnson. He was in he was in an Oregon prison serving a state sentence for three counts of sexual or child sex abuse when he escaped from a work crew in 1994. Well, he was found and arrested on Tuesday in Georgia 30 years later.

So investigators believe he obtained a deceased Texas child's birth certificate and social security number in 1995, a year after he escaped. And then in 1998, obtained a Georgia driver's license underneath that name. He was arrested in an apartment complex where he had been living since 2011 under the alias William Cox. It's unknown if he had a job, but when he was getting arrested, he did mention he had a pension. We're not sure where he got that pension from.

The building manager of the apartment complex, everyone's basically shocked. They said that they knew him as Bud, and it was an older community. It was 55-plus community, and the neighbor said that he was a very nice man, and everyone liked him, and he took care of himself and exercised every morning. But he was caught, and I found this interesting. The Diplomatic Security Service is an armament of the State Department.

They have a new investigative technology which helped investigators find new leads on this case, but they're not willing to disclose any more details about this technology to protect the secrecy of future investigations using this method. So something is working. They're developing something around there. But luckily, where he escaped from, the Mill Creek facility in Oregon, it was an unfenced facility that housed 290 prisoners that were within. There's a lot of those facilities, by the way.

Which is crazy because all I did was Google Mill Creek Correctional Facility and then escapee. I was trying to figure out how many people escaped from this place. The amount of headlines that say inmate walked away from Mill Creek Correctional Facility. This line got me. It says it's...

This is from 2015. An inmate walked away from the crew on Monday as they're working along Highway 20. It's the fifth time in two years that an inmate has escaped the minimum security facility and walked away from the crew's operation. So where I grew up, Kylie, in upstate New York, I

We were outside Lake Placid on the other side of town was actually a minimum security prison for New York State. Really? Yeah. They would because New York prisons were overcrowded at that time. You could have like a triple axe murderer who also robbed a store.

who would get put in the minimum security prison to serve out the initial store robbery sentence before they had room for him, a max. So these guys would run all the time, right? Right. And they would do this phone call around town. Your phone would ring, and it would be this recorded voice that says, there's a prisoner escaped. Please lock your doors and secure your vehicles, all this. Two things happened immediately after that. Everyone in that town went out and put their keys in their car.

Because you don't want them coming in your house. Let them take the damn car. There's only two roads out of town. That's really smart, though. Kylie, are you doing that in Boston? Are you doing that in Boston, Kylie? I might have to. But Sam, you might know more information. I have a question. So Governor Kate Brown closed this facility in 2001 to save the state $44 million. So they spent $44 million on 290 inmates. Wow.

Yes, although also an older prison facility, we're having that problem here in Arizona. So they may be counting some capital need costs into that calculation. So I wouldn't know offhand. But the cost to maintain a prisoner is now well over six figures a year in most states.

Oh, yeah. No, no. It's expensive. And it has to be. I don't know. I don't know how you make it cheaper. No, you really can't. But one of the things that's happened is obviously a lot of prisons now were built around the same period in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, particularly the 80s. And those facilities are now reaching the point of just being totally obsolete and falling down.

We had the incident here in Arizona where the doors just were randomly opening on cells, like randomly unlocking themselves. That's great. You know, so they may be counting some capital costs in that number. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Well, yeah, I just think you're like I think you're like set for full time employment on this particular subject, Kylie. It's just always something crazy going on every week, right?

It really is. It's kind of next week. A little bit of anxiety. But next week, by the way, would you do a little reporting on the background of the shooter at the Trump rally and his family? Try to find you go down. Go down this red holes for us, would you?

I'd love to. Thank you so very much. I mean, it is crime. By the way, Sam, something interesting. It was reported on Arizona Capital Times today that the abortion rights campaign, which has put on the ballot access to abortion rights, has raised more than $10 million. And this is the point that makes me just infuriated. The pro-life movement has raised $407,000. Yeah. They just simply do not have the firepower to do that.

to fight this issue, and they just will not admit it. Yeah, so that's the point I want to get to right here, because you and I know we were both told by people who have connections to the major pro-life organization here in Arizona that they had raised $10 million. They were telling people they had raised $10 million, and now we see the real number is one-twentieth, less than one-twentieth of that total. They...

They lie about how much they think they can raise all the time. And I don't know if it's hope. I don't know if it's a hope and a prayer. But they've got to just stop saying it. What they have to do is what our friend Tim Mooney says. They've really got to start focusing on changing hearts and churches and families. That's the only thing. That's how you slow down abortion. And I'm going to get struck dead for this by some people.

You know, you sort of probably need to make access to birth control free, over the counter. I mean, look, if you're pro-life, you want to do the things that prevent pregnancy that's unwanted. That's the ultimate pro-life position. Absolutely it is. So, yes, I agree 100 percent, Chuck, but I want to throw out one other thing on that front.

very specifically for this is that's all they're going to be able to do after this cycle because they have been so thoroughly beaten, because they have been so thoroughly dishonest and they're getting their butts kicked.

This is going to be on the Constitution of the state of Arizona. There's no way that's ever getting overturned. And now all the hearts and minds of all these organizations have left. And forever they've done – they've always said let the voters decide. Yeah. The Supreme Court did it. Well. And now they don't want the voters to decide. And there's a reason because they lost the battle they needed to win. Exactly. Well, we have provided you gloom, assassination, populism, death, murder, mayhem, child predators. Yes.

A random quote from Chuck that he didn't give this morning that went viral? Did you know about this, Jenna? No. So there was a quote this morning on Yahoo Finance, which was sent to me by a public relations professional in D.C. She goes, you were quoted on this. I read the quote. It's a wonderful quote, except I didn't say it.

And I sent it out to Sam and I's group chat with our consultants. They're like, yeah, you didn't say that. I mean, it's just not something – as Sam said on the way here, he goes, that is a quote someone would write, not say. It's not spoken word, but it's definitely not Chuck Warren's spoken word. So besides the fact that I am now an expert in inflation and tariffs based on Yahoo Finance, it has gone out to 42 publications internationally in the United States –

with access to 800 million people. When we were talking earlier, he's already been quoting in Malaysia. And Kylie went and she's going to put something up on Substack where she says she Googled the words, went through her transcripts. We didn't get close to even having this comment. I thought initially a guest might have said it and they missed in the transcript. And Substack doesn't dignify or separate the two. But this is just lazy journalism.

And, by the way, this has happened to me three times this year. It's absurd. Now, like I said, Kylie hasn't put on my bio in quotations. I'm an expert on inflation and tariffs by Yahoo Finance. But I did not say the quote. And so people understand it when they come back and someone's fact-checking. I am not a big tariff fan.

I think they should be used grudgingly. But as Sam and I said, what tariffs are, is there a bat for negotiations on free trade agreements?

And that's what I believe Trump's going to – when Trump does that, this is how Trump negotiates. So if anybody follows Trump, this is how he negotiates. I don't believe he wants to put a tariff on everything in the world. He wants free and fair deals, right? So we just want that to be on record. But yes, quote, folks today on Yahoo Finance, the quote I have about tariffs and what's going to raise the prices on clothing and other things.

That's not my quote. Again, I don't like tariffs, but it's literally not my quote. But I am an expert on inflation and tariffs. All right. What do you got for us on Sunshine Moment here today, Jenna?

She's getting good. She's waiting for the song to play now. Look at her. She pauses. Her heart stops, but she's ready. All right, Jenna, what do we got? Got to get the Johnny Cash in. Yeah, no, so kind of like how we can't control the inflation, everything going on, like my eggs. I can barely afford eggs. I can barely afford groceries, all this. My dad always tells me we can't control what happens to us. We can only really create things.

control how we react to it. So I have a story about a college student in Denver named Mason Brandstratter who has always wanted to help other people. There's this great article by CBS all about him and he was on a fishing trip with his dad told him like you know one day you know this is what I want to do I want to help as many people as possible I'm not sure how I'm going to do it but I want to help as many people as possible.

He loves the outdoors, and on a skiing trip two days later, he did a jump and woke up in the ICU. And the doctor was telling him, we don't know if you'll be able to walk again. He...

Talks about how he was like, you know, you never know with a spinal cord injury exactly what is going to happen. And so he said, you know, they talked about maybe he'll have to work on walk on crutches, maybe wheelchair. And eventually they discovered, you know, he'll have to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Right.

But Mason goes to University of Denver, very outdoorsy person, loves outdoors, loves his friends, loves connecting with people. He didn't let this stop him. He started posting on social media, started sharing his –

like how he gets through life and through his day, um, living in a wheelchair, um, and started, you know, started rebuilding, um, you know, his physical ability. And, um, he has been, he now just, uh,

Ran, I guess ran, but he in a wheelchair with different aids, he was able to run a marathon. He ran like grandma's marathon. So what is it? Twenty six point five miles, I think. Or I don't know. I have never desired to run a marathon. That's not on my bucket list. Folks, if you're watching the video, you know, I know. I do not know.

Yeah, but so he did that and you see videos online, he shows himself swimming, how he gets in and out of the pool without aids and how he takes out his garbage and he's inspiring a whole bunch of people and he said that he's grateful he's able to

actually you know connect with people and help people in a way and you know I think he's been able to help as many people as possible you know and you didn't expect how why don't you try to contact him and let's get him on the podcast yeah let's talk about his journey I think that would be inspiring I'd love to hear more about him that'd be fantastic it's always amazing people like this that have these tragic accidents that have a grateful heart how they're able to succeed

Yeah, when they're able to find what they're grateful for on it, it's amazing the hurdles they're able to overcome. You know, from a handful of friends I've known in that position, if they can do that, they will live a long, productive, healthy life. And if they can't, they're going to be dead in a few years. 100%. It always reminds me of this great scene in Modern Family where Cam's talking about

If he dies in a household injury, he hope he's not crippled because he wouldn't be a very aspiring disabled person. But the people who do succeed and thrive, they have grateful hearts. And I think they go with each day with gratitude. And I think that's something the world needs to look more at because most of us have a lot to be grateful for. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you for sharing. Yes, indeed.

Well, folks, thank you for joining us this week for Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. You can even make up quotes from us. Sign up for our sub stack. We have great opinion columns for Sam and I and other people we have coming. We will have a sub stack column out here in a week or two about all the judges' opinions.

Trump appointed and ruled against him on election interference. So when people talk about democracy is in danger, just understand they're lying. The court issue is a big one, the way Democrats are going after. They are going after, they keep saying democracy, but they are going after really the fundamental plank of actually having democracy. They live in a bizarre world. So on behalf of Jenna, Kylie, Sam, and Chuck, have a great weekend. Visit us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Sign up for us on Substack and have a great weekend.