Budget Battles and Social Security: Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith on America's Economic Future
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. Joining me in studio today, we have Sean Noble. He is filling in for Chuck.

Good to be here. Chuck is out. You're going to catch him, though, in hopefully the fourth segment, audio equipment willing. Oh, there you go. He is doing an off-site taping with Congressman Jason Smith of the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, so obviously a good one for our program, so stay tuned for that.

We're going to have Shea Kateri coming up next. But after our first guest, who is a friend of the program, someone who's writing, Sean, I know you enjoy, I enjoy, Chuck enjoys, David Katniss. He is a Washington-based political writer and host of Too Close to Call. He's written for McClatchy, The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, and Politico. You can read his work at davidkatniss.substack.com or follow him on X at Dave Katniss.

David Katniss, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me back. So you've been on a roll with some of your pieces lately, I'll be honest. But you had one – I'm going to jump right in with the one you put out this morning –

Because I woke up. That was one of my first pieces of reading today. I thought it was same. I thought it was really good. You were talking about the enthusiasm gap between the two presidential campaigns. Can you tell folks a little bit about what that piece is? And obviously we want people to go there and read it. But, man, I thought you hit on kind of one of the main dynamics that's going on right now.

Yeah, I was just trying to coalesce my thoughts from the week and hearing from Democrats and Republicans. And I reached out to the Trump campaign yesterday for a story I'm working on about

a CNN commentator, Scott Jennings. I'm sort of writing a profile on him and what he means. And they just gave me this quote, like blasting. They're like, we're watching, President Trump watches him eviscerate the Democrats. We're winning, you know, winning every day. And it just occurred to me, man, these guys are never not confident. From Trump on down, it permeates the staff. Their supporters online, they're like,

trash and com every day then you go to democrats and it's just like they're like oh my god she's stumbling and like she in her interview with howard stern i watched and she said i'm nervous i'm losing sleep and it just it crystallized and it's just the psyche the difference between these two parties is really psychological as much as it is on any ideological issue yes immigration or taxes

Republicans are just confident. They just don't think they think their guy is going to win. They probably won't believe it if he doesn't win. Democrats, I think, in the reverse, would be surprised if Kamala Harris wins. But if you drill down in the data, we still have a very damn close race. These are all margin of error states from Arizona, Nevada, back out here into the East Coast and North Carolina. But the psychological gap is just so wide between the two parties.

Well, I think that I mean, it's it's interesting to see the polling because the polling is definitely tight. This is the closest polling election we've ever had. When you compare it to 2016 and 2020, Trump looks much better now than he did at those times. Trump never. I tell people this all the time of legitimate public polls in 2016 and 2020. Trump never led on a national poll.

And he has been up in some national polls, you know, here and there throughout the year. And then on the swing states, he rarely led any of those states and ended up winning in 2016 and then, you know, coming very close in 2020. David, I feel like it's in part...

That there might be this – and I get the sense from Biden as I watch him undercut Kamala that there was this total sugar high when they replaced Biden with Kamala. And everyone thought, oh, this is it. We've done it. We're done. We're good. And that hasn't really borne out. I don't know if they thought it was good. I mean I remember Nancy Pelosi –

People forget about this interview. Even when she was calling for Biden's head, when they asked her about Kamala and those original interviews in July, she suggested an open convention might be the best way. Now, we all know that didn't happen. Nobody had the kahunas to challenge Kamala. Biden boosted her very quickly. Everybody got in line.

But I think Pelosi, who could argue maybe is the sharpest operator on the Democratic side. Without question. I'd say the sharpest operator in the country. OK. OK. So I just think she knew in the back of her head this might be a problem. And here we are three months later. And look, I sort of I sort of reverse engineer this. I'm surprised Kamala is even in the game. Like, I think she should be losing. And I show I think it shows Trump's incredible weakness that she could win.

because we all know she wasn't a great candidate in 2019 i covered that campaign very closely in the debacle that it was never making it to iowa the internal staffing fights she couldn't she didn't know her positions then

But she's in this game. Like, she could win. Like, the pass – or the Wall Street Journal pulling out this morning down in the Midwest states, which I thought was odd. But they have her up in Arizona. They have her up in Georgia. So none of these states are out of play. This is all margin of error baseball. And look, I guess whatever – November 10th, whenever the day we know the outcome of this election, because I think it could be that close that we won't know for a few days –

It's either going to be like this was the brilliant, most brilliant swap in history or this was a huge debacle. And like flip a coin, man. Pick pick whichever argument, because I could go either way right now on. And I think that's who's going to win. Yeah, that's the reality. It literally is a towing cost. And I think you can argue Trump is Trump is incredibly lucky that he ended up with Kamala Harris as his opponent instead of.

One of the numerous candidates on their side who is a lot easier for people to like and vote for. Well, yeah. I mean, I had thought that it was – for months I had said Biden is not going to be the nominee. It's going to be Michelle Obama because they care about winning and that's their surest bet. She never wanted it though. I mean imagine a ticket of Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro.

Now, again, they're like anyone else. They're untested on the national stage. I think a Scott Walker is somebody I thought who could be president. And then they put him on the national stage and he flopped. Same thing around his hands. So a lot of these governors, we hype up because they're, you know, from afar, they look great. And then they got to, you know, they got to do the daily rigmarole and it's very tough. But like you can imagine a bunch of different combinations of candidates. Wes Moore, I think Cory Booker is sort of spectacular and exciting and great on his feet.

But like, it was like, nobody, nobody would go there. They said, we don't have the time. We got to buy it. This is Biden's call. We already pushed him out. It's gotta be her, or we're going to piss off the black community. So like they're riding with her. And it's like, I feel like the mentality of the Harris campaign is to just squeak it out. It's kind of like, they're not trying to like,

win the damn thing. It's like we can just edge this out if we just attack Trump enough, lay enough seeded doubt of what it would be like to bring him back. And we can just get it over the goal line in these states for her to become president. In terms of the race going forward, one of the things we're seeing is hair, which you mentioned at the end of your piece,

Harris is focusing like a laser on these swing states. She has made numerous, numerous appearances in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, coming here to Arizona repeatedly. Tim Wall, same story. While Donald Trump has been holding rallies in New York and California, which obviously he's not going to win, but is he in an unusual position where control of the House means as much to him as whether he wins or loses the presidency almost? Because...

If Democrats have control of the House, I'd assume he gets impeached like day two. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I mean, I think that part of what the Trump campaign has said is he cares about the House. So that's why he's going to California, because of Southern California seats could determine control the House. Knowing Trump's psyche, I just think it's an ego thing. Like, I think.

I mean, to have a rally in Madison Square Garden, like everybody's going to cover that. Everybody's going to be interested in that. Like all politics is national politics. It's the inverse of the Tip O'Neill. Like everything you do everywhere goes nationally because of technology and of podcasting and what you guys are doing.

You can pick up clips and you can watch a TV show in Kentucky or, you know, somebody from California can watch a live stream of the hurricane in Miami. Like it's ubiquitous and Trump, everybody has interest in him. So wherever he goes, I mean, he could go to Hawaii and do something on the beach and we'd all be there like, what the hell is he doing there? Put it on cable. Like, well, I think it's an interesting strategy because I think his team sort of believes wherever they put him,

That is helping with their message. It's helping get out the vote efforts that will inspire someone to get off their ass in North Carolina or Georgia, even if he's in California or standing in Madison Square Garden in New York City. Sean, I'll ask this kind of a both of you, but.

Is that a good strategy when there is an effective wall between left and right media where people watch one or the other but not both and local appearances are one of the few ways candidates seem to break through within local press outlets? They have to cover a Trump rally or a Harris event. I mean I have two minds. One, I think the best strategy for Trump would be to just go into a closet and

Take away the phone and just watch reruns of his rallies from before and let J.D. Vance do all of the campaigning because he won't say anything. You know, J.D.'s been disciplined. He's shown that he's he can do this campaigning without creating, you know, big firestorms because the less that Trump is in front of mind of the typical voter, the less scary he seems. Right. It's like you start to remember the good things.

The flip side of that would be if he's going to do the travel, then go to these towns, mid-sized cities, and do the local broadcast. Don't worry about doing cable. Don't worry –

Do exactly what you said, because there are no swing voters that are watching CNN. There are no swing voters that are watching Fox News. Right. Period. I think I mean, I just think that I don't know. I mean, everybody's heralded this campaign is the most sophisticated Trump campaign. To me, that looks odd that 24 days out you're at Coachella. Yeah. But I think this is a Trump driven thing like.

He's done interviews saying if all the ballots of Jesus were counting the votes in California, he would win California. Like nobody believes that. But Trump might. So he might just say, I want to do. I mean, he's in Colorado today. Right. He's in Aurora, Colorado, Colorado to drive an immigration message, to drive those messages of gang infiltration. So that's a state that most people don't think is in play. So here we are three weeks, a little more than three weeks out.

And he's going two, three days in a row where he's not in a battleground state, which is just incredible bravado or it's just Trump being Trump. Yeah. You hope they're that confident in their internal polling that there's a really well thought out strategy behind it. But despite the...

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

I mean, and the thing that that's the thing that makes me a little bit nervous about how campaigns, especially on the Republican side, are going to look going forward is if this is viewed as the as the premier campaign. God help us. Twenty twenty eight. Yeah. I'd like someone who knows how to run a ground game in four years. That's just me.

We have about 30 seconds before we go to break here. We're going to be coming back with more in the next segment from David Katanese, folks. He's a Washington-based political writer and host of Too Close to Call. He's written for McClatchy, The Atlantic, U.S. News & World Report, and Politico. Follow his work, davidkatanese.substack.com or on X at Dave Katanese.

And make sure you're staying tuned because we have a fantastic, fantastic episode for you today. And make sure you're ready to download the podcast because we have Andy Gould, former Arizona State Supreme Court justice, coming on to talk about all the issues in Arizona, one of the key swing states to this election. Stay tuned.

Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Sam Stone. Chuck Warren will be joining the program for the fourth segment. He's doing an off-site interview right now.

But before we get going on that, we need to talk to you about Chuck's favorite investment, InvestYRefi. You got to go to invest the letter Y, then refy.com. Join Chuck Warren as an investor in this fantastic program where you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return in a secure collateralized portfolio. If you need your money back, your principal is safe. You can get it back 100% at any time. There are no fees, no penalties. So check them out, invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888-Y-REFI-24. We're

We're going to continue on now with our interview with David Katniss, a friend of the program and Washington-based political writer, host of Too Close to Call. We were talking first about a piece he did today about the differences in intensity and confidence on the left and the right. But you've also had some great pieces lately that we wanted to talk about as well. Yeah, David, you wrote a piece about – and this is a question that a lot of us get and you obviously did because you wrote about it. Has it ever been this crazy?

This is the worst it's ever been, right? And so you wrote a piece. Answer that question. Yeah, it's obviously been crazy before and arguably crazier. I mean, all you have to do is

And look, this is why I try to read history during campaigns, because I just think we always get these overpronounced, like no one's ever done this before. No one's ever called a candidate Hitler before. Well, 1972, George McGovern literally called Richard Nixon Hitler. And, you know, I was more familiar with the 60s. I think most Americans are more familiar with like 60, 64, 68, LBJ, 60s.

But I had never really studied 72. So I was reading this Rick Carlstein book on Nixon land. And there are just so many parallels between

to sort of the insanity of people, what people call the insanity of politics have happened before. I mean, Nixon once claimed a rally in Atlanta. He had 700,000 people when police said it was 75,000 and like wouldn't back down. I mean, that struck me as like, this has all happened before. And I just, you know, I have relatives, I have friends, they text me, they're watching these debates. They see Trump say something off the wall and they're like, tell me it's never been like this. And I'm like,

I don't know. The late 60s and 70s were the wildest. I mean, I wasn't around, but like, man, if you read the history on those, I mean, the riots, the way the conventions, people weren't safe. I mean, protesters laid in front of buses. I was at the DNC. There

There was nothing. There was Palestinian protests, but they were mild. You read about the protests in the 70s. There is nothing compared to that. So to me, it was just it struck me to write something to say, because I do get that question all the time, isn't it? This is the craziest ever been like, no, not really. Not really. History of the 70s. And it was pretty wild, if not wilder.

Absolutely. Obviously, I don't remember that because my political knowledge starts around 1980. But you go back and read history. It's pretty astounding. I mean, there was a time when there were bloody fights in the U.S. Congress. I mean –

We haven't seen that lately. I you know, when when AOC and Marjorie Taylor Greene decide to pull out cane knives and go at it, that may be setting a precedent. But until then, we're still short of what's happened. Well, and police would you know, people would say critics wrote back to me and they said, well, you know, January 6th never happened. And they say Trump is a unique figure. And even Nixon wasn't as, you know, nefarious as Trump. So they.

people would separate Trump out as sort of the most extreme figure in our history. And like, that's where you can have like maybe a different debate. Like some people would, you know, it was Nick Nixon who like,

I mean, Trump would never resign the White House probably, right? Like Nixon did say at the end, I'm getting out. Political pressure mattered. The Republican Party mattered. They went up to him. They said, you got to go. And he went. I think the difference now is, and it says more about our media maybe than our politics, is that like the individual personality is more powerful than the institution or political party. Like no Republican Party could ever get rid of Donald Trump. It's going to have to be Trump himself.

That decides to leave or an early electorate that decides we don't want you anymore. But the Republican Party isn't – I mean we already tried – they already tried this last primary. It didn't really work. And that leads us actually a perfect transition to the other piece – another piece we want to talk about. You did an article on J.D. Vance 2028.

I frankly I've been more impressed with him out of the gate than I thought I was. And I wasn't someone who disliked him at all. I think he's a strong member of the Senate. But he has really been a valuable addition to Trump in this campaign.

I think he's very smart. And I mean, maybe too smart in some ways. That's why some people think he's smarmy. I mean, I'm kind of surprised that his approval ratings are as bad as they are. I think some of that, the old podcasts, you know, these free flowing conversations, the cat lady comments have sort of followed him everywhere. But you could tell in that debate with walls and, you know, some Democrats didn't like that. I wrote that like, you know, I

what to me was an obvious, just as a political tactician, he obviously won that debate. He was a superior debater. He was more prepared. Walls just looked green. He finally got his sea legs.

But I think my point of this piece was that Vance is going to be in the national stage no matter what happens in this election. Whether it's Kamala Harris, he's immediately a candidate. He can run against her. He's already got his reps in. I think he was smart. He goes everywhere. He does every campaign event. He does every interview. So he's going to be – there's going to be other Republicans running.

But it's like, Kamlo, you see she hasn't gotten her reps in. So she's behind. She can't do the interviews as smoothly. Vance is not going to slip up. He just does not make very many mistakes. And I think that provides him an advantage going into 2028. And if Trump wins...

You know, just does Trump just hand him the baton in 2027? It's like he's got to be J.D. Like, who knows? You can't really predict Trump's behavior, whether Vance will be in his good graces or not. But I think either way, in either scenario, Vance is a player heading into the next election, no matter who the president becomes this time. Yeah. The thing that has struck me as a Gen Xer is that if Kamala doesn't win.

We will have never had a Gen X president. Is that true? That's true. Yeah. No, that is true. Because Obama was a late, late boomer. Yeah. And then it went older. Back to Trump. Right.

I'm a Gen Xer. Wow, that's a crazy stat. And that's, you know, we were called the slacker generation, and I guess we're proving that right. The three of us are all Gen Xers, and I got to be honest, guys. Oh, man, what a bummer. I'm almost taking some pride in the fact that we're the least political generation. We're the generation that wants to tell every politician to go pound sand. That might be true. That's true. Frame it that way. It sounds better. It does. That's a wild statement.

It is wild. I mean, it's it's I guess you can. I like your optimism. I like your optimism, Sam. I've always I've used it. I've always thought of it because that's that's why I was a big Marco Rubio fan back in the first, you know, 2016 race. And, you know, because that was a generational thing. Right. But here we are.

Well, we have just about a minute left here. I want to touch on really quick before we wrap up with David Katanese. He had a final article we want to talk about. Can she fake it to make it?

I'm just going to ask – I think everyone knows what we're talking about. Can Kamala Harris continue this sort of plastic campaign that is very limited? It's gotten a lot more exposure with the media she's done. David, just what is your take? Can she fake it to make it? I think she can. I mean I wrote Can She Fake It to Make It a couple weeks ago where she wasn't doing interviews. She's doing more. I actually thought she was –

pretty good at 60 minutes. I thought she was relaxed at Howard Stern. She did have a flub in the view when she didn't say she could break with Biden, which is the thing that everybody focuses on. But that's why you do a bunch of them. Like Trump, Trump does so much media that you can't focus on one thing because you're like, oh, he's off doing another thing.

A flub is history by the next day. Right. And she was just like, because she wasn't doing anything or much of anything, every moment was getting scrutinized. So now she did that town hall. She's doing more. I think she can do it. She's not great, but she's getting better. We'll let that be the final word. David Katniss, thank you so much for joining us. Stay tuned, folks. We've got more coming up.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your Sam Stone. Chuck Warren will be doing the fourth segment from a remote. He has got Congressman Jason Smith, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Right now we have in studio a good friend of ours, Shea Kateri, VP of Development and senior fellow at the Yorktown Institute. You can follow him on X at Shea Kateri. He is always covering everything that's going on in Middle Eastern policy, foreign policy,

global military affairs, a key person to cover. And when we're talking about military affairs, I got to say, folks, listen,

Military technology has seeped into every part of our government, which is why they're tracking every person in this country. And you don't want that to be you. So you need to go talk to our friends. I mean, you've got to call for Freedom Mobile. You've got to go on their website today. It's the number four, freedommobile.com. Go on their website to finally get a phone that isn't being tracked by your government, that isn't vulnerable to every threat.

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All right. Continuing on, Shay, welcome to the studio. Thanks for having me. So you are, I think, one of the most intelligent folks covering everything that's going on in the Middle East right now. You have a very clear picture based on your background of what's going on. You had a piece out recently.

a couple of them that we wanted to touch on. Khomeini's base may abandon him. Yeah. No one else has written something like that. So tell us what you're seeing and what the premise is. One benefit of being a Farsi speaker who grew up in Iran is that I get to actually hear a lot of information that are not necessarily being reported because

The more interesting stuff to report is always what's happening in elite politics. So I know this is a short segment, but you just touched on something I don't think we think about often enough. How many of the news bureaus have native Farsi speakers? They have usually one or two. But the problem is that even those two are reporting on elite politics, not actually what's happening among the rank and file. Right.

But what is important is not elite politics as much as rank and file because as a conservative czarist in early 1900s said, warning that as a rule, a regime falls not because of the strength of its enemies but the uselessness of its defenders. And the question is how – Boy, the US is in trouble. Well, yes. But also so is the Islamic Republic.

For the past several years, we see Iran on the offense, but the very conservative youth who support the Islamic Republic, it's 10 to 15 percent of the population at most, but that's enough to keep the regime in power. And they are seeing the regime on defense, on its back footing and retreating, especially over the past year. They have been very angry at the regime for decades.

how it has handled the war in Gaza, that they have not come to the defense of the Palestinians and now the Lebanese, and how they have not responded strongly to Israeli attacks, sabotage attacks inside Iran and otherwise. And they're angry at the regime that over the past several years, but especially the past year, all the promises of anti-Zionism,

that we're going to stand up to Israel and the Jews have not come to fruition. And they are disheartened. They are thinking that maybe there needs to be new leadership who can take it to Israel and that Khamenei, the supreme leader, has not been effective in standing up to Israel.

That disheartening might be the beginning of crack within the rank and file of the regime. We have just two minutes or a minute and a half now left in this segment. But if that crack happens, that sounds like those folks would be pushing obviously for an even more extremist leadership. But as you say, they're only 10 to 15 percent.

Does that open the door for a more moderate or open or pro-Western leader to come in with the support of 75 percent of the population? It opens the door to any number of possibilities. It could be that the regime entirely falls and suddenly you have a constitutional republic or constitutional monarchy inside Iran, or you could go much more to the extremists. And also, which is why I always argue that leaving the fate of

any revolutionary society to its own could result in something good or something very bad. That's why the United States needs to take custody of our own interests in the Middle East, especially in Iran, to ensure that, one, these cracks deepen, and two, that...

The outcome would be something that we like, that's something that would benefit us. Which makes total sense. We're about to go to break here, folks. Stay tuned. We're either going to have – we're hoping that Chuck's interview, the audio works.

We're amateurs at this, folks. We are rank amateurs. We're hoping that audio works. If it does, next is going to be Chuck interviewing Jason Smith. If that's the case, Shay, we're going to continue your discussion with the podcast.

Folks, you want to stay tuned for that, good reason to subscribe and download at our sub stack. Breaking Battlegrounds, coming right back. Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

digital security, and total freedom. And if you use the code BATTLEGROUND at checkout, you get your first month of service for just $9 and save $10 a month for every month of service after that. Again, that's code BATTLEGROUND at checkout. Visit 4freedommobile.com to learn more.

At Overstock, we know home is a pretty important place, and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms, Overstock has everyday free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful, high-quality furniture and decor you need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock, making dream homes come true.

Welcome. We're with Congressman Jason Smith, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Thanks for joining us today. It's good to be with you. So tell our audience, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee sounds very important, and it is, but what are your responsibilities on the committee? Because it is the committee in Congress.

Tell us what happens on that committee. It is. I was smiling because it made me think of the people back home who I represent in Missouri. Whenever I first was telling people I wanted to be on the Ways and Means Committee, they thought it was like weights and measures, you know, what the Department of Ag does in measuring fuel tanks and gas stations. But we're the oldest committee in Congress, started in 1789. It's the most powerful committee in Congress.

All tax jurisdiction, according to the U.S. Constitution, has to begin in the House Ways and Means Committee. It cannot begin in the Senate. All trade policy goes through the House Ways and Means Committee. All of Social Security, half of Medicare, and the majority of the welfare programs. We have direct oversight over everyone's favorite agency, the IRS. And so it keeps us fairly, fairly busy.

Did you ever expect to be in this position? I mean, you come from a family business of farming. Am I correct on agriculture? I am. I mean, it's it's it's a blessing to be a member of Congress to begin with. I was the first in my family.

to do anything like this. My dad was an auto mechanic and a minister. My mother was a factory worker. The first day my mom and dad ever came to Washington, D.C. in their life was to watch their son get sworn in to be a member of Congress. So it's not something you've ever planned that way, but it just turned that way. I knew after being in Congress 18 months, I wanted to be on the Ways and Means Committee, and I got on the Ways and Means Committee. And if you're going to serve,

be a leader, don't be a follower. And so I knew that I wanted to be chairman at some point. So you're out here today to support and campaign for David Schweikert.

I always love asking the question to various speakers and legislatures. So how many people in your body actually know how to count, actually know the budget process? My sense is David Schweikert's always been one of those guys. Well, let me just tell you, I'm happy to be here to campaign for my friend and colleague of the Ways and Means Committee, David Schweikert.

He's a serious legislator. He sends myself and numerous other members text messages on a daily basis talking about the fiscal health of our nation. And he's not just focused on the fiscal health of our nation, but he's focused on new economy issues.

innovative ideas to help reduce the cost of, let's say, healthcare for one that can bring down the huge budgetary issue that we have. Because healthcare is the driving factor that we're seeing within our federal budget. And so it's good to be here to support him. You know, he's chairman of our subcommittee on oversight and

and was one of the leaders whenever we were doing impeachment inquiry, along with looking into the anti-Semitism on college campuses and also uncovering the foreign dollars that's coming in to our elections through 501Cs, such as a Swiss billionaire that's given several hundred million dollars that's got into the U.S. elections.

It's all under David Schweikert's watch. He's done a good job. I mean, he does a great job representing Scottsdale and Arizona. All right. So we're talking about the budget and the health of our nation. There's many things that need to be tackled. Do you think in the next two to three years, there's an opportunity to reach a bipartisan consensus to sort of

fix and readjust Social Security so it's available for people 30, 40, 50 years from now? The only way that we'll be able to address Social Security and Medicare is in a bipartisan fashion. There is no possible way for the future of both of those programs for it to be on a partisan basis.

These programs are too important for all Americans and it can't be partisan. It has to be bipartisan. We know that both Medicare and Social Security will be insolvent by the years 2032, 2033, changes a little bit here and now, and we're going to have to make some big decisions and it has to be in a bipartisan way. In the last 20 months, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, we've

We have been pushing for a bipartisan approach and looking at Social Security and Medicare. And we've been doing roundtables with our our Democrat counterparts to try to

Figure out where is the common ground? How can we move forward? Unfortunately, Congress likes to kick the can down the road Congress likes to wait to the last minute and some people view 2032 as being a long ways away but that's eight years away and and things could cause it to speed up rather than Go farther back and so

We got our work cut out for us, but the only way that we will be able to address Social Security and Medicare is in a bipartisan way. The media always talks about, or when they talk about, we don't talk about as much as we used to 20 years ago, but we talk about the national debt and it's growing at an alarming rate. What is the difference between having a Democrat Congress and a Republican majority Congress and regarding just fiscal health and spending? Help our audience understand what's the difference between the two parties.

Well, it's a big difference. Let's just look at the last 20 months where Republicans have controlled just one chamber. We've controlled the White House. Democrats control the Senate. Democrats are in the White House. And then you go back two years before that, where the Democrats controlled the White House, Democrats controlled the Senate, and Democrats controlled the House. When they controlled all the chambers of government,

they added $10 trillion in new spending on top of just funding government. And funding government's right around $6.5 trillion. So I'm not even talking about that. $10 trillion in two years of new spending. They passed the American Rescue Plan, $2 trillion. They said it was to defeat COVID, but less than 9% actually went to COVID. $400 billion of that $2 trillion bill actually went to pay people simply not to work.

And it went checks to prisoners. Japanese citizens got $1,400 stimulus checks. It was just crazy stuff. And that is actually what fueled the inflation fire. Inflation was 1.4% year to year until passage of that. And that bill was passed five weeks after Joe Biden became president and the Democrats was controlling all the chambers.

Then you saw the Inflation Reduction Act, another trillion dollar spending bill. You can go line by line of the additional stuff. Since Republicans have taken over the House under the current Congress, we have not allowed these additional new spending projects, which the administration has pushed.

How much would those add to the debt? If they went to the House and you pushed them through for them, how much would that add to our national debt, the spending for programs? Trillions of dollars. That's why we have seen the national debt hit over $35 trillion so quickly. That's why just recently the deficit is so much higher than what was projected before, and it's because of the spending catching up from what happened in 2020 to 2022.

2020 to 2022. Why is this election so important for the country going forward? I think if you talk to anyone traveling this country, and I've been to 31 states in the last 20 months, for my colleagues, listening to small business owners, working families,

and farmers and the economy is their top priority the Ways and Means Committee has a lot of tools at their disposal that can help the economy or hurt the economy tax policy for one um when you look at next year the end of 2025 we will face a 4.6 trillion dollars

Tax cliff. It's the biggest tax cliff our country will ever face. If Congress does nothing, and like what we said, Congress is pretty good at doing nothing. If Congress does nothing, every American will face a tax increase.

Every single American, every individual tax rate goes up. The child tax credit, which a lot of working families use, that gets slashed in half from $2,000 to $1,000. The guaranteed deduction, which 91% of Americans use to justify all their taxes, that gets slashed in half. The death tax gets slashed in half.

The small business deduction for small businesses of 20%, that is gone. Their tax rate will go up to 43.4% when their competitor, which is a big C corporation, will be at 21%. So you talk about things that could drastically affect the economy.

That is allowing those tax proposals to expire. Unfortunately, Vice President Harris has called for complete repeal of all these tax provisions and to allow them to expire, which would be very detrimental, especially after every American has faced a 20.5% inflation tax under her watch.

What is an issue being chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee that keeps you up at night? That's something that predominates your thoughts. There's lots you talk about, you know, outside family and church and other things. But what is an issue that you're dealing with in House Ways and Means Committee that you find is just very detrimental for our country's economic health going forward?

The two things that I am the most concerned with are in regards to our national debt and in regards to China. Those are the two items that I think are the biggest threats to the United States. What do you think we should be doing about China?

I think we need to hold China accountable in trade policies. Our committee has passed legislation out such as de minimis reforms that would pull away the blanket free trade agreement, as I would say, for China for products under $800. Right now, they can bring in products under $800 with no limitations. And that has led to about 5 million packages a day

coming directly from China. And unfortunately, after we have seen a lot of the prior Congresses, especially back when Bill Clinton was president, when they passed PNTR for China, their economy has only grown gangbusters in two decades. And it

it had an effect with what we did with trade preferences with China. And we need to revisit those. Does there seem to be bipartisan cooperation on the issue of China in your mind? Definitely bipartisan in regards to China. Um, but with anything with bipartisan, it's, it's, it's, it's tough to thread the needle. Devil's in the details. The devil is always in the details. Unfortunately, we see a lot of gameplay that, um,

You notice that the other side is asking for completely unrelated items just to go ahead with something they already agree with. Immigration. That's a big issue here in Arizona. What do you think Congress should... Congress keeps trying to pass what I call these grand slam immigration measures. What if we just started doing, using baseball parlance, because you're probably Cardinals guy, just a bunch of singles. So what are two or three issues that you think that Congress could pass a single subject

that could possibly pass and make a difference? I think you could just look at what has worked and what worked were a lot of the executive orders that were put in place under the Trump administration. You know, finishing the wall, that would be extremely important. Of course, you can't have a wall along the whole southern border, but there's certain areas where a wall would be extremely helpful so that you know who's coming in and out of the country. There's some areas where you can't build a wall.

Codifying into statute remain in Mexico policy. That was an executive order that the Trump administration had that was really successful, but this administration has rescinded it. Catch and release is a disaster, disaster program. President Trump stopped that process. Unfortunately, this administration reversed it. And you can tell exactly how big of an impact it was. You just look at the first year

of the Biden-Harris administration, there was more illegally known crossings in their first year than all four years combined under President Trump. And in President Biden's first 100 days in office, he did roughly 90 executive orders reversing the successful immigration policies.

What we need to do as Congress is to codify a lot of those important provisions. You know, you hear a lot of people talk, especially in the presidential debate. You hear Vice President Harris talk about the bipartisan immigration bill that they were trying to pass Congress. What that bill did was to grant more authority to the administration to have more leeway in deciding on how they would propose and operate the border.

This administration is the reason why the border is as porous as what it is. And so that legislation was absolutely a disaster to even think about. What legislation we need are what codifies real things that holds every administration accountable to that that had passed Congress. Congressman, thank you for joining us today. We'll end on that. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back. Great to be with you.

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Breaking Battlegrounds, we're continuing on with Shade Kateri. Shade, it's a fascinating conversation we're having about Iran and your point about the young people in Iran who are pretty radical, the 15 or so percent, don't think that the regime is going far enough in being on offense. They're on defense. Obviously, Israel's put them on defense. But

At the last time, you made a great point about the United States needs to be a little bit more engaged in order to tilt this thing in a direction which would protect the United States and, frankly, Western culture from the extremists. From the world. I mean, we know they're close. I don't know. You probably have a better grip on how close they are to nuclear weapons. But they also have at least intermediate range ballistic missiles to attach them to.

An Iranian regime with the bomb is potentially World War III in a nuclear scenario. Well, not only that, but their alliance with China and Russia is a concern as well. So...

What should the United States be doing that we're not doing now? So just one clarification. When I talk about these conservative youth, they are 10% to 15% of the population, meaning the youth themselves. But overwhelming majority of Iranian youth are actually very anti-regime. Okay. So that's 10% to 15% of the population of the young Iranians. But generally 10% to 15% of the general population, which is also 10% to 15% of the youth population, is pro-regime.

Meaning that Iran has a 90 million population and 15 percent of that is per regime, including – But to clarify, you've got 80 plus percent of youth who are not tied to or aligned with the regime. Which you see them being shot on the streets trying to overthrow the regime all the time. It used to be one of them. You don't see that much in the news here anymore. Right.

The biggest problem, so to go back to what we should do right now is, first, continue to humiliate the Islamic Republic or allow Israelis to do that to drive a wedge between the leadership and the rank and file. So Israel is expected to retaliate at some point. We have a range of options.

The most important thing that we should do is, one, not tie Israel's hand behind its back, but also to deploy aircraft carriers to the region to ensure that Iran cannot retaliate through its submarine fleet. Right.

in Eastern Mediterranean to block Iranian access to Israeli shore. And the reason you want the carrier group there is because they come with a lot of anti-sub assets as part of that group? Yes, that's one benefit they have. There are other benefits. They have electronic warfare capabilities to, for instance, jam Iran's air defense systems.

Another thing is we have air refueling capabilities. The fighter jets that we produce have a small range. Because of that, they need to be refueled in the air. We have KC aircraft capabilities. 135, yeah. And...

to help Israelis refuel, to refuel Israelis for them. We have conducted these joint exercises before with Israelis, so we are very good actually with that.

And actually, so one thing I kind of learned recently was for a lot of combat operations, a naval carrier can use the F-15s as buddy store re-tankers for the F-35s that are the front strike. Yes. So air refueling is another option. The other alternative for Israelis is to land in Saudi Arabia and fuel on the ground there, but –

The Saudis aren't super thrilled with that idea? Actually, behind the scenes, they'd rather not be involved, but they'd rather take care of Iran, help Israelis take care of Iran than not. So everybody prefers that we help Israelis with refueling, but if we're not going to do that, we need to actually give assurances to Saudis so they can comfortably do that. The other thing here is that

Biden is right now saying, Israel, don't hit Iran's energy production facilities, which is kind of a tough spot for Israelis because you're not enforcing oil sanctions on Iran and you're not letting Israelis to solve the problem. Pick one here. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, great point. And I think some people are like, well, why would Saudi not support Iran? Because, you know, we...

People get mixed up about the Middle East. And it is always about follow the money. So the Saudis don't want to run in. Follow the money, but also follow the Sunni-Shia split, right? It's not actually as much Sunni-Shia split. Rather that the Saudis are trying to reduce their reliance on Islam as what they drive legitimacy from. And...

Iran becomes a problem because Iran is the only major power in the Middle East, a left that is still relying on Islam to legitimize itself. Now, it's losing its legitimization, legitimacy among Iranians because Iranians are incredibly secular. Less than a third of Iranians identify as Shiite Muslims now.

I didn't know it was that small. I mean I know – I knew it was the most secular population among the Middle Eastern countries but … I mean think of it this way. After 50 years of having Islam forced down your throat, you grow a distaste for it eventually. Well, especially – I mean I got to believe that older Iranians who remember …

Iran was like in the 60s and 70s. I mean, it was a hip place. Let me give you actually a very funny anecdote. A friend of mine, I love telling this story. A friend of mine, in Shiite Islam, you can ask God for your wish to be granted and in exchange on a religious holiday every year, you go and distribute food to the poor.

It's called Nasri. So a friend of mine's father, he's in his 70s, and one year, it's the time of the year that he's supposed to distribute Nasri, and he says that his father is still home and not going back to their hometown. And so his dad would happen. And his dad says...

Well, son, after all these years, I've come to realize that all of this is BS. And he actually uses – spells out the BS. But in your 70s, you usually turn to God. You don't turn away from him. Right. That's fascinating. It's really, really interesting how it does seem like there is a both governmental shift in –

So I don't know about the population necessarily.

For one, we do not have very good polls inside, let's say, Saudi Arabia or Qatar or UAE, right? And UAE is itself, there are seven Emirates and it's Emirate by Emirate. If you go to Ras al-Khaimah, which is the most conservative one, you will not see a woman's face there. So it also depends. There are certainly the Sunni states, mostly, not all of them, are turning away from, as I mentioned, turning away from Islam as a source of legitimacy.

In Iran, you have the other side of the coin, which is the population is turning away from Islam. But remember, this is not entirely good news, especially in those Sunni states, because they're doing what the Shah was doing. And that led to an Islamic revolution because he was doing it too fast. And he was doing it without any democratic way of the religious conservatives to express their grievances. Without building up the... Yeah.

The apparatus of democracy and of self-rule, right? I mean we take for granted that the United States was sort of created out of nothingness, but it was created out of English common law. Yeah. So there was a foundational basis. And it was based – and fundamentally it was a religious freedom fight, which is something that I think –

when you're trying to democratize something in the Middle East that's been under Islamic rule, you kind of forget, well, we still have to have some religious freedom, which includes Islam. And the other problem with it is that the rapid modernization that they are doing economically is pulling a lot of people from rural areas, from the Bedouins into the cities. And those are more religious and they come to more liberal cities. And that creates a cultural resentment between Islamists

That's a really interesting statement. I don't know if either of you saw the piece this morning. I think it was actually CNN that had it with a Haitian immigrant who was saying...

You have to understand most of the people that are coming here among the Haitians are country Haitians. And so they're very different than urban Haitians. And I think we underplay that difference in every part of our electoral analysis, whether it's here in the United States, across the Arab world or Haiti or anywhere else.

There are massive differences in the way people live within a country that dictate a lot of those outcomes based on who's going where and doing what. So, Sam, I don't want to be too facetious here, but this is actually I'm trying to make a serious point, as funny as it is. But the New York Times doesn't understand American rural voters. Do you expect to understand the Bedouins or Iranians? That's a great point.

Wow. Yeah. You put that really well. Thank you. You put that really well. Fly over country and then there's like don't fly over. Never fly over. Well, because if you read texts from – I mean like even from the period of the Crusades and earlier –

Even the urban Muslims in that area did not understand the Adena ones pretty very well. And the other side of it is that they're also very good at deceiving our intellectuals and our think tankers, policymakers. Let's say you're an American diplomat or an American policymaker and you're taken to Saudi Arabia or you're caught in a war.

UAE, anyway. And you're shown all these modernizations that they're undertaking in these areas. And do you really even just as a matter of your time and enjoying your trip, do you really want to go actually and see all the Bedouin places? They're going to show you the nice neighborhoods in major cities and you don't even want to go and explore the rest of the country.

You know, that reminds me of that sort of famous incident with I think it was Khrushchev when he came to the United States and he ordered his car to stop because he was convinced that the grocery store that they had shown him on his official trip had to be a setup. Right. That it had to be a fake. And so he ordered his convoy to stop and he goes running into this grocery random grocery store and is confronted with the reality that, no, that that's the way that's what they all are.

And he came back to his limo and says, I don't think it was Khrushchev. I don't remember who it was. And he says, what have you done to our people? Right, right. Yeah. It's probably not Khrushchev. I'm forgetting which ruler it was. It was in the 1980s. I don't remember. It might have been Gorbachev. I think it was before Gorbachev. Possibly. I would remember, I think, if it was Gorbachev. It might have been –

I'm not that up to date on my previous Soviet rulers. We have only about two minutes left here. Shay, what should people be looking out for in terms of the conflict between Israel and Iran and its proxies coming up? So I'll start with what they shouldn't be looking for, which is an all-out regional war because these are two countries that don't share a border. If there is a regional war to be happening, first you need ground forces deployed and

Aside from the fact that neither Syria nor Iraq is interested to have Iranian forces on it on the way to Syria to invite a conflict on it, even if that happens, it's a long distance. So Israelis have a good bomber fleet or fighter fleet to just obliterate that. Second, Iran has no good air defense system nor a good air force. So it's going to be a one-sided conflict.

And it's going to take a few weeks at most. It's not going to be that bloody. And it's probably, at least for now, not going to involve Iran's nuclear sites. Very good. Okay. Shay Khatiri, thank you so much for joining us. Folks, you can follow him on X at Shay Khatiri, S-H-A-Y-K-H-A-T-I-R-I.

And fantastic work today. We really appreciate having you on the program. Love your insights, man. Thank you. And stay tuned. We are going to have hopefully hopefully you've already heard this fantastic interview that Chuck is doing with Jason Smith. But stay tuned, because on the podcast also we're bringing on Andy Gould. He is an Arizona Supreme former Supreme Court justice here to talk about this issue with two hundred and eighteen thousand voter registrations that are in question. We also have some other stuff he's covering. So stay tuned for that.

I want to thank all of our guests today. It was fantastic, fantastic show. Shay Kateri, I really, really enjoyed. David Katniss, always brilliant. We did promise you an interview with former Supreme Court Justice Andy Gold. We had a little mix-up on the time. I think we had him on his calendar on Eastern time and not Arizona time here. It does happen. We're going to get him back on because he's got some important stuff to talk about. But, Sean, you and I were actually discussing in a break –

He's one of the leading folks fighting against the – what do they call it? Prop 140. They call it make elections free and fair. Make elections free and fair. Democrats are so – this is another inflation reduction act. It does the exact opposite of what the title says. So I had not – I mean I'm not for ranked choice voting and I obviously wasn't signing this thing. But I had not fully looked into the language. I have other things going on. You do too.

I hadn't fully looked into the language on this thing.

This is maybe the worst version of ranked choice voting or of any voting change that's been put forward in this country. It is folks. This thing is is terrifyingly awful in so many ways. It's hard to comprehend. Well, it takes the two worst ideas when it comes to elections and puts them together. So you have open primary jungle primaries like in California and then ranked choice voting like you have in Alaska or Portland, Oregon or Oakland, California.

where you basically... Oh, and then you throw in the other mix, which is that the Secretary of State, and for the next election, that will be Adrian Fontes, because he'll still be the Secretary of State, will then decide on a race-by-race basis who of the jungle primary gets to appear on the general ballot. It can be two, it can be four. It's not numerical, so there's no, like, he just, by his own discretion, makes that decision. So...

Fontes, who is – for folks who are not here in Arizona, our secretary of state is a super politicized Democrat. Yeah. It's the most politicized secretary of state we've ever had. And so –

For instance, he doesn't necessarily need to choose a Republican in that grouping, even when a Republican is strong. Right. I mean, look, and he gets to choose who his opponent will be when he goes up for election because it's his race as well. And so this is this is catastrophic for the state. And and.

What's concerning to me is that more people haven't like actually paid attention in part because the Supreme Court really fumbled this one. So to give folks an example of how easy this would be for him to game, let's say you have a race, an open primary. There are three Democrats and three Republicans that run. Right. And a Republican is the top vote getter among that group. Then a Democrat, then two more Republicans run.

And then a Democrat and then another Republican. I'm just kind of laying this scenario out there, right? You had two Democrats, four Republicans in this race because they control who runs in their race as much more than we do. So now if I'm Adrian Fontes, if I put the top two, the Republican who was the top finisher and the Democrat, I'm pretty sure that Republican is going to win. Right.

But all I have to do is take those next two Republicans and put them on the ballot. And I have guaranteed that Democrat. Exactly. That's exactly what will happen. And to make it even worse.

The that if it's more than two, then it becomes a ranked choice voting, which confuses people, because if you go in and you're like, well, I want this guy. And then and and it's like I said, it's a race by race basis. So some in races where there's only two candidates, it's not ranked choice, obviously, when it's more than two candidates. It is if you don't mark the ranked choice, it spoils your vote.

Right. That candidate on that office. So it's going to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people because it's so confusing and chaotic. It's it's not. And we just had an issue. The Supreme Court basically said, well, they don't have the number of signatures, but we're allowing them to have the number of signatures and possibly the most politicized ruling I've seen here in Arizona. It is. It is. It was a terrible ruling. Basically, they said, well, minimum signature requirements.

Not that big of a deal. So this will be chaotic going into the next election cycle because now there's going to be drawn out litigation. How do you throw anybody off the ballot, any initiative off the ballot going forward? Because you've just set a precedent that we can't actually require a minimum number of signatures. They admitted that there were 40,000 signatures short of the number unless you're counting duplicates. Right. Right.

Yeah, they had 39,000 duplicate signatures. That part is going to be a problem. But this initiative is obviously a bigger problem. It adds 15 new constitutional amendments.

Which just and which means that we can't just go fix this. No, no, no. You need a going to be with us. Yeah. There's no there's no coming back from this. If you do this, Arizona is going to have the most insane, unfortunate election system anyone could ever. And they were smart in the way that they wrote it, because this hat, this goes into effect on the next election.

And once Adrian Fontes gets to pick who the candidates are in the next election, it's going to be Democrat rule and it's going to be impossible to pull it back. I have told numerous people in Sean asking if you agree on this front.

End of the day, if this passes, Arizona is a blue state permanently and there's no way to do anything about it. That is true. I mean, when we say that don't California my Arizona, this is literally what we would be doing. We would be creating a new California. Well, and in and in a way on all the bad things. Right. It's not just the outcomes, but it's actually the corruption of the system behind it, because California, quite frankly, has surpassed New York probably as the and Illinois has.

Right.

They stay in California because it's nice, but they're making it very fair. Good grief. So that's an easy one. Prop 140 is a big no. Yeah. And if people want to go to our podcast, Light Beer, Dark Money, we had Scott Musi on to talk about one. We talked about all the initiatives, but at length about 140. There's even more information you can get on it from there.

And we will have that link up. We'll put that up on our Breaking Battlegrounds sub stack and social medias and all that kind of stuff. All right. I know we do – we have a sunshine moment. Oh, thank goodness. We're going to leave that alone. I do want to give a little update for – in Kylie's place, she is not here, not available for her usual murder and mayhem corner. But the case we're talking about at ASU with the student who was stabbed by her classmate –

There has been some further movement on that and now it is official that the charges have been cut down to simple ag assault. Oh my gosh. With a maximum sentence, maximum of 10 years, which means you're out in less than five because of the rules. For attempted murder. For attempted murder. And most likely this person will serve – I talked to a cop friend of mine. He said she'll serve six to 18 months in prison.

Wow. For this. Unbelievable. And that's if she's convicted, which obviously still... Yeah, that's a question. Because it's going to be a tempeh jury. Unbelievable. So...

Crazy, crazy, crazy. Give us something sunshiny. Yeah, let's go sunshiny. Sure. So, yeah, I'm new to Twitter, even though I'm working in politics and involved in politics. I'm new to Twitter. So I haven't really figured out how it works yet. So the other day, I normally- No one else has either. That's okay. Yeah.

Just know that it's a dumpster fire. That's what I'm learning really, really quickly. So there's the For You page, which is what the AI gives you. And then there's your following. So I'm like, I'm a good little like politician employee. Like I'm following The Economist. I'm following Elon, you know, all that standard. But normally my feed is always full of political memes. And there's this pygmy hippo named T-Rex.

who's really cute and there's a lot of footage of her. So that's normally my entire feed. You pretty much can't go wrong with pygmy animals. That's right. You can't. And there's so much footage. I think we live in a post-truth world in a little bit of a way and

It's like, there's so much footage of Mudang, and I do wonder how much of this is real about this little hippo. O' This is actually getting to be a problem. AI has gotten really good at those videos in a very short time. Yes. It really has. Yeah. So, the other day, I normally barrage my friends with just a bunch of pygmy hippo memes and things like that, or whatever else. And the other day I was really excited because my feed was all politics and all The Economist, all that.

And so I didn't realize there was a distinction between the For You page and the Following You page. So I thought maybe the algorithm was telling me, oh, you're really smart and very academically minded, and this is what you're interested in.

I was wrong. It was, it's definitely just who I was following. But it, you know, got me thinking about, you know, how I'm like just the memes around politics and all of that and all the little fun things that people do to keep it light or to make jobs at opponents. But they, they keep things kind of fun and, and interesting. So that's like,

Less exhausting for me to scroll through than the than, you know, the people I'm following. So I've actually got a suggestion for folks on this front, especially if you don't want to be super political, but you want Twitter just to keep up with news and things like that. Use there's a couple of different versions. I use tweet deck.

And I don't follow a lot of the political accounts. I list them. And then I set up separate lists on TweetDeck so it'll have like Arizona politicians, national media, Arizona media, all this. So they don't overwhelm my timeline and my for you isn't just filled with that. So I get more random like –

Animals, history, sports, all this other stuff. So it actually keeps me sane because I can open my phone and look at Twitter and it's not all craziness. And then I can go in my lists and there's the craziness. No, that's great because it just gets exhausting when you keep scrolling through it. It's terrible. Look, I think media these days is just driving people crazy. Yeah, it is.

Yeah, well, I looked through... So I actually just recently met some people who are involved in this museum that is a museum of 1.5 million pieces of political memorabilia. And it's everything from George Washington to now. And so I just wanted to share a couple of the fun things that people have been doing for years with all this. So yeah, just...

They have in the museum, they have a Richard Nixon toilet seat on display along with toilet paper. Um,

They have something from William Jennings Bryan. I don't remember when he ran for president, but a long time ago. But they would hand out little coffins against him at rallies. And there are little coffins that can fit in your palm, little wooden carved things. And they're inscribed. It says this man was talked to death. And they would say this is what's going to happen if William Jennings Bryan becomes president. Yeah.

It's creative. It's creative. Yeah. And so also, you know, their gold water had gold water, which are little gold cans of water that I'm sure like I think those are around and some people have seen them and.

Yeah, it's a very cool, fun thing. But yeah, and they handed them out actually at one of the GOP conventions to some of the delegates, you know, just to keep Goldwater in the back of their mind. He was good at those little political stunt type things. Yeah. So, and then, yeah, there are a couple, there are so many different things. There are 1.5 million pieces of political memorabilia. That's amazing. And yeah, it was this lawyer from New York City who passed a little while ago and their family has been

He had been collecting since his first pin back in 1968 and amassed a huge collection. I love all museums. It's so fun. This is a good one. This is a good one. Yeah, I really want to go. I really want to take a look and see. The Postal Museum actually in D.C. is really good, which I did not expect.

But it was really good. Yeah. No, it's so great. And yeah. And then I love museums. So I've been reading about it a little bit. And like some. So France is prescribing going to art museums as a part of therapy for some people. And I think that's new and experimental. But, you know, just going to museums can be a place to connect to the past and like.

See this history. You got to do something because otherwise you've got Germany training their doctors to get stabbed. Right. Did you see that video? Yeah. Use a towel to try to prevent your stabbing. Yeah. Somebody coming at you with a knife, we're going to hit him in the face with a towel. I'm watching this and I'm like,

Okay, think – they had like some guy hitting some woman who was the theoretical attacker. I'm like, did she not think to just grab that towel with the hand that wasn't holding the knife and then stab the dude? Exactly. Like –

We've got to pass down that knowledge so people know. Our governments have gone batty. They've gone batty all across the world. All right, folks, thank you so much for tuning in today. We really appreciate you. For Sean Noble, for Chuck Warren, for the fantastic ladies, Jenna. And I'm not giving Kylie any credit. She wasn't even here to give us an update. Breaking Battlegrounds with Chuck Warren. We're out. Thank you so much for tuning in. See you next week.