Congresswoman Nancy Mace on Women’s Rights and Elizabeth Nolan Brown on Kamala Harris’s Troubling Record
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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, we are jumping right into the lineup. We have a fantastic group of guests for you today.

First up, Congresswoman Nancy Mace represents South Carolina's 1st Congressional District, serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, IT, and Government Innovation, and a member of the Subcommittee on National Security, Border, and Foreign Affairs. Thank you so much, Representative Mace, for joining us this morning. Welcome to the program. Yeah, thanks for having me today.

Congresswoman Mace, when you left high school, one of your first jobs was working at Waffle House. What did you learn about people and hard work as you waitressed and worked at Waffle House?

Well, certainly I learned about the value of hard work, putting in long hours, watching our law enforcement come in right before they got on their shift or right after their night shift, and really seeing community, people come together because everybody loves the Waffle House. It doesn't matter how much money you make, the color of your skin, everybody loves the food and the coffee there. So it's really, for me,

learning the value of hard work, learning about community and also service. Right. So I learned to do the job, do it well and work hard and do it right. And that's what people expect from you when you're in Congress, too. Absolutely. So you're the chairwoman of the subcommittee on cybersecurity, I.T. and government innovation. What can you tell us about CrowdStrike this week and what happened with the, you know, the airlines and the hospitals and just everything crashed because CrowdStrike sent out the wrong code?

Right. I actually have my first briefing with CrowdStrike this afternoon just to get a better understanding. I wanted to give them a little bit of time to get the issue resolved. Some of the airlines were still having issues like Delta this week. We're still having issues post CrowdStrike. And so some companies are still recovering. But my number one question is, you know, how does this happen and how do we make sure that it doesn't happen in the future again? And in

And it's really less about government regulation because I think sometimes we overregulate. But what is the best environment that we can have from a business standpoint, from a cyber standpoint? Because I had a hearing yesterday actually on cybersecurity. 70% in a lot of industries, 70% of our cybersecurity professionals are working on compliance rather than working on cybersecurity because of overregulation by government.

And so, you know, do they have enough resources? How did this happen? How did they get past testing? Those kinds of things. And the last thing that I want to get at, because I am going to have a hearing on it at some point in the fall, but also what did our adversaries learn from this? What are our vulnerabilities that we need to make industry aware of so that we're not more vulnerable when China or Russia try to take advantage of critical infrastructure weaknesses? Representative Mace, I have a question related to that. Is this

Is this a case, and I agree not regulating it, but where businesses in key industries need to consider having parallel systems on separate networks or with different types of security? And is that something the government does with critical systems?

Well, I don't have all the answers yet, and I want to hear from CrowdStrike this afternoon what they have to say. It may end up being more of a testing environment. How did this get through testing? Are they using AI to do testing? Because I'm convinced that if they used AI, that this would not have happened. And the other thing is having a staggered rollout. So if there is fatal code, if there's code that would bring an entire system or industry or nation or globe down,

You're having some kind of a staggered rollout where you're not rolling out the same flawed code to everybody all at once on a Friday. And so I think it's, you know, thinking about it in those terms, how do we ensure we prevent this sort of global meltdown from happening again? I think the answer could actually be more simple than that. I love that. What...

how have we gotten to the point where so many of our IT professionals are engaged in compliance? And this is a problem in almost every industry. I've dealt with this working with the city of Phoenix in any kind of building project that involves the federal government. Our cost of compliance is now like half the project cost of almost any government action. Yeah. They should be focused rather than being 70% on compliance. 70% should be on cybersecurity. Yeah.

leaving, you know, 25 to 30% on compliance efforts. But that's not the way that it is. We got here because we over-regulate. We have duplicate regulations and we don't go back and clean it up. We don't go back and de-dupe. And so when you're talking about different industry sectors, the amount of paperwork that they have to comply with is insane. And that's why they're across most industries, 70% of their cybersecurity personnel aren't doing cyber work. They are doing paperwork for regulatory compliance.

Should there be a congressional committee focused on reviewing past legislative action and mandates to see if they're actually effective and should be retained or could be eliminated going forward or modified? It seems like once something passes, it's just sort of thrown into the wind without further congressional review. Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%. Some kind of congressional review. We also have CISA...

a cyber agency that could maybe have a hand or a lead in some kind of review effort like that, or all compliance goes through CISPA. For example, like if you were in the banking and finance industry, and let's just say you get hacked, there are different federal agencies you have to report to at different timeframes, 8 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours, 48 hours.

Why not just have one report that goes through CISA and then gets dispersed through the other various agencies at the correct time point? I mean, it's just sort of insane how we overburden businesses and then we make ourselves more vulnerable as a result.

Well, that's a great segue to Kamala Harris. So if Kamala Harris gets elected president... Yeah, it'd be the worst thing ever. Yeah, if she gets elected president, the regulation time is going to go up to 80, 90 percent instead of 70. But here's my question for you. You have been unfairly attacked a lot. How do Republicans...

Point out Kamala's failed record, her policies that are a danger to our way of life, right? Without looking like sexist pig or misogynist. I mean, it's really important because you go Twitter and we just got some people just like idiots, like, just stop talking. Go away. You're not helping anything today. You being a woman who's been under attack and done it with grace, right?

What advice would you give surrogates of President Trump, former fellow members, about how to handle this situation without looking like a sexist pig? We have to let women know that we care about women. Nothing else matters. And show that through our policies, show that through our statements, show that through our votes. You know, I can't even get a vote on IVF right now. And so, you know, taking these...

The things that we know are pro-women, and now that Trump has personally put IVF into the Republican Party platform, that's going to give us, I think, the wind at our backs, the wind at our sails, the encouragement to do the right thing for women. We have the right policies for women. We have to talk about them. We have to take action on them. We have to protect women's access to birth control and contraceptives. We have to do all that. We have to do votes on IVF. We have to do all those things to show women we care. We have everything...

In our toolbox, we just have to use them. And thank God we have Donald Trump as the nominee because he's done more for women than any other past president in my lifetime that I can think of.

because he's been so pro-women. He's been pro-life and pro-women. And that's the kind of leader that our country needs right now because Kamala and the left, they're not going to tell you their limits. They say, oh, we're just for Roe v. Wade. Well, that includes abortion up to nine months. They don't have any sort of boundaries or guardrails for any of this, like Europe.

And so making sure that we have women out there talking about women's issues, but also that we get Donald Trump to win because he's so pro-woman. He had women in his administration, women in his cabinet, women on his staff, at the Oval Office. And he supports women. And we have to showcase all of his policies and tell people what he really supports so that women know.

Are Democrats holding that up? Because it seems like there'd be enough votes between the two caucuses on IVF and similar issues to move almost anything. Well, for example, I did a resolution after the Alabama ruling. Just a simple sentiment of the House. We object to the Alabama ruling against IVF. I had several Democrats lined up to co-sign that bill. An hour before I filed it, they were all ordered to.

by their leadership to get off my bill because I'm a Republican who's very strong on women's issues. And so they abandoned that bill. Is that just a perfect example of what's wrong in Washington right now? Well, they don't really care about women. I mean, they say they care about women, but they're complete hypocrites when it comes to actually taking action to protect women. It's really clear the further we go down all these roads that their real focus is on power. Speaking of which...

Obviously, we just got the resignation of the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheadle. The only the question I have with this is, would government be a lot better if we got more active at firing people who fail? Oh, this is a culture of failure in the Biden-Harris administration. Right.

But the bureaucrats lie, they deny, they're dishonest, and no one ever resigns or gets fired. And it took me filing a privileged motion to impeach Kim Cheadle to finally force her resignation 12 hours later.

And otherwise I don't believe it would have happened. We would have gone on business as usual, writing strongly worded letters and nothing would have happened. So I'm taking a victory lap on that this week. Mayorkas and Christopher Ray need to be next. Absolutely. And amen on that front. What, what do you see coming up in the next few weeks there that is really going to draw the attention of Congress? Well,

Well, I think right now we're in recess. We don't go back until September.

But when we do get back, and more importantly, I don't think it's the next few weeks. It's the next few months. Because when we win it all in November, and I think we have a great opportunity to put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office, to get a larger majority, much larger majority in the House, and to put this in it. So my compelling argument to my colleagues today is, when we get this supermajority, when we get this great responsibility, what are...

are we going to do about it? I am tired of paying lip service to the border. I'm tired of paying lip service to government overspending. I'm tired of paying lip service to all these issues when we need to be taking serious,

action in both chambers so we can get solid conservative legislation to the desk of the president to be signed into law that will help every single American no matter where they live, no matter their political affiliation, however they're skinned, zip code, how much money they make or gender. We want to make sure we make our country strong again and we make it the most prosperous and best place to live, work, and retire in all of the world. And we can be that strong force again, but we're going to have to make some really tough decisions

when we get that responsibility. We have a little less than one minute left here, Nancy Mace. Really appreciate you joining us today. What is the first thing you would do when you have that majority?

Well, the first thing we do is we shut down the border and we deport those who are here illegally. The second thing that I would do is I would revisit our appropriations and finally cut spending and come up with a plan to balance the budget, whether that takes five years, 10 years or 20. What is the plan to get inflation under control? And then the third thing we have to address is women's issues. All of these all at once is that I would say not just one.

we need to make sure that we're protecting contraception, we're protecting IVF, we're protecting women's access to birth control, make sure every woman in the country who needs it gets it. Those are the things that we need to do. And they all have to be done. I love it. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Mays, for joining us. Breaking Battlegrounds coming right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, if you haven't been to the website, investwirefi.com, you need to go there today. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return on a secure collateralized portfolio. And when you invest with Wirefi, you're doing well for yourself by doing good for others and helping students pay off their high interest college loans early. Fantastic opportunity. Again, check them out, investwirefi.com.

the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888-Y-REFI-24. Our next guest up today, someone I'm very excited to talk to, Elizabeth Nolan Brown, senior editor at Reason and the author of Reason's biweekly sex and tech newsletter, which covers issues surrounding sex, technology, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture. Follow her on X at E.N. Brown. Elizabeth Brown, welcome to the program.

Hi, thank you for having me on. So, Elizabeth, I came across your writings when you put out this great article, It's Been Easy to Forget How Bad Kamala Harris Is.

And I mean, I spent an hour that morning just sharing it with everybody on my email list. Right. I just thought it was wonderful. And I think you hit the right point. I think right now conservatives, libertarians are going down a path where they can almost make this comment too much about her past and other things become sexist. And the reality is she has a record that needs to be discussed and debated for the American public to decide. And the reality is that record means she will not be elected if people understand the record. That's my two cents. Yeah.

Would you tell us about the article and go over the points that you see are weak points for her on policy and how they will be bad for America?

Yeah. You know, as vice president, she hasn't done very much. I mean, in part because, you know, the vice president actually can't do very much. They can't set policy or things like that, but they can play an important sort of rhetorical role. They can sort of be a figurehead. They can be an inspiring figure. I don't really think she's done much of that, but she also hasn't done too much that is bad. She's mostly just been in the press for being...

silly and having these sort of, you know, weird, esoteric, a little bit rambling statements that are like, what is she talking about? But they're pretty benign. So it's easy to forget how bad she was in some of her previous roles. But, you know, when she was in Congress, she consistently introduced, you know, legislation that was very far left-leaning in terms of economic policy. When she was in the Attorney General of California, she

when she was a prosecutor there. She was very, you know, some people say she was tough on crime and that's true. That's true. But she was also tough on crime in a way that no one should support. We're not just talking, oh, she cracked down on panhandling, which, you know, some libertarians might disagree with the way she did that or the way she cracked down on sex work. I happen to think that a lot of that was bad. I happen to think that it was bad that she cracked down on, you know, people who put marijuana and things like that. But even

But even if you don't agree with that, there are things she did, like go to bat for dirty prosecutors. Prosecutors were found to not actually be operating on the up and up, to try to keep people in prison once their sentences were done in order to have free labor for the state, to try to put the parents of children who were absent from school too much in jail. She was tough on kind in those sorts of ways. I think those are things that almost nobody can get behind.

The two things that strike me as honest in her presentation issues are redistributive economics and that sort of state authoritarianism over the little details of life, whether it's truancy or drug use or any of these other things.

Yeah, I definitely think that there are.

Because as I write, there's a lot about Harris that is sort of hard to know what she really believed because she flip-flops a lot. She's either very vague about her positions or she's gone back and forth sometimes over the course of years. Sometimes over the course of weeks, she's sort of gone back and forth about what she believed. But you're right that one of the through lines has been this sort of petty authoritarianism, this idea that there's no issue too small for the state to...

to get involved in it if if he thinks it's the right thing to do or democrats think it's a good thing to do then by golly we're going to have to state you know possible or started a new policy that that intervened in that area whether or not it's actually constitutional whether or not we you know executive should have that power and things like that i think that she'd be very bad at using executive action to to sort of just set policy unilaterally if she would become president

You wrote that she acted cavalierly towards the Constitution. What are some examples that she acts cavalierly about regarding the Constitution? She's been very bad about gun control policies, which is to say...

Very in favor of policies that probably don't pass constitutional muster. You know, even going back to when she was a DA, she set specific policies for the way that they had to be stored in your house and just things that, you know, the government really shouldn't be able to determine, you know, how you keep a gun in your house, something like that. And when asked about these policies, I mean, there's been many of them, she's sort of been like, you know, we need to we need to protect

people. So whatever. That justifies sort of trampling over constitutional rights. When she was Attorney General of California, she arrested the founders of the website Backpage twice and was told both times that they were protected by the First Amendment, that they were protected by

other federal laws, and she couldn't go after them. And even after she did that once and a judge struck her down, she brought the same case again just because it was in election season. And I think she wanted to keep getting her name in the press because this is when she was running for Senate, even though it was very clear that this was not not a constitutional case that she was bringing. Just for two examples. If Kamala Harris is elected president, how much more aggressive do you think she will be on executive actions versus her predecessors?

That's sort of hard to say because I think we've been just trending up, up, up on executive actions in general. I mean, unfortunately, this is not on one side or the other problem. This is something we saw from Trump. This is something we saw from Biden. This is something we saw from Obama. It's just become more, you know, especially as politics has become much more partisan and much more gridlocked, we've seen a lot more

of the president sort of using that office to set policy. And we've seen a lot more support for that, unfortunately, because a lot of people know, well, we can't get this through legislatively, so let's just sort of ram it through at the executive level, which is just really bad news and helps us, I think, you know, helps our political polarization because you feel like it's not just the president can do these, you know, things that they've traditionally done, but now you feel like the president can set basically any sort of policies, or at least will try to through the executive action process.

We're speaking with Elizabeth Nolan Brown, senior editor at Reason and author of Reason's biweekly sex and tech newsletter. You can follow her on X at Ian Brown or on Reason.com. We have just about a minute and a half before we go to break. Elizabeth, you're going to be coming back for the next section. Next segment, we want to talk a little bit about the podcast you did, why the media covered for Biden, touch on some of those things.

But real quick, before we move on, I want to touch on one point you just made. We have about a minute left. I'll turn that over to you. Is there an appetite in America for a return to normal governance? I mean, if a candidate came out, in your sense, do you think someone could sell, hey, look, I'm not going to take these actions. I don't care if something doesn't happen. I'm going to force this through Congress.

Well, since we have a minute left, you realize you can talk about this in the next segment as well. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Well, I'll just say real quickly that yes, I think there is. I don't think that there is amongst the loudest segments of either party's base. And I think we often take those segments that are extremely online or they're very active in politics to be representative of the American people at large. But I don't think they are. I think that there is appetite amongst just ordinary Americans whose politics is not their whole life for a normal candidate who goes through the normal processes. Yeah.

It would certainly be a change from recent history. We're going to be coming back here with more from Elizabeth Nolan Brown in just a moment. So stay tuned for that, folks. And definitely you're not going to want to miss this week's podcast segment. That's going to be fantastic. We were also talking a little bit about Act Blue coming up here in the final segment. So stay tuned for all of that. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Folks, stop big tech from tracking your every move. Experience true freedom with 4FreedomMobile. Visit 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, go to 4FreedomMobile.com. Use code BATTLEGROUND at checkout.

And we are now continuing on with our interview with Elizabeth Nolan Brown. She is the senior editor at Reason, author of Reason's biweekly sex and tech newsletter, and has been doing a lot of coverage around the presidential race right now. Elizabeth recently did a podcast touching on why the media covered for Biden. Can you tell us a little bit about that discussion and what your sense is of

Why they kept telling everyone not to believe our lion eyes. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's there's some of the typical bias that we've seen in the media since since at least the Trump years where there's just been seemingly more comfortableness with with Trump.

being sort of in the tank for the Democratic candidates because they think, you know, it's not a normal election. They think that Trump is so uniquely bad that, you know, objectivity has to go to the side and they actually need to do more to ensure that, you know, that Biden or whoever is the Democratic nominee wins. I also think it's just something of a taboo about talking about things like health problems in general. You know, there's definitely a sort of journalistic ethics taboo against the idea that you would

you know, ascribe to someone having a medical problem or a mental problem or something without knowing that for sure. And so I think that there's just a lot of fear that if you talked about it, you were going to be, you know, harassed as being as being not just, you know, maybe wrong, but also being unethical. If you if you mentioned that, it turns out a lot of people knew about this and didn't and should have been talking about it more.

Elizabeth, I understand your point, but that's different from this recent class of reporters, because when Trump was president, I kept seeing these stories that they would push on CNN, New York Times about psychologists saying he's mentally incapable of being president.

he needs a new, I mean, they kept pushing Trump's mental state all the time. So that was totally hypothesis without any of it, without any of the red flags that Biden showed every day. But so they had no problem talking about it. So I think personally to me, and tell me if I'm wrong, because you're much smarter than I am. I think that's a cop out. I think they simply are covering up because, and then one question I always like to ask people who are so anti-Trump is what did Trump do in four years that made your life worse? I mean,

I mean, how did it empirically get worse? And I've not yet had anybody answer the question. So to me, it just seems like sort of a propaganda spin by the press saying, well, we don't like to talk about that. Am I wrong on that? Am I being too critical? I mean, I think that there's probably lots of different reasons. I mean, I do know some journalists who I do think are ethical journalists, and that was their reasoning. I don't know if that's the overwhelming majority or not. So I'm just going to stick up for some journalists a little bit here. But I will also say that I think it's been super...

super interesting to see how the media has reacted since Harris was going to be the presumptive nominee since Biden resigned, because it is suddenly gone into full overdrive in support of Harris. And it's just been nuts. I was on this call last night that was a white women for Harris call.

And it was just the craziest stuff. I mean, this whole thing like we saw with Hillary Clinton all over again, where it was just sort of hammered home that if you didn't... If you were a woman, if you were a white woman and you weren't going to vote for Harris, it was because you were sexist or because you had internalized white supremacy and that there could be no conceivable reason why anybody would not want to vote for Harris except for this bigotry sort of thing. It was crazy. Is there...

That's just insane. But is there an issue now in the press where people, it's too much groupthink. What happened to the brave journalists striking out to capture the great story? I think that there's, you know, the incentives, the social media really has skewed incentives with journalists. You know, I think that especially during the Trump years and since then, there's just been more of an incentive for journalists to share, to write things and share things that will get them proper.

on social media and get them accolades from the in crowd rather than to maybe go against the grain and take that risk of not appearing to say what everyone else in the media is saying. You know, I say all the time that the worst thing about social media and the modern internet is that

We're no longer allowed and expected to ignore people who are crazy. Yeah. And we're also no longer allowed and expected to sort of have heterodox opinions, I think. Like there's a there's, you know, if you criticize Harris, everyone is like, you must be for Trump. If I criticize Trump, I'm not for either of them. Well, you bring up a really good point. So today, Matt Lewis used to be of Daily Beast, put a comment out that J.D. Vance supported Huntsman in 2012 for president. OK.

Okay. And, you know, he was making a point, look, you know, this guy's obviously a chameleon. You know, that's, you know, that's over 10 years ago. People's opinions change. Right. Right. I mean, for example, I used to believe the estate tax is abomination. Now I watch all these third generation doodads.

go around and raise money and put it into these nonprofits. I don't think that is now. I just simply don't believe we should have an estate tax. I think we need to cut some of this off. Yeah, I mean, I used to think that raising the minimum wage was a good way to actually sort of raise the standard of living for people, and now I know that that's, you know, I've seen my opinion on that. I think, yeah, you should be allowed to change your mind as you get older and as you get wiser or as you learn more about issues or just as political conversations

Real people learn and adjust their positions over time. Thank you so much, Elizabeth Brown, Senior Editor at Reason. Follow her on X at E.N. Brown.

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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 yours, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Want to thank our first two guests up today, Representative Nancy Mace. I really appreciate this random comment. I really appreciate that Nancy Mace has Congresswoman all over her bio instead of member of Congress. I agree. No reason not to be proud to be a woman serving there. Love that. Also, Elizabeth Nolan Brown from Reason. Really appreciated having her on. Our next guest up is going to be Peter Berneger. Peter,

I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that correctly. Independent journalist and president of Election Watch. He has broken some very important news recently about things that are going on with Act Blue. Some very questionable activity there. But folks, if you're worried about this economy.

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We're continuing on now. Peter Berneger, independent journalist, president of Election Watch, thank you so much for joining us. You've broken some fairly significant news and data recently about ActBlue, which for folks who are not familiar is the big Democrat online financing portal.

Tell us what you've uncovered there to start with. - Well, the base premise of this whole story is that there's a massive national, international money laundering scheme of funneling money into political campaigns.

And we find that the overwhelming majority are the liberals who are doing this, I would say pushing 85 percent, much of it through ActBlue, which is an online portal who takes donations from citizens across the country using debit cards, credit cards, etc.,

but there's many others. The other one, though, this started back as early as 2010 timeframe, and they customized the program to be able to take

their software to take a name and address of a person who's already donating or contributing. And we're talking senior citizens, little ladies who might be giving $5 a month to some political cause that they want to donate their money to, which is fine. That's part of our political process. But here's where the fraud comes in.

The bad guys have latched on to that system, but it's in the ActBlue system. We know it is because they're using the small computer bots to do this. And they latch on to a name.

an address that they can see are making a donation to a liberal political campaign, and they just rammed through tremendous amounts of contributions and dollar amounts. So the little lady, 85-year-old lady who might be making $5 a month donations, all of a sudden, and obviously that's like $12 per year, all

All of a sudden, they get a hold of her or her account, and they ramp up, and they're charging hundreds or thousands of transactions per year. And the money just skyrockets in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars that they're

that they're laundering through this person or these what we call smurfs. And smurfing is actually a legal lexicon or verbiage that federal prosecutors and federal judges use for people who are either trafficking money for drug dealers or the drugs themselves. It came from the street

when the cartoon Smurfing came back. But Smurfing is actually used in criminal indictments in federal court. So it's not just a term we made up. And if somebody would like to read more about it, there's a good brief description of a page and a half. If you go to Investopedia website and enter in Smurfing, that'll give you a good explanation. So to continue the story, though, in early 2019, Wynn Redd picked this up and

And lo and behold, they're using the exact same software. It came from the same developers. So WinRed is doing this, but suspiciously, we find that we can see smurfing, which is, again, structured money laundering, is happening in Republican campaigns also, but the rhinos are doing it.

the you know that the pretend republicans uh... are the ones who are doing it so we find uh... lindsey graham for example kevin mccarthy uh... those types of politicians uh... are have been caught smurfing by us of laundering their money money into their campaigns unit why would say uh... roughly eighty five percent nationwide of the smurfing that's happening

is done by the liberals and the other fifteen percent is done by the republicans are so-called republicans but lindsey graham uh... john mccain when he was alive uh... kevin mccarthy uh... now this that new mike johnson the new speaker of the house in the

Congress, big time smurfing. All of a sudden, funny how that happens, all of a sudden they become the speaker and money just comes. But where are they getting the money from? Who's providing the money for the smurfing? We've tracked it to several different individuals. One is Weiss, W-Y-S-S. He's a billionaire from Switzerland who lives in Wyoming. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay.

Okay, we have another one is Reid Hoffman. We've tracked money back to him. George Soros, and that's not just adding his name in there. We actually have seen bank receipts from his PACs that are funneling the money into the system. China. China's a big one. FTX and Samuel Bank Friedman were, at least.

uh... big ones and we trace it back to the u_s_ treasury now take back on how they're doing is that it goes from the u_s_ treasury with the congress approves the money to go to ukraine and it goes the money goes to ukraine you know of the humongous sums

And some of that money then is sent to offshore bank accounts. And then they go to the next offshore bank account. And you can go through as many as 20 of them. Actually, just like Joe Biden has been doing and Hunter Biden have been doing. And eventually it comes back into a nonprofit like a 501C3 in the United States. And it gets into a pact.

and gets in back into political campaigns. That's why we're seeing these unsightly, unbelievable, humongous dollar amounts funding these campaigns across the country. And one of the most important things I want to stress, this

This isn't just on federal campaigns, which it is with many, many congressmen, U.S. congressmen, U.S. senators, the president, so-called President Joe Biden. And they're smurfing big time. We have the receipts and it's government data. It's not our numbers. It's state and or federal government data. So but.

very concerning more concerning i think is that we're finding smurfing uh... it's focused trickling down because they're all using the same system we're finding mayors like them the mayor of recede wisconsin cory mason uh... has been laundering criminally laundering money into his campaign

And then how much how much is he laundered in? How much money has he laundered in? If I remember correctly, and I have his whole report, I believe is something I believe is like seventy eight thousand dollars. But please don't quote me on that. That's a huge amount, though, in a race like that. Well, especially for a popular, especially for a population of seventy six thousand people. And we're seeing smurfing occurring in school board races. I believe that. Yeah, I believe that.

So this is affecting everybody in the United States because you're talking mayors, governors, secretary of states, state-level offices. So, Peter, for example, the press has made a huge deal that Kamala Harris has raised $130 million since she announced, primarily through small donors.

No way. I agree. I mean, I see that number and I just say there's no way. What percentage of that do you think is smurfing? You don't know. You don't have the facts, but what percentage? I would say

I would push easy. I'd push 90% of that smurfing and very suspicious on top of it. We could see, Tony Seguero was publishing on this on the internet, Twitter, is that 400,000 new accounts were created. Well, we know they're fake accounts. They're not real people creating these, or they're using the names and addresses of real people, but those people don't know it.

So it's a massive, massive money laundering from top to bottom. Given that they're into school board races, mayors, governors, and other state offices, along with U.S. congressmen and U.S. senators, every single American is affected by this.

it's massive we're talking over two billion dollars now this goes back since act blue was uh... created you know in your own buying this is obama because uh... when acorn back in line two thousand seven two thousand eight collapsed and because they were they were found committing fraud the uh... what came up out of acorn is act blue

it was the same people right and if obama was behind it and then they were so successful uh... is my personal opinion that the republicans got so jealous uh... that craving the money that that's when they got the software early two thousand nineteen and started when read so when read it act blue and many others at emily's last packed of the d_n_c_ the d_c_c_c_

I could go on and on. There's dozens of them. Democracy found. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. How do we stop it? What needs to be implemented to stop this?

The FEC is set up so loosely. It's an independent agency. And I tweeted out today the seat for the inspector general of the FEC, it sits vacant. The only way we're going to do this is U.S. Congressman Brian Steele, S.T.

E-I-L, I believe is the spelling. He happens to be from southeast Wisconsin. He heads up the committee that oversees the FEC. But it's Congress who has created the FEC in such a structure that it has no teeth. And also, you can file a complaint with them and you can sit for two years. Now, they're supposed to make a decision in 120 days.

And overwhelmingly, when you file a complaint with the FEC, they do nothing. They just wait and see if you sue them. But you have to wait 120 days before you can file a lawsuit. And, of course, then you have to pay an attorney a lot of money, go into federal court. It's very expensive to do all that. So it's U.S. Congress who set it up this way. So the buck stops with them.

Peter, we're speaking, by the way, with Peter Berneger, an independent journalist, president of Election Watch Incorporated. He's been breaking some amazing news about ActBlue ghost donors smurfing. Peter, what is the largest number of donations in a calendar year you've seen from a single individual under this scheme?

Well, I'll say we typically go back a six-year look-back period for the reason that that's the statute of limitations for criminal actions, even though if someone did a federal recall, it's 10 years. But I'll go back six years, and I believe it's Sonia. I'll just leave off her last name. She lives out in Colorado. I believe at this point now it's over 75,000 contributions by one person. Oh.

And Sonia was moved into an assisted living facility last March, and her daughter took over the finances or the credit cards or debit cards. They were canceled. Oh, my gosh. Wait, wait. The contributions continued. Oh, man. Hey.

Just for reference, I was just running the numbers. So that's 70, just ballparking, 75,000 over six years and then divided by 365 days. She would have had to been making over 34 donations per day. She must have that iPad with her all the time. I mean, that's three or four hours of just straight making donations every single day of her life for the last six years. But the point is,

The point is, it's not her doing it. It's not the Smurf. No. It's not the Smurfs doing it. It's just their names and addresses are being used without their knowledge. Now, there's a small percentage we found where money is being taken out of their accounts. Now, I'm talking probably, if I looked at 100 Smurfs, maybe one that's happening too. But it's ActBlue and others like them doing it.

including WinRed. In fact, I've heard more complaints about WinRed doing that than I have about ActBlue. So I would recommend, first off, nobody donate money to any type of pact or online portal like this, especially WinRed and ActBlue. Don't donate to them. We certainly encourage... Send your check in to the candidate directly.

directly to the candidate if you decide to make a donation, correct? The other thing is that we found... Peter, I apologize. I have to cut you off. We're at the end of the program here. Thank you so much for joining us. Peter Berneger, independent journalist and president of Election Watch. Stay tuned for the podcast.

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Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. I want to thank all of our guests for today. Congresswoman Nancy Mace. It was a fantastic interview, by the way, with her, Chuck. We've interviewed a lot of members of Congress. She was sharp. That was one of the best ones. By the way, I found something really interesting, which we did not bring up. She was the first woman to graduate from the Corps of Cadets at Citadel.

Oh, that's cool. The very first woman who did it. I remember that whole brouhaha about letting women in there, and that is awesome. It was it. She's the first. She's the pioneer. Now, was she the first admitted? Just said the first to graduate. It doesn't say first admitted. It just said the first to graduate. So, you know, from start to finish, she graduated. I love it. I love it. She was fantastic. She wrote a book in 2001, Company of Men, A Woman at the Citadel.

Matter of fact, I got to order that book. That sounds interesting. It does sound interesting. Also want to thank Elizabeth Nolan Brown from the Reason Foundation, Reason Magazine, Cato Institute. I really, really love her work, folks. So follow her. Stay up to date. Even if you don't always agree with it, I don't always. I used to be much more libertarian than I worked for local government, Chuck, and I realized that libertarianism does not fly, that people –

want to be unbelievably controlling of everything around them and their neighbors. Yes, they do. But fighting in a tremendous fight, and she's doing great work. And then, obviously, Peter Berneger. That was interesting. I mean, it just seems like... You and I have talked for years. Well, I just don't understand why...

Get rid of the AGs. Why hasn't some GOP DA, because there's somebody in his area, just go and say, all right, I'm prosecuting this. Yes. And someone needs to get involved. See, that would be actually something worthwhile Heritage actually can do instead of doing the nonsense they're doing now.

There's a lot of foundations that could put the legal resources behind something like this and that would have a major, major impact. Yeah, because there's no way Kamala raised $120 million as small donations. I don't believe that in a million years. I look at some of these state house and state senate races across the country where our candidates are raising a fairly normal amount of money, say $200,000 or $300,000, and they're up against a candidate who –

magically like from out of state has $700,000 in out of state donations plus the two 300 from a normal campaign. Which Phoenix city council person do you think this is possible that Smirsch were involved?

Oh, well, for sure it's been several of them. But Yasemin Ansari, who's now running for Congress, huge on that front. She raised a ton of money with Very Questionable, whatever. Kate Gallego is going to be on that list. I'm pretty sure that Kevin Robinson, who I ran against, did not actually because he didn't get many online donations. Yeah.

The mayor just strong-armed everyone for him. The old-fashioned way. Just a strong arm from a mayor. I get it. I love it. But Yasemin Ansari, who, by the way, is running for Congress on a wave. I saw her commercial yesterday. She's all about abortion. A giant wave of Smurf donations. Yeah. I mean, huge amounts of money. And there's nothing appealing about her. No. That's amazing. That tells me there's Smurfs. There's nothing appealing about her. I'll ask you because, Chuck, you're even more geopolitically attuned than I am.

If you got to leave Iran after the revolution with millions of dollars, what are you? I don't know. Grifter. No, my point is you are someone who works for the regime. Right. Yeah. No one's making it their owning the dry cleaning store. Well, but you were not allowed to leave Iran at that time with millions of dollars.

You're a grifter. Unless you were tied to the regime. I go back to my original answer. Grifter. Yeah. And that's her family, by the way. They left Iran after the regime took over. Interesting. Yeah. No, I saw her commercial the other day. There is nothing appealing about her. So her getting small donations is some sort of smurfing or scam. I don't know what it is. She's got a big – I mean she is their chosen candidate for the national democratic people.

And she's running against a woman who may even be further left than her, a Hispanic woman here. If that's possible. If that's even possible. Well, I mean, they're just ridiculous these days. But, I mean, the thing is this is one of those cases where the woman she's running against, who I disagree with even more than I would Yasameen. Mm-hmm.

Is someone I can at least respect because I know they believe every word that comes out of their mouth. Right, right. Even if I disagree with every word, I can respect that they're true believers where I don't with some of these others. Yeah.

Kylie's Corner. Kylie, what's going on to make the world more chaotic this past week? Yeah, who died? Well, I did your research. Luckily, no one died. I did your research on the Trump shooter that you asked me to do. Oh, great. Fantastic. Tell me more. Tell me more. Well, actually, I take that back. Someone did die. Yes. Yes. I stand corrected. How would we have a Kylie's Corner without death? Yeah. Exactly. But anyway, tell us more about the shooter. Yeah. So I looked into him because I was trying to find out.

you know, trying to figure out what was real, what was not real on Twitter and whatnot. So this is what we do know. This has been confirmed by the FBI. They did have, they've been having meetings with congressional members and they've been doing some interviews. So this is compiled amongst different news sources. But we know Thomas Matthew Crooks is 20 years old. He's from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, which was 60 miles from the rally.

He was identified 60 minutes prior to Trump speaking. That was confirmed. And he did have bomb-making materials inside his vehicle and his home that could be set off by a remote detonator. In 2022, he graduated from Bethel Park High School, which was just two years ago, where he was in the BlackRock, in a BlackRock ad film. That's been all over social media. That was true. He was just...

a kid that was at the school that was in the film. They didn't have any, they say they have no association with him. Did they get paid? I want, he probably got paid and had to sign a release. I'm sure. Yeah. I don't know if he got paid. It was just centered around the management of public school teacher retirement. Oh, I bet they did. I bet they did. He had to sign a release. Parents would have had to sign a release. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. They had some, matter of fact, find out if their parents signed a release.

Okay, I will. I have not seen, there has been information about the parents and there has been stuff about BlackRock. It did not.

If you're a true conspiracy theorist, we would now say we need the parents' bank records and connect them to BlackRock. This has been part of a plan for years. You remember the Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, I think it was Julia Roberts movie, Conspiracy Theory? Yes, yes. The three names? Yeah. Yeah. So clearly this is an MKUltra grad right here. Anyway, so since we went down that rabbit hole. But interesting, his parents had to sign a release form. You just can't – I mean they've done enough film shoots. They just want you to sign.

I mean, Jenna makes us sign one every week when we put her on video. Yeah, no, I agree with that. We'll get to his parents in a second because that's really what I was trying to deep dive into. But I do want to touch on he did try to make his school's rifle club. Right. But was not he was about he was described as a bad shooter. But also something else that I had found was actually the professor said that he had.

I call him professor. The teacher of the class said that he had some crass jokes that he was concerned about his concerned him about letting him into this club. Crass jokes, you said? Yeah. OK. Yeah. So then another student described it as an our old coach was a stickler. He trained Navy marksmen. So he knew when people were good or bad people and when should they should be around guns and shouldn't be.

That's the kind of guy I would actually trust their judgment on that front. A teacher at a public school complaining about crass jokes, 95 percent of the time I'm going to ignore that because they're being probably massively oversensitive and kids are mean. But in this case, that sounds like someone who actually would be the type of person who would –

If you have come from a military background and you can't handle normal crass jokes, you did not survive very long in the military. Right. Military is the home of the crass joke. Yeah. So other students, it does not seem like he has friends. His parents even said that they don't believe he had many friends. People just described him as, you know, he was there, but I can't think of anyone that would know him well. If someone would say something to his face, he would just kind of stare at them. People would also joke that he would shoot up a high school.

So those were kind of all associated with him while in high school. He did just moving on from high school though. He did just graduate from community college, um, two months ago with a degree in, sorry, engineering science, which I found interesting. Um, I mean, I couldn't pass those classes, so no, I couldn't either. Yes. So he must be very smart. I just thought like an engineering and science was a very interesting degree. Yeah. I don't know. It is. Um,

Okay, so his parents, they did tell investigators that he didn't have friends and that he was not political leaning in any way. Both his parents are licensed social workers. It is, he did register as a Republican in 2021 and voted in 2022 in the midterms, but did not, it did not say which way he voted. But he did donate, this is also confirmed, to a 15, he donated $15 to a progressive PAC.

So then this is where I went to look into his parents' affiliations. His dad is a registered libertarian and his mom is a registered Democrat. They're both. Oh, yeah. So, OK, the AR-15 that people say was his dad's. It was his dad's, but he sold it legally to his son. Oh, interesting. Boy, you don't hear that being reported at all. Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah. And so two hours prior to anything, which is so his dad legally sold it to his son. Yes. That seems very anti-libertarian. It does seem a little bit. Yes, he's very anti-libertarian. Here's the thing, Chuck. Going through the paperwork. If libertarians were actually intellectually honest, there would be an actual libertarian movement. But yeah, no, it's not. Anyway, continue. Sorry, Kylie. It was just interesting.

so i find this interesting because his google searches have since come out and photos from his phone not from his phone but right the content which was on it and it was his google searches including included trump biden the department of homeland security trump's rallies coming up the democratic national convention um websites for how to build explosives and he did search

for Ethan Humbly, and he was the student in Michigan that killed four students in high school, and his parents were the first people prosecuted

for that oh interesting not shooting okay that is interesting yeah that's the photo of that kid and research about the parents arrest interesting made about that so that kind of raised speculations in my mind about what his parents involvement were well but it also may be he loved his parents to try and protect them as well he hated them too right yeah there's there's there's three options here

But it's not free reading in the bathroom, right? That's what we're saying? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, they still don't know the motive. The FBI believes that he may have just wanted to commit a mass shooting in general and looking at all of these...

Things that were coming up, the Trump rally was the most convenient and easy. It did not seem like he did have much. He did plan. So he did go to the correct a week before he went to the place. And then, you know, about two hours before he flew a drone over where Trump was speaking two hours prior, which I thought was crazy how they don't know that. Or they did know that or whatever else can be said about this incident. This was crazy.

A failure of epic proportions by the Secret Service. 100%. Epic. Well, it's insane because he bought the ladder and he bought the ammunition the morning of the shooting. This whole thing, I mean, the fact that it was able to happen is just absolutely embarrassing for the Secret Service and for this country personally.

But it does sound, the more you get into this, it sounds like this guy just wanted to be the next famous shooter. And to me, this ties back to one thing that I really think the press needs to get together with, which is stop reporting their names. Yeah, I agree. You got to stop reporting the names. And Trump was fortunate that –

he was not a true professional. Right. Right? I mean, the reality is sometimes there are blessings in fiascos that this fiasco here, he was not a professional, which allowed us to put a spotlight on how crappy the Secret Service is doing their job. I have done a lot of... I have done a lot of shooting in my life, but not a professional level, not a military level. I could not miss that shot. I've done enough hunting to tell you I would not... I mean...

He did also. So the day he registered, which was July 6th for the Trump rally, he also ran Google searches about how far Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated. On the same day, those searches were both made. And he was a part of a gun club where they had a shooting range that was 200. Rifle range. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting.

Well, that's all very depressing. You know, I wrote it. But that's why we have a sunshine moment. That's right. But that's why I wrote the opinion piece, too. There's a lot of people affected by his decision. Yeah. A family lost their father, which they adored. We almost lost a former president of the United States. Doesn't matter what political party. And that might well have kicked off a civil war had that happened. Yeah, very, very, very much so. You know, and you forget this young man's parents also have brothers and sisters. There's

There's probably grandparents involved. I mean, the hell they are going through is unimaginable right now. So it's but again, it's fine. Yes. So that his mom is legally blind and his dad also has some health issues. And so they so it was people did say that they were loving parents were checked out of his. Well, they're just they're just they're just trying to survive.

Yes. Right. As all as most people with health issues, you know, getting up's a chore. Yeah. Right. So there was a photo of videos of them leaving their house one day, you know, because reporters are staked outside of there. And I do and I did feel bad watching it because you could just tell they were just trying to get groceries. Oh, yeah. You know, matter of fact, is anybody thinking about these young these young people who have tried to commit these atrocities, whether school shooters is

Has there been anyone yet you know that came from a household of two parents or both parents, they don't have to be married, just actively engaged in the child's life? That would be interesting to know. Yeah, I don't remember. I usually follow the stories with somewhat consistency, and I don't remember hearing all these parents being really actively involved in these kids' lives. I'm sure there's one or two examples, but of a majority, they're not there, right? Oh, in his last Google search, I don't want to forget, he did search...

major depressive disorder multiple times and remedies for that and how to help that. So he was actively Googling that himself. And he did porn too, right? I did not find anything. Yeah. I heard, didn't he say they looked at porn? That's what the FBI was saying. One of his last searches was born. Oh, oh, looked it up. Yeah. So, yeah. So, so basically he was busy. Yes. They also found, which was weird, a photo of, uh, of him shoot photos of him taking pictures at the rally. Like while he was on the roof. Yeah.

Oh, boy. You know, there was a great documentary I was looking for years ago. I don't remember if it was HBO or somebody who did it. Murderers and Their Mothers. Interviewing the parents of people who had killed, right? Right. And, yeah, there's obviously some cases of abuse and things like that. But the devastation left behind and the questions. How did I mess up? Right. Right.

What could I have done differently to keep my child from doing this? Right, right. There has to be some sympathy there for – Oh, 100%. That's why I just think we – look, what happened was horrendous. It's terrible. A family lost their father. Other people – two other people were shot, I believe. One just got out of the hospital, former Marine. The sunshine on this to a degree is that he was not a professional.

And as much as we have the chaos about the Secret Service right now, now we're able to focus laser and make that agency better where they actually do their job. Right? So, Kylie, thank you. That was interesting. And interesting to see what goes forward with his parents if they do anything about that. But there may not be anything to do. So we've talked about Smurf donors. We've talked about shootings. Yeah.

We've talked about cybersecurity failures, regulations. What do you have to pep us up today here, Jenna? Yeah, so I had a chance to talk to someone who's created an organization to help people with trauma issues and depression and things like that. Right.

And she does it by working with horses. So a central struggle that people who are survivors of different incidents have is being very silent in the early stages of healing and being very internal. And this woman that I spoke with, Vanessa, she...

She had some experiences in her life where she would go back to horses and run to stables as sort of a... Run to the stables and be with the horses as a way to comfort herself. And so she found herself in a dark place and she ended up...

She went out to go look at the horses and they ended up surrounding her car. They all circled around her car. And she had been in a dark place and she said that it was a turning point for her. She said she's so thankful for that moment because it's a moment that changed her life and made her have purpose and want to do something with how she'd been struggling. So she slowly started this organization called Rancho Milagro.

and she got horses and got people together and created this program that's been able to help a lot of different people. So horses can actually sync their heartbeats with each other when they're out in the field.

Um, so they're very empathetic creatures. Um, and so when you go to be with a horse, um, they're, they're really feeding off of you and they're in a very silent, you know, they're silent. They, they can't speak. Um, so they, uh, you have to be in a calm, uh, space in order to interact, um, with a horse and have them, them listen to you and respond. So people can see how they're feeling reflected in that horse, whether they can recognize it or not.

And so she found that, you know, you can go spend time with horses and then look back at that experience and recognize what it was that you were going through. They use it a lot for special needs kids. Yes. Horse therapy. It's quite remarkable. My dad's a gentleman rancher and he's 82 and he has horses and it's funny watching him when he goes out.

They just follow him like a dog because they just love him, right? Horses and dogs being the two oldest fully domesticated species. Correct. They have thousands of years of synchronizing themselves with humans. Yeah.

When we lived in Lake Placid, there was a little house that my sister lived in after she graduated from college that we called the Pasture House because it was up against two corners of the pasture, right? As a name suggests, it was in a pasture.

And the horses would come around and spend all day moving from room to room watching you. Yeah, no, no, no. The windows open. They're putting their heads in. They get very attached to people. And they say – she told me that they can hear heartbeats from like four feet away, I believe, which I totally believe that that's true. Yeah.

They're so loving. I got a chance to go out. I have some good friends in the veteran program at Arizona State where I just graduated from. And I got a chance to go out to a different ranch and go work with the horses. It was kind of more of a leadership training type of aspect.

But you really get to build – it's all about building that connection. And they're helping you. Which is why it's so good for special needs kids. They need a connection. It's just hard for them to build connections with other people. Especially autistic kids, right? 100%. Because a horse hits those buttons with an autistic kid. As a matter of fact, talking about hearts, I have an acquaintance who is an end-of-life nurse. And she was saying about a month ago that she –

She was, you know, she gets called in at these care centers, you know, and she get called in and, you know, sharing it. And she goes, I couldn't tell that was my heart or their heart because I thought I was beating so hard. I was hoping that this person who she'd become fond with was still alive. And I thought about that. And I bet that happens a lot. Yeah. Because you're quiet. You're hoping for the best. But best is probably not coming.

Well, and I think it also helps with people, you know, who are nonverbal as well. And yeah, like you're saying. And yeah, I think one veteran said that he, like, that being with horses, like, and syncing up his heartbeat, you know, spending that time with them allowed him space to feel and process the trauma, which he kept bottled up for a while. And he said,

And, you know, it's helped a lot of different people. Another survivor said that, like, working with horses allowed him to engage with his trauma, work through it, and, you know, really address that and build that up. So some beautiful connections. Well, there are. I think whenever I hear people, as we wrap up here, talk about the decline of our country, I believe all these type of people will prevent the decline of the country. There's a lot of wonderful people with good hearts. So...

Well, on behalf of Sam, Kylie, Jenna, and myself, we thank you for tuning in this week. Please feel free to download us or share it with your friends, family, neighbors, business associates, even the people you don't like. You can go find us wherever you get your podcasts or look us up on Breaking Battlegrounds. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Have a great weekend.