Exploring Global Dynamics: A Deep Dive into Local and International Affair
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Good morning. This is Chuck Warren from Breaking Battlegrounds with my co-host, Kylie Kipper. Today, we are honored with this on this first segment to have with us Congressman Tim Burchett from Knoxville, Tennessee, Tennessee's second congressional district. He sits on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Foreign Affairs, Transportation, and Infrastructure. And unlike most congressional people, Kylie, he actually works. He sponsored 23 bills, and he's also co-sponsored 201 pieces of legislation. That's awesome. So we have a worker on the phone with us. Congressman, welcome to the show.

Thank you all for having me. The world is full of various hot spots right now, from North Korea acting like North Korea, China, Ukraine, Israel, terrorists in the Middle East. And these all – I'm a hawk, you're a hawk, but these have to – before we get into what you think needs to be done on these –

We have a budget problem in Washington, and we have a large military budget, and we want to see it to be used correctly to protect our country and our freedoms. But at the same time, we keep giving more and more money to the military, and they can't account for, what, $500 billion, a trillion dollars? What do we do? Half a trillion. Half a trillion. Well, we start electing people with some guts, first of all. Both parties just throw in with the...

military industrial complex. I've called them war pimps. It's whatever you want to call it. And I've never passed an audit. This last time they failed the audit, we rewarded them, I think, with 20 or 30 billion additional dollars. I forget the amount. And it just never ends. And you have people that are financially gaining from those things. You saw where our

Missile defense system we sent to Ukraine, and we had to replenish ours, of course. People on those committees, both parties, own stock in those companies. And it's public record. It's public record. And it's just not natural for these returns people are getting on their investments in Congress. And, you know, you've got greed. You've got...

which is what the Pentagon sees. They just want more power is all they want. And the way they do it, it's keeping us in these endless wars and they're doing a pretty good job of it. Is there an appetite in Congress for two things? One, to audit where the military spending has been going the last decade. And two, is there an appetite to just ban any stock trading while you're a member of Congress? Well, I'd vote for that. I have a, um, uh,

I always tell people I have a $7,000 portfolio in mutual funds that's managed by my friend Tommy Siler there in Knoxville. So I'm not on the tip of the fiscal – the financial spear, I guess. We don't come for money. We're public educators.

for goodness sakes, but there is some, but it's a joke. They'll pass it in the House maybe and then it wouldn't come up in the Senate or vice versa. It's just a joke. Again, 20 million conservatives decided to stay home last time because of a mean tweet and this is what we got. It's not so much the White House, it's just down the line, you know, from Congress to Senate to...

local school board races and that'll just continue and the other side just laughs at us because they know they know the gang and we we don't play it very well i think we're i think that would be called paper tigers we're the congressman tim burchett from tennessee second congressional district if you're in tennessee you can hear this interview at in nashville at fm 98.3 wlac so um

Let's talk quickly about some hotspots that I want to get to the budget. What do you think we should be doing in Israel? Everybody keeps talking about the fear that this expands beyond Israel and Hamas. What do you think should be done about Israel? I think we ought to let Israel fight their own dead gum war. And we ought to, if we need to give them some of the wherewithal to do it, because people they're fighting are savages. There's no question you can talk about what

what's going on what's gone on in the past but there's nothing excuses coming over the border and kidnapping little toddlers and chopping people's heads off raping little girls just and screaming a la akbar that doesn't to me that doesn't uh doesn't cause me to rally around them any shape form or fashion it causes me to want to send them straight to hell and um and i

I think we better be real careful, though, with any of our people on the ground. I think Netanyahu's made it pretty clear he doesn't want our physical intervention there because our rules of engagement are what got 13 people killed in Afghanistan at the end. We don't need a bunch of bureaucrats out of the Pentagon or State Department running that war.

And we need to let the people know how to do it, run it, and that's the Israelis. And I say we just let them keep going. Okay. And then Ukraine. Ukraine keeps asking for money. They act like we have a limitless budget to keep giving them money. I think we would all agree Russia is not a friend of the world by any means and definitely not a friend of the United States. What do you think we should be doing with Ukraine? Okay.

Well, Russia's GDP is somewhere between Canada and France's. They're not the world superpower that...

that our media seems to want to make them out to be. I haven't voted for any money for Ukraine. We can't defend our own southern border. We won't give Trump $4 billion to work on the wall, but we've given $114 billion unchecked dollars to Ukraine. And as you've seen, a lot of it is unaccounted for. Small arms, things like night vision goggles that are sold handily on the black market.

They're not getting to the men and women who need it. It's a corrupt... I think the second most corrupt nation in Europe, whatever that... However they gauge that, that's not any red badge of courage, I can tell you. And...

And then, you know, our economists and left-leaning intelligentsia are telling us this is great for this country because they're coming back over here with that money and buying arms. You know what I mean? What logic is that? That's like telling people we're going to put...

laxatives in your water because the toilet paper industry is not doing as well as it should. This thing is just out of control and it's just reckless as it can be. It's just more United Nations kind of stuff. We just don't need it. We don't need to be there. It's not our war. Let Europe handle it. Somebody was telling me that yesterday where we're

We're putting maybe a little less than 50% or 50% plus, I don't know, in that war compared to everybody else. But I mean, still, what business is it of ours over there? We need to start looking after our own, and here it looks like it's...

Now it's being told to us it's a proxy war with China. But China studies everything we do, and all they're doing right now is just watching every move we make, and we're depleting funds that we need

an endless war that's not going anywhere. And I just think it's a nightmare for us. So talking about the interests of the United States, we're with Congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District. There's two really serious issues facing the United States. One is the southern border. Two is our runaway budget spending. I mean, we're $34 trillion in debt now. So let's first talk quickly about the border. Sure.

You had 14 Democrats vote for a GOP resolution to condemn Biden's handling of the southern border.

Do you? So that's 14, but that's not even close to a significant amount of Democrats. My question is, why are they so hesitant to just do and implement and fund the things we know that work that close this border, make it secure? And it's not an anti-immigrant sentiment. It's just we can't afford to keep doing it. You don't know who's coming in. Why is there such opposition from the left from securing our border?

Well, you got to look at the numbers. Eight million people have come over in the last three years, plus a couple million gotaways. And what's most devastating to me is 100,000 children that have lost somewhere in that hell we've created. And who knows what they're in, sex trafficking or something else. And yet we refuse to address it.

And it just can't keep up where the figures that I've read are $150 to $400 billion a year to take care of these folks. We can't take care of our own folks. And just the awful, awful things that happened to them on the way up here and going through all these corrupt governments like Mexico. And it just never ends. The only thing I can think is it's just...

it's going to flood the polls with folks. You say, well, Bertrand, how can these people vote? Well, mail-in ballots. You don't have to check an ID on a mail-in ballot. And there's going to be, we're going to have hell to pay if we're not careful. And then the latest numbers coming over, these folks aren't even Hispanic. They're African. They're Chinese and all these other people. Now, why an Iranian, Iraq, Afghanistan, Afghanistan?

Why are they coming here? And if we get into a battle with China or Iran or Africa, again, I understand where we already are, some of them, but we get into a full-fledged, where are they going to be in the system? And are they going to be working against us at all turns? And then, I mean, it's just a complete infiltration. You're kicking kids out of schools in New York to...

house these folks their homes they're doing them over the computer which we know is a failure during covid that's one lesson we learned um uh it just it's just not good the whole thing is and you've got anarchists too in washington that and and the other part and democrat party that want just a complete capitulation of this country they want it to collapse they hate everything it stands for and um

and they're showing it. Well, we have two minutes left here. I mean, I was reading this week in Politico that they said that they were asking border control how many people speak Spanish are coming across. They said less than 20%, which was just a stunning number. Which was a stunning number. And, you know, for those who say, look, they're trying to escape, I mean, we get it. We're humans, right? We want to do what's best for our family. There's sympathy there for a lot of these folks. But the

The problem is with people who just want this border state open. Based on Gallup's polling, 750 million people in the world would migrate to the United States if they could. You just can't do it. There's no budget for it. They don't understand the culture. So it's just different. With a minute left here, tell us what do we have to do to start getting our budget under control? I'm not sure we can ever pay off $34 trillion anytime soon. But what do we need to do immediately just to get things under control?

We take in five trillion a year, we spend seven trillion. That just doesn't work. I don't care. You can bring all the economists in. You can talk about fiat currency. You can talk about all the economics of it. That just doesn't work.

We cannot continue spending more than we're taking in. Second, put people in office that understand that. Hold them accountable. Don't say, well, we'll do it the next time. And third, pray for your country. We are going to lose our country. Congressman, thank you for joining us. I know you're at the airport. Flight's been delayed. How do people reach you? How do they follow you on social media?

Well, the fun stuff is on Twitter or at Tim Burchett. I've got an official one, Congressman Tim Burchett, but the cool one everybody likes is at Tim Burchett. We want the cool one. Folks, thanks. Congressman, thanks a million. Have a safe flight home this weekend. We appreciate everything you do. Folks, this is Breaking Battlegrounds. We appreciate you listening to us. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. And we'll be right back for our next segment. Not episode, segment. Congressman, have a great day.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours, Chuck Moran. I'm Sam Stone, stepping back into the booth after being out for the first segment this morning. I hear we had a rip-roaring segment with the congressman. Oh, it's good. Make sure, folks, if you didn't catch that, you tune in on the podcast.

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Well, our next guest for the next two segments, we're honored to have a Shea Khatiri. He is with the Yorktown Institute as senior fellow VP. Shea grew up in Iran. He's a native Persian speaker. He attended John Hopkins University where he got an MA in strategic studies. And he's focused on transatlantic security.

Shay, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, guys. So before you, we had Congressman Tim Burchett from Tennessee, and he did not call it the military-industrial complex. He called them the military-industrial pimps.

He was a southerner, so we always get good lines from our southern friends. I am so disappointed I missed that interview. So he's a hawk. Let me ask you this question, which is not our topic, but he's a hawk. But he just said he's unwilling to increase the military budget until we have a real audit because we can't account for $500 billion. What are your thoughts on that? He just says it runs amok. There's no oversight, which he's really concerned about in our budgetary times. I think...

The premise was, look, I'll give him more if he can prove me where the money's going.

You know, to somewhat relate it, is we have initiative in Congress to do four things that are in our interest. Border, Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel. Right. And we've tied all these good things together, which means that we're not going to do none of them. It's very true. Auditing the Pentagon is great. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis did it. Pentagon failed by all measures. Right.

And I am for auditing, but I'm also for having a robust defense budget and tying them together means that we're not going to do either. The issue is that...

Other than the Pentagon has to be something that you require a secretary of defense during his confirmation hearing to do. And the Senate has not brought this up during the confirmation of any secretary of defense. And that falls upon them during the confirmation of the next secretary of defense, which is

So there is actually a legal requirement that that be one of the conditions during his confirmation?

And at that point, Senators should ask the next nominee, whoever likely she is, to, are you going to do this or not if you want our vote for confirmation? This is one that just seems like a no-brainer to me, Chuck, because both sides want more efficiency for different reasons. So not only the military, but every U.S. –

public spending should be audited. I mean, if you want to go and say, for example, you and I talked about this law in public schools. Okay, maybe public schools need no more money, but let's have a real audit and see where the money is really going. And we know it's not going to teachers in the classroom. That's what they don't want to show. And I think this is the fear of the Pentagon degree. There's money going to places that have nothing to do with the defense of the United States or the world.

And there's a great analogy, sorry, Shay, but with schools, their increased spending has all gone into administration. The U.S. military, the shooters, the people who hold the guns are about the same number they were, what, 20, 30 years ago?

More or less, yeah. More or less, but now we have way more administrators overseeing those people. You know, those are all valid. In fact, we talk about how much we pay the military industrial complex, but the fact is that, give or take, based on the budget here, 50% of our military budget goes into personal compensation, both civilian and service members.

But the other 50%, you mentioned efficiency, and that is something that's a word from the 1990s because everybody posts, let's be more efficient. Many of these...

Military companies, corporations merged, and everybody was happy because it meant that they would be more efficient in production. It turns out that they got rid of competition and jacked up the prices. So there are many such issues that, again, I'm endorsing an audit, but I think these structural issues that Pentagon, wrong decisions Pentagon made. Pentagon had to sign off for Northrop and Grumman to merge together, for instance. Right.

And these are more important issues. In fact, I'm willing to waste a lot of money if we can convince these more expensive problems to be solved. That's a great point. So let's get to a topic here. We've got a couple minutes left in this segment. So

We have a problem with Houthi terrorists in the Red Sea, okay? And I was reading this morning, and I guess they have a slogan, and I double-checked it, so it's true. It says, the Houthi slogan is, God is the greatest, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam, which, as this author said, to left-wing Americans, that means live, love, laugh, or live, laugh, love, right? So...

To explain to our audience, the Houthis are a problem that need to be, they just need to be slapped hard. So just one correction. It's actually closer translation is not a curse upon the Jews. It's damn the Jews. We would expect harsher. We would expect harsher. Give the Houthis. At least they're consistent on their harshness. At least they're honest. Yes. You know, many substitute Christians,

Jews in the Middle East for Zionist instead of when they want to say Jews, they say Zionist. They don't even say Zionist. They just say, Yahoo, they say Jews. They're very straightforward. Honest people. You know, I've heard a lot of people call it a piracy problem, but it's not a piracy problem. It's a political problem because they're not asking for money. Yeah.

Not that they would mind it. The Houthi problem has erupted in mid-2010s.

And they were a small Shiite group that took over the government of Yemen and controlled most, not all, of Yemen. And to be clear, Shiites are a minority in Yemen, are they not? Yes, yes. They are a minority in Yemen. And they increasingly, after taking power, increasingly strengthened their ties with Iran and...

Saudi Arabia and UAE had a war with them to oust them. And in the next segment, we can actually get into mistakes we made throughout three administrations.

To oust them, and they failed. And now they are blockading the Red Sea, which much of the global trade goes through Boba Mandib and the Suez Canal. Well, to make matters worse on this, not only are they making people go around the Horn of Africa, now you have drought problems in Panama, which has cut the ships that go through the Panama Canal by a third.

I mean, people thought inflation was done. Yeah. No, no, no. It's coming back big time. Big time. So, Shay, we're going to wrap up this segment. Come bring you back next week with Shay Kateri. He is the Yorktown Institute Senior Fellow VP, friend of the show, a good friend. He got his master's in strategic studies, and he focused on transatlantic security. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. You can find us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. We'll be right back with Shay, Sam, and maybe Kylie. We'll be back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We've also got, as always, Kylie Kipper. Make sure you stay tuned because we have some Kipper's Corner coming up later in the podcast element of the program. But right now we're continuing on with Shea Kateri. He is a senior fellow and VP at the Yorktown Institute. Yep. Yep. And funny story about when he went over to England and brought that up.

Still a little bitter. Still a little bitter over there. Hey, look, I don't blame them. I don't blame them. I'm not apologizing. So we're talking about the Houthi terrorists. I'm just going to call them what they are. The Houthi terrorists, okay? And so when President Biden was elected, he took them off the terrorists. Yeah, so... Explain the process, what happened there. So let me actually go back a little bit. When the Saudis and the Emiratis started the war, there was...

a hold against the Obama and Trump administration in the Senate led by Rand Paul, Republican, and Chris Murphy, Democrat, against giving Saudi Arabia precision-guided munitions.

And their reason for that was, did they say? Chris Murphy would say that, oh, humanitarian grounds, et cetera, et cetera. But it's that both didn't want the United States to be involved in the Middle East. That was the problem. And you see when we're not involved in the Middle East, now inflation is going to go up.

So the issue was that we didn't give them – Jay, you're doing a lot to dispel the image of Americans as brutal materialists. Okay, just keep going. I'm an immigrant, so I get to have my misunderstandings. Okay.

But the issue was that we didn't give them... This is actually quite silly. We didn't give them precision-guided munitions so they could actually be more precise in their targeting. So they had to use dummy bombs. And then we complained that...

Their bombing campaigns were taking too many civilian lives and not accurate enough. Well, you didn't give them the munitions. Right. And that's what bombing campaigns are generally. Especially without precision guided missiles, right? And that was the start of a breach in U.S.-Saudi relations. A huge breach. A huge breach, which Biden's still been paying the price for. Continue, Shay. So we don't give it to them.

Even the Trump administration, and I still cannot figure out why, they waited until a few days before leaving the administration to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. Do you think that because Trump's wish just not to involve us in wars overseas? I mean, is that you think that's part of his process? Like, I'm not I'm just not doing this anymore.

I think it is. I do too. I think that's what our congressman before, I think that would have been his mindset as well. I don't know because they designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization. That's true. So... But that's an easy one to go. Yeah, but who are Houthis? I mean, so when I write, you know, and Shade does research for me and stuff in writing, whenever I do anything about Iran on social media, Kylie, does it not just go bonkers on Substack? I mean, it's just like, you know, death to Iran, right? The Houthi stuff is...

then they don't understand it. No, I don't think they understand it. Yeah, that's actually, that's fair. But for whatever reason, it took until January 2021 to designate them. And within weeks, the new administration removed that designation. And eventually China brokered an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which included for rapprochement, which included an end of the war in Yemen.

And now we have this problem with the blockade in the Red Sea. And we have taken as long as we have. One reason is that the Saudis actually don't want us to attack the Houthis because they don't want to reignite that war. Not because they're scared that the Houthis would be damaged, but they are scared that

the war will be reignited and we will do the same thing again, which is abandoning them, leaving them with the problem to solve. And it is understandable. And I recently wrote something with a friend, which I said, Americans need to make a decision.

What is our Middle East policy? Are we going to be involved and fund our Middle East policy accordingly or withdraw and let the consequences unravel, which are not going to be favorable, but at least we are going to be consistent? We've got one minute left here. Just tell our audience quickly, what are some of the consequences if we just ignore the Middle East? Just say, it's your problem. It's not ours. We have enough oil here. We don't care anymore. So two of the most important

three of the most important trade choke points are in that region. One is the Dardanelles.

which connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean to free waters. One is the Persian Gulf, which much of the... And the Strait of Hormuz, which much of the global oil comes from and gas. And the third one is the Red Sea. And if we give these up... And the Chinese have made it very clear that they want to have control over these choke points. If we give them up, it means that strategically we cannot...

through them for military supply supplements and for trade we are at the mercy of China thank you Shay or the shake a Terry he is a Yorktown Institute senior fellow VP Shay after our next interview why you stick around for the podcast portion you can participate in our banter there folks this is breaking battlegrounds our next guest will be Jeff Stein he's a lifelong Iowan 40 plus years in the Iowa broadcasting at news talk 1540 we're gonna talk about Iowa

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our next guest up today is going to be lifelong Iowan Jeff Stein. He's got 40 plus years of experience in Iowa broadcasting on News Talk 1540. He is here to break down all the fun and results from the presidential primary in Iowa and what that looks like going forward. But before we get to that, folks, I want to thank you so much for joining us.

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So, Jeff, first question is, for the good folks at News Talk 1540, after all the campaigns spent hundreds of thousands of dollars probably on radio, if not more, did everybody get a bonus now that everybody's left town? I'm actually so rich after this, I shouldn't have to talk to the likes of you guys, to be honest with you, right? Hey, that's fair. That's fair. I buy it. Who wants to make time for the peasants? Not Ron DeSantis, obviously.

Oh, my goodness. I was going to say there's nothing like forgetting the little people as you step on them up the ladder. Well, I'll tell you this, DeSantis, if you were going to look at the playbook for how to do well in the Iowa First in the Nation Presidential Precinct Caucuses, you would first go to all 99 counties.

and do some of the large areas more than one okay check he did that you would get the endorsement of a statewide elected official check he did that i was governor who had just had a huge reelection uh... effort the year before you would get the evangelical leaders to be behind you because they delivered caucus wins for mike huckabee in all eight and ted cruz in sixteen okay check he did that

And yet, despite all of that, every time he started getting more money or more endorsements, he kept going down in the polls to where he was lucky to finish second with 20% and only finish 30 points behind the winner. Yet he claimed that that's the groundswell that's going to take him on to New Hampshire, except, oh, wait, he left there to go to South Carolina. Well, again, it's the Trump factor.

You throw the playbook out because of the anomaly of having a former and perhaps future president in the race. Do Republicans just have to come to a realization that there's just a chunk of the Republican base that just likes Donald Trump, period, as a person, as a president? They just like his character? I mean, I don't know the way to explain it, because you go through them and you can explain the flaws of President Trump, and they just shrug their shoulders.

And the only question I would have, or the only challenge I would have to the premise of your question is, I think a lot of his supporters don't like him. They don't think his character is great. They don't think his integrity is great. But they liked the results. And so as opposed to sometimes where we say we hold our nose and vote for someone, they're not necessarily holding their nose, but they're ignoring things that normally would make a difference because of results.

And there's a real split, at least there was in my state, a split between what I'm going to call establishment Republicans, the ones who are used to going to a caucus, the ones who get together for meetings at the country club, all of that, and rank-and-file voters. Rank-and-file voters love the guy because he talks like them. He questions everything. And even if it is...

with this whole big bag of garbage that comes along, they don't care because it's different, it speaks to them, and it gets results. And the establishment Republicans don't like that because they can't control him.

And that's why it's so interesting to see how this voting plays out, because the establishment folks, again, look at the evangelicals. This is a conservative Christian state, and more than half of the evangelicals voted for Trump, despite the fact that their leadership was solidly behind DeSantis. As you followed it, and I'm sure you had them all on your show, what surprised you about the Iowa caucuses this year?

Not very much, to be real blunt with you. There's always one candidate that breaks out of the pack that you just came from nowhere, kind of a flash in the pan. That was Vivek Ramaswamy. The fact that he came from zero when we first did a radio and TV program with him around Memorial Day and wound up getting 8%.

You know, yeah, he had slipped from his highest point, but, you know, that's still surprising. The fact that 125,000 Iowans showed up and 25 below windchill shows you some passion toward this whole issue. But in terms of the order of finish...

Not a surprise. I'm mildly surprised that Trump got above 50%. The thing to keep in mind is, again, it's a caucus. It's not a primary, so everybody shows up at the same time. They're all in the same room. They have conversations before they fill out little pieces of paper and vote. Well, in a contested caucus over the past 50 years, only twice, only twice in 50 years of contested caucuses did the winner get more than 40%.

46 would have been a record. He got 51. The prior record for margin of victory in a contested caucus was 12 percentage points. He won by 20. I'm sorry, 30. He won by 30. I mean, you start looking at this, you say, oh, gosh, you know, I mean, that's a pretty big record-setting thing. So all my friends on the left who say, well, 49% voted against him, it's called a primary. Or it's called a caucus. That'll happen, you know? Right.

One of the things that one of my takeaways and tell me if you agree or disagree from this is that the result for DeSantis and Haley in Iowa was literally the worst possible thing that could happen to both of them because neither of them gained an edge that would put the other out of the race or significantly on the defensive. They're both still kind of there in a muddle and Trump ran away from both of them.

Completely agree 100%. Best case scenario for Trump was to win a record-setting victory and have no chief competitor emerge. So you've got Haley and DeSantis neck and neck.

and they're going to have to keep punching at each other. Now, one of the surprising things, if you will, of caucus night was Nikki Haley coming up to the podium after finishing third, underperforming the poll expectation and saying it's now a two-candidate race, and everybody looked at each other like, was she pulling out? What are you talking about? She's at a third-place finish, man. She was the competitor to Donald Trump. Well, okay, I can spin anything I want to, but the fact that nobody broke out,

And then when you look ahead, DeSantis doesn't have a good ground game in New Hampshire. I already mentioned he was kind of moving everything to South Carolina, so fine. So Haley does well, arguably, in a crossover state primary. Then they go to Nevada, where she, for whatever reason, chose to be on the primary ballot, where no delegates are going to be awarded, as opposed to the caucus two days later on February 8th, where the delegates are awarded.

And then after that is South Carolina, her home state. By that time, she'll be limping in with no delegates out of Nevada and DeSantis having had a couple of weeks in warmer weather as opposed to New Hampshire. So I don't know how anything changes at that second tier.

DeSantis folks I've heard said they had 60,000 people committed to go to the caucus. Only about 20,000 showed up. How much of that you think is due to weather? How much of that is just exaggerating numbers? Totally exaggerating numbers because we're used to a couple of Arctic snaps every year where the weather is this cold. We're used to getting a foot of snow in a certain day. Now, I will grant you that having back-to-back snowstorm events

a dozen inches each time, followed by the Arctic blast. Well, that's kind of, you know, that's new. But we just kind of look at it, you know, like, okay, Mother Nature, hold my beer. I'm going to be there. I'm just going to throw another coat on. I mean, we're used to it. So I would sooner think it was DeSantis trying to

Take a page out of the Trump playbook of exaggeration where everything he did was huger and better and all of that. I mean, as someone who grew up in the far northeast, the only difference between when it was below zero and above zero was your nose hairs freeze below zero.

Like, other than that, who cares? I've got the, you know, and I was shoveling snow again today because it's a day that ends in the letter Y. So I was shoveling snow and my eyebrows were all frosted over by the time I came inside. So I understand. So did you have the opportunity to interview all of the Republican presidential candidates?

Each one of them, including Trump on caucus day, Trump and Ramaswamy both live on caucus day. So which one did you enjoy interviewing the most that you got done? Just like this is this is a good interview. I enjoyed it.

Of those who finished the race, if you will, Nikki Haley is really engaging to talk to because she has a depth of knowledge on these issues. Now, you may not agree with her plans, but they're full of specifics. Everything she talks about is full of specifics, and call that the brain of an accountant, if you will. DeSantis was a bit underwhelming.

I really enjoyed the passion of some of these candidates, quite honestly, that didn't make it. People like. And these may be folks who have one issue, but they're really good on that issue. I mean, Larry Elder and Doug Burgum was very impressive in an understated way. Ryan Binkley is very sharp. Perry Johnson. They all bring something to the table.

And that was something that I think is important to remember. I hear people dismiss some of these folks and say, well, they don't stand a chance. Well, they deserve to be heard anyway. I agree. Voters decide. Shouldn't we? I agree 100 percent, Jeff. Chuck, I think we do a poor job of bringing those as an overall media, of bringing those candidates that one issue forward. Because, man, you can make a big impact by running on an issue like that.

Oh, there's no question. And we did an event because, again, it's Iowa, right? So people will take my phone call. Today they don't. Today they've forgotten who I am, and I don't blame them. But we did an event for our listeners, a picnic last summer, and invited candidates. And we had people like Steve Laffey, who made his name as a mayor in Rhode Island, was his only trip to Iowa, and some of these other people, Elder, Ramaswamy, some of Binkley.

And, you know, the audience may at the beginning look up and go, who is this guy? And then after 15 minutes of a stump speech, they say, wow, I didn't realize Social Security was in such dire straits because my elected officials gloss over it, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

And for me, and I've said it a hundred times, and I'm sure I'm off the party and Christmas card list, but I don't care. The RNC, with its stranglehold on these debates, they adversely affected the process. Because are you telling me that Larry Elder didn't have something to say? Are you telling me that somebody with the experience of a Doug Burgum gets a couple of shots on the stage and then they freeze him out? I mean, it...

I agree 100%. We've had Larry on. Larry's a friend of the show. I think another person that, you know, that finally stepped out was Asa Hutchison, who we've had several times. Talk to Asa about the border. Asa understood the border as well as any of them. And it's a real shame for the American voter that they don't hear these folks. Well, and in this media landscape, why don't we do more of a round robin type thing, you know, leading up to those debates? No.

No, you're exactly right. And Governor Hutchinson was in our studio a couple of times. We did the TV show with him. Think about a resume. Yes.

and yet he finished with point two percent in iowa uh... and so what i took the position because i'm an independent i'm not a republican so i'm not going to tell republican caucus goers how to vote i mean it's just so i and my position is i'm not endorsing anybody

I want as many voices on the air as possible, because it's up to the listeners to decide. And so, yeah, we had Trump, Ramaswamy, DeSantis, and Hutchinson on Monday, the day of the caucus. We had had Binkley on a couple of days before. Haley just couldn't work it in the schedule, but she had come through recently. I just want everybody to have a chance to speak.

Because there are good ideas that might be taken by those who ultimately prevail. But if you're the RNC and you're shutting everybody up, I mean, you're denying the American people the right to make a decision. We've got about 30 seconds left here. I have one question I want to ask you. So there's about 110,000 voters who participated in the 24 caucuses.

How many of those attendees do you think went to more than three events? What percentage? 110,000. I mean, you know, the old joke is you ask an Iowan who they're for, and the answer is, I don't know. I haven't seen all of them four times each yet.

And it's true. I mean, we don't have pro sports. This is our pro sport. Okay. And so we take it very seriously. And so I think it's 100%. Take the over on that. It's one of the reasons I love the Iowa caucuses. Me too. We need to keep them in place. Folks, stay tuned. If you are a podcast listener, make sure you stay tuned. Shea Kateri is going to come back on there. We have Kipper's Corner coming up. Breaking Battlegrounds back on the air next week. And we thank you, Jeff Stein, for joining us today. Have a great weekend.

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All right. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. Jam-packed show today. Oh, my goodness. Kylie made a goal to just start emailing people, which makes me question what we were paying her for last year. But all of a sudden, we have a lot of guests now. No, no, no.

I was like, I'm going to email 10 people a day and just start scheduling out. And then they all just started coming. How about this week? You can tell us about the holidays anymore. Like, yeah, sure. I'll be on. I'm like, relax. I was trying to be proactive here. Now I have too many people. But Chuck, we pay her for our morbid fascination with Kipper's Corner. That's exactly right. So let's first before Kipper's Corner comes on, I have a funny story this week. So at the University of Victoria,

DEI has run amok, guys. So they had a job listing, which we have posted on our Facebook page for Breaking Battlegrounds. The Department of Writing at the University of Victoria invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of assistant professor with specialization in fiction to commence in July. This is the job qualification. Ready? Okay.

Black people.

That's it. There's other people. Black people. I mean, it's not indigenous. It's not Hispanic. It's not Asian. It's just black people. And I have posted that job description on our social media page. So did you see – I don't know if you caught the thing with Fannie Wills. Oh, my gosh. The Georgia prosecutor when she went in front of the AME Baptist Church, which, by the way, is a nutball church. But let's leave that aside. She goes in there, and what she says about this –

You know, whatever this conflict of interest, the unbelievable wrongdoing that she's involved in with the prosecutor she chose. She says, oh, well, literally her answer was, well, I'm a black woman. I should be allowed to make mistakes. Yeah, no, it was. She literally said that. It's just I almost fell out of my seat and I was driving. Yeah, it's just unbelievable. I don't.

I wish he just came and said, yeah, I mean, he was a boyfriend, but I think he's a great attorney and he's done this. This is why I did it. And blah, blah, blah. That actually would be an OK explanation. It'd be a great explanation. Like, OK, whatever. I mean, look, you hire people, you know. It might still be wrong. Right. It might still be wrong. But it's better than what she did because now she made herself the laughingstock of every moderate and conservative in America. And now they're like, again, and it feeds if you're an anti-Trumper.

It feeds the narrative that you're just out to get this guy by unethical people. Right. That's what she doesn't understand. So, as you know, this week, the World Economic Forum is meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Right. I guess a lot of private jets complaining about climate. Yeah. So, folks, if you don't know, this is where politicians, journalists, NGO heads, corporate leaders get together. They talk about climate change, gender pay, all those things end up doing nothing.

Right. They just talk about it. They get a lot of press. They do nothing. Right. I don't say that do nothing anymore because they are working really hard to infiltrate their policy. That's true. But they kicked off the talk this week about the climate and they had an indigenous woman spoke about protecting the forest and then blew on the foreheads of a bunch of the scientists there.

And I just I think this just sums up how relevant they are in a lot of ways. But I do believe you're right. They are really trying to engage in certain things that are just really a danger to the world. And that's why we have our our famous our favorite Argentina president, Javier Mele, down there and just basically kick them all in the booty.

Go ahead, Shay.

They say that we are not leading the world, and they are wrong. We are. And I read that, and I immediately think, this is nonsense. How are we leading the world? And then he says that everything that happens in global international institutions, we are setting the agenda.

And then he goes through the agenda, and I realize, oh, my God, we are, and that's not a good thing. No. Because exactly at Davos, all this nonsense that you're seeing in Europe, in Canada, increasing in Brazil nowadays, all are coming from the United States. And that's why Obama's...

folks are so panicked about Biden's campaign right now. And the wokeness overall is a legacy of Obama's second campaign and all the people he seated in federal agencies and international organizations from that philosophy. Correct. Yep. And, you know, I, Chuck, I've talked to you about this before. And

It is getting ridiculously out of hand. You see now that PEPFAR, which was President Bush's plan for AIDS relief in Africa, you're seeing that it's

practically being destroyed by the Biden administration, not because they want to destroy it, but because they are adding all these work requirements, be it women empowerment in Africa and et cetera and et cetera. And both Congress and the Africans are saying that this is nonsense. I go back to George Shultz who said the best way to solve a problem is to just solve that one problem. Well,

Why would you want to cure a disease, AIDS, HIV, when your goal is to spread a disease called wokeism? Well, what's amazing about it is the program implemented by George W. Bush was working. I mean, everybody talks about this is – they hold this as an example of something that actually worked. Right.

Right. Am I wrong on that? No, it worked. It literally worked. And that is actually, like many things in life, it's a victim of its own success, which is it's working. How can we make it work better?

and therefore destroy it. Just put a Democrat on it, that's for sure. Well, let's talk about Kylie's Corner. Do you have some good news or bad news for us today? I have all the things for you. Whatever you need. I have an update, a little update. Murder, mayhem, and joy all in one package. Let's do it. I have a weird update from the Kansas City story that I talked about last week. For those, if you didn't listen to the episode, go back and listen because I talked about another mysterious case out of Mississippi. Okay.

But Jordan Willis was at his home on not last Sunday that just happened, but the previous Sunday he was watching Kansas Chief game with some friends. And that following Tuesday, three of his friend's bodies were found in his backyard and he had said they just froze to death. Since this week, he's still not been arrested. Remains

he's sticking by the fact that he thinks they froze to death out there and he was unaware of the whole situation. But the weird thing is that people found, which I find so weird is his sister posted on Facebook a week before this incident happened and said, hello, Lee's summit police. I'd like to report a mass homicide. There's not one, not two, but three dead birds on this back patio of this house. I just showed send help.

But regardless if she knew anything, didn't know anything, what is the weird coincidence that three dead bodies show up on this guy's back porch a week after she posts this on Facebook? That's odd. That is real. Yeah. Were they Bills fans? I don't know. That is a great question. You know, since we started the Kylie's Corner, it is...

spectacular and all the weird things that are happening across this country. I mean, now you understand why Dateline 2020, all those things stay in business. I mean, it's funny. I was reading years ago about Law & Order always has these cases, right? Ripped from the headlines. So now because they were so close to home, because

Because they don't have to be creative. They just have to read. They have Kylie. They have a Kylie who finds all these cases. They now put apart that they sort of disclaim that this isn't a real story, but it clearly is. But that's what the lawyers told them they had to do. So they want to get sued. Right. So I don't get sued. This is all allegedly. She's using air quotes. She's using air quotes. I got to ask because I just thought about this. Has there ever been any follow up on the thing? I think it was from Boston with a cop and then there was the murder. Yeah.

The cop in the murder? Yeah. In a Boston? I think it was Boston. You were telling us that there was a cop who was being charged. Yeah, he was shot. The wife...

They think the wife shot him, but we're not sure. Oh, there's so many cases. Wow. I got to brush up on them. You got to brush up on that one. We need an update on that one. We'll bring some updates next week on the cases that I just left everyone hanging on. Well, that's what... Yeah. No, I want to know. You sort of have to see this through. Yeah. There's a couple that I haven't spoken about because I'm waiting for either the arrests or more stories to come out, but there's some fascinating things. You're just teasing the audience. I am. Let's get some completion here. But anyways, this story makes me sad and upset. So on December 12th of this year, Jose...

Jose Manivar. We're just going to call him Jose. He's from El Salvador. He was involved in a drinking and driving accident that killed a Colorado mother and her son. But I want to go into his background because he is here illegally and he's living in Colorado.

Since 2009, he has been deported four times. He was deported in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2015. But honestly, his background does not stop there. So December 12th, four days prior to him killing this mother and her son in Colorado, he was just sentenced to a drinking and driving incident.

that had occurred. Oh, good grief. That occurred previously. Um, and on that case, he pled guilty to two charges of drinking ability impaired, one charge of driving under the influence and one harassment charge, um, which resulted in a year of prison time, jail time. However, um,

However, it's Colorado, so they refused to allow ICE to deport him at the end of it. Yeah, so the judge actually let him have work release and was waiting outside of the jail system while Jose waited for a bed to be open. And then during this four-day span, it only took him four days to kill two people while drinking and driving. And that pisses me off. It should. Go ahead. Can I make a policy suggestion here? Yeah. Deport this guy, but...

Pierce the GPS tracker to him. Yeah. He knows the secret path. Yes.

He knows the way. He has the treasure map in the cereal box. He knows where to go. We should see how he's coming. Block that route. Half of the problem is solved. Look at Shea being frugal with U.S. taxpayer dollars. Speaking of treasure maps. All right, treasure maps. Do you like that transition? I love it. That's a nice segue. Nice segue. Go ahead. Someone is hiring right now. Captain Fear. I didn't know that was his name, but it's the mascot for the Buccaneers.

Wait, wait. The Buccaneers mascot is called Captain Fear? The Pirate. Captain Fear, the Pirate. Yep. Team's mascot. The job listing just went up. Okay, that's lame, but all right. In case you don't know, when the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl three years ago-

Some media folks out of D.C., no one in Tampa, were complaining that they should not be honoring pirates because they were rapists. They were – I mean everybody's just like you need to go away. Matter of fact, I'm interested if that guy ever wrote anything like that. This stuff all bothers me because like they did actual polling of Native Americans about the Redskins name. Yeah, and they're like – And like 85 percent were like it's fine. We like it. Well –

Well, if you want to be this mascot, these are your qualifications. You have to have a college degree. It's a hard job. Wait, what? Yeah. You have to have a college degree? Yeah. You have to be able to work nights, weekends, and holidays. Okay, that's reasonable. Yep. You need to have good communication skills. You need to be able to make people smile, laugh, cheer, and boo while not being able to talk. Okay, that's legitimate. Yeah. No, I mean, that's hard to do. I've talked to the former Wilbur the Wildcat about that, and they were like, man, it is hard to be emotive.

in a costume where you can't talk. And can I ask you a question? How many college graduates nowadays are capable of being yelled at without crying? That's also probably another call. 5%. Yeah, it's a very small pool. 5% and probably most are in Utah. Don't yell at me. When we get to the end of this, I'll tell you a story about Tuffy the Toro's worst day, but okay. Yeah, but you know, that's pretty much it. You have to be able to pass a background check and...

Have previous experience as a mascot. By the way, mascots make tremendous amount of money. Really? Yes, they do. Because not only do the professional teams pay them well, but they get paid appearance fees. So, for example, I know like the Bear in Salt Lake team.

I have been told by authoritative sources, is well into the six digits annually. Oh, yeah. Just based upon not the team pays them, but for appearance fees, things of this nature. It's pretty incredible. It's a good business. But the problem is, dude, they also have a lot of physical injuries. Yeah, well. Especially with the teams when they make you do push-ups every time you get the touchdown. You didn't go to the gym this week, did you? I went three times. But the average salary of an NFL mascot is $60,000 in case you guys are trying to apply.

It's a pretty good starting salary out of college. Well, that's a pretty good college quarter. So next week, let's wrap. Let's find out what happened to some of our cases. Sam was right. We had the cop that was shot or something. I think by his wife, they thought. But then she was saying. Oh, I remember. OK. So as we get ready to leave here, I was getting ready to leave here. I know it was somewhere snowy. That's all I know. We want to thank Shea Kateri for being with us for our banter session. But Shea, I want to ask you a question here. You're working on getting your citizenship to the United States. OK. Yeah.

Gallup did a poll a couple years ago that more than 750 million people would migrate to the United States. My two questions are as following. Do you think that number is low or high? And B, what should the United States do to make legal immigration a simpler process?

Well, $750 million. I mean, we can never do $750 million. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, do you think that number's high or low? No, I mean, well, that's a very high number. It's just that I was going to say I would assume that it's even higher. I do, too. I've been to 65 countries, and I'm telling you, I love people say there's all this anti-Americanism. Yeah, there's not. I would put the over-under somewhere like $2 billion.

Yeah, I would be closer to that. Which never can happen, nor is it feasible. So you've been trying to seek your citizenship, and I want to talk about this briefly. What can the United States do to make this simpler? I mean, I think we need to increase our legal immigration numbers. The number's too low, what we've had. But what do we need to do? So it's going to sound weird, but one thing is to stop illegal immigration. And because I'm through the system...

I can speak with authority that one reason my case has been stuck for seven years now is that all the officers who are tasked with immigration have been overwhelmed by illegal immigration, so they cannot process legal immigration cases. There's only X amount of hours in a day. Yeah, and X amount of money that you're going to...

put into immigration and is going to illegal immigration case asylums.

And by the way, when I say, I mean, even people who cross illegally and apply for legal status, they take up that time. So that is, I think, a very important thing to do. A second thing is, this is a friend of mine who's at the Manhattan Institute himself. He's a Venezuelan immigrant, suggested, which is...

A lot of immigrants who are here are actually middle class and make decent amount of money, but their cases like mine are stuck. And we can add a premium, which is I will pay more money to expedite my case. Interesting. Yeah. So that is a very interesting idea. And the third one is that we need to...

link the needs of employers to immigration. And if you're an employer today, just for a starting point, you need to pay $10,000 to sponsor someone for a work visa. And guess what?

This is going to work against small businesses and in favor of corporations. Interesting. Because corporations have the money to pay that $10,000, but the small businesses don't. And for my priorities need, Jay, when you said let's link it to employment, let's link it to the needs of the economy and to business.

A lot of times that means we need to seek out people who have specific levels of experience, knowledge, training, that sort of thing. We need to make the path very easy for those folks who we need here in this country who are bringing that benefit. And you do need people who are going to be working on the low end too, right?

And those doors should not be tied together. They should be separate so that we say, okay, right now we have a lot of people in the service – a lot of openings in the service economy. We have a lot of openings in the agriculture sector, whatever. We're going to swing that door open.

Then as those get filled you swing that closed and we say right now we need a lot of tech workers We need a lot of medical workers. We're gonna swing that door open tied to that. Yeah. Yep, and there's one more thing we need to do which is Kylie brought up the Salvadorian right immigrant and This is actually this is one of the most important things we need to do what? we need to make sure that even people would bring in legally and

We are careful to, one, deport irresponsible immigrants. Correct. And two, you know, I'm from Iran, so I come from the Middle East, and I saw, like many other immigrants in horror, when in Dearborn, after the Hamas attack, there was a festival celebrating it. And Americans look at that and say that we have enough crazy people here. Right.

We don't need more. Yeah, we have our basket of crazy already. Yeah, so, you know, I always say that we can do two things. We can only bring in civilized people

Or we can do what we have always done in U.S. history, which is actually bringing crazy people and civilize them here, essentially. And by that, I mean that many immigrants send their children to colleges and universities. There used to be societal constraints, and there used to be assimilation, but we've removed all of those. We have become a culturally libertarian society that everybody can express whatever they want,

And therefore, there is no way to Americanize immigrants. And Americans look at that and say, no, we don't want our country like that. If you look at the European countries, the one that's had the least problems from their immigration is Norway. And Norway requires a two-year period.

assimilation class, a formal class where they teach people these are the norms of Norwegian culture. And what's made America a great melting pot is that we base it upon principles, right? Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and that's what's held us together. And it seems like there is a group on the left, not all of them, that want to eliminate that. And that's not good if you want to have a society that gets along with one another. Yeah, and you know, when you mentioned Norway...

we did it much better than the Norwegians, which is we didn't have them take classes. What we did was you come to our community and we have community centers.

And to prosper in America, you have to abide by those standards. And we have removed those standards for ourselves and them. Exactly. Well, the Norwegians like to take credit for everything. As we know from the show, you generally read that. I wouldn't generally always endorse that approach. But no, I agree. You say something, Sanders. They put formal guidelines in that

that we then threw away, like you said. Well, Shea, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Love to have you back again soon. As we close out, Sam, I just got noticed that Sports Illustrated has laid off most of staff. And that is a real change of the guard in America. Actually, if you want to really get a wonderful grasp of the English language, reading Sports Illustrated growing up was a great way to do it. Yeah. And I don't, I mean, it's been around 70 years and they tweeted out today they're laying off most staff and writers. Yeah.

Well, look, I mean, I mean, I mean, it's really sort of sad. It is really sad, but...

You know, one of the things you and I are big fans of is The Athletic. Right. Right. Which took over the space that Sports Illustrated used to have of really good articles. And Sports Illustrated got a little wokey with their bathing suit issue. Yeah, look, when you're having to put people in tucking suits on the swimsuit issue, you're off the rails. That's not your audience. Well, folks, we appreciate you joining us this weekend. You can visit us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever.

You get your podcast. Shay, thanks for joining us. Kylie, as always, next week, follow up. We want to know who's... Follow up. It is Boston. I stand corrected. Okay. We need to know. We need to know. Yep. I got you. All right, folks. Have a great weekend.