The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now.
Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. First up today, a gentleman who has ended up in the news in a way he certainly never wanted or intended to end up in the news. Aaron Steed is the CEO of Meathead Movers, founded the company in 1997 as a way to make money while going to school and support himself as a competitive wrestler. Aaron Steed is the CEO of Meathead Movers, founded the company in 1997 as a way to make money while going to school and support himself as a competitive wrestler.
Meathead Movers has grown to become the largest independent moving company in California, over 700 employees, 120 trucks. It's on the incorporated 5,000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S. for eight years in a row.
top 2% of fastest growing companies in the country. And Aaron was recognized as young entrepreneur of the year, the White House's top 100 entrepreneurs. I can go on and on. This is an incredibly impressive resume for a startup, for anybody, for a startup business that has grown like crazy. And then something else just happened that makes absolutely no sense to anybody who has sense of
The EEOC, Chuck, came down on him. Heading in for age discrimination. Aaron, welcome to the show. Thank you. Let me ask you this question, a sarcastic question, but I think I know your answer. So if The Rock or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone or anybody their fitness level over the age of 60 came into you and wanted a job, what's the likelihood they'd probably get a job?
Anyone can work at Meathead Movers so long as they're physically capable of doing the job. Exactly. Exactly. So to back up real quick, the issue here is that you are being is it Aaron investigated or sued by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission over hiring young, fit, muscular people to do this job? And they're saying that's discrimination. Yeah, it's pretty confusing. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know what to say. I mean, no one even made a claim against you, right? It was simply the EEOC that did this on their own based on marketing material. So explain exactly how you go hire people so people understand maybe because we don't understand what they're doing. So explain what's going on.
Yeah, look, in 2017, the EEOC started investigating my business for age discrimination. So I called my attorney. I said, hey, what's going on here? He said, don't worry about it. You guys are doing everything above board. Let's invite them into our office and have a conversation, give them everything that they want and need. And I'm sure that this will go away. It's some sort of misunderstanding.
So, you know, we were open and transparent with them. We gave them everything that they wanted. And then a couple of years later, they give us a demand for 15 million dollars penalty fee for unclassified people because there there's been nobody harmed. Nobody filed a claim against my business. But according to them, they think we're discriminatory business. And I just don't know or understand how it just happened.
You know, it's mostly younger people that want to work at Meathead Movers. The job requirement is to move heavy things up and down stairs all day. And then we require employees to jog when not carrying anything, which makes it just that much more physically demanding. So, yeah, people who are my age and look like me are probably not applying for this job very often.
Yeah. I mean, it's but, you know, I know plenty of people that are over the age of 40 and could do it. But then the question is, do they want to do it? Exactly. You also have to pass a drug test and a criminal background check. And, you know, the starting wage is a couple bucks more than minimum wage. So it's.
We're totally dumbfounded. I've tried working with the EEOC. They have monetary, non-monetary demands. The non-monetary demands, I was very open to. I'm open to evolving in whatever way. Let me stop you there, Aaron. What were the non-monetary demands from the EEOC? Well, they want us to...
have someone in the office who reports to the EEOC if we're doing things in accordance to their rules or not. And a lot of the other things that they wanted was under the mediation confidentiality. But at the end of the day, what it comes down to is we've been in business for 26 years. Next month, it's going to be 27 years.
And I want to be in business for 26 more years. And I understand that there's laws and rules and I want to comply with all of them. I just don't see how we did anything wrong here, though. We've never discriminated against anybody. What percentage of your movers are female?
I don't know that off the top of my head. But you have female movers as well, correct? Yes. Oh, absolutely. They do a great job. But they're probably better than men just because they're organized. They can put things in a truck right. Did you ever, I mean, you started a company, you started this in college, right? I started actually in high school. In high school. It's a perfect job for a young person, right? To go and probably some flexibility involved and so forth. Yeah.
Did you ever imagine, and you've been in business now for a long time, that you would ever come under the gaze of the federal government for something simply moving?
I mean, not in a way like this. As you mentioned earlier, we are so honored to be recognized by the Obama administration. We're so honored just a few years ago, Vice President Harris did a Facebook post recognizing our work helping hundreds of women fleeing abusive relationships through our partnership with domestic violence shelters in October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
On one hand, we're getting applauded for our business practices. And then on the other hand, the EEOC is simply trying to put us out of business for something we didn't do. Nobody's even complained. The EEOC brought this on themselves and it's bewildering. It's scary. It's an egregious overreach. And that's why I think all employers should be scared to death of
What's happening now, because if they can get away with it here, really any job that has a physical requirement, you know, look at the police officers, look at roofers, look at construction workers, look at other moving companies. I mean, any job that has a physical requirement, if,
If they can demand $15 million from us in an amount that we can't afford to pay, even with no claimant, then really all businesses are on extremely shaky ground. And it's quite scary. And it's why we've decided to start a GoFundMe page to help with our legal expenses since now we're going to court over this. Where can people find that GoFundMe page?
Yeah, it's Help Us Fight Against the EEOC. If you go to Meathead Movers, it's in our link tree on our Instagram. If you follow me, it's on my link tree too. I'm Aaron Steed on Instagram.
And it's amazing. The community outreach has been incredible. We've already had 150 donations in the past four days. So many people in our community and clients and our employees even, you know, past employees are donating because they're just beside themselves that the government would want to take out my small family-owned business. We're just trying to make a living.
I have 320 employees whose jobs are at risk because of this, and they didn't do anything wrong either. What did they think about it?
They're confused. They also have a high degree of confidence that our company does enough good out there in the world. We're constantly giving back to nonprofits. Like I said, 248 free moves to victims of domestic violence last year. We're a top-in-class moving company. We are the best at what we do. And it just doesn't make any sort of sense whatsoever out of all the businesses that
Why would they be trying to target us like that? I think there's a belief that we're going to get through this. There's a belief that we didn't do anything wrong. And there's also a belief in our legal system that eventually they're going to see the truth of the matter and that Meathead Movers is going to be vindicated. And, um,
And this landmark legislation just isn't going to stand. The thing that makes me, when you said they want you to hire somebody, an EOC-approved employee who will sit there and report to the EOC, Chuck, that immediately started ringing alarm bells for me, that this is something, this may be the real point of what they're actually trying to do.
is to start seeding these employees and companies all across this country. Well, it needs to be stopped and it needs people need to support meathead movers. How much do your attorneys think your legal fees are going to cost to fight this? And what are the steps? Yeah, about a half million dollars. Half a million dollars. OK. Or more than what I've already spent in the past seven years. So I'm looking at about another half million to finish this through.
And, yeah, our GoFundMe helped us fight the EEOC Legal Defense Fund by Meathead Movers. And I'm really confident in my legal team. My legal team is really confident in the merits of this case. It seems like a pretty clear-cut case. Folks, it's important to go donate to this because this is a real important –
This is a really important moment. This is a milestone. This is time to slap these people hard.
and not allow them to make egregious claims against a company... For no reason. ...that's clearly employing 300-plus people, helping these abused women get out of households, who's just doing the job that has to be done. The thing that kills me is not one person has claimed to be harmed. That's just astounding. What with Aaron Steed of Meathead Movers. Aaron, Kylie's going to email you, and I want to call you next week. I talked to a couple of think tank legal groups recently,
who want to help defend you on this as well. And I want to talk to you as well about raising some money for this. I think what you're doing is important. I think the jobs you provide are critical. Yes. How many, let me ask you this. How many college students have you helped get through college by them being employees of Meathead Movers? What do you think that number is? Give me a guesstimate. 3,000, 4,000. So 3,000, 4,000 people who are going to school, getting an education,
Advancing themselves. Advancing themselves or able to help provide for themselves going through college because of Meathead Movers. That's a number you need to get out there, buddy. And I'd imagine most of them really enjoyed that job while they were doing it. Oh.
I'm exhausted thinking about it. I had Crate and Barrel come to my house last week and they had two nightstands and I said, oh, can I just give you 50 bucks to bring it upstairs? Right. So, you know, I mean, come on people though. It's like he said, how many 40 plus year old people want to do this job? He's not hiring anyone out of this studio. What else? What else should people tell me this real quick here? Let's get off. We have about a minute left here. What are the costs associated with the moving company? You have the employees, you have the trucks, you have gas, you have insurance. What else?
Oh, yeah. No. You know, we have to pay for our administrative team. We have to pay for our ops admin team. We have to pay for our facilities, you know, that we have. Now I have to pay off for all these attorneys. And probably an awful lot of permitting fees for your operation.
Oh, sure. Well, thank you very much, Aaron Steed. Aaron Steed, CEO of the Meathead Movers. Go join their, they're on Facebook as well. Go to their GoFundMe page. Folks, this is very important. Aaron needs everybody's support. He's not in this alone. The EECA has decided to take on American small business. Let's get on this and help defend Aaron and his employees. They do great work, provide incomes for a lot of people. Aaron, have a great weekend. Kylie, we'll get ahold of you. Let's you and I talk on the phone this next week. Sounds good. Thank you so much.
At Overstock, we know home is a pretty important place, and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms, Overstock has everyday free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful, high-quality furniture and decor you need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock, making dream homes come true.
Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, YRefi has been getting a ton of calls from all the people on the air that are talking about him and we want to thank you for supporting an investment that actually helps people. First,
You have an opportunity here, folks, to earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market or the Fed. Joe Biden can mess this economy up as much as he wants, and you can still get your fantastic return. But also, you can turn your income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There are absolutely no fees. There's no attack on principle if you ever need your money back, and you'll get your monthly statement with no surprises.
If you're not sure to trust this economy, this secure collateralized portfolio may be a good option for you. Go to investyrefi.com. That's invest, the letter Y, then refi.com. Or give them a call, 888-YREFI24, and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.
So we're at Ashley Hayek. She is the executive director of the American First Works. She's the chief engagement officer for American First Policy Institute and author of a new book, Beat the Elites. Before we get started in some policy, Ashley, there's a fun little Christmas fact that we were told about you that your first job was you were selling mistletoe door to door to buy a dog. That's right. That's right. My dad's a farmer.
Not a mistletoe farmer, just a regular farmer. And the mistletoe just happened to grow in the trees. So you were actually picking it from the trees and doing it. You weren't buying it.
Yeah, so my dad would pick the mistletoe, the like bushes out of the walnut trees and bring it home. And then I would have to clean all the bugs out of it. And then we dipped it in this stuff to make it like last longer. I would tie a bow around it and put it in bags and we'd sell 50 cents for a small one and a dollar for a large one. My question for you is how long did you, first of all, how long did you do that business for? Just one year or did you do it for a couple of years?
I did it for a couple years, and my goal the initial year was to buy an American Girl doll. And there's a whole story behind this. And this is actually why I became a Republican. Oh, sure. I really wanted this American Girl doll, and I also knew that selling mistletoe was $81 at the time. I think they're probably way more expensive than that now, which is kind of crazy. At that time, that was a huge amount of money for a doll. Yeah.
Yes, it was a lot of money. And my parents said, if you want it, you have to earn it. So my dad was friends with this woman who owned a jewelry store. So we convinced her to buy a bulk order of mistletoe so that she could give it away with her jewelry store purchases. So that's how I got like the majority of the mistletoe sold. And then I also sold it. My grandparents owned a fast food restaurant. So I sold it at the fast food restaurant.
restaurant too. So I finally get through the season. I have like $81, just the right amount to buy this doll. My dad said, okay, go ahead and call and see if you have enough money. They said on the phone, well, it's $81 plus tax and shipping. And I understood the shipping part, but I didn't understand the tax. And I said, dad, why do I have to pay taxes? What's a tax? And he said, well, that's the money you have to pay the government. And I said, well, I don't want to pay taxes. Why do I have to pay the government?
And he said, well, honey, this is why you're a Republican. And I said, OK, got it. So I got my Samantha doll. He covered the tax and shipping for me. And I also became a Republican at that moment. So mistletoe got us a Republican voter and probably got a lot of people a first kiss there, too. You can't do better than that. Well, actually, you know, that's a that's a fantastic story. And I think one thing that's missing today is young people don't work anymore.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think there's a lot of entitlement right now, just across the board. We live in a society of instant gratification. That's amazing. You have a new book out called Beat the Elites. Tell us about it, what inspired you to write it, and what did you find interesting and challenging about writing a book, the process?
Beat the Elites is five steps to stop the elites and save America. I grew up in California, moved to Virginia to work on the Trump campaign, and then started working with America First. This year, I traveled to about 30 cities working on state legislation and moving state legislation.
As we've seen, especially over the course of the last three years, you have people in Washington who are getting richer. You have people in Washington who are killing our jobs but never lose theirs, who are making moves to defund the police or open our borders while they have private security and fences and gates around their homes. Traveling across the country and talking to people, I realize a lot of people
people just felt really hopeless and helpless. So this was an opportunity to give people a tool, inform them, give them a lot of information, everything. I think there's over a thousand footnotes in the book. It's all sourced on the website, beattheleads.com, all fact-based on
what's happening in the country. And then also at the end of every section, there's a call to action on what you and what we, the American people, can do about it. Because if we work together, we can take on the elites in Washington and reclaim the power that belongs to we, the people.
So I view life when you have a lot of tasks that need to be done. I like to tell people you need to look at blocks and you need to get rid of one block at a time. Sometimes we can overwhelm ourselves with all of the pressing issues ahead of us, right? So if you go through and as you write your book, what do you view are the number one, number two, number three things that you feel we need to solve immediately to get America back on track?
Well, what I outlined in the book is, number one, we have to stop spending in Washington. We have to fix the economy. Our economic policy is out of control. And what a lot of people don't realize is that in 2025, if we don't get a America first president in the White House, those tax cuts and jobs act are going to end. We need to get Congress. We need to get a conservative Congress back, make sure that we make the tax cuts permanent for the people.
We have to unshackle American energy and make America energy independent again. You know, killing the pipeline jobs in America and then relying upon our enemy for oil seems a little crazy and completely unnecessary. The third thing is really supporting our rights of security and securing the border. So the thing that's actually kind of crazy about all of this is that
We have a president who can fix all of these major crises today, and he's choosing to ignore them. We could have a stay-in-Mexico policy today. We could finish the wall. We could stop spending and sending millions and billions of dollars to Ukraine. But we have an administration who chooses to put America last. And so there are things that can happen on day one of an America-first agenda or America-first administration that could change all of this.
Why do you think Democrats are so opposed to securing this border? It's a really odd thing. They know, I mean, they see the footage. They have their own mayors complaining about it. Why are D.C. Democrats so hesitant, not even hesitant, just opposed to fixing this border crisis?
I think it's power. I think they have an assumption, too, that the more people that they bring into the country, the more maybe voters they would have, for example. But I also see that beginning to backfire on them. And there's two things. I want to go back to the first one actually on power. When you bring in a group of people that then are reliant upon the government, it gives you more power as the government. And the Democrats are the party of big government, big tech, big
big media, big pharma. And so they need, you know, anybody who is weak, who's not independent, who's reliant upon them, makes them stronger and more powerful. So, of course, they want to open the border and create an environment where there's so many people who are dependent upon government and on them to give them more power. And also the fentanyl, the economic crisis. Ashley, Ashley, let me step right there. We're going to go to break real quick. I want to come back and talk about fentanyl a little bit, OK?
Sure. Ashley, tell quickly people where can they follow you at? At Ashley Hayek and on the platforms or at AmericaFirstWorks.com. Great. We're with Ashley Hayek at American First Policy Institute. This is Chuck Warren of Samson at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. We'll be right back with more with Ashley. We're going to talk a little bit about fentanyl. Be back.
Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We're going to be continuing on here with Ashley Hayek, Executive Director of America First Works, Chief Engagement Officer of the America First Policy Institute and author of the new book Beat the Elites, which you can get at Amazon.com, a roadmap for taking on the elite dysfunction that is now overtaking this country. And Chuck, while they always like to talk about Northern Europe as their model, if you look at the actual politics of the left today that Ashley describes in her book, it's
It looks an awful lot more like Venezuela and Latin America than it does northern Europe. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a disaster. And in everything, you know, it's government for the government, government for the elite leaders of the government, but not for the people. And the fentanyl crisis Chuck alluded to as we're going out, and Ashley, I want to have you touch on that, is a perfect example.
The opioid of the masses really is an opioid now, and they're killing people with it left and right. And that's because we have an open border and we refuse to interdict Chinese fentanyl precursors going into Mexico.
Yeah, that's it. That's a thousand percent right. It originates in China. It gets processed in Mexico and then it comes into the United States. We've lost more than 100,000 lives to fentanyl overdoses, which is equivalent to a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing every single day. And it's now, you know, the top cause of death of young Americans internationally.
18 to 24, I believe it is. And we're seeing children, teens, adults, seniors, not even knowing that they're ingesting it because it's laced in everything. In Texas, they've seized more than 400 million doses of the drug and enough fentanyl has been released
seized across America to kill every American just in 2022 alone. That's terrifying. And then they've refused to take on the drug cartels and secure the border. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. That doesn't include at the cartels. They're bringing it into our schools. So when you think about all of the people that are coming in through the cartels, they have a toll to pay. And what the cartels are doing is they're forcing kids into these schools and they're selling it to our kids.
Let me ask you this question. So I agree with everything you said. OK, but there's probably also one sure way of not dying from fentanyl for most people, and that's not taking drugs. What is a policy we need to have? I mean, look, I mean, as much as everything you said is correct and it needs to be done no matter what.
But what can we do as conservatives, as think tanks to encourage and just people stop doing it? I mean, it's always an overdose because they mixed it with some other drugs or something. And it's in ecstasy. It's in all these preventable. No one's putting a gun to folks head. And that's the frustrating part for me, because everything you said is correct.
But society keeps getting more permissive about drug use, not less. So let's look, you know, now Oregon now is supposedly taking a complete U-turn on what they did on their, you know, open drugs, right? Ashley, what do you think we need to do to encourage people just don't take them? We can really solve this problem real quick just on the fentanyl just by don't taking the drugs.
Well, you can increase penalties for fentanyl possession. There's a whole number of things, of policy prescriptions to address this. I think you also have these kids who are buying stuff online. I think there needs to be some sort of fintech accountability level here because a lot of those big tech companies, they know that those drugs are being sold through Snapchat,
or Venmo or Facebook, and they're not doing anything about it. There's no accountability. But also there's another issue too, where how many stories have you heard recently of somebody that has the drug and then a child gets ahold of it and overdoses because it was somewhere in the house. There was this case in Florida where a mom put her baby down for a nap at an Airbnb. She goes to check on her baby and the baby's dead from fentanyl because he found something on the ground and put it in his mouth.
I mean, like it's everywhere. It's that fatal. So there's got to be greater consequences. And that's we're not seeing that right now. Yeah. The other thing, Ashley, I keep thinking of is we need to to reinstitute personal responsibility. We only have about a minute left before we end the segment here. But.
There's never any effort anymore to hold the users accountable or to try to even run campaigns to reduce use. And I think we have to get back to that. Personal responsibility has to be a mantra for Republicans. Do you agree or disagree?
I agree. And remember, a lot of times overdoses, it's like a kid or somebody thinking they're getting ADHD medicine or they're buying weed. They're not buying fentanyl. They're buying something else. And the drug dealers are cutting it with fentanyl without their awareness in most cases. So but yes, personal accountability is critical. Yeah, I think that is.
To a certain degree, the selling point of the left is we'll take responsibility for your life. Just leave everything up to us. They're really bad at it, right? Yes, exactly. But that's because they want the power and they want the people dependent upon them.
Absolutely. Ashley Hayek, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on the program. Folks, you can get her new book, Beat the Elites at Amazon.com. Definitely check that out. Fantastic analysis of what's going on in this country and a fantastic prescription for where we need to go from here. So we really appreciate having Ashley on today.
And you can follow her at Ashley Hayek on all of the major social media platforms. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back with more in just a moment.
At Overstock, we know home is a pretty important place, and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms, Overstock has everyday free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful, high-quality furniture and decor you need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock, making dream homes come true.
Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, you've been hearing us talk about YRefi for a long time now, and if you haven't checked it out, you need to. Go to their website at investyrefi.com. That's invest, the letter Y, then refi.com, or give them a call at 888-YRefi24.
and learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market. You can take your return as monthly income. You can compound it and leave it in there to grow more, whatever you choose. And there's no attack on your principal if you need your money back at any time. It's a fantastic investment opportunity. And by investing with YRefi, you're helping people get out of college student loan debt and get their lives back on track. It is a win-win, folks. So invest, YRefi.com or 888-YRefi24.com.
And now we're continuing on with Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com. He advocates for constitutional republicanism for government, blockchain for institutions, and educational choice for human capital. And Chuck, he's in a little bit of a spat with a name some folks might know, Jack Smith.
What a mess that guy is right now. Oh, he's horrible. Patrick, tell us a little bit about your whistleblower complaint against Jack Smith. Well, I got word of something this summer and been chasing some whistleblowers around Europe and developed the following set of information. There's really three points to it. The first point is Jack Smith, before he was doing what he's doing with special prosecution against Trump, was the American prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
where they were prosecuting war crimes from, say, the Yugoslav Civil War 25 years ago. What he was really doing was he was extorting people. He was sending henchmen over into Eastern Europe to go to people in Eastern Europe, innocent, maybe not innocent, and saying, Jack Smith knows what you did, and you murdered two guys in a village in Serbia in 1998, and you're going to be indicted by America. But if you'll put...
$400,000 in their suitcase. I'll take it back to Jack. Your problems go away. And the bribe was anywhere from $400,000 to $7 million and $9 million bribes were paid with Bitcoin. There's four whistleblowers. There's more than four whistleblowers, but there's four who have given us detailed, beautiful affidavits. I don't know if you've read them. Very carefully written in their native language affidavits
what happened they've got tax records they've got bank record that all kinds of corroborated detail for unrelated people that have very detailed story but all tell the same story that's what jack was really good extortion the second other three things you know this was all part of it
18 months ago. And the whistleblowers were led to have a Zoom call with someone they understood to be sort of high up in internal affairs of the DOJ where this was all laid out in 90 minutes. The DOJ guys spent the first few minutes trying to talk them into recanting. They wouldn't. So then it was all laid out. That internal affairs guy buried it. And the reason is he's not in internal affairs. His name's Alan Pigman and it turns out
He is, or Alan Tigger, I guess, and he's Jackson's number two. So can you imagine being a whistleblower to the DOJ and led to spill your guts to somebody who you think you can help about a corruption? It turns out he's the number two of the guy you're accusing. And that leads to, and so we know that because they take the court of the DOJ call. They weren't supposed to. They did anyway. There's a dynamite 90-minute call.
and the transcript of the recording is in the whistleblower complaint along with the affidavits from four of the whistleblowers. There are more. And then the third, so we know those things rock solid. The third thing I can say is only an inference, and the inference is when Merrick Garland got this information,
a year and a half ago, he called Jack Smith home and said, listen, you son of a gun, we know what you're up to over in Europe. We're going to put you away for 30 years or else you're going to prosecute Donald Trump, which would explain why he's brought the most cockamamie prosecution in American history. Prosecuting Donald Trump for J6 when no one can even explain what the heck he did
On day six, that was actually illegal. So this is – and we have them dead to rights on all this. And I'd say – so he's an – the extortionist Jack Smith is now being extorted by the DOJ. That's an inference, but I can't really think of – it explains everything. Patrick, one of the things that jumps out to me, you ran and founded one of the largest companies in the country.
And let's say that there was an issue with one of your top executives and somebody came to your management team and said, I need to blow the whistle on what this person is doing. What would be the legal risk? What would be the I mean, what would happen if you sat them down with the person they're complaining about their assistant? What would be the impact on you as a company? What would what legal risk would you be subjecting yourself to?
extraordinary risk first of all the publicly traded company i would be violating serving box your sovereign doctorate is all kinds of legal duties the officer of public company has to take such complaint seriously that was formal external process that can't be corrupted all it's really triggers dramatic investigation
That kind of information, it has to be, even if you think it's nonsense, you have to go through the formality. It is very carefully documented investigation. They did none of that. And they are a publicly owned company. It's called the government. I was about to say, this is the government that sets these rules, essentially. The market and the government set these rules for how you would have to treat that complaint in your corporate setting.
But then they're deliberately ignoring them when it's about them.
Yeah, it's totally corrupt. It's corruption on top of corruption on top of corruption. Can they find the transcripts and everything on deepcapture.com? Go to deepcapture. There's a one-page write-up of this and a PDF, and the PDF has about 120-page whistleblower campaign with affidavits, with transcripts, with beautifully written affidavits from four whistleblowers, with documentation, photographs of texts and all kinds of things that corroborate that we have this guy dead to rights.
Our dear listeners, one thing I want to inform you of, in case you did not know, Patrick Byrne did not vote for Donald Trump either time. Am I correct on that, Patrick? You're correct. I'm not a Trump hater. I was not a never-Trumper, but I'm a Rand Paul kind of guy, Rand Paul, as you know. And I've always voted Libertarian, never voted Republican or Democrat. So this has not come out of some love for Donald Trump, but this is just about the truth. We're the truth movement, and we are the truth movement.
And this is the truth. Let's talk China for a minute. More than a minute. Can we stay on this for one sec? Because I want to follow up your question, Patrick, from I think it was a Twitter thread yesterday. You laid out that Jack Smith had all these other aliases he was operating under. What is that about?
I'm kind of five and we last night I got another slew of them as well as a slew of passwords but I'll set that aside I've got a I've got a slew of alices this guy's been using and
And I don't know what it's about. I have someone who's digging and trying to get to the bottom of it. But he's made a lot. Anyway, I don't know. I suspect this guy really is out of... Maybe he's out of the intelligence community or something. I don't know what his background is. But he's been using aliases for years. And, I mean, I put five of them up yesterday, but I now have about 20 more. Is it... I've...
chuck and and patrick i can't think of one but is there a good reason for other other than being an intelligence agent for a government employee of any type to ever have an alias i don't that's a good that's a good reason if he was from the intelligence community that would probably explain why he uses he's used aliases but if he's with the d and maybe if he's with the dj i don't know it's uh let's ask him let's ask him i think that's my answer he's clearly a sleazebag and uh
Amba was really sleazy. He was left in place, and he got through this thing against Trump. Normally, a RICO case is something like one mobster tells another, hey, Chuck, I got this guy, Luigi, you need to wipe out for me. Okay, Pat, I'll take care of it. That cooperation establishes that it's
it's a mafia. It's not just a murder, but it's a racketeering charge. In the case that J six indictment, Trump is, it's a Rico indictment because Trump asked Mark Meadows for someone's phone number and Mark Meadows gave it to him. And that's the cooperation that proves that it's a rock racket. Well, that's a nut, that's a nutty expansion of the Rico law. The only thing, well, one thing that could really explain that, that,
why Jack Smith would take such outlandish positions, is he's been told by Merrick Garland, look, you come home, you prosecute Trump, we don't care how crazy the theories are, you're going to prosecute him and tie him up during an election year, and we're going to get in front of a captive judge, a woman named Tanya Chutkin, who happens to be the same judge who put Maria Bettina away for longer than the prosecutor wanted. She's a second-term Obama appointee.
And she has thrown down enormous sentences on people who essentially their only crime on January 6th, if you can call it a crime, is following security guards who led the way into the Capitol. Like that's and she's dropping years long sentences on these people. Yeah, this is a this is a lawfare corruption soft coup. And it's all meant to intimidate anyone from standing up to this soft coup.
And she's part of it. Before we go to China, can you briefly tell us about the Hunter Biden lawsuit against you for defamation? Well, he filed that three or four days after Congress subpoenaed him. So my guess is he filed it so he can say, you know, I say my response is anytime anywhere, Hunter, we have a debt to rights. I mean, I was part of obtaining the full laptop and and.
It's hilarious. This guy's suing me for defamation. Have you seen his laptop? How do you hurt that guy's reputation? A guy who's got his 13-year-old niece. I won't even say on the air what he's doing with his 13-year-old niece. But I think he may have filed that because it means if he is finally dragged in front of Congress, maybe when he gets asked questions, he's going to say...
Well, since I'm now in litigation with Patrick Byrne about this, I can't discuss these subjects, so I'll take the Fifth Amendment. That makes sense. That sounds like a high-priced attorney gave that advice. Yeah. What is exactly did he say you defamed about his character? I don't know.
I mean, seriously, what is he saying you defamed that no one knows already? I'm not sure you can do any more than the laptop did, but okay. I haven't even read it. I get these lawsuits. I don't spend two minutes on them. I mail them to the lawyer, and I say, you take care of this for me. It's a joke. I actually did.
It really is funny. What could you possibly be saying this? I got, even with the people who were trying to go through his laptop, did not have the full version. I got a hacker who got the image of the hard drive. And even Hunter, before he turned that laptop into the John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware repair shop, he bleached it. He deleted and then bleached it 400,000 files, the very worst files.
He deleted them bleach bit. So what he left on that everyone knew about was actually the good stuff. The worst stuff, deliberately deleted and bleached bit. There's actually a way to reverse bleach bidding if you know what you're doing. And we bleached...
reversed it. We got, we recovered those 400,000 files, which included signature pages, which he had deleted. They included texts, all the texts from his phone that filled in a bunch of missing pieces. So the Marco Polo operation by the wonderful Garrett Ziegler, they were the only people researching Hunter who had access to the full
hard drive, including those 400,000 files. As I recall, Carrot has said that he committed, that they've documented like 455 felonies documented in that laptop. And there's a Marco Polo report that spells it all out. It's just unbelievable. All right, we've got about three minutes left on this radio segment. Then we're going to take you over to the podcast. But I want to start in two minutes. I'm sorry. But the question I want to get started on is, Sam and I are a big believer
that the way you take down America's contention, create a civil war. That's right. That's really what people want to do. And that's what China and our enemies want to do. Are Sam, are Sam and I wearing, um, you know, aluminum foil or do you agree with that? No, no, no, absolutely. Absolutely.
I'm in Ohio, and I just lectured the three high school classes and gave them the books to read. It's in Chinese national security literature. They want to take us over. They started in 1949 on a 100-year marathon to take us down by 2049. In 2010, they accelerated the plan to 2030. They now think they're there by 2028, maybe 2027.
And they've already issued deeds in China on every home in America. And how would they get there? It's not red dawn. They're not coming in cargo planes with paratroopers. They get a civil war started. They don't care who's in it. Who's ever more violent and ruthless are the ones who get support. And it,
The goal is just to get it to be as violent as possible. This has been modeled out in D.C. in 2005. If we go to civil war, 90% of us die in one year from collapse in the supply chains for food, fuel, and pharmaceuticals. So they wipe out 90% of the population. Then the cartels in UN Blue Helmets are given three years to rape, pillage, loot, and burn. When there's nothing left but a carcass, China occupies and turns us into a farm.
exterminating everyone who's left. And if that sounds crazy, just read the Chinese national security literature. Read Unrestricted Warfare. Read the secret speech of Cher Hao Tian. And read the book by Michael Pilfer, A Hundred Year Marathon, which documents... This is as crazy as this sounds to say...
It's the Chinese who say it. You just have to read. They're not even discussing it anymore. It's in their national security literature. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We hope you enjoyed our radio show this week. Please stay tuned and download our podcast. You can find it at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or anywhere you get your podcasts. We're going to carry on with Patrick Byrne and talk more about this. Have a fantastic weekend, folks. Look forward to seeing you on the podcast.
The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votewebdomain from GoDaddy.com. Get yours now.
Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Morin. I'm Sam Stone. Continuing on with us right now, founder of Overstock.com, Patrick Byrne. And Patrick, before we ended the radio portion of the program, you were talking a little bit about China's plan.
And what they're looking at for America's future and essentially helping instigate a civil war and then being able to take it over and use it as a farm and population center. America essentially has all the resources and things that China does not. So it's an incredibly attractive target. And frankly, what you're saying is incredibly scary and doesn't actually seem far fetched at all, given what's going on in the world today.
Where do people learn more about this and how do they get more informed about what China's looking to do? Two Chinese publications and one American. The American is called the 100-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury. He's a China scholar. He wrote it in 2015. And he was a lifelong China dove who in 2015 completely flipped and said I was wrong to say that we should be trying to miss what they're doing. And he lays this all out with a lot of national security citations from China.
There's a book called Unrestricted Warfare by two Chinese colonels in 1993. They're now senior generals. And it lays out that China's view of warfare is different than ours. There's five levels to warfare, and only the final level is the kinetic one, where bullets fly and shells fly. It's the first four, like cultural, economic, financial, etc.
diplomatic and cultural or something. And they consider it a failure if you ever have to get to the point in war where the greatest victory is to win without fighting, without actual fighting, shall I say. And so Unrestricted Warfare, which is two senior Chinese generals now, it was their book that made them very famous in China. And then the third, maybe the most important, is the biggest leak in Chinese history is
There was a guy named, in Chinese it's pronounced, Che Hao Tian, C-H-I, and then the next word is H-A-O-T-I-A-N. He was simultaneously, imagine if someone were in our world, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and the...
the vice chairman of the democratic party all at once there was a that that was true how can he resigned in two thousand three from one or two of those positions his resignation speech within the military was uh... laying out to tigers cannot live on one mountain that where we are we have to we're going to support we've got a polar rug out from under the united states we can't both sure uh...
survive. And it's, we're going to do it first with a bioweapon that destabilizes society. And this was, this got public in 08 and the Chinese had never denied it. They won't comment on it, but you can look it up and read it yourself. It's a linking and disturbing speech where they lay out exactly what they're going to do. And the goal is it's movement warfare. It's not coming at you with, with howitzers and such. It's destabilizing society. Do we fall into civil war? The civil war snaps us. De-stabilizing.
People think that, oh, I'm going to go to the mountains and shoot deer. If the walking dead happens, that's been modeled out in 2005 in Washington, D.C., in the Pentagon, and the CIA modeled this out. And what really happens is within a year, 90% of us die.
Because, look, there's only 30 days of pharmaceuticals in the supply chain. Half of people over 50 are walking around with conditions that you die of within six months without drugs. There's nine meals, three days of food in the cities at the tip of the supply chain. So within three days of a disruption of the supply chain, the cities become ungovernable. People are starving. The kids are crying.
You can't govern them. You have two weeks. And if you don't have it under control in two weeks, we go through a tipping point. And supply chains snap in a way that things unravel in a way that they don't just come back together if you get electricity back on. And it turns into a walking dead world. And what they discovered when they war-gamed us out, which surprised them, was that within one year, 90% of us die and we return to 1880s. But
What they are going to do is the cartels, ultimately the chain of command is China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, the Mexican cartels. People don't understand. The Mexican cartels basically are the junior partners to the Venezuelan cartel. Do you know what the name of the Venezuelan cartel is? Mm-mm.
No.
the capos of the mafia or the generals. So they want to destabilize us. We fall into civil war. We take care of 90% of ourselves. The cartels and blue helmets are unleashed on us for three years. They pillage
pillage loot and burn these 10 million military aged males who've been invited into the united states or 12 million are are they are the secret army and they in fact there's an app that's recruiting them that makes it very clear they're looking for fighting age males and again this isn't me as crazy as this all sounds just look up this in the chinese national security literature you can find it online using the link the names i gave you is it also posted on deep capture
Some of it is. Deep Capture is more about corruption within the U.S., but I've explained this in speeches. You can Google the book, 100-Year Marathon. You can find it on Amazon. The secret speech of Cher Haukian is important, but Unrestricted Warfare is also very important. Those three publications lay all this out. So how do we prevent this?
No civil war. Peace, peace, peace. If we get in a civil war, they win. The first thing to understand is the people who are jonesing for a fight are not to be listened to. And when I see people on the right who are trying to egg me on, hey, when are we going to get deep in the streets? When are we going to get violent and take our country back? I tell them to shut the heck up. The Chinese win if that happens. We're going to fight for election integrity. You know how I believe? I now know 2020 was stolen, and you will too, before 2020.
before the month of April is up, all of America will understand 2020 was stolen. And that's just part of this takeover. And Biden, I believe Biden is a puppet of China. And that's why every decision he made from day one, he installed all these pro-Chinese puppets.
And the first thing he did was he reversed a Trump executive order that lets China put its components in our electrical grid. He's a total butt boy for China. And I think he's got I think he's he's taking orders from them. And he's just a silly. Given what we know from Hunter's laptop, it's very clear that China has corrupted Biden and the Biden family. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's a monetary string here.
You know what's the funniest part of that? As late as 2021, Biden, Hunter, was having conversations with the number two in Chinese intelligence, saying, I think he was in the Oval Office, I'm right here in the room with the big guy, and I'm telling you, if you don't do this, you don't do that. I mean, he's acting like he's in charge and telling the Chinese. The Chinese are so humble. They would totally encourage him and let him think he's in charge. He's so stupid. He doesn't understand that
that they work for China, that his dad works for China. They're not in the position of dictating to China. China dictates to them. As you finish up this podcast portion, let me ask you about two international events, which I think you have some great perspective on. Ukraine. How do our actions regarding Ukraine are viewed upon by China? How does it affect our relationship with China if we support Ukraine or don't support Ukraine?
Well, there's no reason for us to have picked this fight anyway. There's an ancient stratagem of China from the 36 strategies in about one year, like attacking the state of you...
create a fire in the east or something. And it means if China doesn't want to square off with us directly, they want us to first square off with Russia and defeat ourselves and weaken ourselves. Ukraine, I was raised in geopolitics by hawks, hawks, by Ronald Reagan's chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was my sea dad, so to speak.
and he took me to see Kissinger and Schultz in 2015, and they all three agreed there is no reason for us to be talking about bringing Ukraine into NATO. It's extraordinarily provocative. If Ukraine's in NATO, American tanks are dead.
or 230 miles from Moscow. Moscow, Russia's been invaded five times in the last 200 years. For Russia to bring Ukraine into NATO is extraordinarily provocative. And these hawks, hawks of the Reagan era were saying there's nothing wrong with saying Ukraine's going to be like Finland, going to be like Switzerland. That's absolutely the right way to go. But the Obama crew, Obama-Hillary crew since late 2014 have been just adamant that we have to pick a fight
with russia and we gotta get you created a native make no geopolitical sense and i suspect it's so dumb that is that i mean i feel like
like Biden, his way of losing the country is to take us into wars where we're going to break our pick. We're like a miner with a pick, and we're going to break our pick on things like Ukraine. America's been lied to all for almost two years now that we are not winning in Ukraine. Ukraine has dropped from 36 million to 24 million, 22 million, half a million killed, a million just
and lose arms and legs. Over 10 million have fled the country. We've destroyed Ukraine. We are not winning. Ukraine's not winning. We were never winning. All this stuff about, oh, Russia's going to collapse. Russia's going to collapse is nonsense. Russian ruble's up 20%. They're doing just fine. And it's we who's going to collapse.
One of the things we've talked about with Patrick, with other folks on the show here, is that Russia has a industrial base that allows them to very quickly produce a lot of cheap weapons very quickly, which we aren't able to match. And just in general, their population is so much larger than Ukraine that this has now become, if it's a war of attrition, it's a horrible position for Ukraine to be in.
Yeah, Ukraine reminds me of that old movie, Weekend at Bernie's, you know, where the kid makes this guy look alive. Ukraine is the government's defeated. It's a bunch of American advisors. America's paying the salary. There is no government of Ukraine. This little puppet, we're standing up and making it look like it's still alive. It's a big hoax. What's going on?
Patrick, I'm sorry I have to stop you there. We're getting to the end of our time here. I really appreciate having you on. How do folks stay in touch with you and the things you're doing in this coming battle with Jack Smith? DeepCapture or Twitter. I'm Patrick Byrne on Twitter, at Patrick Byrne. Perfect. Thank you so much, Patrick. Really appreciate having you on the show and look forward to having you back again soon. Sam and Chuck, great to talk to you again, both of you. Thank you, Patrick. Bye-bye.
All right. Well, that was an interesting show today, to say the least. If you weren't entertained, folks, you're not ever going to be entertained. It's not entirely over. No, because we have Kylie's Corner. The best part. What we've been all waiting for. Or a chipper Kylie's Corner. But Kylie's Corner. All right, let's do it. I was going to keep it very chipper today because the holiday season. Thank you. However, I did want to mention, because we were talking about the fentanyl crisis earlier with Ashley, and just this morning on the news when I was watching Fox, there was a mother who was speaking about
Her kid in Virginia this week on Tuesday, who's in fourth grade, was rushed to the hospital along with five other classmates because they were eating gummy bears. They were sharing gummy bears that were in a bag that I'm assuming probably had fentanyl in it before. And so the kids got poisoned. So like a Ziploc bag that someone dumped some gummy bears in that it had fentanyl in it. Yep.
And then they had then passed it around their little classroom and all these kids were then rushed to the hospital because they were in contact and they were throwing up and had headaches, muscle spasms.
Unfortunately, that means it's a really small dose for a kid of those ages and sizes. Yes, and luckily they have all survived. But since 2019, the overdoses of fentanyl has more than doubled with 70,000 deaths in 2021 from fentanyl, which there was 107,000 overdoses and 70,000 of those were from fentanyl.
And we've talked about this before, but you're going to see more and more because Narcan has limitations. When you've used it a whole bunch of times, it becomes less and less effective. Yeah, you've told me that before numerous times, and I tell people that, and they're stunned by it because they just think it's a cure-all forever. No, we're seeing it, and I've gotten this direct from people.
Right.
The effectiveness has limits. But what I was really going to talk about on my chipper kipper corner this week is the history of ugly Christmas sweaters. Because I have an ugly Christmas sweater party this weekend. I'm assuming others may as well or if they have already gone to them. But trying to figure out where it all began, right? You know, I'm sure someone, I'm going to
give all these, this history behind these sweaters. And someone's going to say, well, I had a party before this person. I didn't hear about this before the 80 mid eighties. So the eighties is what, so okay. Christmas sweaters, festive knitwears. You can't see me is in air quotes, festive knitwear began in the Victorian era back in 1896 when there was an advertisement for ladies, men and boys, not for girls, just ladies, men's and boys. Um,
Christmas-themed sweaters with a great variety of colors, stripes, and effects. And this goes on into the 1900s. You know, it kind of evolves into stripes and plain sweaters. In the 1930s, we were introduced to the Jingle Bells sweater, which is when they started attaching jingles to them. Attaching bells, yes. But they still said it was...
kept classy well and the advertising was I remember those they were like the two bells were on the pole yeah yeah it's not like they were just loaded with yeah there was there showed with elegance is what they was what the advertisements said in the 1950s you started seeing more TV personalities wearing Christmas sweaters in general on TV and such but it wasn't until the 80s when
When it started getting crazy. And that's when everyone started embracing the ugliness of them. And through movies and TV shows. You were not even a twinkle in your daddy's eye yet. But the 80s had some really ugly sweaters. Well, the 80s had a lot of really ugly...
Yeah, they did. They did. Yes. An air quote. I'm having quotes again. It was described as when fashion and just about everything else fell victim to the mindset that more is more. Well, if you watched the Bill Cosby show then, and we're not supposed to speak about Bill Cosby, but it was very popular back in the 80s and 90s, I believe, as well. It was a long time. He wore very loud, bright sweaters. And actually, I had this great picture.
of me going door to door in New Hampshire with George Herbert Walker Bush, and I never put it up because it is a fantastic picture. Him and I did it together for two days. I had the ugliest sweater on the world on, and I refuse to allow anybody except at my funeral see me in this sweater. So here's the thing. I actually have a theory about what Kylie said about the more is more. I believe that the answer to this is,
is cocaine. The 1980s, every designer in the world was coked out of their mind. But then back moving forward again in the 1990s, it then kind of fell short again. People stopped wearing these crazy sweaters. The only people you'd start seeing them in is the elderly. Cocaine use dropped in the 90s. There you go. So it's your unfashionable older relative was wearing these sweaters in the 90s. And then in 2002, this is the first reported
ugly Christmas sweater party. Was that late? Yeah. Wow. It was.
It was from a retirement home in Vancouver. And they all just started, they just decided to wear their ugliest sweater. You know what they, who could up show the next person, whoever they weren't buying them. This was, this was like who could collect over the last few years. And employee Chris Boyd then took notice of this. He was complimenting them, but thought it was an amazing idea. So he got his friends to all throw a party that year. Um,
to have the most cheesy feel good Christmas sweater Christmas party that they could have and then from there they then levied up the tradition and
made it grow larger and larger so other people could join in. And then that's supposedly when the ugly Christmas sweater parties began. And you are now carrying on the tradition this weekend with friends and girlfriends. I probably know six people here in the Phoenix Valley that are having ugly sweater parties this weekend. Yeah, it was very hard to choose.
There were so many good ones. Well, that was a good Kylie corner today. Yeah, very good. Got to have a positive one next week, too. I got some lined up. That's what I wanted. Yeah. We're going to finish, folks, from a clip from a movie called Margin Call. I think after you hear the clip, you'll understand how it relates to Hunter Biden. And we'll close on that. Jeremy, go ahead. Did you really make two and a half million last year? Sure. How did you spend it all? I was probably quickly...
You know, you learn to spend what's in your pocket. Two and a half million goes quickly. All right, let's see. So the tax man takes half up front, so you're left with one and a quarter. My mortgage takes another 300 grand. I sent 150 home for my parents, you know, keep them going. So what's that? 800. All right, 800. Spent 150 on a car, about 75 on restaurants, probably 50 on clothes. I put 400 away for a rainy day. That's smart. Yeah, as it turns out, 'cause it looks like the storm's coming.
Still got 125. Yeah, well, I did spend $76,520 on hookers, booze, and dances. But mainly hookers. 76.5? I was a little shocked initially, but then I realized I could claim most of it back as entertainment. It's true. So that's the movie Margin Call, and apparently he has the same account as Hunter Biden does. Anyway, folks, we hope you have a great weekend. Thank you for joining us. We'll be back next week for a Christmas show. We hope you look forward to it. Take care.