Peace Through Strength with Congressman Rich McCormick
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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votewebdomain from GoDaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm the co-host, Sam Stone.

As always, a great lineup of guests for you today. Our first guest up, Dr. Rich McCormick. He is also Congressman Rich McCormick, a decorated veteran and emergency room physician who serves Georgia's 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

And he has a fantastic and amazing background, raised by a single mother, worked as a paperboy. This is someone who truly worked his way up. Congressman McCormick, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome to the program. Thanks. Great to be with you today. So tell us about the paperboy job. Yeah.

How did you get doing that, and what did you learn? Well, imagine this. When I was in middle school, this was before they had child labor laws enforcement, I used to actually pick berries in the fields with the migrant workers, and I found out that it's back-breaking work. You get sunburned. Your back hurts. Even in middle school age, it's just brutal. And then you turn these huge cartons of strawberries, and you make about $5.75 for an entire day's work. I was like, this sucks.

I'm going to go make the real money and go buy myself a Schwinn bicycle and hand-paint it lime green with the only paint I had in the garage and make the real big bucks delivering papers off my bike, which you can't do anymore either. I mean, think about it. We don't even allow kids to ride around on bikes and deliver papers anymore. We don't allow kids to ride around on bikes for anything on their own anymore. Congressman, did you see the movie Better Off Dead?

I have not. Well, he has a paper boy that contormants him the whole show because he didn't tip him at Christmas. Did you ever have to push anybody to make sure they gave you a tip over Christmas? You know, I didn't even think about things like that when I was growing up. You didn't have the automatic tips. Nobody thought like that. I mean, my mom made me tar the roof of the garage when I was a kid in the summer. I painted, I stripped the whole house down. I painted it. I mean, can you imagine a teenager doing that now?

Nowadays, on top of the roof, I didn't have a ladder tall enough for the top of the house, so I was leaning over the side of the house. I have pictures of it, of me painting the house trim on the top. That would instantly be 37 IG posts talking about child labor exploitation and a visit from child services.

Right? Yeah, we had to push lawnmower that I had to get a running start on because it was so bad and old. So I had to walk to school uphill both ways, right? Exactly. So you served in the military, in the Marine, you flew helicopters, you earned your master's in business administration, your wife's a doctor, you're a doctor. What made you decide you have a very fulfilling life that's making a difference in the world? What made you decide to say, I'm gonna go run for Congress and deal with this chaos up there?

You know, it was interesting. I went down to – I'd never been to one political meeting. I'd never been to a fundraiser, didn't know any politicians. Went down to the Capitol with a bipartisan group of doctors to take on Surprise Billion in Georgia. Surprise Billion affects about half of all Americans, probably more than that now. Congress hadn't done anything about it, so we were trying to handle it on a state level. By the way, Congress did pass something last year, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Becerra –

has absolutely butchered its application, taken it truly outside the purview of what Congress intended, and got taken to court by Texas, I think, four times, lost all four of those cases, by the way, and he is a lawyer, just so you know. So this is kind of the BS that we're putting up with. We went down to the Capitol, and it was somebody in my own party

who messed with our bill, which was very good, very well-rounded, very patient-oriented. It was built on your experience as a doctor. Yes, and it was for the patient, basically. It was patiently advocacy-oriented. And this guy was trying to have a bill passed that represented special interests, insurance companies, just like they're doing right now in Congress with the secretary, and it made me very angry. I was

We were all in our white coats. I was taking my white coat off during the middle of the hearing. And they're like, what are you doing? I said, well, they're not going to respect me as a doc. I'm going to be a Marine. And let's go to work. And they're like, you're going to get kicked out of here. So I was ranting and raving about it at lunch. And they said, well, if you don't like it, why don't you run for office?

I'm like, well, what do you got to do for that? I had no clue on what to do. They set me up with somebody. I was going to run against my state senator. And when she moved up to run for Congress, I just followed her right up and we went head to head. And I think in an 11-way race, we ended up winning by 40% against her. And she had every mayor that sort of won endorsed her. I think she had a million dollars to start off with. And we crushed her because we were on the right side of history.

If I'm right, if I tell me if I'm wrong here, I think there are literally in Congress three times more Republican members who are doctors versus Democrats.

Yes, you're absolutely correct. And by the way, the footnote of that is there's not a whole lot of doctors to begin with. I don't even think we have more than 10 MDs. We have a couple of DDSs and dentists, and then we have some pharmacists that are all kind of on the same committee kind of trying to represent that health care community. But I think we have around 180 lawyers.

just to put that in perspective. Well, lawyers got to do something in order to live. Nobody needs that many lawyers, Chuck. So, Congressman, we're with Congressman McCormick from Georgia. Congressman, so Chris Murphy, who has...

Senator Chris Murphy just posted the most ridiculous tweets ever. And this morning he posted that new polling shows that when Democrats explain how Republicans killed the toughest border bill in decades, Republicans' 15-point advantage on the border disappears. My question for you is, what's it going to take to get the Republican House caucus to start going out and talking about more, say, we passed a border bill. It's called, you know, H.R. 2. This is what it does. Because

My question is, if people knew the difference between what Chris Murphy's talking about and what the House did, that Republicans would get 65, 70 percent support because that actually solves the problem. So what what needs to happen to get the Republican Congress to go out and just start comparing to say, look, this is what they had. This is what we passed. Well, I'll go a step further. Actually, we have the same laws that Obama and Trump had.

So do you know, we did HR to codify the way that it was being enforced before because Biden literally ignores laws. He when I remember when Obama was getting pressured and heckled actually during a speech because one of the people in the audience, his mom had been deported by Obama and they were going to escort him off the ground. Obama's like, no, no, leave me here. Let's talk about this. We are a nation of laws and

And we are a sovereign nation with a sovereign border. And we are enforcing the law. If you don't like the law, change the law. And I'm happy to do that. But we are a nation of laws. And that's why we enforce our border. That's why we deport people who are here illegally. The same law applies now. We still have a sovereign border. We still have the ability to stop people before they ever get through Mexico because that's what's supposed to stay in Mexico is a law.

We are ignoring it. We are trying to fill the United States up. By the way, remember, Texas just picked up two congressional seats. Probably should have picked up three. Georgia should have picked up one. Arizona should have picked up one. Yeah. Yep. And they should have lost more than one in California and definitely more in New York.

New York, but they kind of cheated the system. And now they're trying to pack these sanctuary states, if you will, with people who are not citizens that they count in a census so they can keep their congressional seat. And if you don't believe me, think about this. In the last three months, we've

We've had more than a congressional seat worth of people come across the border. In the last three years, we've had 14 congressional seats worth of people come across the border. That should be scary as hell for you guys, not just because of the way we vote, not just because of congressional districts, but because they're all consumers. They cannot have a job. They cannot pay taxes. All they do is eat.

which we supply all the food. They need shelter, we supply all the shelter. They need medical, we supply all that. And if they have babies, guess what? We're on the hook for the entire lifetime of that child. That should be awe-inspiring to people who care about debt and about security. And oh, by the way, when we were down in Florida this last month, my Uber driver had been here for four months. I think he had come here illegally. He said in his caravan, he knew of four people that were bragging about murdering people.

And if you want to know why Venezuela is going down to an all-time low in crime, first of all, it's probably because they're not enforcing laws. But secondly, because they're emptying their jails and sending them to America. Correct. Think about it. This is crazy. You have child traffickers. You have murderers, rapists. You have people who are bringing fentanyl here to America. You literally have the cartels using this migration, this illegal migration, to devastate America.

Well, for any country that does not like or is not allied with the United States, it makes all the sense in the world to send your prison population here. It saves you a ton of money. It improves your society. And you put that problem on us. Congressman, we have just about three and a half minutes before we end up this segment. You are big. You're on the House Armed Services Committee, Foreign Affairs, Science, Space and Technology. Talk to us about what this country needs to do to really get back to peace through strength.

and to quell some of this conflict around the globe by being in a position not to tolerate it. Yeah. So let's start. I'm also the only freshman on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and this is the most germane time for NATO ever. It was formed to resist an invasion of a communist country of Europe, and that's exactly what's happening. You don't want to call him communist, whatever. You want to call him autocracy. He is a Marxist.

who has the third largest standing army in the world invading a European country. So that's what NATO was formed to resist that sort of thing. That's why we just took on two new members. We're at 32 members. Thank you to Finland and Sweden for joining the fight. I think they'll be great members. Here's the problem. We do have a movement inside the Republican Party, and I'm just going to call it what it is. It's an isolationist movement.

We think that we can, and Reagan said some great things on this, by the way, that I'll quote right at the very end of this, but we cannot afford to be isolationist because isolationism leads to globalism. Because I guarantee you, if we're not doing our part in Europe or in Asia or wherever else like that, we will be replaced as global leaders. China already has way more influence than us in Africa, in the Far East,

And definitely, even in a lot of Western Hemisphere, in the Western Hemisphere where we are, we literally have more influence by China in what was Argentina until Malay took over. Definitely in Brazil and Colombia and Venezuela and Cuba and in Panama. That's where China has more influence than us. If we don't come out and show that we are global leaders –

And there's a big difference between being isolationist and global leaders. Look, we cannot be isolationist and still lead the world. We have to make sure that we protect our debt. If we have runaway debt, we'll get downgraded to the world currency. We'll lose our global place economically. If we're not strong militarily, if we don't stand up to China and Taiwan, we lose 100% of our chip production for AI. The CHIPS Act did not protect any of that.

This is what really, really worries me is that we keep on thinking that we're going to exist in our own little box and that Israel and Ukraine, by the way, one of the five top resource rich countries in the world will be protected. It's just not true. We have a part to play. And if we invite away every single secretary of state we've ever had, Republican and Democrat, including Pompeo, who's Trump's, says we should be part of this organization.

to resist Ukraine, the invasion of Ukraine. We have to be strong. Absolutely. We have to stand up against Iran, too. Congressman, we have about 30 seconds before we come to the end here. How do folks follow you and your work and support your efforts? So if you look at it, I'll just...

Google me, Rich McCormick, Congress. You'll see our websites, both Instagram, our official website, our campaign website, easy to find. And I want to end with this. Reagan said,

We learned that isolation never was and never will be acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. Thank you so much, Congressman. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

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We're continuing on right now with Joe Setjen. He is the Senior Communications Manager at the Goldwater Institute and recently had a piece out about city officials from Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Avondale

took a trip to Portland, Oregon. Which is like saying, I'm going to send Congress to Congo and Haiti and Ethiopia to learn how capitalism works. Yeah, so they sent them there to learn how to deal with homelessness. It's insane. Portland is like the worst at this. They're right there with San Francisco as the worst. It's unbelievable. Joe, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the program. Well, thanks so much for having me on the show. So tell us about this taxpayer-funded trip

to Portland, which can't teach anybody anything about drug addiction or homelessness. Yeah, absolutely. So let me just start off by saying, you know, you guys covered it pretty well, but when you want to do something right, you do not. You should never, ever take the tips from the people who did it wrong. But that's exactly what's going on in Arizona. Now, we were able to obtain some emails between these folks, you know,

She's deputy city manager in Phoenix and her counterparts in some other places, in Scottsdale, Avondale, Mesa, Glendale. And she's part of this group called the Maricopa Association of Governments. And Phoenix's deputy city manager, the one who oversees the Phoenix Office of Homeless Solutions, basically said, you know, given all the problems we're having with homelessness, we want to plan a trip to Portland to learn what we can do.

Yeah.

But why did they think this was a good... Do you know why they thought this was a good idea to go there? Was there any indication in their email why they thought Portland was the place to go? Not sure. And that's actually what some of her counterparts said. They said, we're totally down for a field trip, but Portland. Why everywhere? It's such a curious choice. And, you know, I think that's what we're trying to figure out. Why would you want to go to Portland? I mean...

Homelessness is horrible. It's a terrible problem in Portland. It went up 65% over the past eight years. Just in 2023 alone, it spiked 20%. And we know that Portland's leaders, you know,

These progressive leaders take a very hands-off approach to crime, vandalism, public drug use, public camping. And this beautiful town is now being overrun by homeless encampments. So it's very curious. It's a great question. So why did they go to Portland? Do you think maybe somebody else funded it? Some progressive group or some NGO funded this trip to Portland?

This was actually a taxpayer-funded trip to Portland. And that's just what, it's just the icing on top of the cake, isn't it? What do you think they spend on this trip?

Boy, you know, that's a good question. Maybe we should file some public records. Yeah. No, no. I think people would like to know. I think that's worthwhile for taxpayers to know when cities are talking about, well, we don't have enough money for parks. We don't have enough money for shelters. But we're taking a trip to Portland, which is just – I mean, Portland is a disaster right now. It's like a old Kurt Russell. Remember the escape from New York? Portland.

Portland is going through the same thing right now. Axios reporting that Oregon and Portland led the nation in homelessness among families and youth in 2023. Led the nation.

It's ridiculous. And what's in my research for writing this piece, I actually found out that more than half of Portlanders want to leave the city. If they could afford it, they would leave. This is who Arizona and Phoenix and, you know, these places, this is who they want to copy, where nobody wants to live in Portland. Let's continue on this topic, but I want to switch gears. What is going on with the zone? Before we leave this, because I was just looking up some numbers.

The city spent Portland spent one point seven billion to fix this problem. In 2023, they had approximately 20,000 homeless people. So they've spent eighty five thousand dollars per person.

Yeah. And look, has it helped the issue? No, it's made it worse. Where does that $85,000 go per person? I mean, what are they spending on? Is it just all typical NGOs and government employees? It's all being eaten up just the way it is here with our much smaller budget in Phoenix, I assume. It's being eaten up by the people who are supposed to be serving the homeless, not the homeless. I mean, you know, you get some meals, you get some shelters, you get some overpriced housing, but you don't get much of any. Well, let's talk about Phoenix a minute. What's going on with the zone?

Yeah, so, you know, as we know, it took a court order for Phoenix to finally clean up the zone. So, you know, they're cleaning it up. It was one of the nation's largest homeless encampments. And we know that, here's the thing, cannot trust the government to make things better. They could not trust the government to clean up the zone because they wanted the government to clean up the zone. But instead...

government literally gave courtesy rides to homeless people into the zone. They brought them into the zone. They knew that this was going to destroy people's property. I hate the vandalism. I hate to throw another city out under the bus, but I used to watch Glendale PD pull up and just dump people out of the back of their cars in the zone. Oh, I believe it. It's ridiculous. That's literally what's happening. That's not an exaggeration. That's not hyperbole.

Go ahead. Here's what we want to do about it. We know that it took, you know, as I said, it took

for telling them they have to do something for Phoenix to clean up the zone. That's why we're really urging the Arizona legislature right now to pass this bill that would actually help. It's HCR 2023 in the House. It's SCR 1006 in the Senate. And what it does is it protects these law-abiding residents' rights.

these property and business owners, their livelihoods are being destroyed and it's not their fault because the government has a duty to protect them. They pay taxes for health and for all these services and they are not getting what their taxes pay for. In fact,

The city of Phoenix and all these cities are actually destroying their livelihoods. So what this bill does is it says you can claim a refund for damages, you know, for the mitigation expenses incurred as a result of the government's failure to safeguard their rights.

We're trying to get this on the ballot so that Arizonans can take matters into their own hands since the government's not going to solve the problem. Great, Bill. I was talking to one of Phoenix's community action officers, Chuck, the other day, and she said, listen, obviously we've spread the homeless out throughout the city when we cleared up the zone. Right. But they are actually having some success now because they are doing more enforcing of anti-camping laws. They're having more success getting people into programs and into shelters and into treatment. So...

It's not fully addressing the problem. They're still not as aggressive as they need to be. But this was a positive step that came from this lawsuit. That's a very positive step. And we need to make sure that this works because we don't want them to become like Canada and start euthanizing these people, which Canada would do right now. Absolutely. This lawsuit showed that, you know, citizens can take matters into their own hands and actually force action on homelessness. That's exactly what happened here.

Joe, we have just about 40 seconds left before we come to the end of this segment. How do folks follow you and stay up with the work, the great work Goldwater is doing?

Yeah, absolutely. You can go to Goldwater Institute dot org and just follow, you know, all that we're doing there. We're also on social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, excuse me, Facebook, Instagram. Just feel free to look up Goldwater Institute. You can also find me on X at Joe underscore F-E-T-Y-O-N. Fantastic. Joe Setian, Senior Communications Manager here at the Goldwater Institute. Thank you so much for joining us. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of studio for this segment, but we have with us in studio Arizona State Senator Anthony Kern. Senator Kern, welcome to the program. Thank you for joining us. You have a really interesting bill that you got through the Senate, right, this week or last week.

Tell folks a little bit about that real quick. Sure. I'm assuming you're speaking on the Ten Commandments bill. Yeah. So this has been getting some national attention. There's some focus on this because it's one of those issues that seems to inflame the left for no reason I can truly identify. Right.

Yeah, well, you know, anytime you want to put a satanic statue up in our public places, in our taxpayer-funded buildings, the left is all in favor of that. But when you want to take a Ten Commandments and opt in for a teacher to maybe talk about the Ten Commandments— And that's really all the bill did, was say this can be in the classroom, and it can be taught. Yes. Yeah, just like our national motto, our Pledge of Allegiance, you know, our Declaration of Independence.

All that, the teacher is allowed per statute to talk about those things, and all of them include a reference to God. This just adds the Ten Commandments to allow a teacher to opt in if he or she wants to tell the students about the Ten Commandments. Well, and what I find so interesting about this objection is the Ten Commandments, I mean, a lot of our listeners know I'm Jewish, but the Ten Commandments are foundational to the legal system and the moral principles

of our legal system. It's the background behind English common law. It's the background behind a lot of the legal...

predecessors to the United States system. Yeah. Yeah. Thou shall not kill. Right. Thou shall not murder. Thou shall not steal. Thou shall not, you know, commit adultery. Those are basic tenets, like you just said, of our government system. The Ten Commandments is in our U.S. Supreme Court. The Ten Commandments is referenced in many, many monuments in our at our at our at Washington, D.C. So and even at our own state capitol, which I know the left would love to see removed. Right.

But the bottom line is, is if it's, you know, transgendering a student, they're all in favor of it. If it's allowing little boys to go into little girls' bathrooms, they're all in favor of it. But dare you, and even a Democrat senator said this, I do not want my children hearing about God in our public schools. And we have just a short segment here, and I want to get to something you have coming up, which I think is kind of interesting and folks should know about. But

One of the things I find interesting about that is, you know, outside of communist countries, outside of satanic beliefs, every country on earth essentially uses these commandments as the basis of their law, the foundation of their law. Yes.

I agree. I mean, you look outside, like you just said, outside of Marxism, outside. But it's just this is a good versus evil war we're in right now. The United States of America has been told the lie of separation of church and state. That is an absolute lie. That is there. That is nothing in the Constitution. That is a a letter that Ben Franklin wrote to the Danbury Baptist, period.

And so the only thing in our foundational documents, it says the government shall not create a mandatory church of its own. So that was a Church of England reference at that time. Yep. Yep. Yep. So so the lie of separation of church and state is just that we believed it for so long. We kicked God out of everything. And I believe in order to turn this country around at this point.

It's not a Republican Democrat issue. It is really a good versus evil. The left is evil. The uniparty is evil. There are good Republicans in the state legislature, and we're pushing, as you saw the vote, it was a bipartisan vote. I'm sorry, a bipartisan vote. Republicans voted in favor. Democrats voted against the Ten Commandments.

And at the same time, they're okay with teaching the Anton LaVey Satanic Bible to our children because it's expanding their knowledge. Yeah, they're fine teaching the Satanic Bible. They're fine teaching pornography to kindergartners. Yes.

But they don't want people to learn the moral foundational basis of our law. That's it. And we have one of our senators. He was in a House committee hearing yesterday that literally one of the Democrats just blew a gasket because he showed them what is being taught to our kindergartners. Literal pornography, literal man and woman having sex.

And God only knows what else. He literally showed that picture in committee. The Democrat stood up, went ballistic. And he said, if you vote against this bill that he was Senator Hoffman, if you vote against this bill, this is what you're voting for, allowing our kids to be taught and showed. And it's literal pornography. So before we go, we have one minute here. You have a fantastic event coming up. And folks, stay tuned. Make sure you get our podcast segment because we're going to have more from Anthony Kern, state senator in Arizona there. But what is this? What is this event you got going?

on? Yeah, it's called Heal Our Land. The Bible says, you know, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, turn from their wicked ways, seek my face, then I will heal their land. Our only hope is God. Our only hope is bringing God back into the school, back into the public sphere. So this event is on March 9th. It's at 5 o'clock. You can go to kernconcert.com, kernconcert.

KernConcert.com for tickets. And it's an event with Johnny Diaz, Anthony Kern, Seth Leibson, and Robert Kiyosaki. It's a great event. That's a fantastic lineup. And you know what? That's a fun event to have for a political fundraiser type gathering. There's not enough fun in politics. So folks, go to, is it KernConcert.com? Yeah, KernConcert.com. K-E-R-N Concert.com. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, isn't it time to do well for yourself by doing good for others? Check out our friends at investyrefi.com. That's invest, the letter Y, then refi.com. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return for yourself. You have total flexibility with your money. And at the same time you're doing that, you can help people who need a break because you're helping them refinance their money.

They're high-interest rate college student loans. This is a fantastic opportunity. Check them out. InvestYRefi.com or 888-YRefi24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. Our next guest up today is Dan McLaughlin, friend of the program, senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at the National Review Institute. You can follow him on X at AtBaseballCrank.com.

Fantastic. It's still the best X out there. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. First of all, Dan, before I get to my question, who do you predict will be in the World Series for the 2024 season? Important stuff. Yeah. As a Mets fan, I'm going to say not the Mets. But they do appear to be heading in a good direction.

Well, you know, it's not really spring training until the opening day starter is unavailable for opening day. So we've already crossed that line. So who's your prediction? Who's a National League, American League rep in World Series? Yeah, I mean, I guess if I had to pick now, I'd say, I mean, I guess it really is probably the Dodgers and the Orioles. I mean, the Braves are still a tough nut to crack, though. Yeah, that'd be a great story. So,

There's this old Winston Churchill story. Remember when he's talking to the socialite and says, ma'am, would you sleep with me for five million pounds? And she says, well, I suppose we need to discuss the terms. And then he goes, well, how about five pounds? And she goes, what type of woman do you think I am?

And his reply was, we've already established that. Now we're just haggling over the price. I sort of feel that story is appropriate for family radio. I feel it's over appropriate for this Newsom story with Pandera Bread comes to find out that Pandera Bread's founder gave him one hundred thousand dollars. And now he's exempt exempted because they make bread for twenty dollar minimum wage. I mean, this is this is the type of stuff that leads to populism, is it not?

Actually, it's the kind of – yes and no. It's also the kind of thing that results from populism because populism is how you get the $20 minimum wage in the first place. Correct, correct, correct. And then the elites look at that and they say, well, my friends shouldn't have to be subjected to that. Yeah.

It's also going to create a perverse incentive, of course, because now like, you know, every every every like chain restaurant and fast food joint is going to look at. So how can we make enough bread on the premises to qualify? Exactly. I mean, I would assume Subway almost has to qualify, wouldn't they? They should. They make all their own bread. Yeah. So we had elections in Michigan this week. Did we learn anything from it for Biden and Trump?

I mean, I think what we've learned yet again from Michigan is much the same as we saw in South Carolina and New Hampshire, which is that, you know, the parties are sticking with Trump and Biden. They're stuck with them. But there's a pretty big undercurrent of discontent there.

You know, there's a lot of voters who are not yet reconciled to the idea that these are their party's nominees. You know, in Michigan, the specific grievance against Biden in Michigan, which puts him on the horns of a dilemma, is that, you know, there was a big sort of movement against his qualified support for Israel.

And Biden has been, you know, inconsistent on that, but he's been at least more good than bad. I mean, one lesson there is that the uncommitted vote that was opposed to Biden, you know, it was noteworthy, but it was not huge. The idea that it's a big election-losing issue to support Israel against Hamas is kind of nuts. I've seen no evidence. If you're in a close race, anything happens.

Sorry, Dan, but I've seen no evidence that Democrats will actually stay away from Democrat candidates over things like this. I mean, they always find a way to unite, and that's one of the differences between the two parties. Well, that brings me one question, though. So, Dan, I think third parties are going to play a real difference this cycle. If you get Kennedy on the ballot in battleground states, you have Jill Stein. Cornel West, I think, is just a vanity project. I think he has no organizational skill. But if you have Jill Stein...

RFK and maybe no labels. Who knows? Who knows what no labels does? I mean, they're qualified to be on the ballot. What percentage of vote do you think they take? And do they take more from Trump or Biden? My assumption is if no labels or RFK is on the ballot, that 15 percent of Republicans who do not want to vote for Trump go to one of those two. I think they won't sit on their hands. I think just go say this is my middle finger vote. What are your thoughts on this, Dan? Yeah, I mean, I think there's look, obviously, no third party candidate.

has ever won the presidency. Only one of them, Teddy Roosevelt, who was a former president, has ever finished second. You know, so, but these campaigns can make a difference at the margins. I think you have to look at it in two dimensions, so...

because it's partly the people who will go third party, and then it's partly the people who will just stay home. I think it's likely that turnout is going to be lower than it was four years ago. Yes, yes. You know, 2020 was a very high turnout election. I think

I think you're going to see a lot of people burned out. I mean, the other thing about that, the parties may end up sort of implicitly embracing the fact that, you know, it might be better to have some of your voters vote for RFK than stay home because at least some of those people might vote for your candidates down the ballot.

That makes a lot of sense. I mean, one of the things that I've been talking about with folks in talking with people who are maybe willing to vote for Donald Trump but don't like him, I'm very concerned that a lot of those folks might end up casting a vote for Trump because they're so concerned about Biden for any various reason, but then punish Republicans down ballot. Yeah, I mean, that would be sort of the reverse of it if people are just like, look, I gagged to vote for Trump, but I'm not going to give him any help.

So, you know, I mean, look, I think, for example, an example of that, I think a lot of the parole voters in 96, the second time around, I think a lot of them were really the people who saved Republican control of Congress with Bob Dole getting beaten up by Bill Clinton. That's a wonderful point and good insight on that. All right. Mitch McConnell said he's stepping down as his majority minority leader, majority leader, whatever, the Republican leader in Senate this after this election. It's always interesting.

interesting to watch people in Congress on, let's say, the Freedom Caucus complain about this guy when Mitch McConnell is actually governed in his life. He actually we have a Supreme Court because of Mitch McConnell. As much as people want to say it's all Trump, it's just without Mitch McConnell. Do you think that first of all, without Mitch McConnell, do you think Donald Trump would have had his three picks for the Senate from the Senate? Yeah, no, there's no question he would not have had three. He might only had one.

Do you think there's any chance he has the other judges that Trump put on the courts, federal judges, appellate courts? I mean, again, I think they would not have been able to fill as many vacancies. So, I mean, there's no question that for both McConnell and Trump, the judiciary is the strongest part of their legacy. And the irony is that it took the two of them working together to do it. Who's a functional leader who could replace McConnell?

I don't know. I mean, Mitch has the thing is he's run the caucus for so long. He's been the longest serving party leader in Senate history that nobody else has really had to step up and learn how to do the job.

I mean, you have some people there who have a little bit of leadership experience, right? Like, you know, Marco Rubio was Speaker of the Florida House for two years. But for the most part, the people who were actually trying to, you know, trying to get the job, I mean, the main contenders are sort of the three Johns, right? John Thune, John Barrasso, and John Cornyn.

There's some talk that Rick Scott may make a bid. He at least was a governor. But I don't know that any of them really have the experience, but I think they're serious people. The question – there's nobody who sounds like the House Freedom Caucus who's really making an open bid right now.

So Mitch McConnell, how active is he right now in recruiting Senate candidates in these various states? It sounds like the Republicans, my guess would be Republicans. I think it's a pretty likelihood that Republicans regain the majority in the Senate this cycle and lose the House. What are your thoughts on that? How active is Mitch McConnell and recruiting these candidates and funding them?

Yeah, the House is up for grabs. And the other guy I should mention as a possible dark horse for the Senate leadership is Steve Daines. And Daines has actually been – he took over from Rick Scott as the head of the NRSC. And he's actually been heavily involved in the candidate recruitment. I think he's been, to all visible appearances, much more active in that area than McConnell, which is good because –

McConnell has always been serious about recruiting good candidates for the party, but his judgment has often been bad. And that even goes back to the Tea Party era.

So I think McConnell kind of washing his hands of this a little bit and, you know, sort of being on the program with Danes has actually so far been been reasonably successful. I mean, I think they unfortunately are going to be stuck with a bad candidate in Arizona. But a number of these other races, they're getting the people they want. And the map is just

brutal for the Democrats. It's just, it's really, really hard to see how the Democrats don't end up losing a seat or two at a minimum. What's the best case scenario for Republicans regarding Senate elections in 24, in your feeling? What's the highest they could get, reasonably? I mean, yeah, I mean, if, look, if, I mean, the thing about the whole race is that

At the end of the day, I don't think the bottom is going to drop out of Trump. You know, I think Trump is what he is. You know, he has a very low ceiling, low ceiling, high floor. I mean, you're not undercutting him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But but Biden, I mean, the bottom really could drop out of Biden.

You know, people are just they're just they don't think he's up to the job. And, you know, if there's if there's a real there's still the possibility for all of Trump's baggage that there's just a real kind of.

you know, something that looks maybe not like a big red wave, but enough of one that the Republicans could pick up. Yeah, they could end up with like 53, 54, 55 seats. I think it's much more likely that they end up with like 51 seats. But, you know, there's a bunch of states in play where they're going to make a serious play. And and if the turnout

is reasonably favorable to them. Uh, that could matter. I mean, the other thing about the third party candidates too, you have to remember here is that right now, and again, we don't know what the no labels, which is for now, the no candidate party, um,

You know, we don't know what their ticket's going to look like, but right now it looks like all of the third-party energy is going to be on the left rather than the right. Correct. Okay, so Donald Trump has all these fines, these judgments against him. We're not going to talk about the validity of these court rulings. I think they're ridiculous a lot of ways. But that being said, does truth social going public save Donald Trump on this? I mean, supposedly his share is worth $4 billion plus. Does it save him?

Yeah, I mean, it may arrive a little too late to deal with his immediate problem, right? Which is his immediate problem is he has to put up a bond for like half a billion dollars to appeal the civil fraud verdict in the Trump organization case and the defamation verdict in the E. Jean Carroll, you know, sex assault cases.

And so he needs to come up with that cash quickly, and he's going to have to borrow money. But the prospect that they're going to do this truth social public merger slash public offering soon and that he could net a couple of billion dollars worth of stock –

That definitely gives him something to borrow against. And, you know, related to that, I mean, he still can't sell. The thing is, if he makes all this, if he gets all these shares, he can't sell them right away.

Yeah. He's going to be legally restricted and he would tank the stock price if he tried. But one minute before we end, I thought the ruling yesterday or the day before in New York was significant, allowing him to use New York banks to borrow that money from because he's got an existing relationship with those banks and a lot of assets on their books. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's big. Dan, how do people follow you?

I'm at Baseball Crank on Twitter, which I still call it Twitter, and at National Review Online. Fantastic. Fantastic. Dan McLaughlin, thank you so much for joining us today. We always appreciate having you on the program. Folks, make sure you stay following him. Thank you to all our guests. Really fantastic show today, and make sure you tune in for the podcast segment. Check us out, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, wherever you get your favorite podcasts, on

on Twitter at Breaking Underscore Battle. We'll be right back. 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.voteweb domain from GoDaddy.com. Get yours now.

Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, we're continuing on with state senator, Arizona state senator Anthony Kern. I always forget because we're on in so many states now. We've got, I think, 16 stations going on for this program. But if they're not tuned into the podcast, they need to be. Because I think we have some of the more interesting discussions in this part of the program. But there's some interesting stuff going on at the Senate and in Arizona House right now.

Tell us a little bit about some of those other items that are coming up. Sure. Well, there's some good legislation coming through, but it's very it's very party line vote. We have had in the Senate ad hoc hearings regarding the ASU. And unfortunately, we have a Democrat governor. So it's hard to get a lot of things done.

through. It is hard to get a lot of things through, but a lot of things will be going to the ballot. So if we can pass them again, most of them on a party line vote, a lot of them will be going to the ballot. So we have been fighting the ASU, U of A, NAU debacle where they claim they have free speech, but they have nothing but. But now we've had Ann Atkinson on this program. I mean, they are just a mess at ASU. It is really and worse.

A lot of people don't realize ASU is the birthplace of critical race theory. Yeah, yeah. That it actually came out of ASU and their department and now has spread countrywide. That's the same thing as DEI. It's all this stuff. It's all connected. Well, and it's being led, Sam, by the great and powerful –

And Michael Crow, who, you know, touts and I don't want to keep bashing Michael Crow. Arizona's best public taxpayer money developer. Yeah, right. Exactly. And, you know, being paid over nine hundred thousand dollars a year by Arizona taxpayers who who who literally has said he's smarter than the founders because of climate change. They didn't include climate change in the Constitution or the founding documents whatsoever.

And they should have. So they got it wrong. He calls us imbeciles and idiots as elected officials. Everybody's, you know, you know, we're not all as smart as him. But I really wish he climbed down from his ivory tower and get into the real guts of what's really going on in this in the university, because conservative students are not being heard. Conservative speakers are being shut down like Dennis Prager and Robert Kiyosaki and and just, you know, you know, Turning Point USA, you

While at the same time they're holding Marxist rallies and pro-communist rallies and students for Palestine rallies, anti-Israel. I've met with Jewish students. I've met with students on the campus. They are terrified. They don't know what's going on. In fact, yesterday I had a group of the student body government at Tempe at ASU came down to the Capitol. Great young men, probably 10 or 15 of them. They came down because they just passed a

a mirror bill of my transparency bill, which is the teachers should be posting their syllabus online so parents can see. Because what's happening is one of the students on the student governing body, which passed unanimously, by the way, which they are now being pressured by the administration to remove that piece of legislation at ASU because they went down to the legislature. So what's happened is

One quick example, Sam. A student signed up for an English class. Great. He needs to learn English. Okay. He probably knows English, but he'd know it better. Okay. He's not like me. He signed up for this class. He gets into the class, and he is taught indigenous studies. Yeah. Or queer theory. Yeah. Or witches and warlocks. Are you kidding me? This is just ridiculous. More of us should have seen this coming. I remember when I went to college.

They had a course that they required called Inventing America. Yeah. Right. And it was a two semester course. And I thought, oh, man, this is going to be fantastic because let's talk about the founding fathers. Let's talk about the foundational principles of the Constitution and our legal system and our system of government. And the first semester was that you had a very old professor, you know.

Yeah.

books about and by women who accomplished nothing. And that's not an insult to them. That was the culture at that time. But if you ask me, do I want to hear about some woman who lived on a farm in Vermont who nobody's ever heard of? Or do I want to hear about the founding...

of our national system. Give me the architects. Give me the real people. Right. Or just sitting in class listening to an angry woman. Yeah. I mean, that's all just nothing but anger. I mean, I... And she... We were comparing. She gave nothing but B's and C's to the guys and all A's to the girls. Oh, bless her heart. Yeah. Yeah. See, that's typical. And the parents pay for it. Yeah. So what we're trying to do is get the syllabuses published online, which, again, all the Democrats are against.

and all the republicans are for these are tax dollars that all of us are spending i don't care if it's a queer theory class or you know gender queer you know foundations

Post it online. If you're signing up for that class, it's one thing, too. But if it's being inserted in other courses. Yeah. And hidden. Yeah. A lot of this is hidden. And so, yeah, we just need to keep pushing and pushing. Speak truth, Sam. All we have is truth. You know, men are men and women are women and men don't get pregnant. If you see my votekern.com media spot, I actually literally asked a lobbyist down at the Capitol a year ago in March.

and she said men get pregnant. Men can get pregnant. It's crazy, but that's what we have to deal with in our society now. I'm trying not to fall over laughing right now because it's just so ridiculous, the entire thing. Okay, we have about two minutes left here. Did you just touch on something else? You're running for an office that's pretty important in a pretty competitive race. Yes.

Yeah. So, uh, CD eight congressional district eight, Debbie Lesko's, uh, she's, she's vacating the chair. She's running for another office right now. Yeah. And I looked across the landscape and I debated because I get a lot of calls say, Hey, please stay in the Senate. We need you. We need you. You're one of the best fighters we have here. Thank you. And I, and I, I, you know, I, you know, I, I, I really, and just you saying that kind of makes me kind of choke up because I, I, I, I'm just honored that you would say that Sam. And I've had a lot of people say that, but the,

But the bottom line is we need a lot of fighters in Washington, D.C. You know, I would have been the ninth vote to oust McCarthy. So the CD8 race, you know, I look across the landscape. You've got two carpetbaggers. You've got a guy that, you know...

you know, just loves the system. And you got another guy that kind of is old school. And so I looked across and said, no, I wouldn't vote for any of these guys. You got to have a fighter for such a time as this. We don't need the same old, same old. You got to have, whether you're Trump, whether you like him or not, he's a fighter and he's going to fight for you and I, and that's what I am. And that's why, you know, I, I have to be honest about this because look, I,

We're all, you know, in state politics, you end up knowing everybody, right? Yes. I mean, I've known Abe Hamaday, who's in that race, Blake Masters, who's in that race, neither of whom live in the district. Right. I've known Blake since he was a little kid. I've known Abe for 10, 12 years. But here's the thing. They don't live there. Right. They don't live there. And that's a big deal. They don't live there, Sam, and they don't have a voting record.

So, you know, it's imperative that we cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again, expect different results. I was saying to someone this morning that with you, we know exactly what you're going to do when you go there and what you're going to fight for. And I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to crawl up the lobbyist rear end and I'm not going to, you know, get into the swamp and say, oh, this is so great. You've had plenty of opportunity to do that already if you wanted. Well, and right now at this at this current time, I have opportunity.

Probably almost every Republican in the House mad at me because I exposed them for this stupid Israel trip that they're going to take next week in the middle of session without a budget pass. We still have election issues. We still have immigration issues. And they're wanting to go take a vacation in Israel at a lobbyist paid trip. It is a wonderful country. I've been there numerous times. I've been there three times. It's fantastic. I love Israel.

I'd rather they got our business done first. Anthony Kern, we're going to let that be the last word here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, sir. Folks, I want to thank Anthony Kern and all of our guests this week for their appearance. Dan McLaughlin, always fantastic. You know, Kern, I think, surprises me and a lot of folks because he has one reputation in the press, right, as kind of a wild-eyed firebrand. For folks who don't know him here in Arizona, he's known as one of those people

You know, really aggressive Republican legislators. But here's the thing, which I found most interesting. The man knows his historical background and basis for the arguments he makes in a way that most people who get branded that way do not.

In a way which most reporters don't have that ability. They don't at all. So they do not look at the whole argument. Yeah. I mean, so this Ten Commandments Billy has, right, which just says you can go – you can put the Ten Commandments if your teacher chooses. They can teach about it in school. They can put a list of it on the wall or whatever. You talk to the reporters. They're like, no, that violates separation of church and state. Correct. Correct.

But their understanding of what the separation of church and state is has no basis in the law or foundational documents. No, not at all. And his does. It'll be interesting to see. So you think it passes the Senate and the House and vetoes by the governor? Oh, I think it gets vetoed by the governor for sure. In a heartbeat. Yeah. It's unbelievable. Sam, when you think of the ACLU, what do you think of? What is their mission? Yeah.

Well, so this is a tough one for me, Chuck. In the olden days. No, when I was a kid, I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU in my 20s, right? I mean, people know I was a Democrat. I don't feel like I've shifted that much. Their job was to defend the Bill of Rights. Right. All of it. Now, they never really defended the Second Amendment. No, no, no. But free speech, they did. Free speech. They were a nine out of ten, right? Right.

I refer to them now as the ASLU, American Select Liberties Union. I'm not even sure they do that anymore. I'll give you an example. The ACLU of Iowa came out and said canceling student debt is good actually. What does that have anything to do with the mission of the ACLU?

No, we're working up several bills in Nebraska right now for the ballot there. One of them is children aren't for sale, which adds penalties to child sex trafficking. They came out against that bill. Yeah. And what's the reasoning? Did you talk to anybody from ASLU about it? You know, I did, and I heard their testimony briefly. Their reasoning –

is that this will somehow hurt victims. I mean, there was no real reasoning behind it. This is just a leftist support organization for whatever. They all are now. Wherever you need a lefty lawyer, there's the ACLU and they're nothing else. They're a legal service for far left Democrats. It's just, it's so sad to watch these groups at once. You know, conservatives never liked them, but I always appreciated what they did.

It's important to have people protect those constitutional rights. Even when you disagree with what the people did, that's the reason they're constitutional rights. They were once utter absolutists on free speech. Not anymore. Not anymore.

So this week, Hunter Biden went to Congress, went to committee and answered questions. The funny thing about it is Joe Biden is the one who should be doing interviews. He's not. Hunter Biden absolutely should not be doing interviews. And he is. And the funny thing about him is he came out with this comment, which is just so Biden-esque. It's, I have something much bigger than even myself at stake.

We are in the middle of a fight for the future of democracy. And I feel a responsibility to everyone struggling through their own recovery to succeed. So Hunter Biden's battle with addiction is the middle of the fight for the future of democracy. That's what that's what we're telling people now. That's the sales pitch. I mean, this is they are so ridiculous. Look,

Democrats do have a real hammer against Republicans in this election, as they did in the last election with abortion. Correct. Our side is not handling that well at all. No. Right? No. I mean, it's a mess.

This whole democracy thing that the press is lit is so it's offensive. Well, if you significant way, if you did a drinking game every time the Democrats said future of democracy, we'd have a lot of dead people by November. Oh, look, you half the country be passed out before noon. Yeah, it's just unbelievable what they're doing. And they just keep saying this is the future of democracy when it's very clear, no matter what the press wants to say.

that Joe Biden allowed his name to be used to benefit Hunter Biden, which in return benefited the Biden family. That is the way their network works. Yeah, no, absolutely it is. Absolutely. And look, as a whole...

And there was a great tweet from Glenn Greenwald, who's who's really come around on the because of the free speech attacks by Democrats. Right. Talking about the judge who just threw Trump off the ballot in Illinois and this judge who typically presides over minor traffic violations. Yes. Like this is just ridiculous. Right. Right.

Here was what he said. They are exactly what they claim they fight.

One hundred percent. You know, Axios did this report on, you know, they did an interview of Hunter Biden. And in that report they did, they had an anonymous source say that Biden is worried all the criticism of Hunter's business dealings would, quote, could even lead to Hunter's relapse.

So end of quote. So basically translation, please stop reporting on the Biden family. The reporters are actually causing Hunter to relapse and Republicans are the crack dealers. Right. That's what this is all about now. And there is there is a there is not a family more adept than the Bidens than weaponizing empathy. No. And and you have a very willing national press. Right. Like the order went out a couple of weeks ago to start attacking Donald Trump on his age.

And Biden and Trump are close in years. But look. And you know that would not have happened unless the White House started pulling all those reporters in, which has been published, and said, you're not treating us fair. How come you're not pointing at him? Right. And so they all went out and started doing that. They did. This whole thing they did where he was at CPAC and he was talking about his wife. And then he turned and addressed Mercedes Schlapp, who's the executive director of CPAC. Right.

And with her name, Mercedes, and they say, oh, that's him forgetting his wife's name.

Yeah, no, I mean, this is just, you know, he speaks in non sequiturs and that gets him in trouble. Yeah, it's going to be horrible. Other fun note, Marianne Williamson unsuspended her presidential Democrat campaign this week. And I love this quote from her unsuspending her campaign quote. We have to respond to Donald Trump's dark vision of possibility. We need to have a peace academy as well as a military academy.

We have to have armies of peace builders as well as armies of military personnel. We need to play peace games, not just war games. We need to learn to wage peace, end of quote. I am interested if some sociologists out there can look at the decline of work ethic in America when we start of all the personal coaching, which she is. Yes. I mean, it'd really be interesting to know, did the decline of certain values like,

kid going and picking strawberries in a field or delivering papers did that all stop when we started getting personal coaches on to go out and push this goobity gook personal coaches and then the the concurrent dissolution of

Quality psychological care into affirmation. Yes. Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. So if you go to a psychologist who's trained in the last 15, 20 years, you get this. Oh, your problems are not your fault. We're affirming you, you know, garbage. Yeah.

Garbage. 100%. Chuck, you and I, I mean, how many people, I've had struggles at times, you've had struggles at times, everyone I know has had struggles at times. How many of those people didn't bring those struggles on themselves or didn't exacerbate them with their own actions or solve them with their own actions? Correct, correct, correct.

One little note as we end this podcast, and again, by the way, I would love to see Congressman Cormac run for Senate in Georgia. That would be great. Republicans need that type of intellect and that view of the world in there. I mean, a man that speaks from experience about hard work, being raised by a single mother, now married to a doctor. He's a doctor, served overseas. He's a fantastic person. You know, his background is so special.

Because the doctor, obviously, as an emergency room physician, that's a big deal. That's one pool of knowledge that you develop that you can take to Congress. A helicopter pilot is a whole other set of knowledge, and people don't realize all the mathematics, the engineering, the understanding of everything that goes into that.

Picking berries in the field when you're a kid is a pretty relevant thing at this time when we're talking about work ethic and immigration. Yes. This guy's got a really fantastically broad background that I believe when you have people like that, they are better members of any elected body than the people whose experience is limited to government. I agree. One final note. There is the...

Palestinian correspondent for the socialist magazine The Nation, Mohamed El-Kurd. He was complaining about all the new restrictions on people. You can't protest peacefully. You can't boycott. You can't hunger strike. You can't hijack planes. Folks, yes, he said you can't hijack planes. Yeah, yeah.

You can't march. You can't write. You can't dissent. You just can't be. This is what the nation's, the socialist magazine, the nation's Palestinian correspondent, Mohammed El-Kurd, is saying that the United States is so heavy handed that you, my dear listeners, cannot hijack planes anymore. Well, that's actually the only restriction that's on that list that is true. Yeah.

I mean, no, you can't hijack planes. Congratulations, dude. You are a terrorist. That's unbelievable. Folks, thank you for joining us. Next week, we've got a great show. We've got a couple of congressmen coming up. On behalf of Sam Stone and myself, you can visit us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Subscribe for our podcast. Subscribe for our newsletter. And you can also find us wherever you get your podcasts. Have a fantastic weekend.