[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show.
[00:00:15] The cost of the war goes through the roof. Ammon Bundy gets arrested. We've got video footage of the arrest. Instagram goes long. Details coming up.
[00:00:35] And James Edwards of the Political Cesspool with me today to break it all down. Donald Trump in Mississippi. We'll talk about that as well. James Edwards with thepoliticalcesspool.org. Dear friend, welcome back, sir. Great to be back with you, Sam. A little bit off our normal schedule, but I'm glad it worked out this way because I was just down in that after.
[00:01:01] It's a part of that aforementioned rally as an attendee when Trump visited the small town of Corinth, Mississippi, just on Monday, two days ago. And I applied for credentials to that event. I was hoping to go, but was not able to make it. However, I did get approved credentials, James. That is exactly right, Sam. And I can tell you, folks, from experience, if you have a chance to go to one of these things, having press credentials helps a lot. We can get into that.
[00:01:30] Came into that. Did you get a go? Oh, yes. No, I went. I was there. Absolutely. No, yeah, I thought you knew that. But I guess... All right, so tell me the details when you went. I'm playing stupid for the audience here a little bit to draw the story out, right? All right. So you did go. A little bit of confusion even amongst our own team here at Liberty News Radio. But yes, so I didn't even find out that he was going to be down there until last Friday. Yeah. And it wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I decided to go myself, and this thing was on Monday.
[00:02:00] And just to give you a little background to begin with, Corinth, Mississippi is a very small town. And that's the reason that I was going to go but couldn't go, right? Well, you'd have to fly into Memphis and then drive. And I was hoping to make that happen, but I just couldn't get the logistics done. It was just too short notice. And by the time those press credentials were approved, it was already early Sunday afternoon. And they approved everybody at once in one flush, and then they shut it down. But I've got a lot of history with Corinth.
[00:02:29] People don't know where it is, and you probably don't unless you're from there. It's a small town in northwest Mississippi. My paternal grandparents were born there. My great-grandparents are buried there. And I spent a lot of boyhood days in Corinth. So listen to this. With a population of just 14,000 people, it is the political and economic heart of rural Alcorn County, Mississippi. And I love the town.
[00:02:54] But when the president of the United States rolls into a place like that a week before Election Day, I don't think it's a victory lap. And you kind of wonder why, James. What the heck? It's a warning flare is what it is. So, again, you know, a confident Republican Party at this point in the game would be barnstorming the swing states. Instead, what you have in Mississippi. And they would dismiss the whole state of Utah and Corinth, Mississippi, right? Well, it was the first time Trump's been to Mississippi since 2019, okay?
[00:03:23] And the reason he was there a week before the election attempting to fortify his citadel is because Senator Sidney Hyde-Smith is in danger of losing her Senate seat. Now, I want you to think about how profound that is because the last time Mississippi sent a Democrat to the United States Senate was 1982. His name was John C. Stennis. It was his seventh re-election, his seventh term. That was the last time a Democrat was elected. 43 years ago, basically.
[00:03:50] Well, to put that into further perspective, Sam, that was the exact same month that Michael Jackson released Thriller. Okay? That's how long you have to go back to fight a Democrat senator. So, here we are now, 44 years later, and the president of the United States is working a literal cow palace. Where he was at, it was a building built with pre-engineered sheet metal panels. And he's there so the GOP doesn't lose a seat that it should have long ago banked. Now, this venue was Crossroads Arena. That's where I was at.
[00:04:17] It holds 7,700 people at maximum capacity. In true Southern style. And nobody was there, huh? Well, it was full. It was full. Oh, the mainstream press. They weren't kind of promoting that it was a full event. In fact, I don't even really see it in the news hardly. That was the thing about it. I mean, well, I'll get to that in a moment. I mean, it really did lack a lot of the, you know, we got all those press credentials, Sam, back in 2016. It really did lack the energy.
[00:04:43] Well, I don't want to look for confirmation bias just because I was much more enthused and energized by Trump at the beginning of it all. Then now as we enter into this twilight. But it seemed like, I mean, the crowd was full and they applauded at just about every line. But it wasn't the rapturous stuff, except for when he told the old folks he was going to protect their Social Security. I saw people standing. It was like Christ telling, raising Lazarus. They were getting out of their rascals and doing somersaults there.
[00:05:10] But besides that, they applauded. But you didn't see that just real, real, real excitement. But so he's at Crossroads Arena in Corinth, Mississippi. And in true Southern style, the Secret Service had this entire building ringed with a protective phalanx of John Deere tractors, I guess. So nobody could, like, drive into the place or something. I mean, the whole place. Yeah, which you know some wacko would be prone to do.
[00:05:39] So you can't blame them for this. Well, no, no, no. I love it. And I'm not knocking the place. I saw the Beach Boys there once. It's just, again, not where you expect a sitting president to be on the eve of an election like this. So a lot of people there, you get press credentials. You get to park and secure a lot. You go straight into the pen. Easy peasy. If you are a member of the general public, you can get free tickets online. But here's the thing about it, because I looked into this.
[00:06:06] They give more free tickets than they have seats. And sometimes... Yeah, just like an airplane does. Yeah, but I mean, I think the airlines book it at, like, 10% more than capacity because they are expecting, you know, some people not to come. I read... I was researching this the night before. I have read that the Trump campaign has given out as many as 20,000 of these free tickets for venues that hold not even half that. And there's two reasons for that. Number one, they want that data.
[00:06:33] They want the name, the address, the email address, and the phone number so they can continue to use you for fundraising and marketing purposes. So they want that data. It's a data harvest. So that's number one. And number two, you do have bad actors like Antifa or people who are against Trump who are going to try to gobble up these tickets and not show up. And number three, you want to make sure they can never claim it's not full. Not only is it full, but we had way more tickets people asked for. People were outside. I mean, they want that whole delivery, right? Well, they do. But it is disappointing.
[00:07:03] If you have a ticket with your name on it, you expect like a concert or a sporting event. And you expect to get in? Yeah. Even if it's general admission, you may have a bad seat if you get there. You know, if you don't camp out overnight as some people here did. Some people were there. I talked to that were there the night before sleeping in the parking lot. So if you don't want to do that, well, at least you got a place. You might be up in the nosebleeds, but you're still going to get in. Not the case. There were Trump said 22,000 people outside that couldn't get in. I was there.
[00:07:33] It was not that it. Maybe he meant to say 2000. There was definitely some people who couldn't get in, but it wasn't like that. So that's that's how that works behind the scenes. And I know some people were disappointed by not being able to get in after they had a ticket. But they did have a jumbotron set up outside and people watched it there. And you're still close to the president, I guess, because this place is a very rural and it's very small and it's kind of out in the middle of a pasture.
[00:07:58] Now, there was a lot of warm up acts, including the aforementioned Sidney Hyde-Smith, the senator down there, the Republican congressman from Mississippi, the governor of Mississippi, the chairman of the Republican Party of Mississippi. They all gave boilerplate talks. I mean, very uninspiring. Fight the left. We need a conservative. I mean, I mean it. I mean, it wasn't anything. It wasn't. It was just complete copy and paste stuff. I kind of tuned that out and was looking around at the crowd.
[00:08:28] And the crowd is interesting because it's my people. Right. I mean, I'm a first generation or excuse me, second generation Tennessean. But all my my folks are from down in Mississippi. And it was the demographics were striking. It was 100 percent white crowd, except for two black reporters that I saw. And, you know, Mississippi is interesting in that way, because Mississippi, to put some numbers in perspective, this is the state where whites is a vote as a racial block more than anywhere else. So what blacks do everywhere, whites do in Mississippi.
[00:08:58] The whites are only 55 percent of the state population, but they delivered 82 percent of their votes for Trump. Now, to contrast that, look at Vermont. Vermont, 91 percent of the population of Vermont is white, but they gave him only 33 percent of the vote. So I think that that's interesting. And this was my first full Trump stump speech since 2016. Of course, Sam, we were barnstorming the country then, the Republican National Convention and the inauguration, all with these press credentials. We were having a good time, buddy. We did.
[00:09:27] And, you know, the Cheyenne kind of wore off of some of that. But this is my first time to actually go to one. And the Cheyenne's wore off of it, James. But let's make no mistake and make this very clear. Even though Trump hasn't done what we really hoped and were disappointed, the bubble's been burst, whatever you want, you know, the balloon popped, whatever you want to call it. But, look, Donald Trump and the Republicans, compared to what these Democrats, Socialists, Communists will do, is still striking. And so you're not really voting for Donald and company.
[00:09:55] You're voting against these people that would absolutely destroy the country. Exactly. Really. These people are unhinged and off their rock and absolutely crazy. And so people need to understand that reality check, folks. I was just about to pivot into that because I'm going to give a fair and honest and non-biased assessment. It's the same as you've always done on this network. Trump does things we like. We give him credit. He does things we don't like. We talk about that. We discuss it very candidly.
[00:10:24] But I am not one that is just a never-Trumper or a Trump sycophant to whatever he does, no matter if it's radically different than what he was doing some years ago. All right. Skip the break. James needs to rock and roll on this. Go, sir. Well, I don't – I'm not entirely opposed to him or entirely in favor of him. We look at what he does and then we respond. Sure.
[00:10:43] But he knew – so I gave the demographics of that crowd and some Mississippi history there because I got to say, he absolutely remains a showman in person and with remarkable stamina. I mean he's been doing this now as president or as a candidate for 11 years, you know, all over the nation. I will say this. Just driving down to Corinth – it's an hour and a half from where I live. Driving down to Corinth and back wiped me out for a day.
[00:11:11] I mean he's doing this like every day multiple times. And I know he gets, you know, secret service. Yeah, but he eats vegetables, James. Come on. Well, it doesn't look like it. No, but seriously, he has – you know, I know he gets chauffeurs and limousines and Air Force One. But, I mean, he's in his 80s. I mean this has to take a toll. Yeah, it's incredible. There's no question. But he has remarkable stamina. And he gave the Corinthians a full and lively hour and 20-minute talk. And he knew exactly how to work that room. He knew exactly who his crowd was.
[00:11:38] Now, I got to say, he opened by invoking Willie Horton. All right. Now, people forget who Willie Horton was. He was a black convict who I believe Michael Dukakis released. And he went on to rape or murder or maybe both. And this has been a bread and butter Republican play for decades because it works. Now, but Trump took it further. He noted that rapes in Memphis and New Orleans have dropped since he sent the National Guard in.
[00:12:06] And then he went on to say that, quote, 2% of the population were committing 91% of the crimes. But he took care of them. And an attendee immediately shouted, thank you, sir. And God help me. I mean, talking as a Memphian, I'm glad the troops are here. I don't want them to leave. Trump did that. And I'm thankful for it. And he played all the hits. What you're talking about, Sam, in a moment ago, he went through the checklist. The media is the enemy. Letitia James is what you're going to get if the other side wins.
[00:12:35] Only Republicans are going to keep boys out of girls' bathrooms. Protect the Second Amendment. Keep English as the official language. Stop the border from being flooded. And frankly, that's true. He's right about that. And he reminded us that his administration has removed all the DEI language and critical race theory propaganda from the government. And they have done that. That's true to a great degree. Now, there's a lot of companies that have pretended to go along. And they've kind of hidden it, hoping when the Democrats win, they'll roll it back out again. So beware of that. But Trump has done what he can in that regard, for sure.
[00:13:05] So all of this is good. And when you look only at the disappointments, and sometimes people do that, you can do nine things that people love. It's not fair, though. It's not honorable. It's not honest to do that, James. And people say, Sam, you're too critical of this. You're too critical of that. And I say, well, what do you do when I defend? See, I don't get credit for defending this or that either. See, I call it like I see it. When it's right, I call it right. When it's wrong, I call it wrong. To the best of my ability.
[00:13:29] And if people, you know, get one-sided on something too much, they forget that I do my very best to walk down the fair lane, James. I really do. Well, this is what I'm saying. And I'm going to cover it from both angles just here very quickly. And that is, again, all of these things are things that he did or that the Republican Party have done under his time as president or during his time as president that would not have happened otherwise that has been to the benefit of the American people. And I've got to say, he got a big laugh out of me.
[00:13:58] I mean, he still is funny. He got a laugh out of me when he claimed that Ilana Mar is married to her brother. I mean, that was just – it was fun. I mean, his rallies have always been fun. But not everything landed. I mean, I do not believe for a second that Bran was about to get a nuke. That is straight from the script of the movie Wag the Dog. His current position on foreign policy with regards to the Middle East completely repudiates the non-inventionist platform that propelled him to the presidency in the first place.
[00:14:27] And there was a lot of gaslighting about the economy. He claimed that Americans are richer than ever. You know, apparently the president hasn't bought rosaries or filled up his car lately. The people that he hangs out with are richer than ever, James. Well, that's right. That's right. That's right. Those people are. That's all he knows. Let him come talk to one of us. See, and that's the thing. In truth, the middle class, working class Americans are suffering financially largely because of this war that he started. And that's a big reason he's in Mississippi this week or on Monday trying to secure that seat that should have been safe.
[00:14:56] It's a big problem with the economy, cost of living, inflation. He says inflation's down, wages are up. That's just not true, at least not for the people who were in that arena. Now, again, for the people he hangs out with, maybe so. In a classic Trump style, he alleged that, you know, unemployment rates for everybody except the people who were in that arena are the lowest ever.
[00:15:19] And there was the usual oddball bluster, including the recent renaming spree, although he did get a standing ovation when he promised not to rename the Mississippi River. And at least one dissenter. I ain't got to rename it to the River Sidon, just saying. At least one dissenter did show up, though. When Trump talked about the new White House ballroom, there was a man there who yelled, quote, shove that ballroom up your fat ass, end quote.
[00:15:49] And security did remove him. But I got to say, Sam, even that was muted compared to the fistfights I saw in 2016 when grassroots white Americans were on fire for the man. That first rally that we got press credentials to back in February of 2016, it was that rally that led immediately to our interview with Donald Trump Jr. on your show back in March of 2016. But I was there for that rally was right outside of Memphis in February of 16.
[00:16:19] And a guy came in with a sign, tried to interrupt Trump. The sign read, make America hate again. And somebody came out of the crowd, tore the sign, took the sign out of his hand and tore it up and then beat the hell out of him. And then the people threw him out. And it was no big deal. So I have a problem with all that, though. I have a problem with one, the disruptions. You don't have the right, folks, to disrupt people.
[00:16:45] There's peaceful assembly or peaceably assemble is what we have the right to do. Not protest, not fight, not. OK, so the guy shouldn't be there causing mischief and problems in the first place. But there's no authority for other Americans to go up and steal his sign, which is his private property, and destroy it and then beat him up, though. There's no right or authority on either side of that discussion, James. Well, you know, again, these were the early days of Trump.
[00:17:13] I'm not necessarily arguing with you about that, but I think the point is that was the sort of the vigor that the Trump supporters had back then. Yeah, and Trump would blatantly, openly say, kick the crap out of them. No, that's right. No, he did. In fact, it started happening so often that he had to sort of start telling his people not to do that because it was happening time and time again. But there was no security there. I mean, you know, this was before Trump had that Secret Service protection. I mean, I guess he had some security.
[00:17:41] Yeah, a lot of good that Secret Service protection is there, you know. But, I mean, you know, there was nobody there. That guy would have kept shouting. I mean, so the people did grab him and throw him out. But anyway, but I was glad I went. And as fate would have it, if you can believe it, that rally on October the 26th, just two days ago on Monday, fell exactly 22 years to the day after my first radio broadcast. It was my 26th.
[00:18:08] An interesting way to mark the 22nd anniversary in a town with deep personal roots. And I went and visited the family graves, made time for that. So I thought it was a fitting bookend to our experiences, Sam, together from a decade ago. Did that rally make you believe the Republicans are going to do better than we thought they might? You know, you hear the mainstream press. You hear the polls that the Democrats are going to just absolutely slaughter. You hear Newt Gingrich coming back and going, no, they're not. The polls are all bogus and wrong. Then you hear that there's a bunch of faked polls that they admitted to.
[00:18:36] And now you see President Trump in these rallies. Are Republicans going to do better than you think they might or thought they might? I think, and I've talked to Lou Moore about this. Of course, Ron Paul's former campaign manager, and he's a savant when it comes to polls and predictions. And he basically said that it teeters on a knife's edge, and it really is just going to come down to turnout. And, you know, can the Republican base get excited enough without Trump on the ballot to turn out?
[00:19:07] And I just think, you know, if you just look at this practically, he would not be in Corinth, Mississippi, a week before the election if the Republicans were confident. And I think there exists a very real possibility. And the proof of that is back in 16 when Donald Trump wasn't really sure he could get elected, you know, he went to guys like me and you and others. And we did some incredible interviews with a bunch of Trump surrogates and everything else and really helped. You know, I mean, I interviewed Donald Trump Jr. You were with me on Super Tuesday.
[00:19:33] I mean, you don't just throw interviews like that with his son, no doubt, to shows like ours if you don't think they will boost your ratings. And we did, and we got him elected. Since then, we haven't had near the connectivity to the Trump administration that we had hoped. And, you know, we don't want to be front and center. But we did apply and did cooperate with Trump's WhiteHouse.gov slash new media offer. And we never heard a word back. And so that's of concern. Now he doesn't have a press secretary.
[00:20:00] And I'm offering my services to do that for President Trump because I think I can handle the press pretty well. I'd be very direct with those clowns. I wouldn't play any games. And I would basically say, now, look, I'm the press man here today. And I know you usually have a beautiful chick. And now you've got this old, you know, grumpy old man kind of guy. But I'm going to be as cheerful as I can with you people. But I'm going to set the rules right now. Are you ready? Number one, you're going to ask me questions. And I'm going to do my best to answer those questions. Sometimes I will not answer because national security is at stake, et cetera.
[00:20:30] But at the end of the day, I'm going to ask you. Listen to me. I'm going to ask you people questions as well. And you better be prepared to answer it. If you will not answer my questions, you will not be able to ask me any questions anymore. Okay. Now, so when you ask a question, I'm going to ask you questions too, because we're going to get to the bottom of the truth of topics. And the only way to do that is to have a two-way exchange. And if you play the game, if you play the game that I'm a reporter and I don't take sides and I have this, but yet you, you know, have this, you know, psychotic hellbender agenda
[00:20:58] to be an anti-Trumper or to hate the Donald or to have Trump derangements. See, we're not doing that. We're going to have a conversation. And when in conversations, polite people answer each other's questions and I will be as polite to you as you are to me. And if you will, you know, hide behind this press badge and pretend you're neutral, that's not going to go well. I'm telling you right now. Now it won't be violent, but I'm telling you, I will not answer your questions. If you will not answer mine, the conversation will be simply over. Do you guys understand the rules? Let's get started. What do you think James? Folks?
[00:21:27] I have worked with Sam Bushman. I've been a host on his network since 2009 and you've never, you haven't lived until you've seen Sam talk to a reporter when they try to call him for an interview for a hit piece. Or Zach tries to run with me and I start chasing the reporters and stuff and Zach kind of freaks and goes, do we want to do this? Even over the phone, he wraps them into a pretzel that gets under their skin. Not that he's trying to be a pest.
[00:21:54] I'm trying to have a cute, open, fair, honorable conversation. He's not going to play their game. He's not going to play their game and he really gets them going. It's just, it's something to see. It's incredible. I'm gentlemen. It's not a, it's not a blast because there's some confrontation. I don't like confrontation really, but the reason that's a blast is because they have never had someone clearly discuss things like that with them in the way that they do. And that's why they'll never go live with me. That's why, you know, they call me a racist, but they'll never put me on and discuss race
[00:22:24] because I'll have to admit that I'm a blind person and I don't even know what color they are. See, they'll be forced to admit some fundamental realities that they don't want to deal with. And that's the problem is when you get people like Trump or even me tenfold, probably, you know, Trump acts like he's pretty good with the press, but I think they sucker him quite a bit. Nevertheless, I think that I would be so direct with these people that I don't think they would know how to handle it, James. I really don't. Well, you are one of a kind, Sam, and it's been and continues to be an honor to work with you.
[00:22:53] And for the majority of our run now, Trump has been either the president or the presidential candidate, if you can believe it. And I got to say, for better and worse, I voted for Trump three times. He took Pat Buchanan's core ideas and made them winning issues, proved that those ideas can win. And he defanged the media. It was a mixture between Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul's ideas, too, because Lou Moore, our good friend, wrote The Forerunner about Ron Paul. And so it's a mixture. And when he did that, I mean, he was absolutely loved by the people, James.
[00:23:21] The only reason that he's not loved by the people now is because he kind of jettisoned that script to a great degree. Well, in addition to that, that's all true. He defanged the media with constant scorn and ridicule. But he is also a disappointment. And his second term got off to such a good start, Sam, that you and I put together this conference back in May of last year, a year and a half ago. Steve King was there, Philip DeWinter, a member of parliament in Belgium and other current and former elected officials.
[00:23:50] But since then, it's been a disappointment that has largely wasted the trifecta. He does appear to be compromised. Yet, I got to say, I'm thankful that he stopped two witches from being elected right after Halloween in 2016 and 2024. The other side is going to be horrific. But the Trump experiment has entered its twilight. He was never going to be around forever. The rest of the job is up to us. Well, we better be careful because we might get some crazy witches, AOC kind, in 2028 if we're not very careful, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:24:18] It could be Bernie Sanders and AOC or something psychotic like that. It could be Omar if she beats this issue about her immigration and marrying her brother and all this weird stuff. She might beat that and join an AOC for a clown show in 2028. And sadly, the Republicans might lose unless they take action. President Trump, I beg you to take action to stand for God, family, and country. And the Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul's script is your answer to middle America, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:24:45] God save our constitutional republic.