Radio Show Hour 1 – 12/16/2024

[00:00:13] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West.

[00:00:18] You are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show.

[00:00:25] Pistol that shoots is the wish of Bonnie and Ben.

[00:00:28] Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk is the hope of Janice and Jen.

[00:00:33] And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again.

[00:00:57] Yes, it is. Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Bushman live on your radio.

[00:01:01] Hellhard hitting news the network refused to use. No doubt kicks off now.

[00:01:06] This is the broadcast for December the 16th in the year of our Lord, 2024.

[00:01:10] The goal is to promote God, family and country and to protect life, liberty and property

[00:01:14] and to do so on your radio in the traditions of our founding fathers.

[00:01:19] Dr. Scott Bradley is with me, freedomsrisingsun.com.

[00:01:22] We also have another incredible guest with us today. His name is Andrew Thornbrook.

[00:01:26] He's a national security correspondent for the Epoch Times.

[00:01:29] And even though it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, ladies and gentlemen,

[00:01:33] if you're planning to give your loved one a cell phone, well, beware.

[00:01:37] National security is the topic.

[00:01:40] Chinese state-backed hacking group, it's called Salt Typhoon,

[00:01:45] is engaged in an ongoing attack on vast swaths of the U.S. telecommunication infrastructure.

[00:01:55] The problem is they remain embedded. It's been going on since 2022.

[00:01:59] I submit it's probably been going on longer than that.

[00:02:03] Lawmakers are worried about this. It's a huge story.

[00:02:05] Andrew is at the center of it, keeping tabs on everything for us.

[00:02:08] Welcome back to Liberty Roundtable Live, sir.

[00:02:11] And by the way, Merry Christmas.

[00:02:13] Oh, Merry Christmas. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:02:16] All right. Let's kick this off then.

[00:02:18] Did they just discover this in 2022?

[00:02:22] Yeah, by all accounts, it looks like it.

[00:02:25] Well, excuse me.

[00:02:26] It looks like we just discovered it this year.

[00:02:28] It's been going on at least since 2022, maybe longer.

[00:02:33] So how do they know that, by the way?

[00:02:35] How do they know 2022?

[00:02:36] That's an interesting time frame is why I'm pointing this out.

[00:02:39] Yeah, so a lot of the research really seems to be coming out of really our technology companies,

[00:02:45] which has been so often the case these last few years.

[00:02:48] You know, I feel nine out of ten times the technology companies that actually find these breaches

[00:02:55] and the government's the last to know.

[00:02:59] So this is generally done through research by firms like Microsoft, right, and Meta,

[00:03:04] who have been trying to get ahead on these security issues for a long time.

[00:03:09] Sometimes with varying results, but essentially finding that there's been these sort of persistent,

[00:03:16] what we call persistent threat actors inside of our telecommunications infrastructure.

[00:03:22] So these hackers have been able to secure access inside and then maintain it by disguising their presence there,

[00:03:30] by having this malicious code inside our communications network.

[00:03:35] And this is a huge, huge deal.

[00:03:37] I think it's bigger than anything we've maybe seen ever, but at least as big as the Equifax hack back in 2016.

[00:03:46] So what this essentially looks like is there's been at least eight major telecommunications providers that were targeted.

[00:03:56] These include AT&T.

[00:03:58] These include Verizon.

[00:03:59] These include CenturyLink.

[00:04:00] If you have a cell phone service through any of those providers,

[00:04:06] then theoretically the Chinese government does in fact have access to your texts and your calls.

[00:04:13] It doesn't look like they've gathered that information.

[00:04:16] So what looks like has happened is an unknown, ostensibly large number of Americans have had metadata taken.

[00:04:24] So this means they can see when you made a call, to whom you made a call, when there was a text,

[00:04:31] but they don't have the actual audio or the text.

[00:04:34] But in addition to that, there was a targeted attack on a smaller subsect of people, including political officials.

[00:04:45] One of these is Kamala Harris.

[00:04:47] Others are Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, who were explicitly targeted for data exfiltration, right?

[00:04:54] So with the intent of securing audio from their phone calls and texts from their text messages

[00:05:00] and actually extracting that and seeing what was there.

[00:05:05] So in the case of J.D. Vance and potentially Trump, based on what J.D. Vance has said,

[00:05:11] he was using an encryption app signal.

[00:05:14] So it's unlikely that they were able to get that audio.

[00:05:17] But, yeah, this is a huge deal.

[00:05:19] So let me ask you this question.

[00:05:20] I get, if you're the president of the United States or somebody like that, how that's really, that matters, right?

[00:05:26] And I'm not trying to just be ignorant on this,

[00:05:28] but I'm trying to put this on the kitchen table for the American people to understand.

[00:05:32] Why do I care?

[00:05:33] Like, I mean, so the Chinese know that I called my wife.

[00:05:35] Who cares?

[00:05:36] Or so they know that I, whatever.

[00:05:39] I mean, does it really matter for the average Joe?

[00:05:42] Oh, yeah.

[00:05:43] So, I mean, there's a lot of ways it can matter in the long run.

[00:05:45] One is, of course, that this data can be used in influence operations, right?

[00:05:49] This can be used to train, using artificial intelligence,

[00:05:53] you can use this data to train models to essentially, and algorithms to target you specifically, right?

[00:06:00] In the same way you might think of, you know, advertising firms trying to make targeted advertisements for you online.

[00:06:09] Well, foreign powers are doing that all the time with malicious foreign interference trying to target you.

[00:06:15] Yeah, maybe they clone my voice and call my wife for me, huh?

[00:06:19] Right.

[00:06:19] And so, well, this is, though, this is the big deal, right?

[00:06:22] Is anyone who works in government, anything like this,

[00:06:25] this is essentially going to allow a foreign adversary at some point to be able to create some sort of leverage.

[00:06:31] See, you know, just by knowing when do you call people, what are your target points, you know,

[00:06:37] or do you talk a lot about debt you have?

[00:06:39] Do you talk a lot about medical issues, these kinds of things?

[00:06:42] Do you think a lot about the problem?

[00:06:43] But more earnestly, that is really a tertiary concern in terms of the average jail, we might think.

[00:06:51] A bigger concern is information about Chinese people in the United States.

[00:06:58] So one of the big revelations here is that the Salt Typhoon Group targeted the infrastructure used by the government

[00:07:09] to conduct wiretaps, right?

[00:07:12] And we're talking about the Patriot Act infrastructure, the FISA infrastructure.

[00:07:15] The infrastructure the government uses to surveil Americans when they're linked to foreign adversaries.

[00:07:22] So by tapping into this data, the Chinese have essentially found a way to try to find out if the government is surveilling certain people.

[00:07:33] Because by doing this, they can say, okay, well, look, here's one of our spies.

[00:07:38] Otherwise, they've been surveilled.

[00:07:40] So they've clearly been identified.

[00:07:43] And this can also...

[00:07:44] Or onto them being onto us, in other words.

[00:07:46] Exactly.

[00:07:47] And they can also know, perhaps, the inverse.

[00:07:50] Oh, it looks like they don't know about so-and-so, right?

[00:07:53] So this is a big espionage win for them so far.

[00:07:59] So this is unlike, right?

[00:08:01] So unlike other cyberattacks, we've had the targeted sort of vital infrastructure for sabotage purposes, right?

[00:08:08] This is really espionage-related.

[00:08:11] All right.

[00:08:11] Let's get Dr. Bradley in on this conversation.

[00:08:14] Dr. Bradley, are you comfortable with this?

[00:08:16] It's been going on since 2022.

[00:08:17] And the United States government has no real solution to respond at this point.

[00:08:23] However, they've kind of created the hole they're driving a truck through, Dr. Bradley.

[00:08:28] Well, and I certainly do not want to diminish the absolute horrific damage this could do to our nation.

[00:08:37] But just let me parenthetically, as we begin this conversation, harken back to almost two dozen years ago,

[00:08:47] when the U.S. government obtained this exact capability that they've been honing and expanding

[00:08:54] and basically growing this monster of craft capturing, they started out with just the metadata.

[00:09:02] You know, that's no big deal.

[00:09:04] I mean, you know, that's kind of a who and from and kind of the endpoints and stuff like that

[00:09:10] without having the central information that we're sending, you know, for our texts and our emails and our voice contacts.

[00:09:20] And I am absolutely pissed off that the United States government is doing this and has been doing it

[00:09:27] and has been they have no right to do this.

[00:09:30] Now, China's doing it.

[00:09:31] And they're kind of in it sounds like the beginning stages of where the United States government was probably a couple of dozen years ago.

[00:09:37] But the the fact of the matter is it can absolutely be used for every one of the purposes that Andrew has been talking about.

[00:09:46] I spent some decades in the telecommunications industry and was perhaps experienced a little bit of the original China clumsy efforts

[00:09:58] to do some of these things some decades ago, probably close to 40 years ago.

[00:10:03] But but the fact of the matter is that they're here and they're now and the U.S. government didn't know about it.

[00:10:10] And somebody in the industry says, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, guys.

[00:10:13] Hey, do you know this is happening?

[00:10:16] And I mean, we are we are caught flat footed way too often on these international intrigue kind of things.

[00:10:25] I mean, it's not just in telecommunications, though.

[00:10:28] Of course, we have hypersonic missiles that they're going, wait, wait, where did they come from?

[00:10:32] We don't have any of these.

[00:10:33] We seem to have become kind of a technological backwater country almost in so many ways recently.

[00:10:40] And the fact that China has come this far to this point, I have to assume that their acceleration through the learning curve the United States government took to get to where they are now,

[00:10:54] this leviathan that's out there devouring everything they possibly can.

[00:10:57] I think China is going to catch up really fast.

[00:11:01] And there's all these things that Andrew's talking about.

[00:11:05] They could be upon us almost instantly.

[00:11:07] And they're very successful at doing those kind of things.

[00:11:11] So this is a grave concern.

[00:11:13] I mean, you know, we could.

[00:11:14] It's a grave concern.

[00:11:15] I'm worried about China.

[00:11:17] I'm worried about the United States doing it and the United States doing it to us in the first place was the problem.

[00:11:21] Remember, George Bush said, oh, no, we're just monitoring foreign adversaries.

[00:11:24] Oh, well, foreign adversaries.

[00:11:25] And if they've got a tie to the United States and, well, we're really monitoring everybody.

[00:11:30] Sorry, I know it's criminal and no harm, no foul kind of a thing.

[00:11:33] And now they say lawmakers are scrambling to find a solution to this.

[00:11:37] But really, it's lawmakers that allowed this to occur in the first place.

[00:11:41] First, the United States.

[00:11:42] But then those same infrastructure backdoor whatever are really what's being exploited now, Andrew.

[00:11:48] Your thoughts on the problem with the United States doing it in the first place and the United States doing it also?

[00:11:53] So I'm not sure who to be more afraid of at this point.

[00:11:57] Yeah, I mean, this has definitely been a policy failure, I think, over multiple administrations going back to the sort of immediate aftermath of 9-11, right?

[00:12:06] And how we try to sort of mobilize against these non-state threats at the time.

[00:12:12] But, you know, I think I hope the silver lining here is that it encourages Americans to adopt encryption.

[00:12:20] Right?

[00:12:20] And it's very easy now.

[00:12:22] You shouldn't be making texts and calls with just your normal phone.

[00:12:25] You should just download, signal, or download an encryption app and make your texts and calls through the encrypted end-to-end app.

[00:12:33] And the one, like, the real silver lining there with encryption that I hope we get out of this, that it looks like we're getting out of this, is the federal government relenting and saying, yes, you should use encryption.

[00:12:44] Which we've now had a number of administration officials say.

[00:12:49] And that is really something new.

[00:12:52] Because just back in 2017, by the height of the sort of fear over telegram and its role in enabling ISIS, we had FBI Director Christopher Wray testify that encryption was a huge problem.

[00:13:08] Those were his exact words.

[00:13:09] A huge problem for national security.

[00:13:12] Because essentially, if you use an encrypted app, the government couldn't surveil you.

[00:13:18] And so hopefully this is at least encouraging the transition away from that and this understanding back towards more privacy and these more secure communication standards.

[00:13:29] But I don't want to be overly optimistic yet.

[00:13:33] Is it that Joe Biden's weak and so the Chinese exploited that in 2022 after the election where Joe took control?

[00:13:40] Is Trump going to turn this around?

[00:13:42] What do you think of that?

[00:13:42] Is this administration specific or is this just in general where just, as Dr. Bradley wisely pointed out, we're kind of backwoods and kind of behind the eight ball and just getting spanked everywhere around the world now?

[00:13:53] Yeah, no.

[00:13:53] So this is definitely an intergenerational problem.

[00:13:57] This has been something that Chinese leadership's been working on for a long time.

[00:14:02] This one group has been operating since at least 2022.

[00:14:07] But, you know, before that, we had Voltaison targeting our critical infrastructure at least as early as 2020.

[00:14:13] Before that, we had the Equifax hack leaking millions and millions of American information.

[00:14:18] We've had, going back decades and decades, espionage attempts against our military, our defense industrial sector.

[00:14:25] So this is not something that's going to relent based on a change in administration.

[00:14:31] The best we can do is hope that a new administration gets more serious about developing our own infrastructure, even if that comes to the cost of profits, right?

[00:14:41] So a lot of our infrastructure, our telecommunications infrastructure, it's awful because we've allowed our private sector to essentially continue on trying to make the maximum amount of profit without investing even really minimally in security.

[00:14:59] So we're going to need to see security standards across the board.

[00:15:04] We're going to need to see investment in infrastructure because that's really going to be the root of all of our technological defense and our technological, our economic advancement as well.

[00:15:14] So I hope we get it.

[00:15:17] You know, Andrew, I wonder if I might suggest, I mean, no, far be it for me to direct the ship here.

[00:15:24] But I wonder if you might have a story in this little line I'm going to just suggest at this moment.

[00:15:30] If the U.S. power structure of the government is suggesting, oh, yeah, maybe encryption is not a bad idea.

[00:15:40] My assumption is, and I may just be an old curmudgeon that is a lot of distrust.

[00:15:48] My assumption when you said that instantly was that the encryptors have provided the keys to the government.

[00:15:55] And so they therefore have a backdoor access to these things.

[00:16:01] And therefore, now they can support that idea.

[00:16:04] And if, in fact, that has happened, that's another interesting violation of Americans' rights of privacy.

[00:16:11] But if there are keys, which I'm confident there are, I would be absolutely shocked if the Chinese do not have access to those keys also.

[00:16:22] And so are we really going to leap ahead because suddenly you and I decide to use signal and the Chinese go, yeah, gotcha, here's the key to that.

[00:16:33] Well, even if the Chinese don't have it now but the United States government does, how long will it be until they do, even if they don't?

[00:16:38] So your point's well taken.

[00:16:40] Yeah, I don't think that we're – I don't think that if you've got the government flat-footed at every turn, I'm not so confident that these guys are the brightest bulbs on the tree.

[00:16:53] And the Chinese are – if you can't hear the footsteps, they probably already passed you, you know?

[00:17:01] Yeah, well, yeah, especially – so this is a very interesting issue.

[00:17:04] And I think you're absolutely right to point out this sort of secondhand information leak from the U.S. government to the Chinese.

[00:17:12] And the issue of backdoors is, I think, a huge one.

[00:17:17] It's been largely required, for lack of a better term, by the U.S. government for a long time.

[00:17:23] But I hope we can at least pressure private enterprise to uphold some better privacy standards when it comes to that.

[00:17:30] So this is actually going back to 2017 when Ray testified about the national security threat, supposed national security threat of encryption.

[00:17:37] It was related, of course, to a mass shooting in California in which Apple would not uncrack the phone of the shooter for police.

[00:17:47] And so Apple actually never did uncrack it, I don't believe.

[00:17:51] And FBI got a private entity that specialized in encryption to break it open for them.

[00:17:58] But, you know, this is going to require effort from all sides.

[00:18:02] And the private sector absolutely is going to need to, I think, be a little more upfront and robust in rebuffing some of these requests for backdoor access,

[00:18:18] particularly in being a little more credulous about when a warrant is or is not warranted, you know?

[00:18:25] So this is going to be a long, complex issue.

[00:18:29] I don't think we're anywhere near having it resolved.

[00:18:32] You know, I've had a lot of interest in this, as I kind of inferred earlier, for all the decades that I spent in this particular industry.

[00:18:42] And I'm probably one of a handful of people in the entire United States that has read the USA Patriot Act cover to cover, top to bottom,

[00:18:51] annotated it, cross-referenced it a whole nine yards.

[00:18:53] And the problem is that the idiots, buffoons, baboons, clowns, whatever you want to call them,

[00:19:00] that have been at the head of our government have actually created an environment wherein the Fourth Amendment has been eviscerated and even lost completely.

[00:19:10] And they have, the Patriot Act is filled with nonsense like shall issue warrants.

[00:19:17] There's no, you know, probable cause or specificity is required in the Fourth Amendment in these kinds of things.

[00:19:26] And if they request it, you must give it.

[00:19:29] And as a director of a telecommunications company and if somebody comes to me and says, I got to have this information.

[00:19:38] Oh, no, don't you have a warrant?

[00:19:40] Well, I have to give you they give me a letter that says it's part of an ongoing investigation.

[00:19:44] A judge shall issue all of those kinds.

[00:19:49] It's an imperative.

[00:19:50] It is not any kind of protection at all.

[00:19:54] The Patriot Act eviscerated the Fourth Amendment.

[00:19:57] In fact, it doesn't exist in the United States anymore.

[00:19:59] And so with with that kind of power at that level, I'm suspecting that any foreign entity and probably the Israelis are ahead of the Chinese, I'm guessing.

[00:20:09] But but at any rate, there are there are a lot of backdoors.

[00:20:14] And I'm I'm very concerned that we have kind of cut our own throats on this thing.

[00:20:19] Well, I agree with your assessment, Dr. Bradley, but I'm just as worried about the United States government as I am the Chinese government.

[00:20:25] And I'll give you an example.

[00:20:26] You know, the FBI has literally been attacking good, honest patriot people, literally acting as agent provocateur in many cases.

[00:20:37] And, you know, when you look at that, I mean, I'm not like delighted about the communist Chinese either.

[00:20:42] But I'm just as worried about my own government having this information.

[00:20:46] Andrew, do you want to speak to that?

[00:20:47] Because this is critical to we act like it's just a foreign issue.

[00:20:50] And it is.

[00:20:51] But it's a domestic issue, too.

[00:20:54] Sure thing.

[00:20:54] You know, I think there's always this sort of rally around the flag effect here when we see a foreign adversary doing this.

[00:20:59] But, you know, obviously the the overreach of the U.S. government has really the intelligence agencies has been immense in recent years.

[00:21:10] We saw that, of course, just a couple of years ago with the revelation of how many tens of thousands of times the FBI had sort of inappropriately used this authority to spy on Americans instead of foreign adversaries.

[00:21:27] So this is a real issue.

[00:21:28] I certainly I don't think it's comparable to communist China.

[00:21:33] I think we still have some transparency.

[00:21:35] We still have elections and we still have the ability to change command, as it were.

[00:21:41] And that looks like it's what's going to be done.

[00:21:45] So hopefully, you know, I certainly am not one of the people who hopes for the intelligence agencies to totally be burned to the ground or anything like that.

[00:21:53] But I do think we need more transparency.

[00:21:54] We need to we need Congress to do their part to pull back the amount of classification we're seeing on documents all the time.

[00:22:03] It's gotten to the point where I think classification is itself a national security threat because Americans don't understand why decisions are being made the way they're being made.

[00:22:13] So hopefully we'll get change of leadership and some of our intelligence agencies.

[00:22:17] They'll knock the appropriate heads and get back to work.

[00:22:21] But by de facto, has big tech turned into the fourth branch of government?

[00:22:28] I wouldn't go that far.

[00:22:29] But, you know, who knows?

[00:22:32] Maybe one day it'll be the first, second and third branch.

[00:22:35] I don't know.

[00:22:36] Because I kind of look at AI and I kind of look at these breaches and I look at all this stuff and I'm just like, they're the ones that are claiming, oh, man, now we're trying to fix it.

[00:22:43] But your headline says that they still remain.

[00:22:47] So they've been doing this since 2022.

[00:22:49] Now we discover it now, but they still remain embedded in U.S. telecommunications.

[00:22:54] It's not like they've done anything about it now that we know about it.

[00:22:56] It's all public, but they haven't changed the game or stopped it, right?

[00:23:00] Yeah.

[00:23:01] So yes and no.

[00:23:02] So, yeah, this is one of those very interesting sort of areas where there's a sort of a lack of authority because our system is primarily focused on the private sector, right?

[00:23:14] So essentially what's happening is the intelligence agencies are investigating and responding to the attempts to exfiltrate data, right?

[00:23:28] So the people who were targeted and had their texts taken and their audio taken, that small group of people, the intelligence FBI is leading investigation on that.

[00:23:41] Whereas everyone else, if you just had your metadata sort of scraped, they're leaving that, the notification and sort of process of that to the telecommunications companies.

[00:23:53] So that's going to be a big issue in sort of dividing up those authorities and how that plays out in the years to come.

[00:23:59] You've only got about 10 seconds.

[00:24:00] Last question.

[00:24:01] Are there any companies that are large that are not affected?

[00:24:05] Not that I know of.

[00:24:07] The best I can say is use encryption and be smart.

[00:24:11] Don't say anything you don't think you should.

[00:24:14] Andrew Thornbrook, ladies and gentlemen, epochtimes.com.

[00:24:17] Thank you so much.

[00:24:18] We'll have you back soon.

[00:24:19] Thanks so much for having me.

[00:24:21] Have a great one.

[00:24:21] You betcha.

[00:24:22] All right.

[00:24:23] Folks, look, the Chinese state-backed hacking group, Salt Typhoon, still has access to all of our telecommunications.

[00:24:32] They're embedded and the government seems to protect the insiders, but they're not really doing much about the rest of us.

[00:24:40] What do you think of that?

[00:24:41] Dr. Scott Bradley's responsive seconds on your radio.

[00:24:53] Cross the land.

[00:24:55] You're listening to Liberty News Radio.

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[00:26:00] ABC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump's presidential library.

[00:26:05] The network's decision settles a lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos' inaccurate on-air assertion.

[00:26:11] The president-elect had been found civilly liable for sexual assault.

[00:26:16] A Chicago man attempting to return a very overdue book to his childhood library, as Jason Walker reports.

[00:26:23] But instead, Chuck Hildebrandt was told to keep the book.

[00:26:27] Chuck was 13 in 1974 when he checked out a book titled

[00:26:31] Baseball's Zaniest Stars from a library in Warren, Michigan.

[00:26:36] He was going through his bookshelf recently when he noticed the Dewey Decimal number on the book's spine.

[00:26:42] Hildebrandt says he talked to the library director about the book during a recent visit to Michigan.

[00:26:48] She said, just keep it.

[00:26:50] It's been 50 years.

[00:26:52] Jason Walker reporting.

[00:26:54] Breaking news and analysis at townhome.com.

[00:27:00] Retailers say sweaters and alpaca scarves are flying off the shelves so far this Christmas season.

[00:27:06] Owners of small retail shops say the top-selling gifts appear to be cozy items this year.

[00:27:13] The National Retail Federation predicts holiday shopping this year will be up between 2.5% and 3.5% over last year.

[00:27:22] I'm Jackie Quinn.

[00:27:24] What might this week's Fed meeting mean for interest rates?

[00:27:27] Americans waiting on lower borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans may be disappointed by this Wednesday's announcement from Federal Reserve policymakers.

[00:27:35] The Fed is widely expected to reduce the benchmark interest rate, but only by a quarter point to about 4.3%.

[00:27:41] I'm Jennifer King.

[00:27:42] The new year will usher in the Bitcoin-friendly administration of President-elect Donald Trump.

[00:27:47] That's something analysts say could lead states to become more crypto-friendly and more public pension funds to buy up cryptocurrency.

[00:27:54] More on these stories at townhome.com.

[00:27:59] Former Sheriff Richard Mack recounts in his book The Proper Role of Law Enforcement.

[00:28:04] How he came to realize while working as a beat cop how wrong the all-too-common orientation of police officers is when they think of their job as being to write tickets and arrest people.

[00:28:14] Richard Mack tells of his personal transformation from by-the-number cop to constitution-conscious defender of citizen safety and freedoms.

[00:28:21] Learn what it really means to serve and protect.

[00:28:24] Purchase your copy at CSPOA.org.

[00:28:27] That's CSPOA.org.

[00:28:29] Do you know what is great about America?

[00:28:31] Ask an Immigrant.

[00:28:32] Ask an Immigrant is a new podcast dedicated to helping Americans, especially our youth, value, appreciate, and be grateful for the freedoms we have here in America.

[00:28:41] Join host Lydia Wallace-Nuttle as she interviews immigrants from around the world to discover their inspiring personal stories about why they came to America.

[00:28:49] To learn more about why America is the most prosperous, greatest country in the world, download the Loving Liberty app or go to lovingliberty.net.

[00:28:59] You know where the solution can be found, Mr. President?

[00:29:03] In churches, in wedding chapels, in maternity wards across the country and around the world.

[00:29:10] More babies will mean forward-looking adults, the sort we need to tackle long-term, large-scale problems.

[00:29:16] American babies in particular are likely going to be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still industrializing countries.

[00:29:27] As economist Tyler Cowen recently wrote, quote,

[00:29:31] By having more children, you're making your nation more populous, thus boosting its capacity to solve climate change.

[00:29:37] The planet does not need for us to think globally and act locally so much as it needs us to think family and act personally.

[00:29:48] The solution to so many of our problems, at all times and in all places, is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids.

[00:29:59] We wish you a Merry Christmas.

[00:30:17] We wish you a Merry Christmas.

[00:30:19] We wish you a Merry Christmas.

[00:30:22] And a Happy New Year.

[00:30:27] We wish you a Merry Christmas.

[00:30:28] We wish you a Merry Christmas.

[00:30:30] We wish you a Merry Christmas.

[00:30:31] And a Happy New Year, too.

[00:30:32] It seems like we always have a lot of dour subjects that we have to talk about.

[00:30:37] It's a dangerous world we live in.

[00:30:40] And without becoming overwhelmed and oppressed by what the storylines might be, we have to recognize what we really commemorate this time of year.

[00:30:50] Of course, it's the Savior's birth and what that brings to us, the Prince of Peace, being the one that we hold as our ideal.

[00:30:58] So without extending the topic from the last segment too much, and I know we've got plenty to move on to, I think people do need to realize that this is a very serious, serious issue on both sides of the fence, if you will,

[00:31:17] both within our own government and with exterior kinds of attempts to undermine what we have going on in this nation.

[00:31:26] And people need to think about that.

[00:31:27] But I personally think we just barely, barely, barely stretched the surface with Andrew when he was on.

[00:31:34] And I think that Andrew barely stretched the surface with this article he's got out.

[00:31:41] And I really do think it bears a lot more focus because a technology war can rage for a long time without actually having boots on the ground and somebody with their weapons lit up and all that kind of stuff.

[00:31:56] This kind of thing is very egregiously carried out against us, both by our government and their governments.

[00:32:03] And I think that Andrew could write a number of more articles.

[00:32:06] In fact, I suggested that to him.

[00:32:08] And if he doesn't do it, maybe I will.

[00:32:09] I don't know.

[00:32:10] But at any rate, this technology breach, we are a technology people.

[00:32:19] I mean, you look at every kid that you got their nose buried in their computer game or their cell phone or whatever.

[00:32:25] And most adults are that way.

[00:32:27] Nobody can live without texting and phoning.

[00:32:30] And it's absolutely amazing.

[00:32:33] 55 years ago, I was in that world.

[00:32:36] I mean, you know, that's not the last time I was in.

[00:32:39] But I first entered at that when we did our communications in the military.

[00:32:47] And we had people that were monitoring the other side's intelligence as best we could in those days.

[00:32:58] We've got far, far, far orders of magnitude more capability now.

[00:33:03] And so did the bad guys.

[00:33:05] And this idea of loose lips sink ships.

[00:33:09] I mean, this is old World War II jargon where, you know, in a bar or in a casual conversation, you know, some operative would pick up a little tiny tidbit of information.

[00:33:20] And when they collate all of these tiny tidbits of information together, you can get a pretty good picture of what's, you know, going on.

[00:33:29] And top secret operations can be compromised with a fairly small amount of extraneous information that would seem taken individually to be extraneous.

[00:33:40] With the capabilities we got now, it's very, very, very easily done.

[00:33:46] And computers can link and match and bits and pieces here and there, all that, so on and so forth.

[00:33:54] I'm just not so sure that the U.S. government isn't actually part of the problem.

[00:33:59] Well, it's part of the problem for us as the citizens.

[00:34:01] But I think it's part of the problem for the international intrigue that's going on.

[00:34:07] Who's to say that they haven't got some backdoor into some of this information-gathering stuff?

[00:34:14] And we're actually our own enemy.

[00:34:16] We know they do, though.

[00:34:17] Back in the George Bush days, he virtually had to admit it.

[00:34:19] And even though he was guilty of criminal activity that should have been impeached,

[00:34:22] the fact is Congress just backed him and put in fake, you know, pretend legislation

[00:34:27] that backs the president in violating your God-given rights, your Fourth, your Fifth Amendments.

[00:34:32] It breaches the separation of powers.

[00:34:34] I mean, we go on and on.

[00:34:35] It puts things into the FISA court.

[00:34:37] It treats us as enemy combatants, as if we're in wartime.

[00:34:40] And many say that we currently still are and all this kind of stuff.

[00:34:44] I mean, it's a serious issue here.

[00:34:46] And I don't think Donald's even close to bringing that back.

[00:34:49] He's just scratching the surface on, you know, getting to the bottom of a lot of these things.

[00:34:54] I mean, now they're talking about banning TikTok.

[00:34:56] The debate is, are they going to ban TikTok?

[00:34:58] And Trump's saying, no, we won't let him do that.

[00:35:00] And others are saying, well, now he will.

[00:35:02] And, you know, well, how does that work when people are just voluntarily signing up for TikTok?

[00:35:07] They don't need your cell phone data.

[00:35:08] They got you posted data by your free will and choice.

[00:35:12] So it gets very complex fast.

[00:35:15] You know, you mentioned the FISA court.

[00:35:17] I hate to get stuck on something you said a couple of minutes ago.

[00:35:20] But that is on its face from the get-go.

[00:35:25] Its very existence is unconstitutional, okay?

[00:35:28] And you say, what?

[00:35:30] What are you talking about, Bradley?

[00:35:32] You get to be a FISA judge.

[00:35:34] Well, you know, I thought there was this thing about the, you know, the president.

[00:35:38] Article 2, you know, makes appointments and Congress, you know, is then able to confirm, blah, blah, blah.

[00:35:44] No, the president doesn't nominate anybody for a FISA court judgeship.

[00:35:48] It's done by the chief justice.

[00:35:50] John Roberts does it.

[00:35:51] It's an extra constitutional existence.

[00:35:54] And it is a rubber stamp of the ability.

[00:35:58] I mean, it's a handful, a couple of handfuls of cases.

[00:36:01] And since 1978, when this came into effect, when they got the permission to exercise these warrants against people with just a request.

[00:36:12] It's a rubber stamp organization.

[00:36:15] And so I say, okay, this exists unconstitutionally.

[00:36:18] Well, who's to say the Chinese don't have access or whomever, the Israelis or whoever, have access to anything that's coming up on this thing.

[00:36:26] It's been used to spy on innocent Americans.

[00:36:30] And who isn't an innocent American?

[00:36:32] I mean, you know, it's absolutely true.

[00:36:34] You've got to ask yourself, though, it's hard to know where to stand in some of these battles.

[00:36:38] U.S. court denies TikTok's request to freeze law requiring sale of the app.

[00:36:46] Sadna Mashawari or whatever the New York Times has this piece.

[00:36:51] And so, you know, where do you stand?

[00:36:52] Are you for the government banning TikTok?

[00:36:55] You know, TikTok spying on everyone and it's a threat, no doubt.

[00:36:58] But look, your government-controlled, manipulated phone systems with big tech are just as big of a threat as TikTok.

[00:37:05] And, you know, it's hard to know where to kind of stand on this, right?

[00:37:09] Well, you know, Sam, think about it.

[00:37:11] Okay, if they can ban TikTok, could they ban Smith & Wesson?

[00:37:15] Liberty Roundtable Live?

[00:37:15] Yes, sir.

[00:37:18] Yeah, could they do that?

[00:37:19] Sure.

[00:37:19] See, here's the deal.

[00:37:20] We don't think Liberty Roundtable Live is safe for America.

[00:37:23] We believe Sam's this and that and that and the other.

[00:37:25] And therefore, hey, it's a threat.

[00:37:26] Shut her down, right?

[00:37:28] See, that's the problem.

[00:37:30] We get these Leviathan kind of tentacles that are out there that they're gathering in everything.

[00:37:36] And it's kind of, you remember in Man for All Seasons when Roper was going to cut down all the laws in England

[00:37:43] and Sir Thomas Moore says, well, then what's going to happen when they come after you, baby?

[00:37:48] I mean, those are not the exact words from a very eloquently and eloquently written play.

[00:37:52] But the fact of the matter is that's kind of where we are in America today.

[00:37:55] And I just, I find it problematic.

[00:38:01] That's a very, that's a benign term.

[00:38:04] When it comes to the things that we seem to overreach on constantly.

[00:38:09] Yes.

[00:38:09] Yeah.

[00:38:09] I don't think the government has any authority to ban TikTok.

[00:38:11] They don't.

[00:38:12] Whatsoever.

[00:38:13] None.

[00:38:14] Okay.

[00:38:14] So I'm not for banning TikTok at all, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:38:16] I am for banning the government though from spying on us and using the telecommunication infrastructure backdoors to spy on us.

[00:38:25] Supposedly via FISA and all this other mandated necessity due to Homeland Security created by the Republicans due to, you know,

[00:38:32] all these different whatever terms that they're about to pass their latest big old omnibus spending bill with this in it too.

[00:38:38] The Patriot Act and everything else.

[00:38:40] But see, a lot of these backdoors and a lot of this wouldn't even exist unless the government created and insisted on it in the first place.

[00:38:47] The government's created our own demise.

[00:38:48] Now we're looking to them to solve this thing?

[00:38:51] I mean, we are just ignorant, sir.

[00:38:54] They create an emergency and then a solution to that emergency.

[00:38:57] Oh, by the way, we had this in our back pocket.

[00:39:00] You know, the USA Patriot Act had been long time.

[00:39:04] I mean, I could give you the history and background about its passage at cyclonic speed through the Congress.

[00:39:10] I mean, Congress, it wasn't unanimous, but there was a vast, vast majority of the Congress jumped on this bandwagon.

[00:39:18] Well, you know what?

[00:39:19] Having read the thing, you cannot possibly digest that in an overnight cooling period.

[00:39:27] But this stuff, now by my count, I'll just go back a number of years when I first read it.

[00:39:33] By my count, and I did it manually so I'm sure it's undercounted, but I counted 214 other segments of U.S. code that were affected by the Patriot Act.

[00:39:45] 214.

[00:39:46] I didn't have time to read all those codes and integrate that into my thought process.

[00:39:51] It simply is, like I say, a leviathan with tentacles.

[00:39:54] And we do this kind of stuff, National Defense Authorization Acts, you know, these kinds of military commissions acts.

[00:40:02] I mean, every single one of these, the FISA Act, the 702 banning that we can't get banned or shut down, whatever, out of the FISA.

[00:40:12] All of these things, we get kicked down the can down the road for the guys in Congress saying, oh, man, we just don't have time to see what's wrong with this.

[00:40:22] Let's just pass it again.

[00:40:24] Let's renew it again for another three years.

[00:40:26] And then we can see what's in it, you know?

[00:40:28] Yeah, we'll take that time to look at it.

[00:40:29] No, they don't.

[00:40:30] They do not take the time.

[00:40:33] It is absolutely absurd.

[00:40:34] All right, go ahead and skip the break.

[00:40:36] This is really critical conversation, ladies and gentlemen.

[00:40:40] Lawmakers unveil $1.3 trillion or $1.2 trillion with a government funding package ahead of shutdown.

[00:40:49] This is CNN with the piece.

[00:40:52] And it's a big deal.

[00:40:54] They're trying to do this in what?

[00:40:55] The lame duck session right before the end of the year.

[00:40:58] And they're not even calling it a full spending bill.

[00:41:00] What they're saying is we've got to have this kind of ongoing resolution to push it until March.

[00:41:04] That way we can get the new Congress in, let them kind of work on it and decide it.

[00:41:08] But what it does is it coincides with the hundred days of President Trump being in office at that point.

[00:41:14] And it will mark a milestone of, you know, is he going to sell us out and spend into oblivion?

[00:41:18] Or is he going to really pull back the reins?

[00:41:20] And how hard can he pull back the reins?

[00:41:22] And who will support what?

[00:41:24] And they're just – Quantico, Virginia is the headline.

[00:41:27] They're just putting a serious, serious tag on Trump's back.

[00:41:31] By, in my opinion, pinning this to his first hundred days.

[00:41:35] I've given the direction for Donald Trump, and he needs to listen to me.

[00:41:39] Shut down the government entirely before the end of the year.

[00:41:42] Tell everybody Merry Christmas.

[00:41:43] Y'all go home.

[00:41:44] Have a good time.

[00:41:45] When we come back, we're going to look at every line item one by one.

[00:41:49] We're going to have Doge and everybody else get on it, and we're going to do it.

[00:41:51] And if it's not constitutional, we're going to simply jettison it.

[00:41:56] Unless we need to kind of do a – we don't want to crash the plane plan, and we say,

[00:41:59] hey, we've made promises or whatever, so we're going to figure a sunset provision

[00:42:03] or a way to wind down the program.

[00:42:05] And we'll only pass it based on, you know, logical, realistic plans to unwind it.

[00:42:10] If it's not constitutional and we don't need it, it's gone.

[00:42:12] If it is constitutional, it passes, and it's in safe territory.

[00:42:15] And you can literally update the nation on a nightly basis like they did the COVID stuff.

[00:42:19] This is budget-like reality check, budget, you know.

[00:42:23] And they could do this stuff, Dr. Bradley.

[00:42:25] But I don't see anybody even really talking about a plan.

[00:42:28] All they're talking about is this big, massive spending bill, $1.3 trillion,

[00:42:32] and it only relates through March?

[00:42:34] What the heck is going on?

[00:42:37] Well, there's a lot in that, obviously.

[00:42:40] And the first problem really is Trump is not the president until the last 10 days of January.

[00:42:46] He cannot shut down the government.

[00:42:49] And the people that are there now are not –

[00:42:51] He can advise they shut it down and Congress could shut it down.

[00:42:55] Yeah, Congress – again, Congress – we get a new Congress the first week in January.

[00:42:59] But the fact of the matter is Donald Trump administered, if you will,

[00:43:05] the biggest deficit the United States has ever had in a single term of presidency, by far.

[00:43:11] I mean, by trillions of dollars, okay?

[00:43:14] And so, yeah, there's some real scary stuff going on right now, and you're absolutely right.

[00:43:19] This idea of let's do this one now and let's do something later, you saw, didn't you,

[00:43:26] they almost – what was it?

[00:43:28] It was like $895 billion military spending bill just went through the House, if I recall correctly.

[00:43:36] Nearly $900 billion, almost a trillion dollars in military.

[00:43:41] Now, that's the biggest budget we've ever had.

[00:43:43] It's probably bigger by an order of magnitude of any country in the world.

[00:43:47] Well, I don't know.

[00:43:48] There might be a couple of countries that are only half or a third of that.

[00:43:51] But the fact of the matter is we're spending money hand over fist.

[00:43:57] And part of the problem is that we're expending – let's just take the military budget.

[00:44:01] We're expending billions of dollars on behalf of foreign nations

[00:44:07] that we have no constitutional authority to be engaged in their problems.

[00:44:11] And we continue to be the largest exporter of death and destruction in the entire world by far.

[00:44:19] And we pass huge military budgets that are completely unrestrained, it seems like,

[00:44:26] in the slowing this stuff down.

[00:44:31] I'm baffled.

[00:44:32] We're spending money we just don't have, and nobody seems to care.

[00:44:36] You're right, Sam.

[00:44:37] I mean, somebody's got to rein this in and say, let's look at this from baseline budgeting.

[00:44:44] Now, I get that Donald Trump doesn't have authority until January 20th.

[00:44:48] I understand all that.

[00:44:48] But I also understand that he can use his influence, and you can use Doge,

[00:44:53] even though Doge isn't a government agency yet.

[00:44:54] They're still talking to people on Capitol Hill.

[00:44:57] And you could absolutely push for this and publicly make the case.

[00:45:00] We cannot continue putting this until March just puts a kick-me-in-the-butt sign on Donald Trump

[00:45:08] at the first hundred days.

[00:45:10] Hey, you've now either once been issued to oblivion, so you pass it by the end of the year now.

[00:45:16] There's supposed to be a government shutdown by December 20th.

[00:45:19] What's that, Friday?

[00:45:22] Yeah, it's just before Christmas.

[00:45:23] Merry Christmas, Sam.

[00:45:24] So all I'm telling you is if you pass this now and kick that can,

[00:45:28] and then in March you've got to kick the can again,

[00:45:30] you don't have enough time if the president takes office on the 20th to deal with anything.

[00:45:36] You're setting up a disaster for your own party, Mike Johnson.

[00:45:40] You're setting up.

[00:45:41] So let the disaster be on Biden's watch.

[00:45:44] Shut it down.

[00:45:45] And then say, listen, we're going to take care of business,

[00:45:48] and we're going to bring back all the constitutional government.

[00:45:50] We're going to educate people all along the way.

[00:45:53] This is constitutional.

[00:45:54] We've got to have it.

[00:45:55] We've funded it.

[00:45:56] Boom.

[00:45:57] This is not constitutional.

[00:45:59] We're not going to continue this, period.

[00:46:01] This is a problem.

[00:46:02] We've made promises.

[00:46:02] It's unconstitutional, but we've got to work our way out of this one.

[00:46:05] And you're showing the American people how responsible you are.

[00:46:09] You're funding the proper role of limited government, line item by line item,

[00:46:12] so people can see what's going on.

[00:46:13] You're saving money big time in the process.

[00:46:15] But there's no other way forward that could be successful.

[00:46:19] Now, I get that Trump can't mandate this at this point, or even, you know,

[00:46:22] but he can certainly use his influence for it.

[00:46:24] You can have Mike Johnson stand up and show people the way.

[00:46:27] But what other plan is there than what I've pointed out that makes any sense?

[00:46:32] Is there one?

[00:46:32] Well, I've been an advocate every chance we get to say that the president has,

[00:46:40] I mean, it's a power position.

[00:46:41] You could stand at the podium or sit at his Oval Office at the desk.

[00:46:47] FDR did the fireside chats, and Reagan did his little, you know, review with the people.

[00:46:53] The people, when they feel like they're engaged in the process, they get behind it.

[00:46:58] And Reagan was successful in much of the stuff he did, much of it erroneously and actually unconstitutionally.

[00:47:05] But he got these things through because he took the message to the people.

[00:47:10] The people don't have a vote.

[00:47:12] But the people can communicate with their legislators and say these things.

[00:47:16] Trump could communicate these things.

[00:47:19] Mike Johnson could communicate these things.

[00:47:21] And I'm calling on them to do so, and I'm providing the guidelines of how I would do it.

[00:47:26] But that's a great idea.

[00:47:28] It is.

[00:47:29] We need to go back to that, you know, that baseline zero budget kind of thing.

[00:47:34] Okay, if you had to start over with all your essential things, build me a budget.

[00:47:38] And every area of the government could do that.

[00:47:40] And then they could look at them, each of them, based on their constitutionality and the affordability.

[00:47:46] But, you know, they set themselves up for destruction the way they do these rolling kick the can down the thing.

[00:47:54] And they're about to do that right now this week, I'm telling you now.

[00:47:57] Five days before Christmas, are we going to get good legislation?

[00:48:02] No.

[00:48:02] I just asked you.

[00:48:03] Why did Mike Johnson even put this, you know, kick the can and put this as the deadline?

[00:48:11] Yeah, it's absurd.

[00:48:12] They all know that it will just simply get kicked again if they do that.

[00:48:16] Why not deal with it openly before when you had plenty of time?

[00:48:19] Well, their real deadline was September 30th.

[00:48:22] Okay.

[00:48:23] And they knew that was coming.

[00:48:24] It happens every year at the same time.

[00:48:26] I guarantee, Sam, next year, the September 30th will be on the same date it is this year.

[00:48:31] Oh, wow.

[00:48:31] These guys all know it.

[00:48:33] And they just can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that they have a job to do.

[00:48:39] And it's really not that complex.

[00:48:42] They have a list of assigned duties constitutionally.

[00:48:46] Get that out.

[00:48:46] Read it over.

[00:48:47] And say, okay, this fits.

[00:48:49] This doesn't.

[00:48:49] And it goes along with what you're talking about.

[00:48:51] You know, oops.

[00:48:52] Nope.

[00:48:53] That's off the list.

[00:48:54] Well, again, there's going to have to be some sunset clauses.

[00:48:57] The, you know, fly the airplane in without crashing it kind of thing.

[00:49:01] Instead of just shooting it out of the sky.

[00:49:03] But the fact of the matter is they've got to start this business.

[00:49:06] And I think within a very short number of years, they could correct the how far we've gone off off track.

[00:49:14] And we could we could begin again to be.

[00:49:16] And I don't know of any other plan than what I'm proposing.

[00:49:19] You know what?

[00:49:19] Bring the American people and get them involved so they understand what hard choices we're making and why.

[00:49:24] You can make it simple if you don't put create omnibus spending bills.

[00:49:28] But you, you know what?

[00:49:29] Do line item by line item.

[00:49:30] We could have an audit exercise saying, look, here's the topic.

[00:49:33] It's a single issue.

[00:49:34] Here's what the issue is.

[00:49:36] We don't have the money.

[00:49:37] It isn't constitutional.

[00:49:38] It's and if you put together this stuff and let people really understand and then you make these moves.

[00:49:44] I don't know of any better way to extract ourselves from this than that.

[00:49:48] But, you know, what are they going to do?

[00:49:49] By Friday, they're going to go.

[00:49:50] We came back with a backroom secret deal.

[00:49:53] No one had time to read the legislation.

[00:49:55] But by golly, thank heavens.

[00:49:57] Merry Christmas.

[00:49:57] We're going home now as your heroes because we saved you and kept the government open.

[00:50:02] And by golly, we'll meet next year.

[00:50:05] Well, next year comes.

[00:50:06] Donald Trump has his big inauguration.

[00:50:08] He's got literally about a month and a half before he's got to basically deal with that can either kick it or do what I'm saying should be done now.

[00:50:17] You can either put it in Joe Biden's hands and make it his fault or you can make it Trump's fault.

[00:50:23] That's what that that's where the blame gets laid, regardless of the truth, doctor.

[00:50:29] Well, it is.

[00:50:29] And actually, he's going to step in it and you can visualize what that might be.

[00:50:36] But that's what they're giving him.

[00:50:38] But that's kind of what's been created.

[00:50:40] It's excrement.

[00:50:41] I mean, it's see Donald should speak out against this and he should be standing up saying, look, Congress, you've got to do the right thing now.

[00:50:47] Not wait till I'm in office to do the right thing.

[00:50:50] And he needs to educate the people that Joe's handing him a pig and a poke.

[00:50:54] There's no good answers come March if you do this.

[00:50:58] Well, Trump has one thing that he didn't have this first administration, and that is he didn't think he was going to win.

[00:51:05] And so he wasn't he was flat footed.

[00:51:08] Wait, wait, wait.

[00:51:09] You mean we won?

[00:51:10] Oh, holy cow.

[00:51:12] Now what do we do?

[00:51:13] I think there was a much stronger level of understanding going into this.

[00:51:19] And I think that based upon how he's got some names that he's thrown forth now at once, he's thought a little bit more.

[00:51:27] And that's a good thing.

[00:51:28] Amen.

[00:51:30] And I have a lot of hope.

[00:51:31] I just don't want them to give him something that's almost impossible.

[00:51:34] I don't want his own party, the Mike Johnsons of the world and some of these other peoples to literally undercut and undermine his very, you know, going out of the gate opportunity when you can't get too much done in a month and a half.

[00:51:50] You know, you've got too much busy work getting set up and getting.

[00:51:53] And so they've got to take this on earlier and they've got to leave, you know, lay the blame of this to the to the Biden clan and to those Republicans that are dominant authority in Congress.

[00:52:03] But the Democrats who have.

[00:52:05] Hey, you can pin the blame in the right place if you try, and then you can come back starting out with the solutions.

[00:52:12] Well, I hope they're coming up with some solutions.

[00:52:15] But honestly, if they're using the same mold they have historically for the last 50, 60, 70 years, it's a it's an FDR based kind of thing rather than, you know, a principle constitutional based thing.

[00:52:28] And there's got to be a real learning curve in those that are in the leadership positions in this nation, too.

[00:52:34] I mean, somebody's got to say, oh, what would the founders have done?

[00:52:39] You know, and there's just not hardly anybody that's doing that.

[00:52:43] In fact, I can't think of anybody in the country that's in a leadership position that literally does that on a realistic basis.

[00:52:51] All right.

[00:52:52] Our one in the can, ladies and gentlemen, I'm telling you, you've got to pray for the United States.

[00:52:55] That's for sure.

[00:52:56] You've got to get a hold of your congressmen and senators and tell them, you know what?

[00:52:59] Shut down the government.

[00:53:01] You say, well, hey, you know what?

[00:53:02] It's only a partial shutdown.

[00:53:03] I understand.

[00:53:04] And then let's literally look at what's constitutional and what's not and make appropriate plans accordingly.

[00:53:10] Let's be the leaders to help doge with their process.

[00:53:13] Let's influence Donald Trump to understand you cannot do what you've always done or you're going to get what you've always got.

[00:53:19] You've got to have drastic change.

[00:53:21] And that doesn't mean kick the can down the road and then in March, you know, kick the can.

[00:53:27] But yet we're going to only have the can half full of gas, not all the way full of gas this time.

[00:53:32] And, OK, you can't do that kind of stuff.

[00:53:35] You've got to have a seat change in the way you approach this thing.

[00:53:39] And it's got to be serious.

[00:53:41] All right.

[00:53:41] When we get back, we've got another guest that I find very fascinating we'll talk to.

[00:53:45] He is Mark Tapscott.

[00:53:48] He's an award-winning investigative journalist.

[00:53:50] He's a senior congressional correspondent for the Epoch Times.

[00:54:14] Epoch Times.

[00:54:16] He's going to break that down for us.

[00:54:17] OK?

[00:54:18] We've got a whole lot straight ahead on your radio.

[00:54:20] Dr. Scott Bradley, freedomsrisingsun.com and yours truly.

[00:54:24] Hang tight.

[00:54:24] Liberty Roundtable Live.

[00:54:26] God save the republic.

[00:54:27] God save the republic.

[00:54:28] Good luck.

[00:54:28] All right.