Badlands Media - Badlands Daily: 5/15/26 - Trump in Beijing, Ratcliffe in Havana, Shapiro Empire Crumbles

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

CannCon and Chris Paul close out the week with a Friday show built for the big picture. Trump wraps his China summit with Xi, and the White House readout makes no mention of Taiwan, which Chris Paul reads exactly as it should be: the Taiwan crisis is a media fairy tale being dismantled in real time. Xi pledges no weapons to Iran and expresses interest in buying American oil to reduce reliance on the Strait of Hormuz. While Trump is in Beijing, CIA director Ratcliffe quietly lands in Havana to meet with Cuban officials and Raul Castro's grandson, with CBS simultaneously reporting the US is moving to indict Raul Castro himself. CannCon maps the Venezuela and Iran regime change playbook onto Cuba and asks if 90-mile-away Cuba is next. The House Oversight Committee subpoenas Arabella Advisors' 1630 Fund over the Chorus Program, which paid social media influencers up to $8,000 a month to push Democrat talking points without disclosure. Chris Paul delivers a precise diagnosis of the Daily Wire's collapse, explaining how the Ben Shapiro network was never a product of real political analysis but of algorithm boosting and paid talking points. Chris then lays out his full theory of Trump's discombobulator strategy, explaining how Trump taking every position forces public opposition that resolves false narratives over time.

All right. Good morning, Badlandia. Happy Friday. We made it for another week. Joined on this lovely day by the one and only Chris Paul. Are you doing, brother? I'm great, man. How are you? I am relieved to see you have your background back to some semblance of normal. What do you mean? Oh, like, it's slightly, it's not quite.

No, no, no, no. I don't know why this clicked in my brain as we're going live, but last week you were like all bright. And I was like, oh, yeah, the lights were turned up a little bit. I was trying out a new lighting scheme. And I think I've found like a happier medium. It takes away from the, you know, kind of the seat. Funny, we come up with the same word there. I'll take it.

All right. Well, welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen, a lot to get to today with the show. But before we do that, let's go ahead and jump into some of our sponsors for the show that help keep us rolling here. here at Badlands, and let's talk about our friends over at Rise Attire first. What up, Badlanders. Are you ready to rock something new in 2026? Well, as always, we got you covered with the Rise Badlands Native Collection. Built from the rich tones and the rugged terrain of the Dakotas, equal parts beautiful and brutal. Old roots, new vibe. Whether you got gaiters in your backyard, or you have to take a bush plane to the post office,

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Again, that's badlandsgold.com. All right. And you'd be up almost almost 300% if you guys took my advice back when we started. 2022-ish, 2023, Silver was down around 20 bucks, 20 bucks. Now is it now? I think it's almost 90 right now. Jeez. Yeah. Yeah, 20 bucks guys. That's almost 400% actually. It's four X. It's more than that. Yeah. I think it's 450%. Yeah. And at the highest, I mean, at the highest, I think what was it like 117 or something? something like that. Yeah, I don't know. It's crazy, man. I have some. I just never pay attention to

the price. That's all like just hold for down the line somewhere. That's exactly. My wife said, why, you know, when silver was up over 100, why don't we sell it and take the cash? And I was like, why? The cash is going down and value the silver's going up. Why would I get rid of the silver? And to hold cash, I mean, are we, are we expecting to buy something that we, you know, need? You know, I almost thought about paying off my mortgage. Like, I got to the point where I could have paid off my mortgage with silver when it was up that high and i was like damn that's tempting right there but yeah decided not to trade one asset for another pretty much pretty much okay so let's um let's jump into the news again smash that thumbs up if you have and i do want to start uh just kind

of surface level with uh trump's china trip and i don't know chris how familiar you are with all that went down over there but uh just good i said no i've been paying attention okay well just the news did a pretty decent job at getting again surface level uh the article here it's complicated trump delivers straight talk despite jiz subterfuge on tariffs Taiwan and iran it says the main topics that were on the agenda were trade imbalances and tariffs with the two leaders holding productive talks on strengthening the economic ties with focus on opening more more market access for american businesses boosting chinese investment in u.s industries and increasing china's purchases of American farm products.

The one thing, and maybe you can, I don't know if you have any insight on this, but when it says opening more markets for access by American businesses, does that mean us selling stuff to China, or does that mean businesses being able to go in there and buy from China to resell to Americans, like is the status quo right now?

I believe it's American businesses selling into China and getting access to the massive market. they have of you know the massive consumer market that they have in china let's go i'm all for that that was you know the latter i'm not so big on because that's the predicament that we're in right now we're we're just a consumer based industry uh country and uh they're producing all these things and we're just eating it all up so the official u s summary did not spell out any specific tariff changes or quantify the imbalances but reports said that the leaders advanced pre-summit ideas for a Board of Trade framework.

So we got the Board of Peace, we got the Board of Trade, who needs the UN anymore? It could cut tariffs on about $30 billion in nonsensitive goods from each side without hurting national security. One of the most strained discussions, however, centered around Taiwan,

as Xi stressed that proper handling would ensure overall bilateral stability, while mishandling could lead to, quote, clashes and even conflict. Xi also reportedly told Trump that quote unquote Taiwan independence and cross straight peace are irreconcilable Then they went on talking about a 14 billion dollar US arms sale package to Taiwan and Congress had already approved that but Trump was like yeah not so fast let me go meet with G first before I sign off on this and then lastly the White House readout of the roughly two-hour talks made no mention of Taiwan focusing instead on trade

economic cooperation and the Iran conflict. Trump later declined to confirm whether the issue came up when asked by reporters. And that to me that was kind of interesting, Chris, because they're making a deal and so are many others about the Taiwan, you know, China crisis and all there. And the White House is like, yeah, it's so insignificant. We didn't even put it on the two hour readout. Yeah. And I think that that's the exact interpretation to have. I think that that's probably how they think of it as well.

The Taiwan issue has been blown up by our media and by neocons and the rest of it because it's a global proxy state, just like Ukraine, just like South Korea, just like Israel in many ways. And that's like one of the major, I think, insights that is provided by examining the world in the good twin evil twin paradigm rather than the paradigm that we've been raised in, where each one of these countries is constantly looking after its own interests and is operating independently as though it's a kind of sovereign state in a multipolar world. That's not how the world has been throughout the course of our lives. And so what you have instead is the global regime occupying territories within all of these kind of super states. And they break off little pieces of these super states. And they say, hey, these are separate countries that operate independently. And because they are the power presence in these, quote unquote, countries, they and the United

States is the police force for the. global regime traditionally, well, then the United States is supposed to defend the independence of these little offshoot states that they have split off. And so the idea that the United States has to defend Taiwan on behalf of the global regime against China, even though our policy is already that Taiwan is part of China, well, all of that is preposterous under the paradigm I operate in, which I think is a much more accurate and sensible and realistic paradigm on how to view geopolitics. So the idea that Trump is going to suggest to Xi Jinping that the United States military is going to come in and defend the independence of

Taiwan, which already is not independent, that's preposterous. That is just a total fabrication by the same media propaganda apparatus that has been lying to us about everything throughout our lives. And by the way, that independence is or non-independence is by our own admission as U.S. foreign policy that Taiwan is not an independent state. We don't acknowledge it as such. You know, I go back all the time on this show to Joe Biden when he was on 60 minutes and they asked, would you defend Taiwan if China attacked them? And he said yes. And then literally as he's talking, they're like, the White House reached out and said that public policy or the U.S. policy on Taiwan is that we would not intervene. And it's like you literally have the command of. and chief right there telling you that yes we would intervene and then the white house trumps the boss alleged boss of the white house yeah yeah that was amazing and what a what a clip that was and i love i love how that you always have that it's memory ready to roll that's in there yeah um and i wouldn't have remembered that uh the the taiwan thing you can see where they want to go with that in the future when it is announced

to us that China is taking Taiwan back, the reunification, which is probably already done to some large degree. And, you know, this is how I, this is how I often describe it. It would be like California under complete control of the global, oops, global evil twin, as I call it, if California, if we started being told that California was an independent nation, and then the United States was reclaiming California. Well, to us, from our perspective right now, all of that would seem ridiculous. Like California is obviously part of the United States. Well, to Xi Jinping, Taiwan is obviously part of China, just as Hong Kong was obviously part of China. And just like South Korea is part of North Korea, Ukraine is actually part of Russia. And the idea that the leaders of those super states have to go along with the global regime story and the lines that,

they've drawn on maps since the end of World War II, well, what's the justification for that? There's no real power justification for that anywhere. So we can see that if China claims Taiwan back, what will we be told? Well, Donald Trump backed down from Xi Jinping by not going and defending Taiwan. And that's the story that they want to run in the future, which is why they're seating that whole narrative through these last at least six years, but longer. And certainly we're going to get more of that story up until that point. The last thing on that article that I just want to cover quickly. And then I just want to touch on an article that was out in the Gateway Pundit about this.

But Trump said that Xi offered to help broker an end to the war with Iran and pledged not to supply military equipment to Tehran during their summit in Beijing. Xi also expressed an interest in buying more U.S. oil to reduce reliance, to reduce reliance. on the strait. Now, that last one right there about G buying oil from the U.S. to reduce that reliance on the street is very interesting. You know, as one of the things that I think we're seeing come out of this Iran conflict is the, is the delegitimization of OPEC as a cartel, you know, that's controlling and manipulating oil prices. And we've talked about this on the show. A move, you know, we saw the routes, right, of all the ships that were leaving the Strait of Hormuz and coming to the Gulf of

America to load up on oil here instead of going there because it was blockaded, the UAE leaving because the cartel, the OPEC cartel would not allow them to produce more oil in order to manipulate the price of the per barrel. And now you have China. If China comes out and is like, yeah, we're going to, even if they only buy, you know, 10, 20 percent of our oil as opposed to getting it directly from the street, that is a major, major game changer, you know, in oil trade. So again, it was just expressing interest, which who knows what the hell that even means. Yeah. And I mean, what we have big picture is a rebalancing in global trade and energy and resources and the rest of it and finance, maybe most importantly. The Iran thing, the idea that

China was going to sell them weapons so that they could continue their war with the United States. I mean, all of that is just a media fairy tale. It's hard to take the, uh, the, uh, the mainstream perspective on any of this stuff seriously. The way they describe our conflicts and tensions with China, that's in their paradigm. Maybe it exists there, but, and I don't know if we're going to talk about the Thucydides trap bit, and I can pause if we are going to. But, I don't have that, so.

Oh, okay, so one of the big issues that's come out since yesterday in the morning when, and I guess it was the evening, their time, But when we saw the banquet that she hosted, where she hosted Trump and she gave his comments and Trump gave his comments and they toasted, you know, she bringing up the Thucydides trap. This is from Graham Allison and Henry Kissinger referencing the Peloponnesian War and the idea being that the great power as it declines is contested by the rising power. And at some point, that equilibrium has to be resolved. And that is always resolved with a war and a conflict. And she said, essentially, that doesn't have to happen. Now, that's being framed by a lot of people as she telling Trump, your country is on the decline.

And it's better for you if we don't go to war while we surpass you. I don't see that that being the case at all. First off, the declining power is the global regime power. That one world liberal international rules based order. And so she and Trump both agree that that is the declining power. They don't need to go into a conflict with that power because that power ultimately has no leverage. They had leverage in the traditional ways, control of media, control of finance, control of resources and trade routes and ultimately the military that's going to back up that form of global control.

But they're both opposed to that. So none of the levers that the global regime can actually pull in that conflict, there's no leverage there. And she and Trump both agree on that. So I don't think he's talking about the U.S. being a declining power. I think that they probably both agree about the Thucydides' trap of it all and that the target is someone else entirely. So that stuff doesn't bother me. I don't think she is insulting Trump in any way. and the attempt to frame that as Trump not having the cards here and being in the weaker negotiating position,

vis-a-fee China, none of that seems true to me at all. So that that'll segue nicely. And by the way, I agree with everything that you just said there that I did not, you know, I didn't have that up for today, but I did not take that as a shot at the United States. And even if it was a shot at the United States, it's balancing out the powers that be and getting rid of the, you know, the global hegemony, that the imperial United States where we've had our hands and everything. We want that balanced out. Trump said as much in his national security agreement or assessment.

He said as much, you know, the multipolar regions fears of influence. I want to just jump into this article real quick that was written by Antonio Grasfo. And I thought this was really funny. I started reading this morning. And, you know, he starts out and I usually enjoy his writing. This one I thought missed the mark a little bit, but that's just my opinion on this. But he starts out talking about, you know, the U.S. air strikes. We've conducted 537 air strikes in Trump's first year alone, saying that that's more than the previous administration's entire four-year plan.

And if you include coalitions, it's even higher. And then he goes on to talk about in Iraq in 2025, the Al-Anbar strike, Midnight Hammer, Hawkeye Strike in Syria, like all these things. And I'm thinking to myself, well, that's, you know, not really an incredible. thing that you know we shouldn't be bragging about that but i get it i understand it but to to use that as the power dynamic and say that that's showing that we are more powerful um that's just showing that we are exercising that power but then it was really interesting i want to highlight these two paragraphs gizeng ping by contrast condemned u.s intervention in both venezuelan and iran while doing nothing to stop them Beijing holds a comprehensive strategic partnership with turan and buys 90 percent of iran's oil

and signed a 25-year partnership covering infrastructure trade and security cooperation. None of that stopped the U.S. from striking Iran, killing its supreme leader and blockading its ports. China responded with phone calls. Wang Yi made 26 phone calls between February 28th and the lead-up to the April 8th ceasefire. And then jump down here to the very last paragraph, and it says, Xi has shown himself either unable or unwilling to defend his allies, enforce his own sanctions, or protect China's strategic interests when they conflict with the U.S. preferences. It is Xi, not Trump, who has arrived at this summit from a position of weakness.

Now, when I read that, Chris, the first paragraph starting out with Xi Jinping and obviously talking about Venezuela and Iran, but if you looked at that from somebody who just knew Trump's platform didn't know anything that has happened in the first, second term, third term, whatever you want to call it, of President Trump. And you just read that to him without any names or anything in it. they would say oh yeah that's trump that's trump that did all that and the other guy the guy that's dropping all these bombs like crazy is that really bad communist dictator over there in china that everybody needs to be afraid of and they're our greatest enemy because they're blowing everything up if you read it like that that's that's how somebody would interpret that that's that's what they're uh that's what they would um you know that's who they would assign to each one of those kind of narratives and and they're the inverse so i thought that was really interesting reading that this morning

You're saying that because traditionally the U.S. president is not framed as the guy who's going around and just dropping bombs all over the world. No, not the U.S. president, specifically Donald Trump. Donald Trump has been more of the peace through strength, but peace through strength, right? And using, especially in this term so far, using the ability to enact economic sanctions, tariffs, things like that as a weapon of war rather than actually going to the bombs. But if you read that in a vacuum where you had no idea who was who and what's taken place since January of 2026 or 2025, excuse me, that's what I think you would derive at is that G was the guy dropping all the bombs. And Trump was the one that was like, hey, man, let's do this. Let's let's help rebuild this country and get this country back on track. You know, going back to his Riyadh speech where he said, you know, let's build your infrastructure.

Let's make you guys productive. We don't have to agree with what you guys do internally within your country. but let's open up trade and let's respect your sovereignty while also expanding your economic capability. Yeah, I would agree that. I think that that makes sense. Antonio Grecefo, I've read a number of his pieces in The Gateway Pundit, and I'm sure that he is a bright man and well-intentioned, but I think that he's operating in the wrong paradigm. And a lot of the times his takes are aligned with what you might see from the international crisis group.

some of these other globalist think tanks. He is aligned with the same factions around the world in these various hotspots that you see alignment from the international crisis group, which is funded by global energy companies, global bankers, philanthropists in the donor class. The international crisis group essentially writes reports kind of directing globalist donors on where to send their money

to help advance the globalist project. And again, there are kind of real on the ground issues with real people in these countries that should not be minimized. And I think Rousseffo is by and large taking the side of those people insofar as the stories are correct. I would just suggest that the stories aren't correct and that the paradigm is flawed. And so I don't believe that she is at any major disadvantage. I also, as I said, don't think he's at some great advantage. I don't think Trump is going over there and kissing the ring. I don't think that he is in negotiating from a position of weakness.

In fact, I think all the negotiations are probably done and have been done since 2020. And a lot of this is optics oriented. They're not even discussing the issues that are presented to us as the major issues between the two countries. So, you know, it's a paradigm thing. I don't think that viewing things that way quite makes sense. And the entire article as just presented, hinges on all of the news that we hear about these global conflicts actually being real as reported to us.

And we don't have to get into the kind of deeper levels of this. Even if there are real kinetic events, the idea that they are all real as reported to us by global media presented in the proper context and framed in a way that, gives us the proper meaning of these events, that's just impossible to believe. I, you know, to your whole point of, you know, these are things that we're just now being presented with that have already happened, already been negotiated, already been worked out.

I don't know if you caught this and just real quick, the, the biolab story that came out again from Gabbert and O'D and I opening up the investigations into all of them. When we were covering that earlier this week, you know, I rehashed all the stuff from March of 2022 where you know all of the the state department was like there's no biolabs newland and rubio and they're little whatever but in the in the reporting from od and i about them opening this up part of it was well russia might be able to gain access to these bio labs well if you go back to 2022 that was the main concern of russia going into ukraine is that they're going to go after the bio labs and there was a lot of reporting that russia was you know going after these biolabs and they were

destroying evidence and all this other stuff and now here we are four years later and they're like oh, Russia might be able to get to the bio labs. It's like that was the whole premise of, you know, the invasion back in 2022. And we're just now like, oh, Russia might be able to get there. No, Russia, if they wanted to get to the biolabs, they wouldn't even need military operations. They could send in, you know, the FSB to get that. They have the intelligence capabilities to get in there, infiltrate these systems and do what they needed to do. But I just thought it was real funny that they're rehashing that same, you know, motivation for Russia going into Ukraine four years later.

and it allegedly still hasn't happened. Yeah, and same thing with China. And we see, you know, China, of course, was at the heart of the COVID lab leak theory back in 2020. And when that, we had a discussion in the chat this week, you know, you and I kind of resolving the difference in our interpretation of the whistleblower thing the other day. But every time you talk about lab leaks and COVID, it goes back to Wuhan. And so I think it was Monday that Trump in one of his Oval Office kind of press interactions brought up the fact that he was the guy who told the country that it came from Wuhan.

Who knows how that story would have evolved had Trump not done that? I've said a number of times over the years that I think one of the things that Trump does, he knows what narratives are about to come out from the other side. And so he front runs those narratives. He claims them as his own so that when they are presented by others, everyone who is anti-Trump, which is essentially everyone who's not, you know, like we are giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and saying, hey, guys, maybe just slow down for a second and consider whether or not Trump's right. I know he's an egomaniac. I know he doesn't know anything. I know he's the dumbest person on earth and all. But maybe, maybe, maybe he's just right about this.

So let's take a second and examine it. everybody who's against Trump all the time on everything, who opposes him on everything, they're all going to immediately oppose what he says. And then when it's presented a few days later or a few weeks later or a few months or sometimes a few years later by their own allies, well, then they've already gone against all those points. So when the narrative is dropped as it was intended, it never works because Trump has blown it up in advance.

I think he did that again this week by bringing up the Wuhan stuff because he knew that China was going to get hit on that while he was over there doing these negotiations and these conversations with Xi and the optics presentation and the rest of it. If you're able to spark up the China COVID conflict again while Trump's over there, well, that's a way to minimize what Trump is doing and make him look weak. And I think that that's what that whole narrative operation was for. Yeah, but in order to spark up the China thing again, you automatically implicate the United States, specifically Barack Obama, specifically Anthony Fauci. specifically, you know, Dasak and EcoHealth Alliance and all that. And, you know, that was part of the

testimony that was given on Wednesday with Xi Zhang Li, the Bat Lady, you know, in Wuhan and Ralph Barrett and their coordination and all that stuff. It is all fast. Go ahead. Yes. And all of that works really well, by the way, for the controlled opposition. It's not like it doesn't align with what we are saying, which is why we are always kind of charitable to that viewpoint. But it works even better for the controlled opposition that wants to slam both the Democrats and Fauci and all that and put that to bed while going after China while Trump's over there. The only thing is the people doing it have been running that same op for six years now. And they never, you know, Ron Johnson and Ram Paul may well be good guys. I don't know. And this isn't about casting aspersions on them.

But they ran this up for six years in a row. And both of them still attest to legitimacy of the body that they serve. They don't really go very hard after elections. And all of it takes for granted and accepts the underlying truth of the claim that there was a very deadly pandemic in the first place. Now, whether or not there was a virus in our midst, there was no very deadly pandemic. The very deadly pandemic happened on television. We were convinced of it. And then people who believe that they were who might have had the flu or might have had the sniffles or whatever who believed or even just gotten a positive test on tests that we know didn't work, went in and got into the hospital protocol, and many of them died.

And we were told that the reason they died was because they were infected with the very deadly pandemic. And so the power of the narrative and collective belief in that scenario was what drove all that forward. And the claim that we're going to get Fauci and the rest of them because of these lab leaks does nothing to resolve all of the falsehoods that really were the foundation of the the COVID there. I know. I know that you had to have seen this headline from CNN earlier this week. Handivirus is not COVID, but calmongering risk triggering post-COVID anxiety. That's pretty

funny. I mean, like that's, again, just about collective belief. And I have to wonder the hantavirus story being so ridiculous and happening on a ship. I don't know if you saw this week, but there was another ship with another virus. Yeah, right here in Florida, right in my backyard. Norovirus is that one orovirus yeah yeah which is like a stomach bug it's like 24 hours and you're fine so you have to wonder did the hantavirus story get seated out there to preempt the norovirus story I don't know but norovirus is literally like Montezuma's revenge like you go to Mexico and you get ice in a drink and the ice melts and you drink some of the water down there and you have the dysentery essentially for like the next you know whatever I mean I did I went on a cruise to Mexico and I was not right or did I for you I think it was frozen. You're freezing in and out. Now you're frozen. I don't know.

Oh, could you hear me that whole time? I can hear you. I just, you're freezing. Well, now we're back. Anyways, I do want to real quick. We're going to move on. I also want you to keep in mind what you were just talking about with, you know, Trump being out in front of, you know, kind of seeding narratives that now the

mainstream is going to have to push back on it. Because I think that we can in a roundabout way apply that to another segment we're going to do here in just a second. I do want to hit real quick. We've been hitting Rumble Rants as they come in in order to, you know, promote the idea of sending in Rance if you'd like. C.K. Feltz is watching with my beautiful niece, Sabrina.

She's a first time listener. Say hi to Sabrina for me, please. Hi, Sabrina. Thank you for watching. And also we'll try and keep it PEG because I'm assuming that Sabrina is young. And we don't, you know, we, I, Chris is always a gentleman. I tend to have a partner. I talk like a Marine cuss like a sailor talk like a Marine all that stuff.

Thanks for tuning in CKFeld. CPG, please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Taiwan just the government that was overthrown by the CCP because they were selling drugs to their own people? They were the original drug lords. That's interesting. I don't know enough about that. So I'm not going to comment on it. Likewise. Okay.

So let's jump into this story here. I want to just real quick, Reuters put this out, a U.S. government plan. was seen in Havana as CIA director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials to discuss bilateral law enforcement cooperation. Now, this was posted on May 14th yesterday at 6.15 p.m. Now, I don't know if this was like a known thing that Ratcliffe was going to Cuba, but, you know, the fact that they got this picture was very interesting. And then right after that, literally an hour later, the CIA puts out this picture here on May 14th at 7.10 p.m. And it was just this. There was nothing in there. I saw this yesterday. I was like, what is this? You know, for some reason, by the way, it popped up on my news feed. And I do, no, I don't follow the CIA. This popped up on my news feed and I don't follow the CIA. That's interesting. So then they, they edited it and added Havana, Cuba about 45 minutes later or whatever. So I was kind of wondering, you know, did the CIA, did Reuters get a scoop on the CIA? And the CIA was like, oh, shit, we better put this.

there I go swearing sorry Sabrina it was the CIA like oh crap Reuters caught us we better we better put something out on this before you know a story comes out or whatever the case might be then we get into the story itself NBC News CIA director Radcliffe meets with Cuban officials in Havana it says Ratcliffe met with interior minister the head of its intelligence services and Raulito Rodriguez Castro a government official who is the grandson of former President Raul Castro. It's interesting because if you Google Rolito and ask if he's a government official, it says he's not.

He's like the head of security for Castro, for his grandfather. It says Radcliffe was there to, quote, personally deliver President Trump's message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes. Officials discussed, quote, intelligence cooperatives, operation, economic stability, and security issues all against the backdrop that Cuba can no longer be a safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere. Let's go. I agree with that. Cuba said it provided information that, quote, made it possible to categorically demonstrate that Cuba does not constitute a threat to U.S. national security. This was interesting. The Biden administration removed Cuba from the list, the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism in January 2025 during Biden's quote unquote Biden's.

quote unquote lame duck. President Donald Trump then reinstated that designation on day one in office. The State Department said that it has offered, quote, support for free and fast satellite internet and $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance. So that's NBC's take on this. I don't know if you want to add anything to that or. I wonder if they're talking about Starlink there at the end. The Ratcliffe thing, again, same situation as Trump heading to Chuck.

Ratcliffe heads to Cuba and there's an anti-CIA anti-ratcliff op in the whistleblower testimony. And, you know, a lot of people called that, what do they call it? Gosh, I can't think of the right word that was used to describe it. But the whole show of it all, that hearing was nothing more than a show. And I would agree with that. What's that? Dog and pony, Kabuki theater. You could call it that.

For sure, yeah, a political theater is what I was trying to think of. So thank you. I think that it was political theater. And now we get headlines about how the Democrats, oh, they didn't even bother to show up for this hearing because they would have had to defend Fauci. Is this even a real hearing? It's hard to take any of this stuff seriously. And, you know, I'm no fan of the CIA and certainly not a defender of theirs, but you could tell that they were going after Ratcliffe and the fact that he's heading down to Cuba, which is and has been for many decades, such an issue and maybe a thorn in the side of the global regime. They were running Venezuelan oil and reselling it through Cuba.

And now that has been cut off by Trump. And they're very angry at that. There's something going on in both of those places. The stories are being dismantled by Trump. And I think, as I've been saying for many years now, I think that's the point. These are conflict zones that we have been kind of conditioned. into believing are these really important and dangerous issues that threaten American national security. And whenever they're brought up by the media, we are supposed to immediately do whatever the government wants us to do.

They tell us, oh, Iran is chasing a nuclear weapon. That means we have to go to war. By the way, I know that that's what Trump is doing now. And that's the justification for it. China's this rising power. They're going to seize back Taiwan and then we have to go to war. Cuba presents this grave threat to us just right off our shores. we might have to go to war at any point.

Well, all those conflicts are being resolved by Trump when he tells people that he's ending all of these wars. That's what it's for. He's ending these war stories so that the narratives themselves cannot be used against the American people any longer. And I think he's doing an excellent job of all of that. So, you know, going back to the fact that Reuters is putting out the picture of a state department bird, CIA bird with Ratcliffe on board, you know, putting out that picture.

are from Cuba is odd. And then the CIA having to come out and acknowledge that, yes, we're in Cuba, Ratcliff is in Cuba, we're negotiating with them and all that stuff. The other thing that's really odd about that, by the way, the media getting out in front of that is the odd part to me. And I think there's obviously a lot of intelligence influence over the media itself. And was this something to get out in front of anything that could come out of Cuba? It's a hotbed for our intelligence. It's a highly contested region. The other part to that, that is the fact that it was Ratcliffe that went there. The CIA director going to Cuba,

kind of it seems like de facto in place of the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which would be, I mean, you would think that it would be a lot more beneficial to relations to send Rubio. Rubio's Cuban. He speaks Spanish. You know, he can go there in the native tongue and whatever.

And I know that sounds like kind of whatever, but he is the secretary of state and that is, you know, common ground that is found there in negotiations. So it was just kind of strange that it was Ratcliffe that went over there and did it while we're in China. You know, just I don't know what to make of all that, but it's just unusual circumstances, I guess. Yeah. And hopefully it'll raise some questions on what the CIA's involvement in Cuba has been over all these many decades. And at some point, we should probably get to Ted Cruz's father and how he was supposedly a political refugee from Cuba, but that's not really true. And his crossover with Lee Harvey Oswald, once he came to America, CIA presence in all of these issues. I don't know what the ultimate resolution for these stories is, but there's something there. And sooner or later, we're going to get the truth of it.

I mean, Trump is the one who brought that up initially with the Ted Cruz thing about Ted Cruz's father. So let's play a little good cop, bad cop here with NBC News versus CBS's news reporting on Cuba. And CBS News reports U.S. moving to indict Cuba's Raul Castro, sources say. So you go from the NBC article where they're meeting with Raulito Castro and they're having a productive conversation, $100 million in humanitarian. aid free satellite for your people we're going to you know lift whatever sanctions all this stuff and then you get CBS news that's saying that we're moving to indict roolito's grandfather raoul Castro it says the u.s is taking steps to indict roel castro the 94-year-old former president of cuba and brother fidel in connection with the downing of a plane 30 years ago cuba's deadly

1996 shootdown of planes operated by the humanitarian group brothers to the rescue being the planes that are referred to there um so just you know that is first and foremost weird story in any time immediately when i see an organization like brothers to the rescue being shot down over cuba the first thing is okay who was cia on that bird right who was who was intelligence what kind of color revolution what what operation are we conducting so of Of course, this morning, I go to my resident CIA expert on this. And Colonel Towner, I texted her and said, what do you know about brothers to the rescue? The founder was Jose Basulto, and he was in Operation 40 trained under the CIA, actively flying missions into Cuban airspace and dropping pamphlets.

Four of them were shot down, giving Congress the ability to pass a law that removed the president's ability to lift sanctions, which is technically unconstitutional and ironically labeled Liberty, like the amnesty proposal sponsored by Cuban congressional members. So I guess when they shot down that bird, they removed, and this was 1996, so Bill Clinton, they removed Clinton, was that? Yeah, Clinton. They removed Clinton's ability, I guess, to lift sanctions on Cuba. And I remember, you know, during the Bill Clinton, this was right around the 1996 had to be right around the Eelian Gonzalez story.

Remember that story? Yep. For all going into the house. That was a huge thing. here in Miami. That was like everybody was talking about that story when Napolitano sent in the border patrol and had the kid at gunpoint with an MP5 in his face. So just thought that was fascinating that Raolito is going to, it seems like he's going to give up his 94 year old grandpa to broker peace with the

United States. Like here's your sacrificial lamb. I'm going to give up my granddad to do to make this deal and granddad's probably like, you know what, I'm 94. My time is come and gone. You know, I won't even make it to the United States and face trial, probably die in transport or something, whatever. Very interesting stories. Yeah, the Raul Castro thing kind of seems like a parallel to the Ayatollah being removed in Iran. These men who are really, really old and probably have very little control over what's going on there. But they are famous figures, made famous.

these super villains made famous by global media over these many years. So we'll see how that part of it resolves. I did a long dig on Raphael Cruz a long time ago with Chat GPT and the rest of it. But he was an activist against Batista there. And the removal of Batista made it easier for Castro to be brought in. And then Raphael Cruz was removed from Cuba, probably by the CIA. So all of that has just, I mean, I look at Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz just there's something very, very wrong with Ted Cruz. And I think that it goes back to the episode with his father.

And again, there's no possible way that I could tell you I know what happened back then. But when we're told stories in certain ways and there are certain little story turns and implied allegiances. We've seen those patterns so many times that you can kind of understand some of these things are inverted. Let's see what the what the inverted opposite would be. And when you're able to kind of locate that, then you can say, then you can start researching from that point using the inverted opposite as a hypothetical. And, you know, like he's always an anti-communist activist. Antic communist activists. Activists are usually pro-communists. The person. Right. So you begin, you begin, you begin. kind of flipping those things back over and you say okay well it seems like maybe this could be inverted to distract us from this other framing is there evidence that

we can find in the official record for this this alternative framing and oftentimes you find out oh yeah there is actually an extensive record that would support this alternative framing and when you put that side by side with the the mainstream media stories that say hey guys it's definitely not that thing you start thinking oh well i think it kind of is that thing when you go when you when you when you talk about Venezuela and then transition to Iran and then now transitioning and i think that's already begun into cuba and you remember at darrell when trump was speaking and they were asking about who's going to rise to power in iran and he says well we've got the venezuela plan we'll just kind of go with the venezuela playbook right and obviously we know

know, Maduro was extracted, captured, whatever you want to call it, Delci Rodriguez, his vice president, longtime ally, assumes power. Trump is more than happy with her, it seems, trades opening up and all that. In Iran, you know, the Ayatollah is killed, and who is alleged to have risen to power? His son, how many? Same concept, right? It's the removal of one leader in a replacement with somebody else in that same faction, but maybe more desirable to the United States. Who knows? And now we're seeing it in the United States, the Venezuela model in the, or excuse me in Cuba, the Venezuela model in Cuba, removing Raul Castro, even though I know he's not in power, people still say that Raul Castro is

de facto leader of Cuba. He's got all the influence in Cuba. You know, you ask any Cubans down here, and most of them probably wouldn't even know that Raul's not still in charge of Cuba. And Raulito, his son or his grandson is the guy that's allegedly his spokesperson that's, you know, running the country for him. He's an influencer, by the way. He's like, a social media influencer. And so now we're moving granddad and we're putting grandson in his place. And it's the Venezuela model. And we've seen it now three times.

And I think this is going to be done before we know it in Cuba. Somebody in the chat, Steve Kray in the chats that said, why isn't Cuba the 51st state? I can't agree with that more. I honestly, I can't. Bro, it's 90 miles from Key West. It is a two-hour boat trip to Cuba. And it's a beautiful, it needs a lot of work. But it's a beautiful country.

open that country up and and you know open up some ports cruise ships tourism all of that stuff the the sugar the tobacco like everything coming out of there dude i would be totally i would take cuba before i would take greenland although i know the reasons for greenland are beyond tobacco and sugar but the uh same model you're talking about we it could be that north Korea was under the same model if we kind of push that model backward in time and see if that pattern fits other other instances the Maduro thing so he posts these every day on his telegram channel this is the days of his kidnapping how many days he's been kidnapped for and that's what they call it Delci Rodriguez still says that Maduro is president of Venezuela so

So, yeah, the regimes are, the regimes are changed as far as people know them and understand them. That is, the Maduro thing has been more than enough optics for the world to accept that there's different leadership in Venezuela. Same thing in Iran. And different leadership means they can't just claim that the same story holds true now. And Trump's making it impossible to do that even with the regime unchanged, which is just a display of Trump's narrative power in terms of shifting, belief and I think that again he knows that's the weapon he knows that's the source of his power going forward and the agenda is being completed through those story shifts alone you know it just dawned on me because I was going to bring up rubio wearing the track suit the

Maduro track suit he wore that on air force one right and rubio is sanctioned by china like criminal sanctions by China did he wear that on air force one to China specifically like, hey, come and get me. Like get me, get me put me on the put me on the headphones and the, the eyeglasses and everything else and arrest me China. I double dog dare you. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.

It could be. Rubio's also been DJing lately and we know that Maduro is a great dancer. So was, well, that was my comment is that they got off a 24 hour bender and with root with Maduro. And Rubio was like, oh shit, I got to go to China. And Maduro's like, here, take my track suit. Gosh, man. It is so funny.

And of course, the Cuban presence in Florida, Rubio, being the former senator from Florida, in with that whole Republican establishment and neocon thing down in Florida that's looking to control places like Venezuela, places like Cuba. Yeah. At some point, the big picture is going to become clear. And we're just kind of trying to put the right puzzle pieces in place, knowing that the mainstream media story is just not true. Have you ever looked at the CIA's X page?

No, I have not. Dude, it's so weird. They post every week. They post these artifacts of the week. Here's the Helms letter with Adolf Hitler tabs. There's a brick from the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden was killed. Here's an artifact of Wild Bill Donovan's fake German ID. a picture of the seven days in the Arctic painting.

Just very strange. Okay. Someone needs to decode that. Right. It'll happen now. I want to jump into this article because I think it's absolutely hilarious. And this is going back to what we were talking about, what you were talking about with Trump,

you know, kind of he seeds ideas and stories that, you know, eventually the mainstream media has to, you know, pick up on in a roundabout way i've speculated that that's what's going on here with some of these wars that we see trump waging on people that have been you know quote unquote loyalists and all that all that other stuff so this was an interesting article in the new york times well it's not really that interesting i i think it's interesting the how this is happening and how this is unfolding from the new

york why ben shapiro's media empire is collapsing there was a time not very long ago when ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media, Chris. You are looking at the king of conservative media, bushy eyebrows and all. That's all over now. The Daily Wire is instituting significant layoffs. Its website has emerged as one of the great traffic losers in conservative media. Its subscribers based on YouTube is starting to shrink. The Daily Wire, there are videos that now, after just a few days,

online have less than 10,000 views, a catastrophically small number for a channel with more than three million subscribers. Capiro, who is an Orthodox Jew, is fiercely pro-Israel. His support for Israel and hatred of the Palestinian cause are issues that define him as a public political figure. He's an unequivocal backer of Netanyahu's Israel and a committed conventional neo-conservative. He has been predictably thrilled by Trump's war against Iran. Also, a fiscal libertarian. He's and social conservative. Shapiro once sat at the happy medium of the Republican voter and could claim at least in the 2010s that he understood the beating heart of campus conservatism. As the recent state elections in Indiana show, however, Republicans who break with Trump can still

suffer. He remains godly among the mag of faithful. It remains to be seen if Carlson or Tucker, Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens projects have an electoral future. What is clear, however, is that there's an online constituency for what they do, whereas Shapiro, he will have an expiration date. The reality of two wars, Israel's bombing of Gaza and the ongoing bombardment of Iran, cannot be waived away by the likes of Shapiro, whose propagandist talking points have grown stale. So, you know, you talk about 3 million subscribers, 10,000 views or less on videos. And, you know, of course, I got to jump into, quote unquote, the great one, Mark Levin, on YouTube 74,000 subscribers, which isn't a lot, but not one video with over 5,000 views really.

But then you get into Rumble, same thing with Levin, 642,000 followers. And look at those numbers. It's almost like it's fake, Chris, 4,000 views, 2.8,000 views, 600,000 followers, 650,000. That's three times more than us here at Badlands. And we've got more live viewers right now than he has on most of his shows. And we're not being premiered at all on, on, you know, we don't get the features that, uh, the other guys get. We'll just leave that at that.

So anyways, the whole point in bringing that up and I do want to go into the next story here, which we'll segue is, you know, I've, I've, I've speculated that if we are to believe the drops, you know, the save Israel for last. And I think there could be some truth to that. And what, what Trump is doing right now highlighting this is, and being an, an, an, an, an ally to that, to that, you know, facet is really interesting because it's turning everybody against them. By Trump being allegiant and, you know, staying the course with Israel, it's like 57% of Republicans now, according to that article, 57% of Republicans under 50 view Israel as

unfavorable. I mean, that certainly sounds like you're saving Israel for last there. Yeah, well, Well, as we were talking about before, so many people hate Donald Trump and will oppose him no matter what he does. If he associates himself with absolutely everything, then we are going to hear a loud public opposition to everything. And it doesn't matter if I think something's good or something's bad. The opposition should come forward absolutely everything because then the conversation starts and then that opposition gets resolved one way or another. Sometimes people will agree with my position, sometimes they won't. But the point is that the argument itself among the American people is what kind of allows the American people to find equilibrium on a number of these issues. Our view as conditioned over many decades of Israel was disproportionately positive for virtually no reason.

Now, the solution is not to just hate Israel, and I'm not advocating that, although if you do, I don't care. The conversation will actually bring that back towards some kind of point of equilibrium where we have reached a sensible conclusion. There are people that really strongly support Israel. There are people that really strongly oppose Israel. And then maybe the happy middle is that we just understand Israel is a foreign country. It's not our responsibility. We should not be going to war on its behalf. We should not be funding its existence and the rest of it.

And you can apply that to any of these other nation states or any other issue that might come up. And that is what I call Trump's. That's the discombobulator. It's taking every possible position, making sure that the public opposes every possible position so that these issues can all ultimately be resolved. The Ben Shapiro thing is crazy because, as they say, he was kind of the guy, ostensibly the guy that sets the pace of what the Republican movement was and at different points, you know, they kind of made him that for MAGA, even though he was always and he self-identified as sometimes Trump. He was also the original campus guy. He was the original Charlie Kirk, but he was totally unlikable. Like you couldn't like him.

Except unless you wanted to see young liberals get slammed to their faces on college campuses. If you wanted to see somebody slam a 19 year old, well, Ben Shapiro was going to do that. And then Charlie Kirk became that guy and was funded by a lot of the same people and directed by a lot of the same people. Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk and the downstream online networks that their organizations, they're well funded, $100 million organizations produced, were credited by the New York Times for winning the fake election in 2024 for Donald Trump. The Daily Wire, remember when the Stephen Crowder issue came up and the story was that they had offered Stephen Crowder $35 million a year to come to the Daily Wire? Well, assuming that's true, that would mean that characters like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh and what is his name, Andrew Claven and Michael Knowles, like the key guys at the Daily Wire, well, they would have to be getting more than Stephen Crowder. And so we're talking about online influencers who are just pushing controlled opposition narratives on behalf of the global entity making a million dollars a week.

More than most Americans will make in a decade. More than many will make in their entire lifetimes. They're making in a week for doing five internet shows. And so all of that was entirely out of balance. I remember the sports commentator Jason Whitlock in his comments when I was back on Twitter for the end of 2022. He said something about Ben Shapiro. And I was like, this guy is toast. And I cannot remember getting more blowback for a post on Twitter than saying that Ben Shapiro was done in 2022, because nobody could believe it. And then a year later, we have the paragliding go-card incident.

And it's been all downhill from there for Ben Shapiro. So the, the, he was always, his reputation was always overinflated. He never had that much influence. That was the algorithm. That was the algorithm rhythm boosting him the machine boosting him the establishment boosting him it was never real there was you know there was um i i did a show a couple weeks ago with some of my old band guys and we had you know somebody that joined us uh towards the end of the stream there and this topic came up about you know the the the maga split right and i think that that's totally manufactured by president trump i think this this split in maga as he's as he's taking an axe to the democrat party openly like outwardly he can't do the same to the republican party outwardly yet eventually i think he can

get to that point where he can do it outwardly but he's doing it by dividing the establishment neocon republican base the maga base and then the you know the the panicking whatever you want to call them the fake maga what america first versus maga whatever you want to call it and i think a lot of that is being deliberately done by president trump and i think that is to break apart this entire two-party system as it exists currently. And, you know, to the point that you made about there are people that will resist Donald Trump, no matter what he says or what he does, when you see people like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and, you know, all of these, you know, mainstream podcasters now starting to break away from President Trump, these people are being exposed to it. Now, they're not necessarily

getting on board with it because a name like Tucker Carlson is ingrained in their head almost as much as Donald Trump says, but they're at least moving in that direction to where they're, you know, being exposed to it. The same with the Israel lobby. Well, not the Israel lobby, but the Israel influence. As Trump goes all in on Israel, the popularity of Israel, the public sentiment behind Israel is plummeting. It's so bad. Did you see what Netanyahu said last weekend? What he said? Netanyahu came out last weekend was like, yeah, you know, I think we need to cut ties with America. I think we need to stop the funding of America. We're going to wean ourselves off of America dependency.

Like that's how bad it is that Trump has driven the sentiment behind Israel down so much that Netanyahu's like, holy shit, we got to go into full disaster control here. And maybe if we tell America, hey, we don't need your money anymore. Just don't leave us. You know, like, I don't know, man. It's like battered spouse syndrome. Like they're like, they're like, they're like, please don't leave me. Whatever. Dude, it's, it's really pathetic, man.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, all of that is well observed. And think about what the upshot of that is. We were told for years that Donald Trump was a servant of Israel, a servant of Netanyahu. You know, and through his like unrelenting support of Israel and Netanyahu, the reputation of Israel and of Netanyahu, the reputations have both collapsed. I think that that is intentional. I think that they know. that oh now you froze completely oh damn it you think you i think it's intentional you know that and i was yeah i was just saying i think that trump is aware and the people around trump are aware that trump taking a certain position means it will be met with vehement opposition from all sectors and if he keeps doing that cycle after cycle over the long term he's able to he's able to first of all, elevate brands that were trashed and kind of destroyed brands that were really high. I think ultimately what Trump is doing is a massive rebranding project of the entire false reality to bring things back into accord with what the underlying reality is.

Like that's my big picture theory on what is happening right now in Trump's comm strategy, but we don't have to get into that. The effect on Israel, please stop me if I told you this a few weeks. weeks ago. I know I said it on one of the shows. I have a friend. His parents are in their late 70s or early 80s. And they are just committed Fox News Watchers, huge supporters of Donald Trump and very conservative, but very committed to watching Fox News. And so at the beginning of the Iran war, they were 100% pro-Israel. My buddy called me one day and was like, man, how do I talk to my parents about Israel just to get them back to like a normal place?

where they can view this with some sort of like arm's length objectivity. And so I went through a few different talking points that he could bring up and questions to ask them. And I talked to him, I don't know, six or eight weeks later. Oh my goodness. It's doing it. I guess I'm okay. Yeah.

And so I talked to him six or eight weeks later. And I said to him, hey, where do your parents stand on the whole Israel thing right now? And he's like, oh, man, they have totally detached from all of that. they are not insane Israel supporters anymore. That is something that you can't accomplish if you're Donald Trump by going out and saying, hey, American people, I want to disclose to you the truth about our relationship with Israel. They've done this. They've done this.

They've done this. This was a lie. This was a lie. This was a lie. They're actually doing this in Gaza. This is a genocide. Blah, blah, blah. Taking these issues head on doesn't get us to the place that we need to go.

And he knows that. And you can apply that to all of these other narratives. People are like, well, why doesn't he tell us the truth about vaccines? Well, he did tell us the truth about vaccines 15 years ago. And now he has to say nice things about them to make this kind of this, this comms operation work and have this back and forth work. And what does the what does the country now believe about vaccines? Because Trump is worth or Trump is prepared to take the slings and arrows from people who supposedly like him. Well, now the country knows by and large, hey, maybe.

vaccines aren't all they were up to be. And you can apply that to every single one of these issues is so important what he is doing. And that's why it makes no sense to get angry at him because he says the wrong thing. The president is not our God. We don't have to agree with whatever he says. Just let the man work. We can see what he's doing. I say the same thing. And this is why I don't engage in all that that Massey drama because I think Massey's doing the same exact thing. The Epstein thing, I think is the same exact thing. Trump was saying, leave Epstein alone, leave Epstein alone. And then as soon as the bill hits his desk, he signs it.

And I've long said that Trump has been an informant in this case. You know, he's cooperated back in 08. I think that he's the, you know, the dog that hasn't barked. I can, I'm not going to rehash all that. But I think that Trump has an interest in getting to the bottom of it. But he can't, if he doesn't say it publicly, if he says, no, leave it alone. What's everybody going to do? Give me more.

give me more anything to go against Trump and that's part of the operation and uh and i and i still that's again that is why i believe that uh and you're seeing now you know in that in that campaign the massive amount of money that's coming out for the opposition and it's mainly coming from the the three main uh jewish donors what is it sangre sanger addelson and and uh i can't remember the third one off the top of my head but you're seeing the pushback against that and why because there's a hawk against the Epstein stuff on there. So I think that's all very interesting again. This is all just speculation.

It's our opinion based on research and evidence and all that. And we could be wrong. Very well could be, but I think I'm right. The Massey thing is, and he was a Ron DeSantis supporter in the fake primary cycle before 2024. And so, yeah, yeah, it very well could be. And I grant to you that you might be exactly right about that stuff. And I think it's important to seriously engage.

Oh, no, you got cut again. Geez, man. I don't know what's with my connection. You got to get you Starlink, bro. Yeah, I guess so. I think it's really important to seriously engage with the perspective you're offering. My only thing is, at the end of the day, if I'm going to come down on one side or another, the question I ask is, is this man telling the truth as best he knows it? And it's clear that that's not happening and that there is something else going on that is not being brought and put out right out front.

And so I will always go against that ultimately because I think that that's what we have to do. We have to demand that people are truthful and honest as much as they know about this stuff. If there's something else going on, we can apologize later and say, hey, man, I can see that you were doing something with the best intentions. But what I saw was that you were not presenting us with an honest case. And I will oppose that in every scenario because I can't honestly ultimately know what the underlying truth of what doing is and so I can only side with true or false and so that's what I do. But yes, in every scenario it is important to consider that perspective because that could be exactly what has happened.

Yeah, totally, totally. And again, I acknowledge fully that this is pure speculation and, you know, just my opinion on what I think could be going on. We're going to get into another story that we'll tie into, we'll, we'll tie into. I'll bring it all back around, I promise. I do, we do have to hit a sponsor though here real quick. And let's go ahead and do that. And where are we going here?

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This is like my favorite time of the show every single day. This is my favorite part of the show. Today, we remember those who gave everything. And memory is never still. No, T.G. We can't stop for Sresne. We have to deliver all of these softs. Disclosure gift card.

The gold by Zach Cain. The lotion detector. Fighting over the beer brunt. Softdisclosure.com. Promocode Memorial 15. The most epic ad, I think, I never seen.

That is, I mean, it is incredible. And Green Star is doing these, right? Yes. That is, I mean, insane. It's better than any commercial on television. And even if you don't know the backstory, if you don't know the badlands,

lore behind it the Zach Payne lore red pill 78 if you don't know all of that it's still epic you know and the alpha so hung all of that stuff so green star actually um sent me the the full music videos i put or the full audio of the song like the whole song like it's a whole song it's three minutes long and um i i posted it last night in our in our chat so i don't know if you got to check it out i haven't listened to it like four times since he sent it to me and like i genuinely love that song like i want to put it on a cd and listen to it in my car or a cassette tape a mix tape and listen to it in my car um tonight we're doing christie and i are doing date night and last night i was playing it before we went to bed i was playing it and i'm going up the stairs and like i'm freaking

dancing and rocking out in the house and she's filming me so you guys if you tune in to date night tonight you might get to see cancun uncensored dancing to soften uh hydrate your elbows That's fantastic. Yeah, so softdisclosure.com promo code, Memorial 15. Check it out. Let's get back into the news. Wait, Brian, doesn't it say, doesn't it say moisturize your soul right after that or something?

I'd rate your elbows, moisturize your soul. And I love the dance he does, like the air guitar, hips way. Yeah. That's my favorite moment. Yes, I agree with you on. Well, in the mullet, the, when he stands out, the Dolorian and the mullet. Also, Delorians are British cars, so it's not very American there, guys.

Although, back to the future thing. Back to the future thing. All right. So let's jump into this story here from just the news. Nonprofit crackdown feds target the liberal dark money infrastructure. All right. A dual prong investigative and regulatory pincer move is moving to close on the nonprofits and quote unquote dark money networks that have long anchored the American left's political and cultural infrastructure. the Trump admin and allied lawmakers are examining the anonymity and tax-exempt status of the most influential progressive organizations in the country.

Thursday, the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to the 1630 Fund, the massive nonprofit hub managed by Arabella advisors. The subpoena demands internal communications and financial records regarding a social media influencer operation known as the Chorus Program. The chorus program's potential role in circumventing federal campaign laws, specifically focusing on the payments of social media influencers to disseminate political messaging without the disclosures mandated by campaign finance law. Last year, Wired Magazine was the first to report on the chorus program, allegedly paying influencers up to $8,000 per month to disseminate talking points favorable to the Democratic Party. This inquiry is part of a broader push to establish whether large-scale nonprofit engines are operating within the same legal framework required of other political entities or if they are utilizing their tax-exempt status to shield coordinated political campaigns from public scrutiny. Now, what I said earlier, Chris, this is the Trump administration and the current Congress, Republican Congress, although I don't think it's as much them as it is President Trump himself, taking the acts directly. to the Democratic Party and the infrastructure that they've built, Act Blue. We've seen that coming out lately and more so. And now going after the kind of the social media aspect of it,

the narrative seating of the left. Now, the same needs to be done obviously on the right. The chorus program is not unique to leftist organizations. There's plenty on the right. We saw the Russia op that allegedly got Tim Poole. I think they got out of that or whatever. But the same thing was going on there, you know, paying, what was it, like a million dollars a month for one of the shows that he was doing or something like that? I don't remember all the specifics. But it's no different on the right. But, you know, obviously here, their focus 1630, Arrobella advisors and all that. Before I move on, I want to tie this back in. I'm going to, we're going to jump back in about a month to a story about Israel and Salem media gets rolled up into this as well. If you want to

comment on this, go ahead. Well, I just, I think that people should be. mindful of the fact that there are these influencer networks and a lot of what you see including and especially the MAGA quote unquote influencers online are part of paid propaganda networks they get 4 a.m. talking points just like the mainstream media used to get and they are paid to disseminate them to their followers in a way that will appear natural to their followers. They're going to think that all of these popular figures have gotten popular specifically for how good their takes are and how reliable they are as political influencers. And the fact that they're all saying the same thing creates the illusion of consensus, which communicates to the audience to the followers

that these people are actually on the right track. That is not true at all. These people are just being paid to say these things. Daily Wire Network, the Turning Point USA Network, again, credited by the New York Times with winning the fake election for Trump in 2024. That's what they are. influencer propaganda networks. These people are getting paid to say these things. This is not like a product of their unique political analysis. And sometimes, you know, we talked a few weeks ago, I think, on this show, about the text message groups where they're all communicating

to kind of refine those talking points and then go out and blast them all together and support each other's accounts, reposting each other, interacting with each other. They never interact with the follower. Oh, no, you froze again. Man, I don't know what the, what's going on with the connection. I see you froze again and you're right back. So it's like, it's going to make three pauses.

All right, cool. Well, I can reset if it gets bad. No, you're good. Well, okay, so let's jump into the next part of this. So, again, you know, I'm all four going after the left. But, you know, the whole Democrat Republican, you know, paradigm is fundamentally stupid, in my opinion. But this was April 30th, the 20th, the 2026, time. of Israel, Israel just quintupled its PR budget to $730 million.

Experts say it won't work. Israel is betting nearly three quarters of a billion dollars that it can talk its way out of a reputation crisis. Lawmakers in Jerusalem approved a 2026 national budget last month that includes roughly $730 million for public diplomacy, five times the $150 million that they allocated the year before and 20 times what Israel had spent on such efforts before the Gaza War. The unprecedented expenditure comes as survey after survey shows declining support for Israel in the United States. Jumped down here and it says a portion of the 2025 allocation included a $50 million international social media ad buy, split across Google, YouTube X, and Outbrain, $40 million to hosting 400 foreign delegations,

including lawmakers, pastors, influencers, and university presidents, a quote-unquote media war room that was erected to monitor 250 outlets and 10,000 daily Israel-related items. Holy shit. Yep. The foreign ministry also signed a $1.5 million a month contract with former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parzcal's firm to deploy AI tools against anti-Semitism online, a $4.1 million campaign aimed at evangelical churches and the Esther project, a paid influencer network running up to $900,000 through a PR firm called Bridges Partners. And I'm pretty sure that's what ties into Salem Media. I think it was Bridges Partners that ended up.

And I thought, because we reported on this, I think it was like $6 million that went to Salem Media. And so my point with this is, Chris, like, I'm all. all for going after NGOs and stuff on the left. NGOs donor list. If you're tax exempt, if you are not paying, you know, taxes as a corporation and I do agree corporations.

I don't want taxes on people. I think the federal income tax is theft, but I can understand corporations that are using, that are paying taxes because there are, there is a lot of infrastructure that they're using federal infrastructure, that they're using to conduct their business. If you're not paying taxes, I want your don't.

donor list public. You should have to put your donor lists and make those public because the people are using those as write-offs as well. But yeah, you got to focus on the right and not just, not just, you know, this story with Israel, but the right does it too. And not just Israel. There's other countries that have this. Britain has, you know, $100 million that they spend a year on this type of shit. So, yeah, I'll land that there. Yeah, I remember last year at some point, or maybe the year before, but researching this company called Influensible, which is another one of these. It's kind of you can apply to become one of these influencers. And I think I don't mean to misstate this. I'm pretty sure if memory serves that that was linked to Parscale. They used to have DC Drano

just right on the the homepage of their website. And then I kind of pointed that online. And within a day, D.C. Drano was no longer there. But yet these networks, they all cross over and they're all used for the same purpose. The Israel thing goes, if you saw, I dropped it in the Badlands chat yesterday, but Nick Fuentes has come out and said that anti-Semitism is, is passe. So I guess the Groypers were thrown a curveball yesterday. I don't know how that will resolve itself. But you could see that there was an op to push

the pro-Nazi cause and the anti-Semitism thing. And again, this is not to comment about whether any of that is good or bad. It's just to state very clearly that there are communications ops, coordinated messaging ops to be super pro-Israel and to be super anti-Israel because those things balance out and they help one another. And the super anti-Israel stuff is the foundational claim on which a lot of the censorship efforts are built. So there's every reason why you would believe that they would want to be launching paid coordinated messaging ops to create the optics and the image, the public understanding that there is this massive wave of anti-Semitism that must be dealt with by the government.

It's all, oh, you froze again. That effort is specifically to increase government power and to enable it to censor the American people. The idea that all of that can be manufactured from the very beginning, that should be easy to believe at this point. And we have to be looking out for that stuff all the time. It's almost like, you know, an organization like SPLC, you know, funding white supremacy. There you go. Controlled opposition, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Why would they, why would, why would, why would Israel ever want to fund or the, or the, you know, the APAC, whatever you want to call it? groups. Why would they ever fund anti-Semitism movements? And people can't believe it because they would say that exact thing. Well, wait a second. They're trying to fight anti-Semitism. You're telling me that they're funding anti-Semitism? Well, yes, of course they're funding both sides. That's the strategy. And that's how they are able to constantly pit people against one another and never have them question what's actually underneath that. This is the same thing we were talking about yesterday when

we were talking about the CIA going after sinolaa cartel members you know mid-level members and it's like they're only going after them because they're clearing out the competition for whatever cartel they're lining up with at that particular moment you know same thing with war why do we fund or why you know why are we so against these you know radical Islamist groups over in the middle east and then we're funding them because that perpetuates the cycle it everything continues on as long as we you know control that dynamic that opposition force over there we can continue to prop up a military industrial complex over here and so they're funding it they send all that money over there and sure those people do genuinely

hate the united states but we're also enabling them to act on that hatred not just towards the united states but towards other countries over there towards their we perpetuate all of this like every single thing that we see the animosity the division is manufactured by some entity and and usually they control both sides yeah and there are there are real world kinetic consequences to that stuff but it's important to remember that even if the people doing like creating those events doing those um terrible acts of violence or whatever it might be all of that is still manufactured at a higher level and you can't ignore the fact that it is manufactured because that's the ultimate or at least closer to the ultimate enemy.

Yep. Real quick, before we move on, CPG, had two rants here with AI searches. I looked at those briefly, and I'll check them out. It's about the Taiwan, Japanese World War II thing that he was alluding to before. So thank you for that. Doc from Amish PA, Marcus Rubius, first of his name, King of the States and of the Freemann, Protector of the Realm. Come on, man.

Wasn't there? saw a headline i didn't click into it but something about how they changed rubio's name or something i didn't see that i'll see if i changed his name marcus rubius is that what that was a reference to i think perhaps that was that yes well i thought that was a lord of the rings shot there all right so let's jump into this story here ABC news briefly trump poised to drop irs lawsuit launch 1.7 billion dollar weaponization fund for allies uh this would be a $1.7 billion fund that would pay back Americans that were harmed as a result of the Biden weaponization of the justice system, the legal, whatever, including nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection to January 6th. The main condition for Trump to drop a series of legal actions that he filed, including the $10 billion lawsuit related to the 2019 leak of his tax returns, as well as a $230 million legal claim related to his 22 search of Mar-a Lago.

and the Russia collusion investigation he faced during his first term. So taxpayer money going out to pay for our government being awful people. And how about we just hold those people accountable and put them in prison? Then we've got this store. I found the Rubio thing by the way. I sent it to you in the stream our chat. Go ahead. No, pull it up.

But let me cover this real quick because it's short and it's kind of related. to the weaponization thing. The DOJ has filed a complaint against a D.C. disciplinary counsel. Hamilton P. Fox III. I never in a million years thought I would remember that name. And now I know that name every single time I hear it because he was the DC bar guy that went after Jeff Clark, John Eastman, like all of those people. And I watched this man litigate against Harry McDougal, who we had on why we vote like two months ago. Great, great episode.

If you guys want to go back and check that out. Harry McDougal is a rock star. The Justice Department filed a complaint against Fox III, the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel and the D.C. Court of Appeals Board on professional responsibility over their improper use of bar discipline to regulate the official actions of the federal government attorneys. The filing advances President Trump's executive order ending the weaponization of the federal government and the presidential memorandum on preventing abuses of the legal system and the federal courts. It seeks to nullify the D.C. Barr's unlawful prosecution of former assistant U.S. Attorney. Attorney, Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark, based on internal deliberations relating to potential fraud in the 2020 presidential election. And this part right here summarizes my entire take on this. As three former AGs recently recognized, the D.C. Barr's effort to discipline Justice Department attorneys, quote, for making recommendations, factual assertions, and providing legal advice during confidential internal agency deliberations on law enforcement and sensitive public policy are quote improper and constitutionally impermissible remember they went after

jeff clark for a draft memo sent just between him and president trump and his counsel attorney client privilege never published anywhere publicly and they went after him and tried to disbarum for that i cannot wait to see justice on this i'm with you on that for sure celebrity in china No, Rubio, not so much. He was banned from the country. Trump had to order Xi to let him in. So China changed his name so we could bypass sanctions. So for the next 48 hours, Rubio's name's Lou, Marco Liu.

Trump also brought Hegg Seth, his top. Loubio. Yeah, so, I mean, this is what we're dealing with. This is what we're dealing with now. And of course, you know, I always take note of when people scream at me you can't call things fake like did rubio get off the plane and they're like hey that looks like marco rubio no no no that's marco loo yeah yeah it's ridiculous this is not fucking real man yeah none of this is real sanctions are not important i think is another

message here and that's why that's why you wore the track suit that's that's totally why wore the track suit now. Now that I know that, that is 100% why he wore the track suit. He put on sunglasses and a mustache when he got off the plane and she's in his Amigo, what's so. Yeah, yeah, they, they assumed that it was actually Nicholas Maduro being delivered to his allies in China. I love this timeline. All right. Let's see. We're going to run out to well no we got some time okay um where was i going next da da da da da da da da da da da da okay so i had this story up yesterday and i did not get to cover it marco loo man i can't get over that uh from just the news one nation under fraud trump admin uncovers massive

welfare citizen welfare fraud citizenship abuses the story involves scammers using fake student profiles to make off with millions in federal student loans that's the first i've heard of that kind of getting into the mainstream and it doesn't mention anything about about it throughout the rest of this article. This whole article and they, they, they, they, they mentioned fake student profiles to get student loans and then they don't bring it up again. Hmm.

And of disappointed in that, but it says here, there's evidence that this type of fraud is, uh, specifically encouraged by the way that federal government programs are set up. For example, the office of refugee settlement resettlement, resettlement, resettlement runs a program that helps new immigrants develop quote unquote, quote, micro enterprises like home health care companies. The quote, help generate an income and achieve self-sufficiency. So it's not just the states, by the way, that are enabling this directly.

It's also the federal government directly. We've kind of speculated the federal government just gives out the money and that the states are the ones that are allowing this to happen. Nope. It's the office for refugee resettlement. Why the hell we even have that office? You want to talk about a bureaucratic bloat that should not exist. Pop that thing and let the gas.

Explode get rid of it. The Justice Department and other government agencies have vigorously pursued states where potential fraud has been documented last month. It shut down 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies in California. It goes on to say on Wednesday the task force announced that it would be halting $1.4 billion in federal funding for home health care and hospice providers across the entire United States. J.D. Vance issued an ultimatum. to all 50 states demanding that they show they are adequately protecting against fraud in federally funded Medicaid programs so stupid man these letters are the first step the first effort to try to force these states to get serious about prosecuting fraud jd vans said at a press conference doctor aaz said that there are signs that medicate programs were also exploited by foreign governments russia uh government involvement we believe in los angeles chinese government involved in a big fraud ring in New York in New York State. The number one job in the entire state is not retail.

It's not working in shops. It's personal care services. Why? It's because it's a jobs program for the state. And so there's another article. We can skip that one in the interest of time. But, you know, last night or yesterday afternoon, Ash and I are covering a creature from Jekyll Island, right?

And one of the things that they talk about in there was New York specifically, and this book was written in the 1990s, mid-190.90s. early 1990s and um one of the things that that griffin talks about in that book is um the disparity between state funded programs and the the the pay of those employees compared like he was saying like a porter uh with the state is making more money than an x-ray technician in the private sector per week it was like two hundred and twelve dollars per week versus like 175 dollars per week which is how far we've come since the 90s that 175 dollars or maybe it was the 70s it might have been the 70s but either way the the whole idea is you know the government bloat paying you know

paying out the ass for the shit like the fraud can't be stopped just by giving a stern letter it's just it's got to stop by just not giving them the fucking money anymore yeah the uh i was kind of blown away at his little fraud speech i think it was monday or tuesday he goes in to address Medicare fraud and talks about all these billions of dollars that are being defrauded in Medicare. But there's actually another layer between that. They have Medicare fraud control units that are also funded around the country to the tune of billions of dollars a year. And JD was essentially like, unless these units start prosecuting fraud, we're going to defund these units. It's not like we're going to defund the Medicaid program so that the fraud can't continue.

It's that we're going to defund the units tasked with prosecuting Medicaid fraud. So I don't think that that is going to complete the mission. My wife must be listening because she just sent me the dance videos. Nice. I don't know if I'll be playing those tonight. They don't quite look as I don't look as epic as back pain in a mullet. Well, no one can. No, that's true.

That's true. So maybe we'll see. in the interest depends on how much wine she gives me tonight um let's get into a couple clips here from a hearing yesterday uh with um the virginia fairfax county prosecutor and i was i was a little bit shocked i guess maybe not really by some of these things here i did a little bit of extra research so brandon gill's going to talk about one crime and then uh i think it's uh representative not or knit that's going to talk about another but um this guy discano here dude this guy is some shocking crimes against children here that are getting a slap on the wrist check this out um do you do you know who

under jose cortez mendes is are you familiar with that case yes sir okay this is a guatemalan illegal alien who was arrested in march of 2024 he was initially charged with quote carnal knowledge of a 13 to 14 year old. Just for those of us who aren't lawyers, can you describe just very briefly, what does carnal knowledge of a 13 to 14 year old mean in this context? Well, sir, generally the, a charge like that would typically refer to underage sex.

Okay. Okay, can we pause for a second there? Hold on. Wait, what? What? Underage sex in Virginia is called carnal knowledge? Why don't we call it statutory rape like the rest of the world or why don't we call it underage sex? Carnal knowledge? That's like something.

Isn't that like when you do something you did it with carnal knowledge, meaning you knowingly knew that this was either against the law, a violation of somebody's, you know, personal rights, rape, whatever the case might. To me, that was just kind of strange. Yeah, I think it's just kind of maybe a more archaic sort of term. I think it needs to go away because it's masking the heinousness of a crime. I mean, carnal's bad, but let's call it carnal underage rape, not carnal knowledge. So we raped an underage person, an illegal alien who raped an underage American. Your office reduced those charges to a misdemeanor charge of consensual sex with a child, 15 years and older.

You offered him a 90-day suspended jail sentence. Is that correct? So based on the evidence that we had in the case. So it is correct. But it's not related to the policy, sir. So that is. So when I heard that, I was shocked. So this illegal alien has sex with a girl that's 13 or 14 years old.

They changed it to over 15. Give him a misdemeanor. And the guy serves a sentence to 90 days and serves zero time in prison. I couldn't believe it. So I had to look it up. And so ICE has this here. The Fairfax County PD arrested Cortez Mendez on March 16th for sex crimes. ICE Washington lodged an immigration detainer right away.

The detention center refused to honor the ICE detainer and released Cortez back into the community. The Fairfax court found Cortez Mendez guilty of consensual sexual intercourse with a child and sentenced Mendez to three months in prison, but suspended the entire sentence. suspended the entire sentence. The guy got no time in jail. So there was another portion of this here. Who was the guy?

You remember the white guy and this was like a big story probably like eight years ago. The high school or a college kid that like raped a girl at a club behind a dumpster. And like he got he got off with like a misdemeanor probation. Brock I think was his name or something. Yeah, that doesn't ring a bell for me. And like everybody was free. And I agree 100%. You raped somebody.

It should be at minimum 20 years. I would go life. But yeah, that was a crazy story there. But same vibes here, except in this case, it's with illegal immigrants. So here's another, this is representative not. And this one's a little more obnoxious than Gil. Gil has a charisma and a finesse to his way of, you know, gotchaing somebody. Mr. Not just goes for the throat here. It could not sentence this

person to any term over two years. Is that not correct? Sir, I'm so glad you brought the state. Is that not correct? Well, because I would like to explain, sir. It is correct. And the court rejected it. Sir, I know the case file. This was a, this was a, I'm talking. It was a judge that was appointed by Senator Warner. This is not a right wing judge. This is a liberal judge. And you know why he rejected it. He saw what you should have seen. He cited an overwhelming evidence. Can we talk about the evidence? This person was a threat and you don't quit talking. And I would love to tell you about it. Threat. All right, dog and pony show, but let's dive into this story because again, I couldn't believe this story. Ice takes custody of a legal after

Fairfax County DA drops child rape and kidnapping case. Jumped down here. According to court, court documents, a man broke into an Annandale area home where a four-year-old and her mother were asleep in separate beds the mother awoke to see the window blinds rustling and heard the girl yelling from the living room the girl said a quote-unquote big man grabbed her from her bed and tried to carry her out police found a shoe print outside the window and palm and thumbprints on the window uh they matched those of mr baccadano uh by august of 2023, he was arrested charged. Those charges in August of 2020 were reduced to abduction and with the intent to defile was crossed out of the warrant. By February of 2024, the girl's age was dropped

from the indictment, reducing the charges from a class two felony punishable by life in prison to a class five felony good for up to 10 years. The burglary charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, unlawful entry charge with the maximum penalty cut from 20 years. years to just one year. And of course, all of that makes it, you know, under the Virginia law, uh, makes this guy non susceptible to deportation is that's the big argument in that hearing. Like what the hell is going on? I, it, and of course, this guy Descano is a Soros prosecutor.

Mm. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, geez, like when you hear kind of the rhetoric of, you know, this is going on and it's like, okay, but then when you actually see some of these cases and see like, manipulating a case by taking the girl's age out it was a four-year-old the guy went in there and tried to kidnap a four-year-old for god knows what reason but either way taking the the age of that victim out in order to you know drop the charge and make it far less

significant than it should have been is disgusting man so good on them good on on on gill not so much not not not so much not not so much i i just i i i don't the political theater that's political What Brandon Gild does is an expert class in how to work a whatever. Not just shut up, you quit talking. No, no, no, no, no. Anyways. Are you ready for a shocking story on California, Chris? Always.

All right. California death row inmates are watching porn on taxpayer funded tablets evading security controls. Prisoners in California on California's death row are partly filling their time by watching porn and engaging in lewd conversation. using taxpayer-funded tablets as the state continues a shift toward a Norwegian-inspired approach to rehabilitating criminals. Why are you rehabilitating criminals on death row? It's kind of a one-way street. Doesn't end good for them. Yeah, you're right about that. California issued 90,000 tablets to inmates as part of a multi-million dollar program, $189 million, taxpayers in California to give tablets to prisoners, could go all the way up to $315 million at the end of it all.

Where incarcerated people could send and receive messages in real time to loved ones admit a push for digital equity, digital equity. Several death row inmates claim that users can evade the security controls. Robert Maori, a serial rapist who strangled and killed at least three women in the 80s, says that he views pornography on the tax-funded digital tablet. Many watch through a video chat application where an inmate can call someone on the outside who can, quote, put porn on their TV for the inmate to watch. Mori said he received a topless photo from a 22-year-old German psychology student

who was, quote, hoping that I would share my story with her for a class project. Kind of makes her a prostitute, doesn't it, if you're willing to sell this in order to get something? Samuel Amador, another serial killer, sentenced to death, said that, quote, I watch porn and short clips of my family at the beach. What a weird combination there. He says, we get around their bullshit, meaning their censorship. And then it goes on to talk about securist technologies, getting a contract valued at $189 million and could cost as much as $315 million. Congratulations, California. You are giving tax.

You could have stopped that giving tablets to criminals to convicted felons. Yeah. You got to wonder what else they're doing with those tablets. And I mean, this obviously sounds awful. I just that when I read this story the other day, all I could think was I wonder if they are recruiting all of these inmates into kind of these online bot and troll swarms that just exist to harass actual people online. all the time and i have no basis for saying that just to let everybody know clearly except for some familiarity with how uh the california mind works and the the sorts of approaches they take on some of these things yeah it's it's wild man absolutely wild speaking of fraud in

california dana williamson newsome's former uh ex hop aide and and andavier boucher's former campaign manager pled guilty to the case involving we talked about this back in november she was um her and i think the guy's name was sean mccluskey um which was also one of bashera's uh staffers they were laundering money out of uh becherra's campaign account i talked about um you know how these campaign accounts essentially become slush funds if your campaign is unsuccessful and you don't win office and this is a case and point right here i think his spousel called me out because I said that they get to keep the money. Well, this is how they do it.

They were billing the campaign account like $8,000 a week or a month, something like that for expenses, saying, you know, making up businesses or whatever and paying themselves all this money. Over a million dollars in total, Bashara says that he has no idea what was going on with all of this. Well, she's been found guilty Williamson has of three felonies, conspiracy to commit, bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return and making false statements. And all of this is as Bashara is running for governor of California, the former attorney general in California. And then the HHS secretary, there's also PPP charges that were in that story as well,

almost like the corruption, you know, just goes on forever. I think when we covered that story, I think it was with Alpha and he thought it was really interesting that they're going after her like that because you know um it can it can definitely go higher up you know with with with beshara with the ppp loans and bashera being in the biden admin the hHS and all that stuff so um and then what did we get from ktla earlier this week the interview with bishara where he's like this is going to be a friendly interview right this isn't going to be like a gotcha interview you're you're going to you're going to be my my operation a project mockingbird hero and ask me the soft falls right and they and she published that wow no I didn't see that you didn't see that no oh

oh man let me pull it up real quick it's it's it's worth a rewatch like Bershera like I don't know if this was supposed to be part of the interview or if she just decided I'm going to air it anyways but here it is this is this dark pavia Bressera in Highland Park by the way this is a profile piece this is not a gotcha piece right well look I think we're these questions are fair. It's in order to learn about you as a candidate. The lines about the profile. I don't know how you define profile, but I'd like to begin the interview. The way I describe profile is you talk about all the things that I've done, things I want to do, and along with some tough questions, but not only tough questions.

Looks like he's really out there to fight. All right. As we start to wind down. Oh, so I'm just going to bring this up because I thought this was absolutely hilarious. We talked earlier in the week about actually it was last week as Alfa and I talked about the AR-15 case before the Supreme Court and the possibility of finally getting some Bruin action New York State Pistol Association versus Bruin and then we get this story from the Associated Press. A musket from 1776. This is not this is not fake guys. This is not April Fool's. A musket from 1776 can fire a leg. ball at a velocity of around a thousand feet per second. Imagine that what that can do to a human body.

Yet under federal and most state laws, it's exempt from gun regulations. Many antique or replica guns aren't considered firearms and even convicted felons can own them. There aren't supposed to be any gun regulations. And we actually have the Supreme Court ready to decide a couple of cases. I was, there was some article on CNN yesterday listing the major cases that's where we were still supposed to get decisions by the end of June. And they're deciding whether or not they can prevent people from owning firearms if they smoke marijuana. That's already been established in appellate courts in Oklahoma that you can go. F all the way off. And you know it was used

to justify it? Brewing. Brewing. I covered this for Gateway because I covered the guy getting arrested. I covered the Oklahoma District Court and then I covered the appellate court. I think it's the Fifth Circuit. I covered the appellate court as well and they upheld the Bruin decision at the district level. I don't know if it ever went to the Supreme Court. Now, to be fair, there are other courts that have made the alternate argument, but none of them cite Bruin. And the judge in Oklahoma cited Bruin saying that gun laws have to be in the,

interest of our you know in the same context as our founding fathers and our founding fathers allowed cannabis and and you know that kind of stuff you could be drunk and carrying a gun and it was no problem and it should not be a problem should you be accountable if you fuck up excuse me sorry Sabrina if you're still watching uh should should you be accountable if you are inebriated intoxicated and you do something stupid with that gun yes absolutely but uh here here's the little clip right here i think people would be kind of interested to know that But when you look at the firearms of the revolution, the Flintlock musket or the flintlock rifles, that they are actually technically in terms of legal standards in the federal government,

not legally a firearm. They are classified as an antique. It is actually not nearly as heavily regulated as a modern firearm. And what I mean by that is that today you don't necessarily need a background check for it in most states. It was created to essentially not burdened historians, collectors, museums, and other law-abiding gun owners from collecting these significant pieces of history it seems silly to to put restriction on something that would be such a terrible weapon if you wanted to you know kill people you can kill more people quickly with a car than you can with with a musket regular new rule if you're going to use a musket to commit a crime you have to dress in colonial attire i think we should bring the tricorn hat back let's do it let's do

but I'll get us a pair and we'll wear them in Deadwood. Nice. We'll walk around Deadwood with our, our, our, uh, trihats. All right, uh, Chris, that's, I think that's all I've got for today, which is good because we're up to the time. And yes, we have a two hour limit on this show. Um, that was a big hoopla yesterday because, oh, yeah. I like two, 204, Alpha wants to rehash the, the, the, the Massey gossip story.

And I'm like, bro, we're out of time. Also, I'm not. participating in that um we had one more doc from amish p a mish pa they changed his name to marco lu because marco rubio has been sanctioned twice by the china's all right chris what do you got coming up brother d p h with john tomorrow night and uh i think that's about it d ph all right uh we christie and i'll be doing uh date night tonight 7 p m so if you guys check that out rumble.com slash cancone. Stay tuned, Daily Herald coming up at 1 p.m. I'm sure there's live coverage that will be going on. I don't know what it would be, but there should be live

coverage. And also, only lands, spellbreakers followed by only lands, Matt Trump, and then only lands. And then, of course, I'll have my week in review tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. If you guys want to check that out as well. And then, of course, Saturday night. Chris, thanks as always, brother. Appreciate you, man. Good seeing you, brother. All right. God bless, guys. Have a great weekend.

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