Badlands Media - The Daily Herold: 3/20/26 - Narrative Collisions, Legislative Pressure, and The Bigger Picture

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Jon Herold hosts The Daily Herold and breaks down a rapidly intensifying news cycle marked by colliding narratives, political pressure, and shifting priorities in Washington. Jon walks through the latest developments, highlighting how multiple storylines are converging at once and creating confusion around what actually matters. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing when narratives are being layered or redirected, especially as new information is introduced at a rapid pace. The episode also explores mounting legislative pressure points, with Jon analyzing how political actors are positioning themselves publicly versus what their actions suggest behind the scenes. He questions how much of what is unfolding is organic versus coordinated, encouraging viewers to look beyond surface level reporting. Throughout the discussion, Jon reinforces the need to step back, identify patterns, and maintain perspective in an environment where information is constant but clarity is limited.

That's a hell of it. Well, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Daily Herald here on Badlands Media. I'm your host, John Harold, and happy Friday. It's almost the weekend. Maybe it is the weekend for some of you. Should have a good show, I think, today. I'm going to have Skip from Patriot Protect come on, and he's got a story he's going to talk about relating to Iran and some hackers. Plus, I want to ask him some questions about elections, election machines, hacking and

machines, Sifi's got any details on that. New case. This is the new opening for now. We are going to have another intro. It's in the process of being made right now. We're changing things up a little bit. Yeah, how's the weather for you guys? It's it was crazy here. It was like snowing earlier this week and cold and it was like 75 the last two days. It's been nuts. Hammer got 35. This could be the best show ever. this week could be we'll see it's definitely my best show so far today we'll see what happens is rumble

being weird i hope not anyway yeah i'm gonna have skip joining me here in a little bit but we got plenty of other stories to go through as well today so um i may even throw out the link for anybody wants to call in and talk about anything we'll see what happens but do me a favor hit that thumbs up from wherever whatever whatever platform you're watching on and let's go through a couple of couple things. First up, from sponsors, we got ourselves, the Badlands Shop. Have you checked out the Badlands Shop lately? You might be surprised by what you've been missing. From thoughtful gifts and unique finds to everyday household essentials and personal care must-haves. There's truly something for everyone at the Badlands Shop. But here's what makes it different.

Every single purchase you make is so much more than just buying stuff. You're investing directly into this movement. You're empowering America First businesses. You're lifting up fellow badlanders and you're supporting the creators who are building this community along with us thank you for being part of this your support means everything head over to badlandsmedia. tv slash shop and or click on shop from the main menu of the website at badlandsmedia. dot tv and discover your new favorite brands it's badlandsmedia.tv. slash shop please come back from wichita what's wrong with my ears Phil what's wrong with my ears my headphones

Now you're making me self-conscious, what I do? Here, up and down, putting pouring rain for two weeks for PJ. Friday with the day off is groovy, setting up a canvas to paint a bit. That sounds fun. And I'm also going to do a quick, soft disclosure ad, and then we'll get plugging away until Skip comes on. Get you some of that beard oil. Now that I'm alone, I have a close-up. Do you see how awesome my beard looks right now?

I use the beard oil every single day. First thing, it comes out feeling all silky, smooth. I take the dropper and I manually apply the oil directly to my mustache. Nice and, oh man, I love it. And then I do drops all throughout the hair and then I just rub it all in. And then I top it off with the tallow stick on the face. I feel like I have to grow a beard just to try this beer with it. It sounds amazing.

It's all from soft-skillage.com. And the best part about it is you'll be supporting Badlands Media, Annie from Willowen Farms, and basically three of Annie's neighbors. So that's five total American companies that you'd be supporting with one purchase. I have been using the soft disclosure, scentless beard oil every day after the shower. It looks unkempt, but it feels silky smooth.

I want to look a little wild and unapproachable, but for the woman I trust, she'll be like, oh, it's actually kind of soft. is approachable after all. Otherwise, stay away. And soft disclosure will help you too with that, if that's the very specific vibe you're going for. That is very specific, yes. You guys are supporting American businesses when you do that. It's absolutely incredible and you get a great, great product. Absolutely. Phil, you're on my shit list for messing with me about with any of your comment. Don't appreciate that. Real quick, no update on the Doge website. Silver and

gold they are at gold is just under 4600 it's crazy how much they've gone down silver at 70 bitcoin is at 69 8 and then a couple um couple things on the website for trom and it's nothing like no presidential actions or anything oh wait preserving america's game this is new this is from today i have not seen this yet so i don't know what this means. For over a century, the Army Navy game known as America's game is stood as a symbol of excellence. Now recently, now the recent and potentially ongoing expansion of college football playoffs, now the postseason college football games threatens to encroach upon the second Saturday in December.

So he's basically just saying that game will always be the second Saturday of December. And the executive order to do that all that, that's, I do like that game, especially when it like snows and they're both like option offenses. and it's just like a ground and pound type game. Those are fun. This was the other big news from today. Trump has unveiled his national AI legislative framework. And some of this I might go save for when chips on or skips on.

But we'll read through it. The Trump administration is committed to winning the AI race to usher in a new era of human flourishing, economic competitiveness and national security for the American people. Achieving these goals requires a common sense national policy framework. that both enables American industry to innovate and thrive and ensures that all Americans benefit from this technological revolution. The administration recognizes that some Americans may feel uncertain about how this transformative technology will affect issues they care about, their children's well-being and their monthly electricity bill. These issues, along with

other emerging AI policy considerations, require strong federal leadership to ensure the public's trust and how AI is developed and used in their daily lives. The Trump administration, is demonstrating that leadership by issuing a comprehensive national legislative framework that addresses the most pressing policy topics that AI presents. Number one, protecting children and empowering parents. Administration is calling on Congress to give parent tools, parents' tools to effectively do that, such as account controls. See, this is the thing.

It's calling on this whole thing already. We're calling on Congress. We're calling on Congress. We're proposing an approach that will likely need Congress to actually implement it. We're proposing guardrails, calling on Congress, encouraging Congress. You know, maybe I'm a little skeptical. You can call me glass half empty if you want to. I know a lot of you like to do that.

But I somehow don't have any faith in Congress to implement anything in line with Trump's agenda or to the benefit of the American people. But yeah, it's out here. Protecting children, empowering parents, safeguarding and strengthening American communities. This has to do with rate paying for the data centers and electricity bills. Respecting intellectual property rights and supporting creators. Yeah, that's an interesting topic.

It can kind of get boring. We talked about a little bit on the exclusive live stream for Gart last or yesterday after the show. But that is an interesting one. Sentencing censorship and protecting free speech. I do not believe we have free speech in this country with the algorithms. Enabling innovation, ensuring American AI dominance and educating Americans and developing an AI-ready workforce. How many people are going to lose their jobs to AI? That's what an AI-ready workforce is.

It's one that's ready to take jobs that are not the ones that AI can do because AI is going to take everybody's jobs. Bass Burns says, How could you not love Congress, John? I'm hurt by the statement. They are our savior. Yeah. Rave Daddy says glass half full, but the water tastes like shit. I like that.

I'm a glass who took my half water guy. There you go. I like that too. You guys are funny. All right. It looks like we got Skip hopping in backstage here. So I'm going to bring him on. I got a couple stories to go over with him.

I don't know if he's going to have his camera or not. Probably not. Skip, are you there? Skip, can you hear me? Check one, two. Check one, two. Can you hear me? All right. I can hear you. How you doing, man? Is there a little delay? John, can you hear me? I can hear you. I don't know if you can you hear me. Does not appear he can't hear you. I can't hear you, unfortunately. Okay. Um, hold for processing. I'm going to text you. Oh, you can hear me and for some reason I can't hear you. Hang on. It's standby. All right. Well, I want to ask him about this AI stuff before we get into the couple stories. I can still hear you. Can you hear me? You can hear me, but I can't hear you for some reason. That's so funny.

You know, would you be all right with me trying to join again? Yeah. All right. Stand by. Folks in the chat, I'll be right there. All right. Well, we'll try to make it work. If not, we'll do it again next week. He'll pop back on in a second. So just hope for me. processing. Skip link twice if you can hear us. Producer issues again. I wouldn't say this is producer issues. This is just sometimes when people hop in,

their settings are weird. Let's text one more time. And you have faith in AI. Do I have faith in AI? I don't. I'd have to skip that segment. Love it. Oh, I wouldn't say I have faith in AI. It's a tool like anything. And people are going to use it. People have to use it. And it's not like going away. Ravis says I was whining way too much for a while.

Yeah, there's plenty to whine about it, you know? AI cannot fix your audio. Helps you get work done, learn shit fast. Yeah. Let's try this again. And now I can hear you and I'm hoping you can hear me. I can hear you too. Awesome.

Fantastic. Good to have you on the show, Skip. Hey, what a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. You know, it's nice to be, you know, the go-to resident cybersecurity expert that can just come on whenever you'd like. I mean, that's what I'm here for. Yeah, you're probably the only actual cybersecurity expert that I know or can get in contact

with anyway. We might have a few in the chat. I don't know. But before we get to the stories that we were going to go over, I want to ask you about this. Did you see that Trump put out his AI legislative framework? Hang on one second. For some reason, the audio just cut off. What's going on here?

Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? Yep. Can you hear me? It's just, the audio is just, I was hearing you just fine before, and then it just cut off. So weird. Hang on one second. You know, for a cyber guy, you'd think you'd have his tech figured out.

We have to reopen the applications. Can you hear me now? Yep. Can you hear me? That's so funny, and I can't hear you. We're going to be reopening applications for the resonant. I'm going to give it one more try here. I think we've got, I'm going to come back in.

I apologize there, John. I don't know what's going on with this platform here. No worries. It doesn't work again. We'll just abandon that idea. I was saying something about AI before he came on, and I don't remember what it was. John lost Badlands Co-founding status.

He put it all on North Dakota State last night. I would never have bet on North Dakota State to win that game. Okay. Okay, see, now I can hear you just fine. Okay. So we'll see what we can do. And if it happens again, well, I don't know, we'll do it. 30 seconds at a time.

If it happens again, we can just try to fix it after the show or something and shoot for next week. But did you see that Trump released his AI legislation today or his framework? I did see that. Do you have any thoughts on that? What are your thoughts with AI? So look, I mean, obviously we think about this a lot. And, you know, the whole point of AI is, to you know there's there's a national security bend to this which is to say it's an arms race

between the united states and china and you know china we were you know screaming about this a year ago when china released their deep seek AI and just saying how consequential it was that there was this huge other you know competitor in the space with you know america's you know open ai and chat GPT kind of being the champion of it um and so like it or not this is going to to be a huge, I think of it as like a natural resource in itself, or call it an artificial resource. Just like AI itself is just a commodity. This is the reason that we're building data centers, you know, next to hydroelectric dams and solar farms and wind farms is just the processing power alone is what is helpful or, you know, what is a commodity to be bought and sold.

I don't know if you remember this, like in the late 90s, was trying to make the internet, meaning just like, you know, data capacity, a resource like, you know, natural gas that can be on like the spot market where you can literally bid on the market for internet access. And this kind of to me feels like that because these aren't just like, it's not open AI that's necessarily buying data centers. They're contracting with subcontractors. Yeah. Open these data centers and sell them for a commodity. processing power. So for for Trump's you know for it is it makes all the sense in the world to me that the government would want to step in and be a part of this you know to champion it.

I have my skepticism. I have my skepticism about what Congress is going to be able to do because it's just a you know a dysfunctional institution. I'm trying not to swear. You're not sure it's okay okay fucking great. So yeah, It's just, you know, I just don't believe that it's going to be a, I don't think it's going to be, you know, promoting the Trump agenda. I just don't think so. Yeah, I would agree with that. And that's why I said right before he came on. It's a lot of this just calls on Congress to implement things.

And they've been totally feckless. So I don't anticipate that's actually going to happen. But there's two stories, you know, that I wanted to talk with you about. With the Iran conflict going on right now, there's a story that came out. Last was that last last year earlier this week last week Sunday maybe about Iranian linked hackers targeting US medical tech company and the the cyber aspect of what's going on over there is is interesting in and of itself. But we get these stories about Iran hacking stuff like they always talk about it with our elections and our election machines and voter data and voter rolls and they got into somebody's emails and got access to the Trump campaign. Like how tech capable is. Iran when it comes to this stuff. Yeah, very, very good question. And let me give you a little

rundown about this stuff. So leading up to this striker hack, which is probably one of the may be one of the most, I hope, the one of the most consequential, you know, cyber attacks this year, unbelievably unprecedented. But this is far from isolated. This is years in the making. The awakening from the IRGC in Iran in general was in 2010 with the Stuxnet virus. That name might pop out to you in your memory. Stuxnet was a joint effort between the U.S. and Israel, basically to infect the Natanz uranium enrichment plant in Iran and literally just spin the centrifuges too fast such that the mechanical parts of it break, right? This was like the proto attempt for the United States to slow down the Iranian, the nuclear program. And that was like an awakening for them to say like, oh, this is something that we can, this is, this is a, you know, a cybersecurity version of an ICBM that we can deploy from our like little turtle mode kingdom, you know, in the Middle East.

And so what they launched in 2012, something called Operation Ababa Beal, which was a huge disruptive, you know, cyber attack on United States banks. They had J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. People might remember that, you know, back then, that they couldn't log into their information for a couple days. They couldn't log into their bank accounts because of this cyber attack. then they started saying well where else can we take this um they hacked a dam in new york state and this was the first way that they started like probing to see can we disrupt uh united states infrastructure right this is scary stuff that they're able to do um sheldon adelson in 2014 the the late billionaire casino mogul said in a in a public statement we should fire a warning shot by putting a by setting off a nuclear bomb in the desert in Iran they hacked the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and they wiped it they caused 40 million dollars of damage in his hotel because he said that it wasn't ransomware they didn't want this for money it was pure destruction And then when the nuclear deal fell apart, they launched Operation C Turtle, which they were just hijacking DNS infrastructure.

As you mentioned in 2020, they did as a retaliation for the killing of Qasem Soleimani. They disrupted the election. They would, you know, did fishing attempts to, you know, rile up and just create chaos with the voting and all that stuff. And then, as you said, as well, you know, they hacked the Trump campaign. So now, okay, all of that happened leads ourselves up to this, which is to say that strikes in Iran and they hacked the striker corporation as we see here. Yeah. Essentially what they did was there's like a protocol that allows for emergency medical technicians and their defibrillators to speak to the hospitals and, you know, to bring that patient data. that's what they went in and they disrupted.

So that is huge. What could that affect? Oh my, I mean, if there's, if you imagine if you're, if your, if your family member is having a heart attack and gets taken away in a, in an ambulance. And the ambulance is trying to send, you know, cardiac data over to the emergency department that they're driving towards. They wouldn't be able to get it. And they wouldn't be able to help the, help the patient that's on the stretcher dying. in the way that they could if they had the data of what's going on in their cardiovascular system. That's unbelievable. This happened in Maryland. It disrupt the Maryland emergency management system.

That's unbelievable. How do we not have the capability to stop these things? Here's the thing. So this is the fascinating thing that really gets me about cybersecurity is that it's not just about, you know, AES-256 bit encryption and all that stuff. It's not about firewalls. This comes down to a very human element of like what, you know, how these things work of, is it an interpersonal thing? It really comes down to a dumb employee at a company getting an email saying, you know, from their boss or saying, you know, like, hey, can you click this link and, you know, you need to re-log in or something like that. And that's a fishing attempt that allows for a, you know, a bad. actor, a state actor, a state aligned actor, like in this case, to get into a corporation. That's it.

That's all it's a efficient attempt. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's wild. And this is what happened in, in case anybody didn't, in case anybody missed this, and obviously, you know, we think about this all day every day. But McDonald's was hacked this year by, and what was leaked was 64 million. job applicants information because a third party processor that they used for all these job applications had their password guest. Can I tell you what that password was? And this was by a, a, a call it like a ransomware group called shiny hunters. Like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine or something. You literally, it was one, two, three, four, five, six. Yeah, crazy. Yeah. Yeah, I see second CH in the chat saying McDonald's.

Yeah, McDonald's of all things. You wouldn't think that like this is, that this is, you know, something that you need to think about. But if you have your, this is what we do all day, every day is if you have your information out there, whether that's from, you know, stuff that you've elected to give to a company because you need to give your information to a company to do anything, you know, your name, your email address, your phone number, et cetera. or whether you are like every other American over the age of 18, which has all of your information published by data brokers, this is your surface attack. This is your attack surface. This is where, you know, whether it's, you know, Iranian state-aligned actors

or just good old-fashioned cybercriminals and scammers that are looking to make a buck off you, this is where your information exists. And that's why it's bad to have it out there. Well, and so like this is a story about an Iranian hacker. They claim credit for it. And I'm sure our government willingly, you know, gave them credit. Maybe they can trace that stuff back.

But how often does our own government, like, if Iran can hack stuff and get this data, what about our own government getting this information without anybody even knowing because they're not going to attribute a hack like that? You know what I mean? Well, you know, unfortunately, you're right. It's a huge problem. So I don't know if you saw this recently. This came out this week, which is probably.

one of the most consequential you know cyber secure yeah you knew exactly what I was talking about yeah probably the most consequential infringement of rights in a long

time which is yeah the FBI is buying data from data brokers to track and target Americans yeah so it's for investigations but do we know it's probably much broader than that of course it is i mean firstly firstly this is just what they're telling us you know

secondly the nsa exists to spy on people including us i mean that was a huge scandal under the obamid administration which was you know the remember they were just like oh well it's not you it's the metadata we're not listening to your phone calls we're just monitoring how long they last and to whom they went uh of course that's what they say but The point is the NSA was built in order for us to have capability to spy on people and harvest their data. The point of this story is it shows why are we even building it within the government structure when there's commercial companies, there's private companies, we can just buy it from. Enrich the data brokers that keep it. I'm getting excited already.

I love it. Anytime I come into a show, I just get too excited about this stuff. But, you know, why enrich somebody that owns a data broker, which is, you know, part of why our government exists at all is to, you know, enrich private citizens and be able to spy on people. So, yeah, the same data brokers that, you know, that we work with all day, every day to try to protect our customers from are the ones that are now selling this data to the government so that they can more effectively spy on you. So yeah, you go outside, you apply for a job, you know, buy a cup of coffee with Apple pay or something, you know, all this stuff, you go to a gas station, all these transactions are mapped and followed. And the whole point is your rights of just your comings and goings, your general, what am I doing today, is being tracked? Yeah. How pervasive is this really? I mean, you know, we think about the capability that the government has.

to like spy on us you know we talk about that there's movies about it but but is it really as bad like you know do i need to be putting a piece of tape over the cameras on my laptop do i need to be you know like can they actually listen are they actually listening to to to our phones through our phones like what is there anything they can't know and is there any going back like there's no way to actually like go back to where they don't have all this information on us right great question i mean look i i i think about this all day every day and this is you know you know You know, I mean, my co-founder, James, is just a constant discussion is, is can you analog yourself? You know, what are the things that we can do to take ourselves off?

I mean, yes, they can listen. They can hack your phone. You know, do you put it in a fairy day cage when you go to sleep at night so it doesn't hear your dreams? You know, how, you know, how much do you want to, how much do you want to disconnect from modern life? I mean, the problem itself, obviously, is more like all encompassing. It's hard. Here's the thing. Like for you to even exist and and, you know, participate in our political economy today, right?

To go outside, get a job, have friends, you know, go to a concert and all this stuff. You're putting your information in the hands of private companies and the government wherever you go. You generate an enormous amount of data here just by doing so. where where's your leverage to take yourself out of that system what do you want to do you want to burn your social security card and go live in a cabin in the woods and you know live on rainbow trout for the rest of your life kind of kind of sounds good yeah I take it I want my compound I keep saying eventually I'm going to buy a compound and we can all just go live there but we all want a compound it's a serious concern I mean with with all the the AI

stuff that's coming out I can only imagine that their capabilities to to like monitor and infringing on our rights are only going to get like better for them worse for us you know and then you have the FISA reauthorization coming up I mean it's just I know it's a daunting it's a daunting prospect to think about and that's always been the case it's like think about it think about what government spying programs you could walk up to you could walk your mother to her flight like in 19 1999, you know, in the airport. Now you have to take off your shoes because one dude blew up his underwear once on Christmas.

Yeah. You know, every step of the, but the point is, what is their incentive to roll them back? That's the thing. There is no incentive. And who would be the ones and who benefits from having this, the economics, you know, from our data? A huge amount of private corporations. Remember the Amazon Go store idea was that you just walk in the store, you pick up the things that you want, and then you walk out, you don't have to even do anything. It just like scans you and takes the money out?

Yeah. So first off, the idea was that it was AI that was doing that. But it turns out it was actually just a data center in India of people just watching security cameras. Oh, seriously? Yes, exactly. I don't realize that. I hope you saw recently, you know, the meta and Rayban sunglasses and glasses that allow you to take video from your sunglasses? Yeah, it turns out that is not AI that is watching all your things and like, you know, clicking on the bed and saying that's a bed in there.

So if you could search for, you know, whatever, if you wanted to go back in your things. Turns out that was a data center in Kenya that was watching all of your most intimate moments. you were having and reels and reels and reels and doing all that data entry by hand. That's crazy. What can I say? Like this is, there's just, it's constant. Yeah, I, of course, I personally, not just because of the work that I do, but also of the things that I think about and care about. And the reason I, the reason that we got into this business, I personally take a lot of steps to analog my life and, and, and, you know, make sure that we.

You don't say things, you know, put things in writing that can be, you know, spotted and stuff like that. I don't do it because I'm hiding something except for my own privacy. Yeah. It's just not the way it works. You should be, yeah, I'm seeing 2020 Joe in the chat talking about the facial comparison and biometric verification. All that stuff was rolled out 20 years ago. There's no way it's going back. No.

Yeah, it's scary, man. We talk about this stuff quite a bit, like where technology. going what parts of it are good but what parts of it are also bad in the sense of like taking away our liberties and i don't know there's um there's there's there's plenty to discuss in this in this topic um but but i know uh why don't you really briefly tell people about patron protects is you're the you're the owner of the company um they're one of our sponsors and you know i'm a believer in people taking their you know data footprint offline as much as possible and that's what you you guys do if you want to briefly tell everybody what you guys do happy to i mean look this is this is

what we do all day every day i mean you know me and james have we have built this with a burning passion because we believe that if it's government surveillance or private company surveillance you should have a choice to of whether or not you're going to have that information of you out there so if anybody in the chat can can go ahead and do this i see hammer guy 35 i'm scaring this not out of him and i should. You know, if you, if you want to, Google your name and address and take a look at the pages of data brokers that are publishing for free your information on Google and, you know, and their platforms and all that stuff. In short, what we do is if you sign up for our services, we take you off all of those so that you are ungoogulable. That counts not just for people,

cyber criminals and all the stuff, you know, all the like that are, want to look you up and try to hack you that we call spear fishing. It's kind of like a rifle versus a shotgun approach such that you get so we can make sure that, you know, no one shows up at your door so that you can prove you believe in 2A. That's part of what we do. And also making sure, you know, ask yourself, do you have a cybersecurity team that's on your side for like five bucks a month? It's so cheap compared to the consequences. We know what people, we know the consequences of being hacked and having your information

put out there. So we give people an opportunity to opt out of that, opt out of that raw deal. Yeah, go check it out, guys, Patriot-Protect.com promo code badlands. Oh, by the way, because I'm such a swell guy, for the next 48 hours, we're making Badlands worth double the discount. So we're doing 30% off for the next. 38 hours. But yeah, promo code badlands at patriot

dot protect.com. Well, you know, we like you and we like all of your listeners. So, you know, I think you'd do something nice. If Iran's going to be hacking us, the least thing we can do is be protected together. Yeah, appreciate that. Closing question for you. What are your thoughts on Ted Kaczynski on his manifesto?

And there is a right answer to this. So listen, the Industrial Revolution and it had some many consequences. And you can read about it in the New York Times. Yeah, I actually, I'm a huge fan of this manifesto, decry the bombings, obviously terrible, but of course. You know, the more, the closer we get to what seems like a tech dystopia, like the more I think he was right, which is nuts.

Listen, listen, when I said, burn your social security card and live in a cabin in the woods, I mean, that guy was like the Michael Jackson of doing that. Yeah, yeah, he really was. Thanks a lot, Skip, for coming on. We'll have you on in the future with breaking. you know hacking and tech stories this stuff is always going to happen so anytime you give me a shout we'll do appreciate your man pleasure till next time yeah yeah he's a brilliant guy the product's awesome i signed up for it you know they became a sponsor and i sent in my emails and all my addresses

and stuff and it's kind of nuts how many places that you don't even realize like how many people have your information and they get you signed up off of all that stuff so it's it's good stuff but Let's get back to some news stories here that we're going to be buzzing through. What was I? Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was going to talk to him a little bit about the cybersecurity strategy, but we'll do that in the future sometime. But yeah, let's do this.

We had Tulsi Gabbard confirming that Puerto Rico voting machines held at the ODNI facility during House Intel hearing. Oh, I might find a clip of this. One second. Gabber, hold for processing. Yeah, here we go. Director, the ODNI has confirmed on the record that your office took custody of voting machines from Puerto Rico last May. I'm not aware of any previous DNI taking similar actions.

Did your office promptly notify the committee about taking custody of Puerto Rico's voting machines? I don't believe we did. However, this was done at the request of the Puerto Rico, AUSA attorney. It's a yes or no question. The answer, as you have acknowledged, is no, you did not inform the committee about the taking of the territories voting machines. Is there a specific foreign threat? And I've read the reporting that you were looking for possible foreign threats, but is... I mean, this guy is kind of a debag here, kind of being polite.

But the way he's phrasing that. taking when they like gave it to them is that taking is that the same thing as just like receiving obviously not semantics are important there a specific foreign threat that drove you to take this action there were questions about whether or not there were vulnerabilities that a threat could have taken advantage of and that was the purpose for they're requesting us to look into those vulnerabilities where are those voting machines now i believe they are held in a secure facility at ODNI. Have you or other ODNI officials taken any other state or territories voting equipment into custody? Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge. That's an interesting answer.

But yeah, so that's something that we knew is kind of floating out there, that story. We didn't officially have confirmation on it. I don't believe. And now we do. And still waiting on the report that she has been working on putting together regarding our fraudulent. elections, which John Solomon said was completed a while ago. And we don't have, we don't have that yet. We don't know if Trump has it. I'm assuming he has by now, but he at least hasn't posted about it. And what?

Maybe I should check his true social. I forgot to do that today before I speak out of turn here. Because maybe he posted about it since I went live. Let's see, nothing. No, NATO, without the USA, NATO was a paper tiger. They didn't want to join the fight to stop a nuclear power in Iran. Now that fight is militarily won with very little danger for them. They complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay but don't want to help open the straight of Hormuz.

Simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil oil prices. So easy for them to do with so little risk, cowards, and we will remember, again, contradicting himself a little bit. And the same true social post. It's always fun. And I thought this was great too. Chris even responded here. So Trump comes out here says, Congress passed the farm. bill now. President Donald

J. Trump, I don't know where his response is. But he responded like before the Save Act and then right after that, Trump posted the Save America Act must be passed by the Senate. There's nothing that is more important for the USA voter ID, proof of citizenship, get it done and watch all the good

things that will happen. It's just funny. But he already said like he's not going to sign any other bill until that one comes to his desk, right? So why pass the Farm Bill? How can we? It's not possible. possible. These asshole pulzers in these hearings need to be

tarded and feathered. PJ Corgan, when are the 500,000 sealed indictments going to be unsealed? I don't know. Maybe they have to reach a certain threshold, like a million before they can unseal them. How long have we been talking about that? Where does that information even come from?

Is it reliable? I mean, I feel like people keep throwing out those numbers and like in all my years of like actually researching stuff. I never came across like a database of this is how many sealed indictments. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying I've never, I guess I'm never one looking for it. Atheidav, my Nigerian prince friend has been very open and honest about cybersecurity.

That's funny. But yeah, anyway, waiting on that election integrity front. We'll see what happens. Big news in the Rico Grande conspiracy case that James Comey has been subpoenaed. I think I might find a John Solomon clip for this too. Again, hold for processing. Here we go. My boy, the storm has arrived

has always got a clip for the stuff I want to talk about. I'm reporting as always from the nation's capital. Where today, just a few minutes ago, we got word of a new development in the accountability investigation involving Russia collusion. As the FBI director,

James Comey, has been subpoenaed in an investigation into the creation of the intelligence community assessment. That's a document that said that the intelligence community assessed that it was Russia's intent to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election. As we now know, that was highly disputed and may have been based significantly on the very discredited steel dossier.

If there's going to be any charges brought in that case, they've been focused on maybe John Brennan, his testimony, whether his emails and his testimony match up on that, James Comey would be an important witness in that. But we are, we have confirmed from multiple sources that James Comey did get a subpoena in connection with that specific issue from Russia collusion. That's a little bit of Amy. I'm your host. I would say this is probably the first actual update we've had on the Rico Grande case in,

I mean, months. It's been a long time. There was a story, I guess, a while ago where they were subpoenaed John Brennan. I think people were expecting Comey at some point to get brought in. There's a story out here that says they've issued more than 130 subpoenas since accelerating last year. year. It's focused on the senior officials. So I wonder where they're at in the process. I mean, they've obviously 130 subpoenas. They've gotten a lot of the lower level people. You know, a month or so ago, two months ago, they got John Brennan subpoenaed and now Comey.

I wonder if they're reaching the final stages of some of these, you know, some of their investigation. Very much looking forward to indictments coming out of that and where they go with that. Yeah, that's good news. I've been waiting on that. I'd prefer more like, declassified documents than I would just subpoenas hearing about subpoenas but I'll take whatever whatever I can get Clearcat says these guys are not important witnesses because

they just lie. Yeah I mean you get caught lying in grand jury you probably get in trouble for it Spetzel says sealed indictments equals bogus number was number of all documents sealed not indictments and it was just additive, never removing unsealed documents

along the way. Ah, that's interesting. Senator Massey said more raw milk farmers have been investigated than Epstein perpetrators. Yeah. Maybe I don't like Thomas Massey. I don't care for him. A lib judge will rule all subpoenas are void case

over. They got Eileen Cannon, though, overseeing that, which is very notable. Fat Chans says, so we will get the truth in 50 years when they get declassified. Cool. Yeah, it's, but, how it feels isn't it didn't trump say like a couple weeks ago a month ago that he was going to

declassify all the alien stuff have we gotten that yet you think with that iran war it'd be a perfect opportunity to roll that stuff out wonder why they haven't yet uh but let's see what other stories i know what guys i'm going to post the link to join the show if anybody wants to hop on and say anything comment on anything i'll post this in the chats here and real quick i'm going to do a one more sponsor and I'll keep rolling. And we got Rumble Wallet. You guys know how appreciative I am of Rumble Wallet and Rumble generally with

how creator-centric they are. They do everything they can to support us at Badlands Media and just creators all over their platform. And they made a way to super chat your favorite hosts in a way that does not take any fees. YouTube, Twitch, even Rumble, Rance itself, you know, they take a percentage. But with Rumble Wallet, you can donate crypto and they take none of it. You can superchat with Bitcoin, TetherU-Sd, or even Tether Gold, stable

coins. The tip shows up directly in the chat. We read at the end of the show. All you need to do is download Rumble wallet in the app store. Go to wallet.Rumble.com. It's an amazing way to support us, taking out the middleman. Big shout out to Rumble for making this technology. And I'd encourage you guys to all take advantage of it. And, okay, the links posted in the chats, guys, if anybody wants to hop in, if not, no biggie. But let's go to and the TSA stuff is nuts. One thing I'm not looking forward to about Gart,

and I'm very much looking forward to pretty much everything about Gart. But as always, the traveling and the TSA agents, not getting paid. A lot of them probably aren't even showing up to work. I mean, how long would you be willing to show up to work without getting paid? You know? Eventually, like, I would just,

Okay, well, F this. I'm out. I think most people would. So the longer this goes on, like eventually there's not going to probably be any TSA agents. Yeah, the wait times are just getting crazy. What else? Oh, Monday. I was going to talk a little bit more about oil prices, but I'm a wait till Monday to do this. I think Polly Mathenon, I think he's in the chat.

Good to see a man. He's going to be joining me on Monday and talking about some oil stuff. He is, he works in the oil industry. So he's going to be my resident oil expert. These are funny. I would hop on, but I don't want to. Yeah. I don't want you either.

I wouldn't bring you on screen. There's a registered URL for alien.gov and aliens.gov. There's a story out there where Trump is mulling to take over Krag Island by force. Let's see if that happens. People are mad at Federman because he of his vote over the DHS. Federman is under heavy fire from fellow Democrats for casting the deciding vote to advance Senator Mark Wayne Mullins nomination for DHS Secretary with some openly calling for his ouster. The idea of trying to unseat Federman is never far from many Democrats' minds. Yeah, we'll see where that nomination goes.

I'm not sure if Mark Wayne Mullins has the actual votes to get approved, but we shall see. I'm just looking for another story here. There's one story I really wanted to go over. I can't find it. Oh, I thought this was interesting. So someone on Senator Tom Tillis' staff needs to tell him what happens. This is from John Carney, no idea who this is. But what happens if Warsh is not confirmed by May 15th?

Remember, Warsh is Trump's nominee for the Federal Reserve to replace Powell. Powell has done as chairman of the Fed Board on May 15th. If Warsh isn't confirmed, Trump can pick Moran, Bowman, or Waller, or any governor to fill the vacant spot, no Senate confirmation needed. Remember a long time ago I said, Steve Moran is my like dark horse pick. What if this is how he gets in? This could be it.

Oh, we got Ramon 2-2-2. He decided to pop in. What is up, Ramon? Hey, John. How are you? Good. How are you doing? I'm great.

I've been with you since devolution days. Yeah. Started everything. And, man, you're doing good work. And I appreciate it. And I just wanted to pop in and tell you that. I follow, you know, every day, obviously. I'm on here.

It's my sanity, so. Well, I appreciate that. Appreciate that a lot. Yeah, I've always seen me in the chat. You're a good dude. So appreciate the support. So anything you want to comment on news-wise? I would give you a whole bunch of money, but my wife is a flaming liberal and she'd see it on the credit

card and I'd get killed. So, but I would love to donate at some point if there's a way to do that without letting her know. You should tell her it's for Gavin Newsom's presidential campaign or something. She'd buy that. Yeah. Funny. So I'm here in southeastern Wisconsin.

What's that? You're in eastern Wisconsin? Southeastern Wisconsin, yeah. Are you a Packers fan? I used to be, but I gave up sports entirely when the first knee hit the turf. Good for you. I got to ask, what's it like? How was the relationship being married to a liberal?

It's really rough. It's really rough. Yeah. My kids are indoctrinated too. Worst thing I ever did was send my kids to college. Yeah. That's rough, man. But you should come to a guard sometime or come to a meetup if you ever come up.

It sounds interesting if I get away. Yeah, I have a full-time job and I also have a business. So it's a little difficult to get away. Sure, sure. Well, we'll see what we can do. Yeah, well, I'm blessed. Yeah. Well, appreciate you popping in, Ramon.

And good luck with the wife. Thanks again, John. Take care. Thank you. You too. Awesome. Love seeing familiar faces. I guess I didn't see his face.

Familiar names pop up in the chat. Polly get as far as getting. the pop and boom fraud no current Fed chair said he wasn't leaving until a new one is confirmed yeah but well May 15th Trump can just remove him and put in what's his name

Steve Moran I hope that's who it is the Mara Marlago Accords that paper that we've gone over multiple times his that paper is I think the closest to what we've seen unfold and you know what I wonder I didn't do this when the war kicked off

I wonder if there's anything in the Marlago Accords about the Strait of Ormuz or Iran conflict. I'll find it. Okay, this is the paper. Ormoos, nothing about our moose. What about Iran? Oh, that's Stephen Moran, so that's not going to be good.

Does the nation side with China-Russia and Iran and key international disputes? Nothing. Okay, well, never mind then. Oh, so we got the bunny. What's up, Bunny? Hey, not much. How you're doing? I am doing well. How are you doing?

I've got my sound going on. Let me turn it off here and hopefully I can still hear you. Yeah, I can hear you. For those who don't know, Bunny is one of the ones that helps out and makes my life easier by running the Badlands groups. But yeah, what's, are you going to be a natural bunny? All right. I'm doing good. Do you have feedback when you're listening to me? No. Okay, awesome. So I've got it double going on here. As long as you go and have double speed, we're good. Yeah, no, we're good. Are you going to be in Nashville?

Unfortunately, I'm not, but I have two amazing people hosting the first-timers event. You have Illinois Danny and you have Rocket Savvy that are going to be hosting the first-timers event. They've got a lot of great things rolling for y'all. Yeah, I'm excited about that. I love the first time. I mean, I love darts generally, but the first-timers meet-up is always. was a fun time. Sorry guys, I'm getting so much feedback. It's kind of hard to hear John. I apologize, trying to navigate.

So anyway, so yeah, just if it's your first time at person to regard, please you reach out to on Telegram at the VA Bunny. And I'll teach you set up in the first time there's groups, tips and tricks. I help you get you situated and start making friends before you even get there. Some people just need a little more hand holding than others.

And then, yeah, the other thing is, is join your meetup groups. We just rebooted the Minnesota group to get them off and running again. And if anybody's interested being an admin group, please do reach out to me. You can email me at Virginia fans of Badlands at gmail.com.

We're looking for a lot of good admins and people to lead some meetups. Yeah, and we appreciate those who do that and take charge. I appreciate you, Bonnie, for what you do with that as well. If there's too much feedback, we can do this again next week too, funny.

Yeah, sorry about that. I'm going to go ahead and get out of here. No worries. Thanks, Bonnie. Babbage in the YouTube chat made a comment of, I think talking about the DHS, TSA people, but when they make a deal, they get retroactive pay, I thought. They will, the people that are working without pay right now, eventually they'll get paid for it.

But the thing is, if you had that job and you had no guarantee of the deal, the deal like there's the the the shutdown or whatever has no end in sight right now like at what point would you not start looking for a new job and then go take that once you get it where you can actually get the money and you'll you'll eventually get your back pay regardless of whether you're still working there i'm assuming they'd have to pay you but there's no end in sight to this negotiation and you know when i interviewed um representative harrigan the other day he kind of said that he's like it's going to take something big and bad to get them to the table to agree on something so it's unfortunate but i think the tsa stuff is only going to get worse oh yeah

chuk norse died i saw that today it's very very sad news i also saw that the bachelorette was canceled also very very sad news just kidding oh my gosh pj what's up man hey john how's it good to have a fellow co-founder on here i know right absolutely how you bet i've been pretty good i've been pretty man how about yourself pretty good we were gonna game one of these Saturdays and or Sundays and never never happened I know right I had my son took that his Xbox over to my my ex's house so got it's been but you you play on the computer don't you yeah you should play my computer yeah yes I always play my computer that's all I got so yeah we did that every Sunday nice yeah so I got a question

I got a I got a buddy of mine who's used to be a Trump supporter you know he was kind like one of us but over the past i don't know i think it was probably once trump started picking his cabinet um he started you know when he noticed all the um just the israel connections you know and uh he you know he started started black pilling pretty good and uh you know i mean he's sending me text every single day and uh at at the time i think it was back in probably like march of last year i was like okay we're going to give trump till this point and we're going to give him till this point and i feel like i keep moving the goalposts and it's getting harder and harder to uh i don't know to hold on to the hope that that there's not this tech dystopia groundwork that's getting laid

like the tracks for this right like this digital digital i don't know it's the surveillance state everything it's uh it's getting harder to to deny that that's happening and uh so i don't know I think my hard line is like if the if the dome of the rock if Israel is able to like destroy that I feel like at that point I'm like okay we're kind of fucked yeah you know it it the way Chris looks at this stuff is he's like yeah that stuff is coming like no matter what whether Trump's there or not that stuff is coming it's just how much of it can Trump divert and you know not allow them to totally you know F us over it it's a scary prospect man and It's tough to even talk about this stuff because there's so many people, especially in our community that are like so hard lined to like trust the plan and like, you know, hopium and all this stuff that when you try to like talk more in what I think is a base of reality, they they scold you and tune you out.

But I know a lot of people too that have like low key and subtly started to black pill and not engage in this stuff because of what they're actually seen. And there's only so much like hopium you can sell them before you yourself. are pushing them further into the black bill zone. So I don't know. I don't know, man. It's, that's a tough topic. At least he still talks with you. Yeah, no, for sure.

Absolutely. I mean, he, I think he's like just trying to beat it into me, man. I swear he gets like 25 text messages a day, X links all the time. And just it's like, I don't know, I have a hard time responding, you know. Who does he get his information from? Like who's he following that he sends you links to? Dude, he follows all kinds of weird, weird things. I mean, he thinks Prince Charles is the Antichrist, and they're just ushering in this.

Yeah, it's pretty funny. Interesting. No, I mean, I definitely, you know, love Badlands. I love you guys brought hope, you know, when there wasn't a whole lot of hope. So I'm still holding on to hope. But I just, like I said, it's just getting harder and harder. But, no, I mean, I think, you know, if there's one person that, we that deserves trust of ours is uh don't trump you know yeah and and uh i guess the other

thing is when you look at the kind of money that like his kids are making jared kushner's making donald trump i mean baron i think i read something where he's made like 80 million dollars and what pushing we're pushing the uh that like the meme coins and stuff the milania coin and there's all these pump pumping dumps that were earlier in the year and it just kind of i don't know that's That's fishy. Yeah, right, exactly. That's crazy. I mean, they're billionaires, right? Like, so when I have money, it's so much easier to make money. So, I mean, that part's not as surprising to me. It's the one thing that I look at, though, is like, there are so many things that we're tracking that we've been tracking for a long time. Like, okay, if we see this play out and ghost with the geopolitical stuff with the Middle East, like he's been so spot on about a lot of these things.

But it's not just there. It's everywhere that we still, we still. still do see these things like lining up and stacking up. It's just taking so much longer for whatever reason for them to actually like pull the trigger on like any of the justice or the exposure or all these things that we've been like banking on. And I know that's like one of those things too. It's like, okay, how much longer am I willing to go without seeing those things before we, we were admit we're wrong, you know? Right. Yeah. And that's a tough thing for people to do. Yeah. No, when he throws out, he's like, well, if it was 100, you're not. And, you know, if it was Hunter Biden doing this and he was making all this money what would you say you know and then

you know he kind of gets me there because it's I don't know you know I mean are the devil's no legitimate way though well I mean I think the pump and dumps are probably not so you know I mean they when you have the kind of platform that they have you can just tweet tweet something about Bitcoin or something or whatever you know they introduce this thing and all of a sudden the value you know just sky rockets and then you know they get out right you know right before it just crashes. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that stuff sucks. I'm going to look into that because I do have an issue with the pump and dump schemes. Trump kind of like he does pump and dump with the entire stock market. Like he can he can move the market based on a single true social post and then bring it right back up on a single true social post. So yeah, you know, um, Rise of Tire says Hunter Biden. He says, you say, well, Hunter Biden is a criminal with no legitimate business track record ever. And that's true. I mean, he had no business being on the, the board.

of Burisma and all those things. But I totally understand their point of view. There are legitimate criticisms out there against a lot of this stuff that's difficult to answer for when, you know, if your response is just going to be, well, well, trust me, Trump is going to, Trump is fixing it. And Trump's not going to do that. Trump's a good guy. Like, you need to be able to show meat and potatoes sometimes.

I get it. No, absolutely. And I like the way that, you know, you don't ball wash for him, right? When you see something that that's kind of fishy or you don't like, know you call it out and actually you know what I really liked was that interview the other day yeah was that yesterday the day before but when you said when you said you guys are you said you guys are the problem and it was just like yeah just look at his face and I was like oh man that was awesome notes and balls yeah we need more people to do that

to these people because every time these people go on interviews Congress unless it's like CNN and it's like a hostel like that but most of these citizen journalists they're just they're sitting there ball washing the congressman asking like how to fix this stuff when they're the ones that are a problem we need more of that yeah just throwing them softball questions and stuff and yeah exactly we need to hold their feet to the fire yeah we'll get those oh especially because uh none of them you know none of them can be proven to be legitimately elected right exactly you know definitely got to hold their feet to the fire you're gonna make to a guarding time soon i i am i'm gonna go uh i think is vegas is vegas this year

this year yes yeah September October maybe I don't remember exactly but yeah I can't if I can't make Deadwood I think I would prefer Deadwood just because with the 250th celebration I'd love to go see Mount Rushmore and I mean I could turn that into a family trip I got all the kids and stuff so that would be a good time hell yeah Mount Rushmore is amazing deadwood is amazing definitely I encourage people to get to that one if they can but either way looking forward to seeing you again man and I will connect with you about gaming one of these days. Absolutely. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun, man. Oh, yeah. Thanks, PJ.

Good talking, yeah. Yep, be talking to you, buddy. Bye. Awesome. Well, I think I'm over my time today. So I'm going to get ready. I'm interviewing Mo Benson here in a little bit for that new Sunday show I'm doing the America First Stories. Anything else in the chat that I missed that I should be talking about? Quite Tony. Eric Trump investing 25 million in an Israeli drone company just before the war wasn't all right. Yeah, that's a little fishy. I'm old enough to remember Roe v. Wade, 50 years it took to get it back to individual states. Check out current abortion rates. Something is really happening. Janet L.N. says, I think I'm in the minority as a wife who had a lib husband. He left me in part because I voted for Trump. How crazy is that? Yeah, it's nuts how often you see that happen, like where people

get married to somebody who's the opposite politically. And it probably happened at the time. your life when politics weren't important to you but then as you get older and politics start becoming important that is such a divisive thing and can ruin a lot of marriages but anyway guys i think with that i'm going to get out of here i hope you guys have a good rest of your friday i will be back on on only lance tonight should have a good crew again so do me a favor hit the thumbs up for this and if there's any guests out there that you guys ever want me to try to have on shoot me their contact info or shoot me the name and I'll do my best to try to get them on. Shoot me a DM on Twitter or something.

But yeah, with that, you guys have a good rest of the day. I'll see you tonight on OnlyLands. Let's get started.