Badlands Media - The Daily Herold: 3/24/26 - Strategic Silence, Legal Movement, and Reading Between the Lines

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Jon Herold hosts The Daily Herold and breaks down a shifting landscape where strategic silence, legal developments, and subtle signals are shaping the broader narrative. Jon walks through key updates, focusing on how certain actions are happening quietly while public attention is directed elsewhere. He explains why what is not being said can often be just as important as what is being reported, especially as events continue to unfold behind the scenes. The episode also explores how ongoing legal movement is influencing both political positioning and media coverage. Jon highlights the importance of reading between the lines, tracking patterns over time, and resisting the urge to react to every headline. Throughout the discussion, he reinforces the need for patience, critical thinking, and careful observation in an environment where clarity often comes from connecting smaller details into a larger picture.

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 Herald, and I hope you're all having a wonderful Tuesday so far. Not going to lie, it's a rather boring newsday. There is one story. I'm pretty excited to talk about having to do with some election integrity, but there's a lot of same old, same old. Really lame.

So I'm hoping you guys in the chat will kind of have my back a little bit and let me know what you want to talk about. Ash, I see you in the chat. I'm going to be talking about the Stephen Ritcher thing. I wonder if he'll come back on for a debate anytime soon. But we'll get there. What else is new with you guys? They have to stick finally getting a legit U.S. attorney in the state of New Jersey that the DOJ supports what changed. I did see that.

Maybe we'll talk about that a little bit. I think I got that pulled up. Yeah, I do have that story pulled up. So we'll get there. Ash has a substack. What is this? Not a decision I made lightly, lightly. Colorado's largest county withdraws from CCCA membership.

Seems like a long article, Ash. Ash, why don't you just hop on and talk about this with me? This and the Stephen Richard thing. If you're not doing anything. Boring, we're getting moon bases, moon base, Badlands Alpha. I mean, that'd be great. I would love to buy some property on the moon. Ash, hop on the show.

We'll talk about this a little bit. Let me get a quick word from our sponsors. And then we'll start plugging away. And first up, we have, what do we got first? We got a loaded gun coffee. Awesome. Badlands, you guys are all familiar with loaded gun coffee. They've been longtime supporters of Badlands,

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So stay tuned. Real quick, no update on the Doge website. Show my screen here. There we go. No update on the Doge website. Golden Silver. I think up a little bit for me. Maybe not.

Maybe they're down. 4,400 for gold, silver is just under 70. Bitcoin is at 69100, and there is no update on the presidential White House website. Haven't had anything in a few days over there, which is lame. Probably one of the funniest headlines I think I've ever seen. A lot of people, this is going viral last night. A professional cornhole player with no arms and no legs is. been accused of murder.

He shot somebody. Like this is literally him. I mean, obviously I photoshop the gun in, but that's how he plays cornhole. My props to him for being, you know, a professional cornhole player with no arms or like, that's got to be fairly challenging, difficult with the handicap. But apparently he was driving his car and then shot somebody. Like, how did this guy get a license? And how can he shoot a gun?

I'm just flabbergasted and wondering if they have the right suspect. When does SCOTUS rule on election day ballots? I'm not sure. I'll ask if she has any insight on that when she hops on. But it's interesting. We're getting like two different, completely different narratives coming out of the hearing from yesterday on the mail and ballots. The left is like they're poised to rule against, you know, the mail on ballot stuff in the election day. and then the right is like oh well that's not the arguments or hearing i heard

so who knows it's a crap shoot i'd bet a dollar john is the most metrosexual dude in north de keezy this exact i you probably lose that bet his buddy you would do well in dwarf tossing that was covered on daily okay well then i won't talk about it uh i want to show you guys couple things get these pulled up here quick okay this one first home sales you guys got this guy's pretty good I don't know if you've heard of Peter Saint-Ong or whatever his name is he's talking about home sales kind of hitting a wall and why and we won't listen to this whole thing but I think it's worthwhile and interesting home sales just crashed a fifth in a single month that's the worst

since housing was crawling out of the 2008 financial crisis some reasons were even worse sales in the Midwest fell 34 percent the Northeast was down four 45% in a single month. Last one to sell turn out the lights. The drop took home sales is $587,000, which is just half what they were during the pandemic, as $150,000 lower than 2019 when there were 20 million fewer people in the country. Oddly, homes trying to sell are up an impressive 4.9% year on year, while prices are now down 7% on the year.

So there's more homes for sale. they're cheaper, but nobody's buying. So it's the problem, easy mortgage rates. They are too high for buyers, while sellers are locked in too cheap COVID-era mortgages. So when COVID hit, the Federal Reserve printed almost $7 trillion, which was about $1 and $3 in existence before COVID.

This is why Trump has been putting such an emphasis on the home situation. In order for people to start being able to afford homes, interest rates either have to come down or prices have to come down, or prices have to come down. But if prices come down, then everybody loses their value in their home. It's quite the conundrum. And it's why he's so repeatedly calling on Powell to lower the rates.

And I think he's in there until May. So maybe we will see a change once Powell's out of there. But yeah, this is an issue. I know people personally that they're in their home. They like their mortgage rate. They do not like, like they want to get a new home. They need a new home for their evolving. family and all these things, but they're kind of stuck.

And it's unfortunate. But some of these interest rates account for like, you know, if you go from what you had during COVID to what you can get now, it's $1,200 a month in some cases or more. So it's pretty, pretty well. I'm curious to see how Trump actually resolves this. TRP 6978, my son is trying to sell. It's a tough market. You know, I think I saw something where the values of.

existing homes are higher than the values of new homes. See, I can find that tweet. But I thought it was kind of fascinating. That might be an old. Yeah, this was from the other day, Zero Hedge. There goes housing new home sales, $587,000, expected 720,000, down 17%. So we'll see.

Carabee 23, 6 to 6.5% right now. I heard we're even getting up to 7%. mortgage rates are tied to the bond market and obviously everything's going up with the Iran war going on Jess Coke we literally paid off our mortgage and paid off our car payment went to buy a truck and they said because our debt to income ratio we had to have a higher rate income is higher now and we have no debt isn't I nuts they get you

Ty is late shame on you Ty but good to see you my father told me that about the rates in the 80s and the teens yeah but I mean would you take a $100,000 home at 13% interest, or would you take a, you know, let's say $500,000 home at 7% interest? And I guess everything's a little relative. Aob 22, I thought I was going to move, but no rate, but no, rate is great and price in my area is starting at $4,000. It's nuts. Carrot's mortgages.

I didn't know that. There's a multiple factors, but generally amidst six rates. Okay, well, good to know. the authoritative source on all things home buying for badlands what else was I going to show you guys we got this on the Iran war this is I mean not really new this is the rhetoric they're they're throwing out there and one of the things I'm loving about what Trump's doing you know we talk about

how Trump is I've been saying carpet bombing the narrative and and thinking more on that and how he does it and why he does it it makes total sense like when you're in a narrative war which we are we talk about that all the time five jams warfare, info war. The whole point is to control the narrative. But when nobody knows what's actually going on, and there are hundreds of contradicting narratives flying all over the place,

it's very difficult for the mainstream media or really anybody to actually control the narrative. And so that's why I think it's brilliant what Trump is doing. We had a story yesterday where Trump comes out and is like, yeah, they agreed to a ceasefire, we're negotiating with somebody and then trying to figure out who it is. nobody knows and then iran comes out and it's like well no that's not true we're not actually negotiating anything like what are they talking about and then it came out today we can find here yeah iranian source acknowledges u.s outreach as war rages on

a source in iran said that there had been outreach between the united states and teheran and that iran is willing to listen to sustainable proposals to end the war other countries are pushing for a diplomatic solution with Pakistan offering to host talks involving Iran, Israel, and the U.S. Israel-Iran trade strikes. An Israeli official said a deal to stop the war does not appear to be tangible right now. As Israel carried out another wave of strikes across Iran. And with that, Ash just popped into the background, so let's bring her on right away. What's up, Ash? I can't believe you're saying it's a slow newsday. My phone's ringing off the hook.

Well, I mean, we have different interests. No, we have the same interests on election integrity. And so last night, I was, you know, waiting. Oh, well, we can talk about this. Of course he's under investigation. Well, let's do this in the order you want to do it in. Let's talk about whatever you want to talk about first. Okay, so last night, it's like, you know, 2 a.m. Eastern time.

I'm waiting for ghosts to bring in his takes because that's what we do on the brief. And I get an email. from a source who noticed that the vice president of the clerk's association was no longer listed as the vice president. So she reached out to him and asked him why and he was very candid and gave this long email about how the heads of the clerks association, which is Matt Crane. Now, the why we vote audience will be familiar with Matt Crane. Brian and I talk about him a lot. Sean Smith came on with me when Brian was out of town once and we did this like two hour debunk of his debunk of the Mesa reports. Yeah.

But he's the he's the kind of handler for all of the clerks in the state in the state. And he gives the not just the courts, the general assembly when they were passing a legislation about taking power away from the counties and giving it centralizing it in the hands of the secretary of state. Matt Crane was the guy that was doing the talking points. And I have that part of my trial evidence was that he's. you know the hand bar essentially um so the VP of the clerk elected by all the clerks this guy is VP he finds that he's not being invited to meetings with with jennas office he's being left out and then he he asked the matt crane and carly coppice who's the president asked them why am i being left out of this why am i not being invited to the meetings and they were told well jett's office

doesn't trust you and you know we need to rebuild trust before you can be invited he's like well that's really weird so he reached out to jennett's office And they're like, that never happened. Really? Yeah. Yeah. And so he recounts this in detail. And I've told that he sent a resignation letter to all of the clerks yesterday.

I'm doing open records for that. But so there's that part of it. Then he talks about the lack of independence, which is something that I've been talking about with elections forever. This is all the classic earmarks of corruption. Yeah. Because, you know, because we should have transparency. We should have inquiry. We're talking about matters of public trust.

You have to be independent on matters of public trust. He talks about that. He talks about the lack of transparency. He talks about the fact that it's not being run in a nonpartisan manner. And this is something we're told all the time is that Matt Crane is a Republican. And Karly Koppas is a Republican. And so all of the election stuff is bipartisan because we have, you know, Democrat, Secretary of State. But the, you know, heads of the Clerks Association are Republicans.

And so all of us agree, right? It's very bipartisan, unipartisan. And so all of this he recounts in his thing. Now this is important outside of Colorado because this dynamic is in play in every state. Maybe not North Dakota because you guys have totally different election landscape, but the associations, the non-governmental organizations who kind of come in and act as the subject matter experts and points of escalation, I have open records from this guy from years ago where I send an open records request to the clerk's office, specifically the one in my head.

I was asking about Libre office being involved in our election. election that's a technology tool. And the clerk sends it to Matt Crane and says, Matt, should I fill? Ashton America is asking for something else. Should we fill it? He doesn't work for the government. But he's a handler. And he has been the, this is the guy that we say is the poster child for mobile voting because his face is literally on the poster for global mobile, the mobile voting company. That's crazy. Huge, huge deal that this is happening. And it's so El El Paso County, the county that withdrew is the largest county. the state of Colorado. It is where Colorado Springs is. It's the only county in the nation that's

home to five military commands, huge Yukava uniformed overseas voting population. Really, really big deal that this is happening. I've been on the phone all morning talking to clerks and journalists and citizen activists and everybody, everybody's like, this is, this is game changing. I want to read this quote here. So this is from what's his name Schiker? Steve Schleiker. Schleiker. I think The core, my decision was driven by concerns about independence, transparency, and the role of external influence within what is intended to be an independent association. As an elected officer of the CCCA, I was not permitted to participate in certain executive level meetings with the Secretary of State's office.

I was informed this was due to a lack of trust from that office and that participation would be delayed until others were more comfortable. After receiving that information, I reached out directly to the Secretary of State, as well as multiple members of her staff. of them shared with me that these conversations had not occurred. The response raised additional concerns for me and led me to believe this situation was developed internally by the CCA president and executive director. So what comes next? So well my questions to the other clerks is are you going to withdraw? So this this association is paid for by the the clerks pay dues to join it.

And then their dues come from tax revenue. Right. And so the taxpayers are paid. for this and they're essentially paying to be handled. We have been here on the ground asking the clerks to leave the CCCA because it's voluntary for years, but they won't because they need it. Our elections are so complicated and centralized. They're not technologists and they're, you know, it's by design that way so that you need a Mac Crane to be the point of escalation. I've been having conversations all morning about what is what does it take to get this Like do we keep the clerks association, but get rid of this, you know, non-clerc leadership type of thing where you have elections industry people who are the subject matter experts? Another fun story. You'll like this one. Remember when the Fulton County thing was going down a few weeks ago?

Yep. And Tulsa Yaber there? Well, yeah, but before that, the state election board was holding hearings. And Joe Rossi got up and he was, you know, talking about the evidence. He was finally allowed to present his side after he hadn't been. able to when the secretary of Georgia secretary of state's office kind of hijacked the hearing prior and the whole thing was shut down so he's telling his side and he says that Ryan Macias who was the elections group at the time yeah the EAC for a while

involved in Ukraine's elections were told he's the guy that in Kerry Lake's trial was reading off the screen and then you know Kurtles and was docked time yeah yeah so at the time that Joe Rossi is down in Georgia saying that Ryan Macias received recount election information results that didn't match and then they got them back and they matched, which was a massive scandal, right? Like this guy said, an NGO, what's going on? At the time that that was breaking, Ryan Macias was here in Colorado at the Colorado County Clerks Association meeting, pitching his new, I think it's called election security group now or something like that, pitching his new NGO to the

clerks getting trying to get their revenues to sign up to get his support and council and consulting and guidance and everything i broke that while they were on the ground didn't say where they were didn't do anything to put anybody in danger or whatever but in response the clerks were told that they couldn't use their phones at their meetings anymore really yeah that's there and this a non like these are these elected positions no well the clerks are elected but the the CCCA so the CCCA has an executive director and then it has a leadership team and the leadership team are clerks and they're elected by the other clerks and the the elected VP is the one who's kind of blowing the whistle on this thing crazy okay well that's so that's one story another story which

I would argue is bigger because of this guy's role and uh he's been on badlands before former Maricopa county recorder under investigation for obstruction. Do you want to break down the story for us? Yeah. I mean, so, so I don't I don't know all of the ins and outs of what, but my reaction to this, John, is of course he's under investigation for obstruction. When the Maricopa, when it broke last week or the week before that the Senate records and all of the records of the audit had been taken by the feds and that they were looking into an investigation of the efforts of Maricopa County to, um,

with the lawful orders of the Senate back in the 2021 audit. Brian and I had this discussion on why we vote about Stephen Richard is never coming back on the show ever again because he's now going to be the subject of an investigation. He was, yeah, he was he was in the role through the 2022 election, I believe. And that is where the drawer three thing happened. And so he was the president of the county recorders and it says here that. the obstruction that they're investigating is he advised other county recorders to not comply with a records request. Yeah. I feel like that's I feel like he's done more than that, hasn't he? Oh yeah. Yeah. So, so Stephen Richard was the elected clerk at the time. We have a record of what happened in Maricopa from

2020, 2020, 2022 and 24 and we're told by the just the news reporting. I think it was just the news that that broke that story that um that all three of those elections are under investigation so stephen richer is under the microscope when it comes to um when it comes to what the county did and that 2021 audit in maricopa is coltler jovonne he was involved in it there was that's that's dug logan and ben cotton and and all these guys but the real story of that and i wrote it i did a timeline and i it's all over the place it's you know on my sub stack again and on my Twitter and everything but that I did the timeline in 2021 when it was when it was happening all that they continually obstructed they've never super the Maricopa County never complied with the subpoenas and richer was a key part of that

yeah president of the president of the Arizona Association of County Recorders is the same role that Carly Coppice is holding here in Colorado and what we're going to see I sent my article this morning to i'm involved in a you know group chat with people that i've known since 2021 that are you know kind of election integrity activists all over the country in the different states this dynamic of the associations is in play in you know all over the country where they're they're the they're the ones handling they're the ones engaging and this is the same dynamic he's the elected clerk but he's also the head of the NGO right the of the NGO plausible deniability man this is the the public-private partnerships in election that create in our elections that create plausible

deniability. And we always end up with, well, it was a glitch. It was human error. It was just that, no man, it's built for fraud. And it's the whole corrupt temple is coming down. Yeah, there's a great quote here. I want to read this. In response to that investigation, Richard wrote in a dispatch op-ed defending the official outcome of the 2020 election. He characterized Arizona Republicans as being maniacally obsessed with theories of a stolen election and questioning the necessity of continuing scrutiny over Arizona elections. The years of investigations, tests, reviews, and audits are also worth revisiting because any future allegations would have to account for why all the previous probes didn't uncover

any material fraud or error, wrote Richard. I would politely suggest that the reason is because no such fraud or error exists. The voters of Arizona chose Joe Biden more than five and a half years ago. It's time to move on. Yeah, there's another answer. There's another option other than no such fraud or error exists. And they can't say error doesn't exist because we've seen error be blamed for the issues with elections over and over again. The other answer is that they were engaging in lawful obstruction to inquiry.

Massive cover up. Yeah. And so it's going to be interesting to see like if we get the exposure that we're looking for, the egg on the face of people like Stephen Ritcher is going to be just. just glorious. I can't wait. Yeah, I mean, he should go to prison. Well, that's true. Can't wait for that as well.

Mark Elias? You're not Mark Elias? There's a lot of people, a lot of people. Yeah. At what point is he going to be investigated for obstruction? I got to imagine he's obstructed at some point. So, I mean, obstruction, sure, but also like intimidation, coercion and threats. He threatened local election officials if they didn't certify.

Mark Elias is out there now talking about local, local, you know, county boards, election boards, being involved in elections being the pageantry of democracy, which I can't believe he said it out loud. And every time I mention his name, I'm going to remind everybody that he said that, that he called the people, the people being involved, the local people in your communities, being involved in elections is the pageantry of a democracy. And it was fun, but there's way too many places where it can be corrupted. So we need to stop that pageantry of democracy and centralize everything in the hands of the state. That's his platform now. Yeah, and he's saying it out loud.

It's crazy. But the real thing about Elias, man, Russian inclusion. He is a key player in the Grand Rico. So I am looking forward to that coming back around. Totally good. And he has been kind of like spurging out lately, like on the media appearances. He's like always yelling and short of breath and just looks like he's got high blood pressure. But you're absolutely right.

It is funny that he said that, though, about the pageantry of democracy because people, being involved like that is their definition of democracy yeah i know i know when brian because but he did this like seven point plan of lawful changes that need to be made and basically he's trying to reinvent the voting rights act at the state level and i've been calling them been telling people this is going to happen for a couple years now because the state the voting rights act has been largely gutted at the national level um because the problem that it was that it was created to solve isn't really a problem anymore we don't have the the government suppressing the votes of minority communities in the way that they did during jim crow and in the wake of that when

this legislation was passed but uh they are trying they the you know elections into the lawfare engine are attempting to reinvent the voting rights act at the state level and they're really pushing hard for it so he goes through this seven point plan brian and i broke it down on why we vote and it's whenever brian and i break down like a mark elias video or a david becker video We do kind of a mystery science theater thing with it. And it's a lot of fun. So people should go back and check that out. Hell yeah.

One more question. Have you seen any updates on SAVE Act? Have they voted for that yet? Do we know where we're at that? Yeah, I think they're still debating it. Still debating it. I didn't see they confirmed Mark Wayne Mullen. So they had time to do that.

But they're still debating the SAV Act. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, it's criminal in my opinion that you have over 80%. 83. I think the last estimate I saw of the country wants voter ID wants only Americans voting in American elections and the Senate is telling us we're too stupid to know what we want. Yeah, well.

It's really something, isn't it? I mean, I kind of agree with some of that, but we are very stupid as a population. But also I don't think so, John. I think that the people have been so freaking lied to that it's not a matter of stupidity. It's a matter of having the wrong information. I think if the American people were told the truth, the American people would make good decisions. That's my opinion. Maybe.

Yeah, I can get on board with that. I don't know. It's I don't think Trump actually wants to save act. I think there's something else at play here. So the whole thing to me is theater, but I also don't trust the polls. I don't believe the polls. Who knows what they actually are, whether it's 80% regardless. It doesn't matter. I think the fact that it's being exposed that that story, right? Like 80% of people want this, but the people that are supposedly elected aren't given to them. That is a fun story to entertain. Yeah. And we can maybe, you know, I don't know, repeal the 17th amendment or something. I. I don't know. We've got to fix this problem, though, because the corruption in Washington, D.C. is becoming a focal point of why we can't get stuff done. Why are we worried about losing the midterms when we can't, we have full control of the government right now and can't get anything done? Right. We won this last election and nothing's changed or gotten accomplished and things have gotten worse. But if we win the midterms, then that'll definitely change things. And nothing's done in Congress. President Trump is doing everything that he can.

Yeah, for sure. One more question for you and I'll let you go. So yesterday we had a SCOTUS hearing on mail-in ballots. I'm curious, did you listen to any of that? I didn't. I saw some clips about it. This is about counting election. Yeah, it's about counting ballots after election. Or counting, yeah, counting ballots after election day.

This is, there's this varies state to state in terms of what the rules are. My state, Colorado will accept ballots up until 7 p.m. when the polls close on election day. So you they have to be in by then. It's not a postmark thing, right? It can't be postmarked by then. So it's fine. It has to be in and accepted. But they the statute says they have to count them until they're done counting. So if this this this impacts many states, it has the ability to make things very, very messy for upcoming elections because every state does it a little bit differently. I think counting elections after Cali ballots after Election Day is stupid. I agree. It is interesting to see. see the opposing sides like the left is like oh man the Supreme Court's definitely going to rule our way and then the right's like well that's a completely different hearing than I heard because I think they're going to rule my way. Curious, do you have any thoughts on have you seen anything to make you guess which way they're going to rule? No, I mean, I think that the I think that the composition of the court that we have right now is largely constitutionalists and I think that a lot

of people get angry when they don't get the answer that they want but those same people generally don't read the opinions so you don't understand how the justices got to where they got. If you read the opinion, you can see you have different, you know, Ghost and Brian and I have all talked about how the most interesting conversations at the Supreme Court are being had by President Trump's three appointees. That's where the most division is. That's where, you know, Gorsuch is on a mission to abolish the administrative state or dismantle the administrative state. Amy Coney Barrett is a constitutional originalist and that pisses a lot of people off because people have gotten so used to wielding the government for for their ends but it is it is

very interesting I heard your someone in the chat asked do we know when that's going to come down now yeah probably before June but yeah it'll be a while I'm sure yeah interesting okay well any closing thoughts anything else you want to say before no I'm excited I mean I'm I love these people being in the hot seat and people like Stephen Richard people like Matt Crane and and Carly Coppice having to have have their work product have a spotlight on it and they're you know now feesants they've been gaslighting people about elections in Colorado and Stephen Richard's been doing it not just in Arizona but around me he came Stephen Richard came on our show to

talk about Georgia right you remember I was super I'm like why aren't we talking about America but there the it's it's the whole corrupt temple is coming down and Kankham was super like polite him in that interview is it was weird and I had one more question shoot I don't remember what it was. Dang it, okay, never mind. Well, anyway, we'll get you out of here, Ash. Thank you for hopping on.

When are you appearing on about this? One, I interviewed Mark Fitzpatrick, who's running for governor of Idaho last night on Culture of Change. Great conversation. He's the guy that owns Old State Saloon where Jordan has done a bunch of events. And he's friends with Michelle and Rick of Tameret Garden. And we had a fantastic current. He's causing a ruckus up there. And I love everything he's doing.

That was really fun. So folks to check that out. And then today we have Book Club Stolen Elections, the Take Down of Democracies Worldwide, by Ralph Pizzulo. And people want us to stop talking about this book. That's weird, isn't it? Even more, it was just yesterday. We got more pressure to stop talking about this book.

So we're going to keep talking about the book. So tune into that at 6 a.m. Eastern. Oh, you didn't tell me about the most recent pressure. Yeah, I'll text you. Yeah. shoot me text all right thanks ash appreciate you we'll see you later i guess awesome thank you to ash for hopping on and filling us in that definitely uh also killed some time because i was worried at the start of the show whether or not i'd be able to fill a full hour because i don't know if i have

that many news stories but real quick we're going to get a quick word from soft disclosure and then we'll keep plugging away get yourself some lotion some deodorant some tallow some beard Oil. Get you some of that beard oil. Now that I'm alone at the close up, do you see how awesome my beard looks right now? I use the beard oil every single day. First thing, 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. Dude, I feel like I have to grow a beard just to try this beer.

It's amazing. It's all from soft disclosure.com, and the best part about it is you'll be supporting Badlands Media, Annie from Rolowen 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. He 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. All right, soft disclosure.com, everybody. Get yourself some of that beard oil and lotion. So let's start plugging away through some other news headlines. This saga about the New Jersey Attorney General. It's been going on for a while. I can't remember what's the Halligan?

Lindsay Halligan. She was the one who first indicted. I think it was Comey. And then what's her name? Leticia James. And then there was the drama about her not being. you know, rightfully appointed or whatever. And we've still been trying to get somebody into that role this entire time.

Well, federal judges in New Jersey on Monday appointed a new top prosecutor and moved backed by the U.S. Department of Justice that signals a resolution to the dispute over leadership of the state's U.S. attorney office. I brief forward to the court named Robert Fraser as acting U.S. attorney, Fraser, a longtime prosecutor with more than two decades in office, most recently served as senior trial counsel handling major organized crime and narcotics cases. It's the fourth individual to lead the office since President Trump returned to the White House following a series of disputed appointments. So it is interesting that the DOJ is actually like supporting this person's nomination because we've seen so many back and forths and the judges there naming somebody.

Trump's like, no, you're fired. I don't like that guy. But this is one they can all agree on. So we got traction movement. I wonder if there's going to be any updates to any of the cases that HALGIN is working on. Go Doggo, Comey is subpoenaed as a witness. He must have turned. You know, I think that's a common misconception, or at least maybe a wishful thought that everybody always has.

Whenever somebody gets subpoenaed, they're like, oh, he must have turned. I don't feel that way about many of these people. They've gotten away with this stuff for so long. Like, why would they turn? And why would we need them to? If we have the evidence we think we have, which I believe is like all of it, we don't need anybody to turn. We shouldn't need anybody to turn. And if you're them, you know, getting away with everything for so long, I feel like there's no motivation to turn anyway, you know.

But as we, as I always say, Witsack always gains another angel. And if we see a news story that Comey dies or something, he's fairly young. Maybe he actually did go to Witzek. Who knows? US Iran meeting could be convened in Pakistan. That's a story circulating today. And there's one more. I want to find the war.

Here we go. Saudi Crown Prince urges continued pressure on Iran. Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, Muhammad bin Salman, has been urging President Trump to continue military pressure on Iran, arguing the US Israeli campaign presents a historic opportunity to reshape the Middle East, according to the New York Times, setting individuals briefed by American officials.

Over the past week, Crown Prince has reportedly pressed Trump to pursue the destruction of Iran's hardline leadership, arguing the Iranian government itself poses a long-term threat to Gulf security that cannot be addressed without removing it. Socialism both Saudi Arabia and the United States have expressed concern that a prolonged conflict could expose Saudi oil infrastructure to further Iranian strikes and potentially entangle the U.S. in an extended war. Obviously, that's what nobody wants.

And obviously, we all think that Trump is getting us into this conflict with the ultimate the goal of, you know, actual peace in the Middle East. Like those prospects after this conflict with this conflict are better, longer term. We don't know how long it's going to take to get there. That's the frustrating part. And while it's going on, things are kind of shitty everywhere else. A lot of the progress that we saw made in the first, you know, part of the second term for Trump, in a lot of ways, in my opinion, it's kind of been wiped away in terms of like

the economic stuff. And a lot of that stuff is still in the wings waiting to fully be implemented. But we'll see. The narratives all over the place. No idea what's actually going on. Nobody does. We'll see what happens. We got this.

As I said earlier, the Senate confirms Mark Wayne Mullen to lead the DHS. The vote was 54 to 45 Democratic Senator John Fetterman and Martin Heinrich broke with their party to support the confirmation. Heinrich said he considers Mullen a friend pointing to legislation. they've worked on together describing as a principled voice and he is not someone easily pressured into changing his views you know i've been described that way a few times myself vote came with opposition from rand paul who chairs the senate panel overseeing dhs rand paul i don't remember why but what's what the

stick of his ass about mark wayne mullin does anybody know sure i look that is it worth looking up and rand don't know why they hate each other or why rand paul hates him see if i can figure it out. They have an openly hostile relationship that came to a head during Mullins March 26 confirmation. It centers on Mullins past comments about the 2017 assault on Rand Paul by a neighbor. Owen reportedly told media in Oklahoma that he thought Paul was a freaking snake and that he completely understood why Paul had been assaulted, which Paul interpreted as Mullin justifying the attack. Mullin said at the hearing that he did not support

the assault but claimed he understood it trying to draw a distinction between understanding and endorsement. you know and and i i get what mark wayne's saying there i can understand like if if i hear of or see a you know an elected representative get their ass kicked i could probably understand why the person did it but to hold up a vote ram paul wow pretty gay rand paul's a traitor all these people are traitors guys all of them can't say i disagree with marcane overhand why are we spelling his name like that is that an inside joke i missed disclose secret subpoena information reveals FBI director Cash Patel's predecessor, Christopher Ray,

signed off on special counsel Jack Smith spying on Patel's bank credit card and billing. Phil, you should send me that link. I want to read that. You're posting in the chat or send on Twitter. We have another secret room of documents, guys, that they found up to 1.9 million pages of records found in secured room at FBI headquarters. How many rooms are in the FBI building? Like how have they it's been what a year and a half?

Not quite. Year in two months. 14 months since Trump has inaugurated and we like took over. And they're still discovering rooms with documents. Like are they behind bookshelves? Are there secret doors? Like where are these rooms and how did they not find these in on like the initial onboarding tour? I mean, I'm sure it's a big building.

But still, you know what I mean? Like it's just weird. We're still getting stories like this. they have identified um according to a filing by the u.s department of justice the documents are housed in a skiff where multiple safes contained between roughly 950 000 and 1.9 million pages if you guys stayed the records must be digitized and reviewed before determining what is responsive to the FOIA request um yeah process could i take 10 to 12 months finally indicates materials include legacy records tied largely to two closed investigations along with more recent files connected

to active probes and prior special counsel matters. This was noted many of the legacy records fall under the authority, the DOJ, office of the inspector general must be reviewed in consultation with that office before any release. Stems from a June 2025 FOIA request that the FBI failed to fulfill prompting litigation. The case also seeks internal FBI communications involving director Cash Patel and former deputy director Dan Bongina regarding the discovery of records, along with directives on how the materials were handled. I'm curious about that stuff too. I want to know where and how they found these stories because it's my belief.

And I can't, you know, obviously prove this. Maybe we could with some of these FOIA requests. But it's my belief that a lot of these documents Trump and his team had before coming in. And they're using the story of like, oh, we found him in burn bag. So we found them in the secret office to just like narratively disclose these records that they want people to see. maybe that's way off base, but it's not as way off base as something to hear every day. So who knows. But this is what was sent over by Phil.

Jack Smith team secretly sought years of Cash Patel phone records, new doc show. Former special counsel Jack Smith saw more than two years worth of phone records for now FBI director Cash Patel while Smith was investigating President Donald Trump. The two subpoenas showed Smith's team. asked Verizon for Patel's phone records dating from October 2020 through February 2020. I wonder if these will get released. Because there were people claiming that Cash Patel ordered my takedown. You know what I mean?

Like ordered the takedown of Badlands. I've been skeptical of that, but maybe we can prove whether that's true. Patel first announced the subpoenas existence in February, calling them outrageous and deeply alarming. Patel worked in the first Trump bad man. We don't need his background. The subpoenas were accompanied by one year,

court authorized gag orders meaning Verizon was ordered by the court not to alert Patel of their existence. That's nuts, but they can do that. It is common for prosecutors to subpoena phone records, also known as toll records as part of investigations. The records would not include contents of messages but would show with whom Patel communicated that went. Okay, so maybe we wouldn't find out. Grassley released the documents ahead of the Senate Judiciary Hearing Committee or hearing examining Arctic Frost. Tell was also a known witness and a separate FBI probe into Trump's handling the classified documents and it's unclear which of the investigations the subpoenas pertain to yeah so i mean obviously these people are going to be in trouble for this this is all part of the arctic

frost thing that's all part of the rico gron case i believe separate narrative like separate separate separate storylines but they all converge at some point with the um the rico ground case 13th floor labeled this 14th floor so it took them a while to find it uh that's what they did That's funny. But all right, back to some other headlines. Where was I? Did that. Okay.

So I think this is interesting. Iran's flex of long range ballistic missiles vindicates Trump may change European calculus. We got that story last week where Iran launched two long range missiles towards whatever the base was, Diego Garcia. Okay. More than 2,000 miles from Tehran. the story is a little too convenient for me and what I mean by that is like they've never done this before they didn't even hit the target

there's like no proof these missiles were shot other than the story that's all we have is a story of this happening and it just so happens to conveniently you know as the title says vindicate some narratives that are out there about why we got into this conflict and I don't know I think it's bullshit I'll just say that I think it's bullshit I don't think this happened

I think it's a convenient story used to justify and offer some narrative shielding for why we got in the conflict. So they don't have to disclose the real reasons, even though I think I'm probably not the only one who thinks the story's bullshit. Anyway, let's keep going. We have a new plan to end the DHS shutdown. I says in 14 airports right now, I believe. Pass now water bottles and making the line shorter, helping with security. I think in Atlanta I saw the weight was once like over four hours. It's down to under 45 minutes.

So it's that easy. The top Senate Republicans coalesced behind plan to end the DHS shutdown. And I need to work around this link here to get the story. Okay. Top Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill believe their party is unified behind a plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security. Now they just got to sell it to the Democrats who probably ain't going to buy it. Republican lawmakers emerged from a White House meeting on Monday night with a plan to fund DHS, all accept a small portion of the immigration enforcement budget on a concession to Democrats. Then once that's passed, Republicans plan to muscle through a partisan bill without Democratic votes to fund the rest of the immigration bill and customs enforcement agency.

We run over that story yesterday and Saturday, about how ISIS is funded. It's shutdown proof. They're fine. They have a bunch of discretionary funding that they can tap into. It's like $70, $100 billion or something stupid. That plan, which was described to CNN by a person familiar with the talks, has not yet been accepted by the Democrats. But key Democrats said they were pleased with the direction, even without knowing all the full details. And so this is what's silly.

Like we're pretending that this plan is going to work, right? Okay, we're going to concede to you guys that we're not going to fund ICE. And we just need to get the country open, DHS open. We need to get the TSA back in there. blah blah whatever but then a story breaks at the same time which details the real plan of them trying to do a workaround and fund ice anyway is that going to work like if you're the democrats are you can accept that if we're pretending to play the red team blue team of course not it's also stupid freaking unit party antics but we'll see what happens as long as ice is in

there like i don't really care about any of this stuff really don't What else? I guess we're almost a full hour here. But I do have a couple more stories, I think. I can find them. No, I don't care about that. Yeah, the reconciliation process, that's what they're going to use to force it through. Man, I already did all these stories.

What the heck? Well, shit, maybe I am done. There we go, guys. What do you guys want to talk about? you got a couple minutes don't trust the plan i trust it so hard you don't even know maybe the lines are shorter because they're afraid of ice and aren't traveling that's possible i also saw i think it was delta airlines who took away congress's ability to cut the lines which i think is amazing i think all airlines should do that and i think that should be

removed permanently forever always if those people why cape to anything democrats oh that's right because republicans are weak limp-risted faggots um it's also because they're not really caving to it's all a uniparty man like they are this is a narrative layer that's on top of this whole fiasco to explain why they're moving the ball forward in whatever way they're doing it

but they're trying to reform how they fund ice apparently and this is how they're telling that story. Spanish islands with first two names for $200. Touch someone's arse has to be abolished TSA I got that's he did there there's only one party

Congress should have no special privileges I did a crappy job mowing this morning and trying to hurry to get done in time for the snow. Whoa, whoa, whoa, where do you live that you're already mowing? And that it's also going to snow soon. That's wild. Mr. Eman, 1968 says, The Patriot Act is unconstitutional.

DHS and TSA should not exist anyway. Totally agree with that. 420 and 8645 were the lotto numbers yesterday in Indiana? That certainly is interesting. Anyway, guys, I think with that, I'm just going to wrap up. Do me a favor support our sponsors a load of gun coffee

soft disclosure also golden silver badlands gold.com Badlandsmeadda.combe.com. Get your gold silver, Bitcoin with that stuff down. Texas. Oh, Texas. You said show not snow. My bad. Walbert Forge says just got almost three

quarters of a tank of gas for $75. Golden Age as fuck. Yeah. sucks don't it and all the names people call you when you complain or not even complain you just notice like hey for golden age doesn't seem like prices are feeling all that golden i personally don't feel all that golden uh polymathan says good show john yesterday's was better though just saying seem a little biased polymathan but yeah thanks again for coming on man you good job

we'll get you back on again plymouth patriot 61 57 if Trump exposes election fraud, the Save America Act will be illegitimate, right? Well, it won't, I mean, illegitimate. It would be irrelevant. Maybe he's a better word for it, which I think it already is. Ramone 2-22, about two pairs of jeans for $20 at Fleet Farm yesterday. That's some golden-naged shit right there if I've ever heard it. Two pairs of jeans for $20?

They must not be designer. Anyway, you guys have a good rest of your day. I will see you tomorrow back here at 1 p.m. me surround the Daily Herald. I make sure you guys stick around Badlands. Got all sorts of great content. Hopefully the news day gets a little more exciting. Not in a bad way, but in a good way. But we'll see what happens. You guys, enjoy the rest of your day.