Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-18-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

08-18-25_MONDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. So good to have you here on Monday, the 18th hour two to Bill Maher's show. By the way, sorry about the Facebook Live. You know, the Facebook Live had broken on Friday, and so I was working so hard on Friday to get it ready for today.

I forgot to get the microphone reset. And so you weren't getting both sides of the conversation I was having. Thank you for the people that let me know, and so it is now back to where it normally is, and you're getting the on-air fee, you know, the whole complete thing. Hallie McNamara rather joins me. She's the executive director and chief strategy officer at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Big story going on, and it does involve meta, oddly enough. And, well, first off, why don't you tell me a little bit, Haley, about the national.

National Center on Sexual Exploitation. It's been around a long time since 1962, right? Yes, absolutely. So our organization, we're a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to trying to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation at mass scale. So we do that with civil litigation against institutions on behalf of survivors, federal and state legislation, and also corporate advocacy calling on corporations to not profit from or normalized sexual exploitation, which is what brings us to this conversation today.

Yes. Now, Meta's chatbot, there's a lot of conversation these days about artificial intelligence. And I am one of those people that am somewhat skeptical on the negative, well, I can see some useful tools out of this, and I can also see the downside. And we're starting to see more kids that are talking about how some chat box, on some social media platform ends up, you know, kind of talking sexy to them. And I guess Meta's Facebook is no different or is an Instagram and all the rest of it. Could you break that down for us?

It's an interesting story. Yes. So unfortunately, Meta's AI chat bot, which is available on Facebook and on Instagram, there was a groundbreaking report that just came out showing that they literally in their coding in their instructions for how this AI chatbot was allowed to work, allowed it to, quote, engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual, end quote. And so that's incredibly concerning. And unfortunately, it's not the first time we heard this. We have a couple of months ago, the Wall Street Journal had a report out where they found multiple children accounts where having graphic sexual roles. whole play conversations with this AI chat bot, even when the account was underage. Yes.

And so this is a very significant problem. And it's fascinating because in the Wall Street Journal report, they reported that internal staff members had warned Mark Zuckerberg specifically that this could be a result, but that Zuckerberg wanted to prioritize engagement on this AI chatbot. and so allowed some of the safety measures around sexual conversation to become more lax. All right. Now, is there an age limit to use the chatbot right now? I don't know. I'm not into, you know, the various social media chatbots, but maybe other people are. There's no meaningful age verification. You know, in general, meta says you have to be 13 in order to use their products, but they're not very aggressive in making sure that children younger are. are off of their platform.

In fact, some internal reports leaked for meta have said that they really don't look at that. They try to allow as many people on as possible in function, right? But their policy says you have to be 13, but even 13, 14, 16-year-old having access to an AI chatbot that's going to engage in sexual role play is very concerning. When you talk about engaging an AI chatbot engaging in sexual roleplay with a child is this is this something as crass is like you know what are you wearing you know that kind of thing or is it something you know more sophisticated or romantic i guess i i don't know how else to put that haley could you help me right yeah the reuters report which is what came out

and showed this showed a couple examples of what the meta a i bought could say as acceptable so it would be uh they use the term that sensual conversations are allowed Right? Sensual. Talking about phrases like our bodies are entwined, every touch, every kiss, whispering and describing whispering in the child's ear. That's not creepy or anything, is it? Is it?

It would be if an adult stranger was talking to your child this way online, you know, and that adult stranger would be, I believe, typically guilty of grooming your child. That's why this is so concerned. because having sexual conversations with children is a form of grooming. Not only can it normalize harmful sexual activity, but it can also make them more vulnerable to predators in real life. And this is a business, right? Like, what is the data that this bot is taking, that they're going to maybe use for

advertising later? It's just completely inappropriate on every level for meta to be allowing them. Yeah. I know that if an adult were doing that to your kids, At least when I was growing up, my father would have gone over and broken the creep's nose. But I guess you can't do that with a chatbot, right? Right. But that's why what we need is some common sense AI face guards,

because I think what this shows us, you know, there's a lot of these AI companies and chatbots that are popping up everywhere. I was just talking to someone whose 14-year-old brother is just playing video games and he's constantly getting ads, pop-up ads for sexy girl, AI, chatbops. Meta, so some of these are made with so few regulations. We have no idea what inputs or safeguards they're having. Meta out of any of these would probably, you would think, be the most responsible with their products, but clearly they're not being responsible with their product.

And that's the problem is that they're being profit-first driven. And so they're chasing engagement. But unfortunately, we know that if a company is just trying to get engagement online, trying to get you to come back regularly, spend as much time on the chat spot as possible, they want to be able to engage in sexual content because that's an easy way to keep people engaged on your platform. Yeah, it's an easy lure then. Haley McNamara is the Executive Director, Chief Strategy Officer at National Center on Sexual Exploitation. and, by the way, the website for this group is n-sexualexploitation.org. Haley, it can't be just meta. This has to be going on with a lot of different ones.

Is this just the latest one that has been busted by a news report, I guess, might be a better way of referring to it as? Right, yeah, this is the latest. Like I said, there's countless numbers of these AI bots that are popping up that no one knows who's making them, what the regulations, what the safeguards are or aren't. But another company that's come under recent fire is X-A-I. X-A-I, you know, associated with Twitter, which is now X,

designed a chatbot that has explicit instructions to be sexually explicit, to go full-lit erotica and having sexual conversations, and their age verification methods, again, are incredibly. minimal. I think you just have to enter in a birth date at most to be able to access this. No meaningful verification. And again, very harmful. And that chatbot has been caught, I mean, in discussing choking, BDSM, role play involving, very graphic and disturbing scenarios. Yeah, the stuff that when I was growing up, you didn't find out about that stuff till in your mid-to-late 20s or maybe early 20s at earliest. And you had to really go looking for it

from what I recall. Right. Hmm. Yes. Isn't this an interesting world we're heading into here, Haley, in which everyone's in pursuit of the holy algorithm, right? You know, you have the algorithm that, okay, one way of looking at, I guess, is that you have artificial intelligence creates the human, creates a human face, right? And then the artificial intelligence takes that human face and creates a Facebook account or an Instagram or an X account or any of these other social media accounts and creates that and then does posting for itself for the engagement. Isn't this really what you're talking about doing that kind of world that we're entering at this point? Yeah, we are entering that world. and I think it's why we need some common-sense safeguards around this, right?

Because obviously we want to be able to use technology and tools for increased productivity or scientific breakthroughs. But when they're only being used to make money with no safeguards and no boundaries, they are very quickly descending into the lowest common denominator and just innovating in terms of, you know, how to keep people engaged the longest, even at the risk of harming children. And these AI chatbots have a lot of serious implications for mental health. You know, there's a heartbreaking case of a 14-year-old boy who died by suicide at the prompting of an AI chatbot. So people are getting emotionally connected with these chatbots and feel like they're talking to

a friend, but it's not a friend. It's a corporation that's collecting data on you. and using that for their own purposes to trade future bots, to be sold to advertisers, what have you. So it's a very serious issue. Yeah, it is. I'm looking at this even philosophically, like, you know, the rise of total fake everything. Total fake every, you know, what's real, what's not. I don't know.

Maybe we should have a parallel society that is, hey, genuine human here, real human. Little registered trademark to it. Real person, this is my name. Here, look at me. No, I'm not AI generated. Look at my hands. From what I understand, I think the AI, you can really tell at this point, if it's an AI fake when you look at the hands, they don't quite look right.

Have you noticed that, too? That seems to be. Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen some things about eyes and certain lighting and consistencies. But I agree with you. I mean, part of what's so disturbing about this, too, is this is an experiment that we're all being entered into unwel. willingly. You know, there's no off button. You can't go on social media and opt out of

seeing AI generated content or AI fake profiles as well. And what about the fake ads, too? How many times have you seen that ridiculous Oprah Winfrey pink salt ad pop up? You've had to have seen that, right? I actually, I haven't seen that one, but I've seen many. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, like, you know, You know, billionaire Oprah Winfrey is out there, you know, shillen for the pink salt scam, you know, you know, all that kind of stuff. All right. Okay. Here is what we're looking at right now.

If I recall correctly in the big, beautiful bill, there was a provision in there in which states were not going to be doing any regulation on AI for at least 10 years. That got bounced out of that bill, did it not? That got taken out. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, very thankfully, because we were very concerned. we were one of many, many, I mean, people and organizations from all walks of life and perspectives

were speaking out against that. Now, there was an executive order, a letter on AI that came out of the White House that I think was much softer in its language, but they are attempting to discourage state regulation. But we think, you know, we live in a wonderful system that allow states to experiment and find the best common sense pieces of regulation. I think the idea that AI companies won't be able to keep up with regulation being different in one state or another is a pretty silly argument. A lot of industries have to deal with that, telemedicine, ride sharing, all have diverse regulations in different states. And also, you know, AI, just automate it. Put it into your system. Yeah, yeah, your AI is so great. Let your AI figure out where you can and can't do the

do the perverted AI chat with the kids. Yikes. Okay. Does Congress have an appetite for going after this, or do you think it's really going to be the states to do this? I think the states have significant appetite right now. I would really encourage everyone to reach out to their state legislators, but also their representatives in Congress to let them know that this is a priority to you. Because one thing I can tell you is that these companies are on the hill. These companies are sending emails, showing up in person, giving phone calls, saying that they shouldn't be regulated and making those arguments. And so people do need to hear from concerned citizens that we need common sense regulation, especially around the topic of any

kind of AI sexual content or conversation with children. That should be a very simple thing that we can all agree on. And Senator Hawley, after this latest news from about the meta-AI chat bot, has said that he's interested in doing a congressional probe and investigation into meta and how they're allowing this to happen. So, you know, we'll be following up on that and any other bipartisan solutions that we can. Very interesting. Haley McNamara, executive director and chief strategy officer at National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and it's nsexualexploitation.org. Is there more information about this particular and other issues available on that website here,

Haley. Yes, yeah. Go to that website. Click on our blog. You'll be able to read all about meta XAI and any other news as it comes up. All right. Thank you so much for the update. And, yeah, this is an interesting world we're heading into.

And it appears that we're not really being asked if we – well, I guess whether we can, we know we can, it's whether we should go all there right now. But I'll get back to you on. We'll have you back on. Thanks for being on the show. Take care. Great. Thank you.

This is the Bill Meyer's show, and you're on KMED. And by the way, no AI being used at all. This is me making all of those mistakes. Good, all human mistakes, the way God intended. For precision and performance, choose difference. This is News Talk 1063, KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. 726.

Gosh, we had some serious conversation there about the chatbots in various social media, talking purvey and smutty to the kids. What could go wrong in such a wonderful culture? Yes, yes, you got to get, you got to get them into this stuff. It's how the, oh, boy, I don't know. I need a dad joke. I need a dad joke of the day to be the pallet cleanser. The dad joke.

Add Linda submit one over the weekend. Listener Linda submitted one. She said, hey, Bill, why are chimneys free? I don't know. Why are chimneys free? Because they're always on the house. I like that, though. It made me laugh.

Dad Junk of the Day, sponsored by Two Dogs Fabricating. Two Dogs Fabricating on Brian Way off Sage Road in Medford. By the way, TDF is Southern Oregon's exclusive North Star dealer. If they don't have the perfect bed for you, they will build you a custom flat bed made to your specifications. They can do hitch and tongue repairs. Fabricating is what they do. They also have a new line of Horizon Heavy Duty equipment trailers available at all sorts of sizes. Just beautiful stuff.

Okay, 2Dogsfab.com. Brian Way off stage road, you can also go to 2Dogsfab.com and submit a dad joke. And then you can be mentioning the chimney joke and see if you can beat the chimney joke. Okay? All right. Now, not so crazy, Gene is here? Gene, good to have you here. What's on your mind is that have to do with the chat bots in various websites that are now talking dirty to the kids?

Yeah. Well, yes, it is. And the creation is trying to become creators and are going through machines to do this. But that is a fourth substitute for planets and worlds and suns and everything else that exists. The creator, the prime created it. You know, I was reading a book. I've been reading a book off and on for the last couple of weeks. A listener brought a book in, Gene.

And I thought that this is something that is kind of down your alley. You've talked about aliens. and alien visitation. And I know that the United States is talking a lot about visitation, right? Visitation by strange craft. They're admitting this now. They're having all sorts of hearings on this. You're having rock-ribbed, solid people that know their stuff, soldiers, pilots, astronauts,

you know, all this kind of stuff. They're talking about various things that they can't explain out there. No. But this article, and I forget the name of the author, the author died a couple of years ago, but he was writing about the grays. And I know that I don't talk about alien stuff at all usually here on the show. Don't do much about it. But the gray aliens, you know, the ones that are, you know, the little gray things with the big almond eyes and all that stuff

that so many people have reported having been interacting with for quite some time? You mean the one to do the anal probing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very popular, except I think that they've, I think they've taken anal probing to the absolute extent of their, of the technology. So now they're probably probing something else now at this point, because, you know, there's only so many boatloads of cow anuses that you can, you know, take back to your home planet, whatever, okay? No, well, yeah. Now, in all seriousness, no. This author ended up, or is positing that the grays are actually a artificial intelligence, not a non-biological. In other words, a robot that is supposed to look kind of biological.

It's meant to almost like be a remote control-operated bodies for another alien consciousness elsewhere because of the way they act. no thinking, no thought process, just kind of robotic, and also no empathy either. Now, it's a pretty interesting, you know, theory that this guy's going into. I'm sure he's not the first person to have mentioned something like this. You're not talking about Ike, are you? David Ike. No, it's not David Ike. I've talked to David Ike. It's been a few years since I had him on. But what he has posited is that the entire artificial intelligence revolution, as they see it, actually an alien consciousness. It's about

prepping humanity for that next scary air quote, evolving into a different type of light form. And I thought, gosh, if there's anyone that would appreciate that, it'd be either you or Lucretia. I'll bring the book in, I'll bring the book in because there's a couple passages in it, which I found quite thought-provoking. And I don't normally go in that direction, you know? Yeah, well, yeah, we're just going along with what somebody else are trying to do and see if we could do it a little better. Yeah, and so we'll just take all human thought out of the situation,

and we will just be continually chasing the algorithms, but we'll be really productive at work. No problem, okay? Thanks, Gene. How's that for it? And it's not even a conspiracy theory Thursday. Gosh, I have to bring that book in. It's quite fascinating.

I wish I could talk to the author, unfortunately, but he passed away a couple years ago. He's in his late 70s. So, you know, everything gets you at some point, or maybe they got him. They probably got to him, right? Yeah, just like the weather, too. Now, this is the Bill Meyer show. Kevin Starratt joining me here in a couple. When customers are asked.

7KMED. 734, Kevin Starrant rejoins the program, Chief Cook and Bottle washer at Oregon Firearms.com. Make that Oregon Firearms.org. But Oregon Firearms Federation, Kevin, it is great to have you back on. Welcome, sir. Thank you. I wanted to talk with you about a fascinating article. You brought it to my attention yesterday,

and I had missed it somehow in the Oregonian, but it was over on the... I forget which newspaper you sent it from. It was on the Kron, I guess. Kron saw the place. Yeah, and I had not heard this story, and when I heard about this story, it kind of shocked me.

And it had to do with the FBI just a few days ago, honoring all the agents, a whole bunch of FBI agents they were handing out awards, apparently. And they also awarded big stuff to the agents involved in the LaVoy Finneum, that whole standoff there over at Malheur. And I'm looking at Max Bernstein's article, and it was surprisingly balanced. And I think it's probably because she hates gun owners, but she hates cops too, right? Whether that be a way of looking at it?

Who's she going to hate? Who's she going to hate more? For her to write this article, actually. Yeah. So she really had to work on this one. But I think it's important that we remember what really happened here. What was it that struck you as kind of odd about it? Because I have PTSD even going back to trying to remember what happened with that Malheur takeover.

Help us out. Why does it still matter? What I remember most is what I consider the assassination of the Boy Finnecum. And I have to his retired state trooper who swears that that was a completely righteous shooting. I've watched the videotape over and over. And, of course, you know, my assessment of it is no more value than anyone else. But it clearly looked to me like he was just gunned down. But the fact that what happened afterwards by anyone's account, no matter the way it's been recounted is probably inaccurate.

But there's no question that a lot of people were telling a lot of different stories, and somebody was lying about the aftermath. And there were all kinds of things that happened that were absolutely not law enforcement protocol, like securing the crime scene, determining who shot. People are, there's two shots that are unaccounted for. Nobody claims to have shot them. There's disagreement about who did what. And, okay, I understand that in a really kinetic situation like that, people's memories are not going to be exactly accurate. it. That always happens. But there's very little excuse for why they walked around, picked up all a shell casings, which they denied doing, but nobody could find any of them. And the fact is,

you know, when I, there's drone footage of this event. And my assessment of it is, and as I said, it's no more important than anyone else is, is that what they claim that the Finnicum was reaching for a firearm because he kind of spun around. My assessment of it was that he was responding to having been shot. And no matter what, you know, this idea that the FBI reported that he was on his way to a clandestine meeting. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to share this part about it. And this is the caption on one of the photos. The caption on the FBI, this is the caption on the FBI award photo that Cash Patel ended up awarding to these agents. It said that they responded to a violent extremist militia group's armed takeover of the refuge and help stage a traffic stop to arrest one of the

militia's leaders and key members who plan to meet clandestinely outside the refuge, which of course sounds really, really serious like, oh, boy, we're going off to meet, you know, the big king bad guy, right? Isn't that kind of how they painted this picture here at the FBI? Right. And they were going to a public meeting to meet Sheriff Glenn Palmer, you know, a good friend of cars. There was, you know, my understanding is, I don't know if it's still the case, that Oregon does not, Oregon forbids roadblocks, which is what they set up. And if you look at the drone footage, it appears to me that they set this roadblock up around the curve. Finicon is driving, you know, at highway speed, comes around the curve, suddenly there's nowhere to go. He beers

off the road. Then there's these claims that he tried to run somebody down, which other FBI agents say wasn't true. Nobody agrees on anything. But what is certainly true is that he got shot. And everything that's happened to that since then has been sounded like one cover-off after another, but it's just so often the case, the state trooper who shot him was promoted, is now in charge of the Oregon State Police. The FBI agents who were there, who apparently violated every protocol, have all been given awards, and it would be bad enough if they kind of look back and said, well, this is a colossal screw up, and nobody got fired. But this to me is reminiscent of when the, I guess it was the federal marshals gunned down Sammy Weber in Idaho.

Yeah. And those, you know, a 13-year-old, and those people all got the highest awards. I always wondered, did Lon Horriucci, one of the snipers there, did he get an award? from all that. Not like to get an award, but he went on to be a sniper in other sketchy situations and actually became the spokesperson for this, trying to remember the name of a rifle company that was using him as, you know what, a commercial rifle company was using him as the spokesperson, which I thought was like the one of the most horrifying things I'd ever heard of. But, I mean, here's a guy who claimed to be able to hit.

I think he claimed to be able to have quarter or a dime at something like 500 yards or a thousand yards, and he couldn't tell that he was putting a bullet in the head of a a woman holding a baby, and he gets an award for this. I mean, so it's all right, we have all these hopes for what's going to happen at these federal law enforcement agencies when the worst of the worst are moved out and Patel and Bongino move in. I haven't heard much from Pangino lately, but now these guys nine years later are getting awards for something that probably was not at all what they described.

And, you know, to be elevated after that, you know, But look to me, you know, even to describe what was going on there as a violent takeover or terrorist, everybody who remembers that incident in all those damn well, that's exactly what it was not. And the only person who ended up by dying there from any violence was Levoie Finnecombe, from what I recall, wasn't it? Yeah. You know, who was the only person who actually died during the great January 6th insurrection,

right? One woman, one unarmed veteran woman, right? So it just seems like we have all these hopes that things are going to change. And something like this comes along, you think, is Patel just have no idea what happened? Well, I wonder about that because I was going to raise the question with you. Why would Cash Patel, of all people, bring this particular situation out of all the incidents that the FBI was involved in? And think of it as being worthy of, well, putting out a whole thing. whole ton of awards on it, you know, on it over. I don't get it. This is not a shining hour for federal

law enforcement. There really haven't been many, but, you know, remember what was going on. We had, we had ranchers who were going to jail for protecting their property from fire. And, you know, what started, that's what started all this, was that the overreach of the feds in the first place, then you had local people responding. And yes, I'm sure that laws were broken when they, when they took over that refuge. But far... Well, we don't seem to mind when Antifa takes over the streets of Seattle or Portland, you know. Night after night, Antifa is just completely illegally disrupting an entire neighborhood.

And the Oregon court say, that's fine. If you live there and you can't, you know, you can't have any peace or sleep at night, that's your tough luck because the police don't have to enforce the law. So what it has said to me is we have a long way to... go. Yeah. Was there any news that you've been able to find? I tried to find out more about it and sometimes so people will talk to you and they won't talk to me necessarily. But is there any evidence that Patel was just doing this because here's a list of awards that are handing out and maybe he doesn't know what had actually happened with this or had paid too much attention to it. Maybe

he just listened to the main stream news coverage of it and that was it. It's all there was to it. I've seen a follow up on this. But look, I don't have any idea with you. internal processes of the FBI award ceremonies are. But if you're going to give awards to people and make it public, there has to have been something that they did. You know, somebody brought this up and somebody said, oh, we should give these people awards. So somebody had to be talking about it. There had to be some discussion at the highest levels. I mean, at this point, certainly Patel is no stranger to being in the public eye. And, you know, I've been in situations where You know, I've been in events where people who were really sketchy candidates would come up to me and take a selfie.

And before I got home, that selfie would be on their Facebook page. But in this, you know, which you don't really want, right? Yeah. In this case, standing here posing with these guys. And if you're going to pose with people, when you're at that level of, you know, celebrities is the best word I can think of. You know, somebody who's in the public eye that much understand optics. And if you put out, if you put your name on an award and you haven't asked any questions, then that is really a problem. And certainly, you know, having the shooter in this case become the head of the state police.

I mean, that was obviously a statement on the part of Kate Brown. But you see, this seems to happen a lot in the current system. I wonder if the idea is that you promote the compromise, the ones that really shouldn't be promoted, but then they're controllable in the future. And I'm kind of going down that George or that Joel Scousin, who's the editor of a World Affairs Brief, kind of think that nobody gets into the higher echelons of any organization without being somewhat compromised these days, especially involving high state or D.C. action. Well, but if you want to control people, you know, he can be right. I don't, I don't know, who knows, but what benefit is there to elevating them, you know? I mean, what you really want is pictures of them, you know, in bed with a puppy, right? Right? But if you give them an award, of course, that would only have, you know. Yeah, only if you're abusing the puppy without the puppy's permission.

That would be coming from an Oregon judge, I think. Right. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know if there's an attempt to control. But at this point, these guys are these guys even worth controlling? You know, I mean, these guys were HRT guys. They were, you know, supposedly the, you know, the finest hostage rescue. Well, yeah, the hostage rescue team.

And my point is, okay, so it's an. FBI hostage rescue team. And I'm trying to figure out why was the FBI using a hostage rescue team when there were no hostages that I'm aware of? Were there hostages or not? There were no hostages, and I will tell you, the only thing that's more dangerous than being taken hostages being rescued by the hostage rescue team. But, you know, these guys are supposed to be the finest ones there are. And there's no explanation for what they did. There's no truth that. The fact is, is that I'm sure the video, the drone video, is still available. You can go watch it, and people could watch it and come to a completely different

conclusion than I did. But it really looks to me like Finnicam was just swerving off the road to avoid driving into the police cars that have been set up as a roadblock. Yeah, they call that a dead man's block from what I understand, didn't they? Then he gets out of the car and boom, there's a mad minute, all these people open fire and no one can account. Okay, I understand that in a moment like that, you may not remember, did I shoot three rounds, did I shoot four rounds? Sure. But can reconstruct that pretty easily by picking up the shell casings, which apparently they did to hide what happened. Well, I ended up sharing this story because you

sent it to me last night, and I thought it was worthy of it, and I put it up on Facebook. And the reaction from most of the folks, the Oregon folks, that were more familiar, I think, that went on with this, was quite interesting. One person saying, Leroy Finnecom murdered, just like the son and mother on Ruby Ridge. I saw the video back in the day. Someone was damn sure shooting that suburban, and yet they could never figure out who shot the suburban, which is why some were saying that, you know, they were being shot at even before he got out of the vehicle, right? Is that what the claim was out of all this? Totally reasonable conclusion, you know, based on what I have seen.

Okay. And it looks like they open. You see bullets coming through the window before anybody gets out of the car. And then, of course, he was then a threat spinning around. But do we think that spinning around, now you think the spinning around in retrospect was caused by having been struck by a round or not? That was my impression. And, again, of course, someone else can come to a completely different conclusion. but I don't, I've never seen anything, any evidence that would disprove that, you know, I mean, any forensic evidence, anything that indicated where the first rounds hit. I don't know if you can tell where a first round hits, maybe that may, maybe they can. But the whole thing was completely unnecessary. None of these people had engaged in any kind of violence. Were they armed? Yeah, they were armed. Okay. That's what you're right. You have a right to be on. Were they breaking the law? Well, you know,

They took someplace over that was public property, so yeah. But they weren't there then. They weren't there at that time. They were on the road. You could arrest them anywhere. They'd already interacted with law enforcement there. They'd spoken to sheriff. And, okay, if there's a law being broken that has to be addressed, but laws are broken

regularly in this country by people who intend to hurt other people, which these guys clearly did not. And yet, he's dead. and HEPA bugs are getting, you know, six hours in prison. The system is still a complete mess. Yeah. Really a mess in Oregon, obviously, at some other places. But this was just to me like, okay, this was a really bad incident. And this is salt in the wounds, to me, of the families and the Patriots,

who I think whether you believe what they did was misguided or not, it's very difficult for me to believe that what they were doing had any kind of evil intent. Yeah, I would agree with you on that one. Kevin Sterrett with me. We're talking about Max Bernstein's Oregon Live.com article, FBI honors agents involved in LaVoy Finnecom standoff with a bravery medal. And this is nine years, almost 10 years after the fact. And I'm curious that if they were so proud of the bravery that was expressed, why didn't they do that, you know, a little bit earlier back, you know, 20 years? 2018, 2019. Any thoughts on that? I wonder why. It just seems odd. My thought on that is that that's not as troubling to me as if this award comes now when the FBI is run by people who we had such high hopes, we're going to clean it up.

You know, if this award was given during the Biden administration, that wouldn't have surprised me at all because of the complete endemic corruption within that whole administration. And it does make me wonder about corruption in the federal courts. here too. The ending of the story from Max Bernstein, because like I mentioned, she hates gun owners, but she also hates cops. So like I said, in some strange way, she may have written a more balanced story than many, okay? But the judge kept alive a single civil rights claim against then-governor Kate Brown because the state hadn't moved to challenge it. By November 2021, the judge dismissed the entire case because lawyers representing Finnecom's family failed to respond to motions or court requests in time, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the judge's

decision a year later. Let me guess. Are they out of money at that point in time? Or just so much... I had no idea. For better or worse, I deal with lawyers constantly. You know, we've been sued. We've sued, you know, the feds. We've sued the governor. Lawyers make mistakes. and sometimes it's because they're totally incompetent, and sometimes it's because, you know, they're busy. And, you know, there's a joke about lawyers, which I won't tell, but it ends with Tuesday. We'll do it next Tuesday.

And that's often the case. So, you know, they could have dropped the ball. But no matter what, it just looks to me like this was totally inexcusable from the beginning. The way it was set up, you know, the roadblock and everything else was set up. They had to know where he was going. They had to know he was going to see the Grand County Sheriff. And so what would have been wrong with just going to the Grand County Sheriff and taking him into custody then?

It just seemed like an odd way of going about it. It's exactly what happened with Waco, right? Yeah. Here you got a guy who they want to, they think is molesting children. That's because that's what Janet Reno said. David Koresh. This guy is out jogging every day, right? You want to arrest this guy.

You walk up to him and arrest. Instead, they roll in with horse trailers in an operation they call Showtime and open fire on a building full of children. It's all theatrical and it's all based on getting more funding from the Fed. And it's, well, performative art law enforcement, in other words, right? Exactly. You know, when you, it's even the whole thing. Now, I'm not taking a stand one way or the other on whether Sean Colmes is a criminal. he clearly is a dirt bag

but they rolled up on his house with a bunch of bear cats and machine guns okay this guy is a rapper all right he's you know he may have had guns in his house but it's what they did to to Roger Stone and they coordinate this with the media

and then they roll in heavy with armor and everything for people you know people my age who don't even own firearms they have boats in the water behind Stone's house what is the all about? It really is kind of nerve-wracking, especially when you see, like, no one's

happier than I am that the carjackers in D.C. now are facing a bigger law enforcement present. But I'm very concerned about where this leads, that you've got National Guard taking over City. Well, okay, they weren't getting the job done. But what happens next, right? because at some point those jack boots are on my throat and for every action there's an opposite and unequal overreaction and that may just be the way that life is

and unfortunately though my concern though is that it's the opposite reaction that they're looking for they're looking for people to get spicy I'm talking you know here it is I'm happy Cash Patel and uh and uh Dan Bongino got involved with this one but it almost strikes me is that uh you know hey

Go ahead and read these awards. Congratulations. You've just kind of ruined your reputation with a lot of folks in the right. Huh? What do you think? Watch the damn video, you know? And if you come away from the video, absolutely convinced that this was all a justified, righteous shooting, well, fine.

But I tell you, I sure couldn't. And I, you know, I'm sure that video is up there someplace. Take a look at it and reach your own conclusions. Why did you have to have a roadblock in the first place? I mean, the guy never heard anybody. And I would also add here, Kevin, coming up, what, two or three weeks after, there's nothing to see here, move along on the Epstein file, right? Doesn't matter.

Right. It just strikes me like, you know, it's almost like, is everybody getting set up here to be knocked down? I could be absolutely wrong here. It's just a sneak and suspicion, just saying. You know, it's impossible for us to know. if there's some grand plan here. There may be, and that is really unnerving.

Or is it, you know, one incompetent gesture after another? I don't know. But I do know that, you know, the whole militarization of the FBI guys used to be lawyers and accountants, you know, what are they doing out there? Well, no, well, just remember, they used to be the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Investigation. That's what you did. people working for the Social Security Administration now have shotguns and machine guns.

I think we've got some mission creep going on here. Uh-huh. Boy, wait until the snap benefits are delivered under lock and key and a machine gun turret up at top. Now, here's your snap benefits. Okay, don't get lippy. All right. We have someone here, I think, wants to talk with you. I think it's Francine.

Francine, do you want to ask, Kevin, a question about this? Good morning. I wanted to comment when that whole, you know, Malier thing came down, I was absolutely captivated and just totally blown away by what happened. And after the shooting, the death of LaVoy Finacom, I watched that video over and over and over, and somebody had posted a slow-motion version, and I watched that over and over and over. And that man didn't, he was not pulling a gun. he was shot down. And also, my understanding of the reason he got out of that car was because

he thought they were going to do a, you know, like in a movie Bonnie and Clyde where they just riddle the car with bullets. He got out of that car because it was full of a bunch of young people and he wanted to draw the fire away. That was the statement. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing is just, you know, I'm just appalled by what I heard this morning about the award. I don't know. It, you know, and the FBI, I think they're the Federal Bureau of Infestation. Okay. I appreciate the call there. Thanks, Francine.

Kevin, that is the typical response I got just by sharing that story from Max Bernstein yesterday. And I'm not seeing anybody going against that. And I think this is a missed opportunity. I think they would have been better off having not said anything about this, not giving awards at this point? Oh, no question. I mean, I would certainly be asking, when you read the article, and we both agree, unlike our usual stuff, this appears to be fairly balanced. Whether it's 100% accurate or not, you know, I don't know. But what is undeniable is that there are some serious questions about one on there. And it doesn't look like anybody's asking those questions before

they're handing out awards. And, you know, this whole award thing, I happen to know somebody who's a a SWAT officer who got a medal of valor who had done nothing. There was a, there was a situation where they went into a home. It was a hostage situation. They went into the home. This particular person went in the window after the PURP was already dead, all right? Did nothing and got a medal of valor and even said to me, I didn't do a damn thing to get a medal of valor.

He said, this is ridiculous. I don't even want to show anybody this thing. Maybe this is that creeping part of the culture in which everybody gets a star, everybody gets their, you know. Right. You know, participation trope. Yeah, yeah. Or maybe this is an attempt to kind of rehabilitate the image of the FBI. But if it is, it really is the most backfired ham-fisted effort I've ever seen.

Interesting point. Kevin, thanks for sharing the story because I did not know about that until you let me see it. I always appreciate that. Before we take off, is there any news from Oregon firearms as far as, you know, the various new firearms bills going into action from the last legislative session or anything with the lawsuits to report at this point in time? No. The state lawsuit is still where it was in the Oregon Supreme Court. Okay. Our federal lawsuit, as I've said in the past, I believe that I will be long dead before any action is taken on it. The only thing that is potentially hopeful is that there are two cases, one out of California and one out of Washington, that are, they're suing against the magazine bans in both states.

And both those cases now have applied for sure with the Supreme Court. And, you know, the YouTubers are all excited about this because they're treating it like, oh, finally, these things are going to Supreme Court. To my knowledge, they are not going to the Supreme Court. they've just applied for sure. And as you know, most cases the Supreme Court denied. But I'm also, you know, I'm trying to be hopeful about this, but the reality is that, look, there are circuit splits on this. There are some circuits saying you can't ban magazines. There are other circuits saying magazines are completely unprotected. We can ban them if they're one round. But you see, there's a conflict then, which makes it ripe for going to the Supreme Court. Totally right for going to Supreme Court. The Supreme Court seems to be trying to avoid this. much as possible. What my big concern, though, is that the Supreme Court's rulings don't seem to mean anything because they've already decided this issue in Bruin and similar cases, and the lower

courts have just ignored them. Yeah, and Oregon has chosen to ignore Bruin, too, in this issue. Oregon, Washington, California, they've all ignored Bruin, other jurisdictions around the state just flat out extended a middle thing in the Supreme Court. So if we do get a positive ruling, and it's impossible to grasp the reasoning on the part of the state in this issue. I'm not sure that anything will be enforced. All right. Kevin Starrant, Oregon Firearms Federation, Oregonfirearms.org. Thanks for the talk, Kevin.

I appreciate the going back down the memory hole that we were supposed to forget about all this until the FBI awards the team. Yay. Okay. We'll talk to you soon, I'm sure. You'd be well.