Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 2/1/24 Eric Brakey on Using State-Level Politics to Fight For Liberty

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Eric Brakey returns to the show to talk about his many efforts — past, present, and future — to advance liberty at the state level. They first talk about Defend the Guard and the push to get it through the New Hampshire Senate after its victory in the House. They also touch on Brakey’s involvement in passing Constitutional Carry in Maine and other states, as well as his prescient 2016 stand against provocatively sending lethal aid to Ukraine. Discussed on the show: New Hampshire Liberty Forum “Trump Campaign Changed Ukraine Platform, Lied About It” (The Daily Beast) Brakey pushes to change Ukraine platform (begins at 9:00) Eric Brakey is a State Senator from Maine and the Executive Director for the Free State Project. He has been instrumental in pushing for pro-liberty legislation like Constitutional Carry and Defend the Guard. Follow him on Twitter @SenatorBrakey This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton.4 you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey guys on the line it's our old friend eric breakie former state senator from main and then he was the something or other over at the young americans for liberty for a long time and then uh he was a state representative there in New Hampshire, and now he's the head of the Free State Project. He's always doing some kind of anti-government thing.

Welcome back to the show. How you doing, man? Hey, doing well, Scott. It's actually, I haven't been in the New Hampshire legislature. Maybe in the future, who knows? I'm still in the Maine State Senate, but I'm finishing up my third and final term. As I have started a new job at the Free State Project, I know it's all over the place. It's very confusing.

I should have asked you before I started. claiming things, I thought it was, I was trying to get over the cognitive dissonance of my brain about you being the New Hampshire guy. So then I had it. When you left Texas, you went to New Hampshire instead of back to Maine. But that's not right. You went back to Maine and got your seat back in Maine. And now you're wrapping up politics on that level and you're doing the free state project instead. Yeah. I actually, I'm here at the Maine State House right now. I stepped out out of committee meetings so I could talk to my good friend Scott Horton. Okay. Well, so could to talk to you again, man. So tell me,

there's huge news coming out of the New Hampshire there that you guys first of all have some humongously sized House of Representatives and in that humongously sized House of Representatives, y'all passed. Defend the Guard

legislation. So first, tell me that story, but more importantly, tell me the story about how you guys are going to ram this thing through the Senate and there's nothing they can do to you. And the governor is going to feel like Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott felt when it came to constitutional carry here in Texas that, geez, we would love to kill this thing or veto this

thing, but we just can't. And again, going to have to sign the thing, Eric. And what are you doing to make it all come true, pal? I mean, isn't it an exciting time to be alive fighting the war machine? You know, 20 plus years, you know, since this whole war on terror started, we're We're still in all of these forever wars. And for the longest time, people thought, hey, you know, let's go petition Congress to exercise their constitutional responsibility to declare war. And Congress, year after year after year, it says, yeah, that's nice, buddy, but we kind of like it this way. We kind of like not having, you know, any direct accountability for this. Let's just let the executive branch decide.

Our hands are clean. And we get all the donations for our campaigns from the military industrial complex. and our constituents can't really get mad at us because we didn't vote for the thing, right? And so that's the pattern we've been in for decades until, you know, it's, it was a, I think the first time, the first two times this idea came forward in state legislatures in Maine in 2011 by Representative Aaron Libby and down in West Virginia by Pat McGeehan a few years later, this Defend the Guard idea. What if we don't need to go to Congress to bring our, at least our state National Guard home from these wars that Congress has not declared? What if we use the power of the 10th Amendment, the ideas of nullification and the constitutional power that state legislatures, that states have over their own state national guards, which collectively account for nearly 50% of active duty troops on the ground in these wars in the Middle East for the last two decades? Well, you know, I don't know how it went in West Virginia the very first time was put forward, but I know in Maine in 2011 it came to the floor and it got 13 votes out of 151, 13 votes.

Well, fast forward a decade. Momentum has been building. I know in Maine, I sponsored it this past year. I was glad we got a third of the house. You know, it's a big improvement from 13 votes to get over 50, but still fell very far short. But in New Hampshire, of course, with the Free State movement, which of course I'm now the proud executive director of the Free State project, as people have been concentrating libertarians in New Hampshire, the live for your die state, this is working to advance liberty policy because you get libertarians who are being elected as Republicans to the state house. They're pushing, you know, real liberty policy like Defend the Guard. And here you have it, a bipartisan majority passes Defend the Guard, over 200 state representatives. representatives, mostly Republican with a few progressive Democrats to overcome the neocons who still are in the party who voted no on this thing, passed the House of Representatives. I imagine that folks kind of collected, jaws dropped.

In fact, I just had an interview on my new show, The Porcupine Report, which I'd love to have you on sometimes, Scott, with Representative Tom Mannion, who is a new state representative, actually just moved to New Hampshire, like within the last few years from Massachusetts, got elected to the state legislature two years after getting elected. He's a he's a retired Marine and he was his first term in. He was agitating or defend the guard and working to get Democrats on board. And yeah, it's it's monumental. When you see that this just passed the Arizona Senate last year, the New Hampshire House this year, yes, it goes on to the New Hampshire Senate. That's going to be that's going to be a hurdle. There's a lot more kind of the old, good old boys establishment

Club in the Senate. But there's a lot of excitement in New Hampshire. I imagine that the public hearings for this are going to be packed because, I mean, it's, it would be monumental if New Hampshire became the first state to call home the troops from the wars that Congress doesn't care enough to sign their names to. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So can you tell me about the organizational force that the free state project and bring our troops home and others brought to bear in order to get it through the house was it just because there's so many freestaters in the house and so it was just easy or did you guys really like get it done and is that same machine you put together to push it through yeah really ready to take on the senate now

Well, the free-staters in New Hampshire are really one of the big driving forces behind this. Of course, working with great national partners like Bring Our Troops Home and Diego Rivera, who's, I know, hop in state-to-state working this. But yeah, free-staters in New Hampshire, both in the House and as activists, you know, kind of showing up and contacting their legislators and making their phones explode, their emails explode, and really feeling the constituent pressure there. that's how you get the wrong people to do the right thing. You make it politically expedient for them to do the right thing. It's great that we've got, I mean, as far as if you're liberal and kind of how you count libertarians in the New Hampshire House, you could count up to maybe about 100 out of 400, about a quarter of the body, which is a really great place to be. As far as freestaters, like define free staters, maybe there's about 40 there. But having those folks who are really principled to work the inside game, even if they're not a majority, that helps create a lot of momentum. and a lot of push inside the system.

But then you also need those people who are willing to show up to the public hearings who are willing to put the pressure on their legislators and let them know, you know, this is the right thing to do. And if you want to get reelected, probably should listen to us. Yeah. Well, and it really is a nationwide movement. I mean, they just had hearings the other day in Maryland

that, unfortunately, I missed my chance to testify for reasons. but, you know, I guess they say it's going to be 30 states this year. Do you know what the number is? Oh, I don't know the number off my head. I mean, I'm, it's, I know that the folks that bring our troops home have really been coordinating this across the states. I mean, I've, it's really been, it's really been great to see kind of having that kind of national organization that can coordinate this across all the different states.

I mean, they need people on the ground who can really work. work in the states like the free state movement has here. Yeah. And going back to the first thing you said there, Eric, is how exciting this is because of how real it is. That it's one of the things left over from the old law that they

haven't been able to completely get rid of. The outright structure of the form of the union, like a lot of that is still left. And the governors do have, you know, constitutional authority, not just statutory, but constitutional

authority over their state militias national guard units as they're called but you know there is uh and then also of course even just the the public relations of it happening especially if we get it passed in in different states i think we could probably foresee a circumstance where some states pass and sign this law and then it really comes down to it and the president says governor give me those god-dang troops and then maybe the governor would have to back down, I don't know. Maybe wouldn't challenge them at war time. But it'd be interesting to at least have that contest and see and force the president to have to work that hard for it. If you're willing to work this hard, Mr. President, to come and get our National Guard forces and break our law,

why don't you just go to the Congress and have them pass a declaration then? That's what the Constitution says they're supposed to do anyway. you know but yeah it's time to force the issue and it's as you say well there's you can bark up the wrong tree all day trying to get the house in the senate to see it your way but having the state governments interpose in this kind of a manner and yeah on behalf especially of a movement led by veterans of our current terror wars in the middle east coming home and talking about it's not fair to make the next generation guys do this and look at the three that that just were killed in Jordan.

They were National Guard soldiers from Georgia. And one of them, a girl, a young woman, but like, oh, no. This whole thing is so crazy. You look at the pictures of the three of them. He was like, what were they doing in Jordan anyway? And it's at the Al-Tomf base or break off of the Al-Tonf base right there, straddling the border of Syria and Iraq. But anyway. Well, you know, I know, I don't know if you ever got a chance to meet when, I don't

know when you testified up here in Maine when we were having the defend the guard hearings last year a good friend of mine who was kind of the driving force behind defend the guard on the ground retired from the main army national guard sergeant Aaron Rawlins who very unfortunately passed away recently but I'll always well it was a great loss to us all but I always remember coming out of that public hearing you know and you were you were zooming in for that And you remember that adjutant, the adjutant general. And it was all the concerns about, well, if we do this, you know, what if the federal government takes away our money, as if there's not a higher moral principle at stake? I mean, even the money, the charges of losing money, it's overblown.

There's a lot of legal protections. The president can't just, like, flip a switch and take the money away. But I just remember walking out of that public hearing and just Sergeant Rollins turning to me. and saying, you know, all these folks who were worried about money, I wish, you know, he had lost a very good friend when he was over in Iraq. And I think that he, you know, he told me he was supposed to be in the seat that day that his buddy was in when he got, when he didn't make it. And, and I just remember Sergeant Rollins just turning to me and saying, you know, all these folks were talking about money. I wish they would tell that to my, my buddy's mother, look her in the face.

say, you know what, it's okay that your boy died because the state got a few million dollars out of the deal, right? There's a higher moral principle at stake than just, how do we maximize money coming in from the federal government, which I know is what state legislators are always concerned with is maximizing those federal dollars. But, you know, if the state was paying, let's say the issue was different, let's say it was abortion and you were talking to pro-life people, right? And they said, well, you know, I know that you're against pro-life. but what if the federal government paid us a million dollars for every baby that got aborted? Would that be okay? It's like, no, pro-life people are going to say, I don't care

how much money you're paying us. It is wrong to kill a baby, right? And for us, in the Defend the Guard movement, it is wrong for our soldiers, our National Guardsmen to be deployed in wars with no clear mission, with no end in sight, and without a congressional declaration of war. Yeah. Well, you know, Diego Rivera himself said something like that to the state legislature here in Texas. He said, you know, my friends came home in a box. I can't believe I'd just heard you say the word money. Did you just say money? And they were like, okay, he was, he might have been hollering. But point being, they were busted. They were just as red, face as could be. Yes, they did just say money. They didn't realize that this ranger

who'd been to Rock War II the hard way and back was going to be the next guy to talk. Yeah. And you know, with these particular state politicians, this was back, I don't know,

two, three years ago, something. I think, Eric, there was still a little bit of a shine on like, yeah, but we were setting the Iraqi people free or like there was some kind of like good underlying this. Whereas, you know, I think much more accurately, many more state representatives across the country understand now that money is really all they have to fall back on. They don't have the idea that, look, this was a noble sacrifice. It's terrible that those soldiers died, but they signed up to do the right thing for those poor people over there,

and boy, they died trying. Like, no one believes that anymore, not after all of this. When they literally had nothing to show for it that anyone could articulate in any way, you know, other than just the sacrifice itself seems noble to fall in battle somehow, like this is some medieval virtue, you know. Yeah, the hypnotic spell the neocons, you know. cast on the nation 20 years ago is all but shattered. Yeah, exactly

right. So there did seem to be a little bit of that left in like, well, geez, you're not really challenging the whole thing, but like, no, that, you know, quite frankly, that is premise one of what we're talking about here is now that it's 20

years later, you know, 20 years straight of this, but we have this hindsight, and we know we should have never done any of this. like we should all agree like boy wouldn't it have been different and better if w bush had to climb that hurdle of one-on-one convincing these state governors to give up their guard units for an aggressive war against a non-aggressive not even power barely even a state over there in saddam hussein's iraq circa oh two oh three or force the con Congress to take responsibility. And you know, I've looked. If anyone can find this online or if anyone has the file saved, please send it to me because I can't find it anywhere online anymore. You can find

some quotes of it. But Ron Paul was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the fall of 2002. And while they were debating the authorization to use military force, he introduced a declaration of war in the committee. And then he said, I'm going to vote against it. And I urge you all to vote against it too. But if you're going to vote for the authorization for the war, then I urge you to be man enough to obey the law and vote for this declaration and take responsibility for your actions. And Chairman Henry Hyde, who people might remember as the guy who had overseen Bill Clinton's impeachment, he told Ron Paul, and there used to be video this. You could find, I mean, it should be on C-SPAN. I couldn't find it. I really did look. But Henry Hyde tells him,

well, we don't go by that part of the Constitution anymore. It's an anachronism. As though that's part of the Constitution that you can just decide that some parts of this thing are just expired and not have any further reason you have to articulate why it's no longer the law that binds the power of the government that it creates. I guess that's what it means to have a living Constitution, right?

Yeah, it's dead. It's dead. live and die, you know, just by not exercising it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the arbitrary power that we increasingly do live under if we just rely on trying to change things at the national level. But I'll tell you, you know, one thing that I keep thinking about as New Hampshire passes in the House and it goes to the Senate, I keep thinking about,

because this is a quotation that I use when arguing for defend the guard, you know, in the main Senate on multiple occasions is this quote from Daniel Webster, right, who was U.S. Secretary of State, but he was from New Hampshire, and he predicted it over a century ago. He said there will come a time when the states have to interpose between their militias and arbitrary power wielded by the federal government. And here we are. It's like he called it, Right? So I don't care what state goes first. I just want it to happen. But if it's New Hampshire, that is the first to get this done and to call the New Hampshire National Guard home from these wars that Congress will not declare. It will be very poetic. And I'm sure that Daniel Webster will be

proud. Yeah, totally agree. And you know, I've seen enough of these hearings and been to a few of them um but um i've seen enough of them to know that the arguments for it really are just totally hypothetical like well you know the pentagon thinks that we're not reliable then they just won't give us any apache helicopters at all or whatever but meanwhile there's no apaches anywhere that you need apache helicopters to shoot at to keep at bay anywhere right because they already lost a long time ago. So, you know, they don't ever really get around to the original question of why it would be so necessary for them to be integrated with the national government, which has its own standing army already. And when, you know, at most, they should be assigned to be,

you know, in the rear helping provide supply or something, not having to go die on the front lines. army infantry when they sign up supposedly to sandbag flooding rivers and help deliver first aid during earthquakes and stuff you know yeah yeah and and it is a um well and i think that so many of the arguments kind of rest on this idea that uh you know we hear this in every state you know well we don't want to be the first if we're the first then we'll be singled out and targeted by Washington, D.C. and they'll come after our money and all of this. But they ignore the fact that this isn't happening in one state. This is happening in dozens of states. And some states are getting further along in the process. New Hampshire, Arizona have gotten the furthest, right?

But you know that the moment one state passes it, that whole dam is going to break, right? They're not going to be alone because everyone is just watching around scared of being the first. But everyone is getting a sense in these state legislatures, at least they're getting the sense from their constituents, that there's something wrong here. There's something wrong with how our troops are being treated. There's something wrong with the total lack of omission. There's something wrong with the fact that there's nothing to show for two decades of wars that have just resulted in disaster and wasted treasure and wasted blood. And there are no excuses left anymore other than, well, if we're the first, they might take our money away. But good luck on them taking money away from, you know, five states, 10 states, 20 states, and defunding national guards across the country, you know, the federal government can try to gang up and bully on one single state.

Still, you know, we all know what the right thing to do, even if we were going alone. But no state legislature is going alone in this. It is happening across the country. And I do want to. And look, wait, worst case scenario, too, they take your money away and then what? You don't have Apache helicopters anymore, but you never need. needed that you know like that's the whole thing of it is you know if you fly around the country and you see all of the expensive planes and helicopters sitting around at american airports military

ones national guard ones especially at american airports around the country it's all just a money hole they don't need any of that if those c-130s are really for something then transfer them over to the Air Force who can use them. Otherwise, the whole thing is just payoffs anyway. Remember Bernie Sanders from Vermont, who's supposedly some kind of piece, Nick, but not if you know

his record, but anyway, voted for the F-35 because Vermont is getting welfare payments in the form of F-35s deployed to their, to sit at their airports, to be essentially financial

ornaments, right? The plane, itself is a turkey. The whole point is it's a transfer payment from the national government to Vermont and to Bernie Sanders donors. And everybody knows it too. It's called the American way, right? What are you talking about? Yeah, just one big money laundering scheme. Yeah, Henry Clay's American system. It's the same thing going on right now. Yeah. Well, one thing I would say, if folks want to know, obviously we're going, there's going to be a real fight for this in the Senate in New Hampshire. I know I'm going to be on my program, the Porcupine Report, which is going to air a new episode every Wednesday, and you can find it on all the different social media channels

for the Free State Project. But if you also, so if you want to learn more about the effort in New Hampshire, as that moves forward, you can check out our show there. But also, if you'd like to, if you've ever thought about visiting New Hampshire and seeing the free state community, We've got one of our great activists on Defend the Guard is Derek Thru. And he's going to be giving a whole briefing and a whole kind of talk at the upcoming New Hampshire Liberty Forum, March 15th through the 17th. By the way, we're also going to have Glenn Jacobs speaking, you know, mayor of Knox County, Tennessee and WWE wrestling superstar. He's awesome. Also going to have Brian Kaplan of George Mason University.

But particularly to Defend the Guard, you can come here, Derek Prue speak on that. If you want to get a ticket, that's at nhlibertyforum.com. NH.libertiforum.com. That's great. And Derek is a really great guy. And I know he's worked extraordinarily hard on this. So that's really cool. I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to travel up and sit in the audience for that one. I know you've got a book to work on. Yeah, you know, I got a lot of jobs, a lot of jobs. But, um... Well, I hope it's done in time for Porkfest so you can come and join us in June. I also hope that. I don't know. But I'm not even going to talk about the deadlines anymore.

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But yes, I will be at Porkfest either way, because I love Portsmouth so much. One way or the other. It wouldn't be Porkfest without you, Scott. Oh, well, that's very nice. I've only been there a few times, so I know it precedes me by a hell a lot but i i like going to it and and uh seeing good friends there um and look and the whole free state project is a great movement as well it's uh too cold for me because i'm a texan and i'm really skinny but um i like it there in the summertime and i do think it's great that so many libertarians are up there and are working together to roll back state power and um well you know the the gun thing has come up. You really were instrumental in pushing through constitutional carry in May.

That's right. And this is a hugely important issue for liberty in America. And it's passed and I have no idea how many states, but I do know this, man. And I referred to this kind of earlier, alluded to it. That when it came to constitutional carry in Texas, where we've had concealed carry since the 90s, that was how Bush got elected, was promising not to veto it. and to sign it when his Democratic predecessor, Anne Richards, had vetoed it twice. So thanks a lot, Anne Richards, for birthing George W. Bush's political career to the world. All you had to do was stand up for our rights, and everything would have been fine. But anyway, everything would have been terrible, but much less first.

We'd have a peace in the Middle East right now. We would have had the horrifying Al Gore instead of the horrific W. Bush, but it couldn't have possibly been as bad as it was. But anyway. God dang, Ann Richards. But point being, it's Texas, and we've got our gun rights. And, you know, when I was a kid, you could have arm rifles in your truck, but they had to be displayed in the window. They were accessible.

They had to be visible rather than concealed. But they've been loosening and loosening and loosening gun laws. But they finally pushed constitutional carry. And by they, I mean the people of the state and their organizing. groups and it wasn't the NRA because NRA really represents like the police lobbies and that kind of thing the arms manufacturers who they prefer their captive customers in the form of police forces and that kind of thing so they're very close with all the police unions and their point of view but it was really just grassroots gun owners and their groups they just I don't know who to give

credit to forgive me for not naming everybody because I really don't know who all it was I'm very peripherally interested in it but I could see it happen where I know I was there when it happened because young America oh that's right you were here in Texas at the time okay so you finished telling the story then because what the part that I'm trying to get to is that you and other people that you're about to talk about and give credit to uh forced Dan Patrick who's the basically the prime minister of Texas right the lieutenant governor but who holds all the power in the in the Texas Senate um force him and forced governor it to let that thing through and assign it over their dead bodies and the wishes of their

friends the police unions etc like that ain't that right and tell us the story how that happened because i think that's such a model for like see when it really comes down to it if you're organized and pissed off like say for example gun owners can who are real single issue gun guys can say absolutely not this is our line and we're fighting about it now so we don't have to fight about it later, and they're willing to go to the map for it. They win. They get their way. So it can happen sometimes, not that I'm saying the magical power of democracy, but I'm saying if people really will start with over my dead body, they really can get pretty far sometimes. And you're really the proof of that because now you're going to talk about Texas and Maine,

where you got done in both states. Well, you know, it is funny you bring it up because I remember a few years back, I was talking with Dan McKnight, and I told him, you know, I really think that Defend the Guard is the new constitutional carry, right? What we pulled off with constitutional carry, it takes time and it takes time to build momentum, but state by state, what happened with constitutional carry is what was amazing. I mean, you go back to 2004, right? I think that's when you get like Alaska passing constitutional carry. And then, you know, it's like, you know, You have always had Vermont, then you get like Alaska, Arizona. It's just a few states popping off little by little.

Forgive me. Just a second. Forgive me just a second. I never said what it was. We just kind of assume everybody knows what we're talking about. But this is basically unrestricted carrying of firearms by anyone over 18, essentially. No more permits, concealed or open, whatever you got, right? Yeah, usually particularly with handguns. You can carry a handgun, you can carry a concealed, and you don't need a dang permission slip from the government to do it, right?

So, and different states have slight variations on it. In Maine, sadly, they set it at the age of 21, New Hampshire, it's 18. You know, there's different variations, but fundamentally, it's, you're an adult, and you're not legally prohibited from owning a firearm. You can carry it. You can carry it concealed. You don't need that permission slip. So, you know, by the time we got to Maine in 2000, and this was 2015, right? In 2015, we became the sixth state in the country to pass constitutional carry.

And we passed it. You know, I was in the Senate. It was my first term. We passed it through the Democrat-controlled House, the Republican-controlled Senate. The Republican governor signed it into law. We're still the only state in America to ever pass it through a Democrat-controlled chamber. And we did that just the same as it happened in New Hampshire, just the same as it happened in Texas. It wasn't by, it wasn't because we were so nice to the politicians and we were so

persuasive with our, you know, oh, please, Mr. Politician, will you please, you know, see reason and hear from us? I mean, there's some degree of that, you know, carrot and stick approach, right? You've got the carrot and say, hey, here's the arguments, here's the reasons why, but ultimately at the end of the day, with something controversial like that, you got to have the stick. And the stick is, we know people in your district who will vote against you. And they are calling, they are emailing, they are putting pressure on you saying, you better vote to protect our rights or else we're going to be working against you come re-election season. That's, that's the threat. And that's, that's democracy. I mean, that's how democracy is supposed to work. That's why

we have these accountability structures and that we elect these people. And we can just as easily unelect them. So that, we did that model of confrontational politics in Maine. It worked, it passed. Texas was actually way behind the eight ball for all their reputation of being, you know, it was funny in Maine hearing people say, we can't pass this. We're not, we're not the wild wild west we're not texas i said texas texas doesn't even have constitutional carry you don't know what you're talking about and the wild wild west i mean like vermont is kind of west of us right and it don't seem that wild but anyway so so so but texas of course is a bigger nut to crack because it's a much bigger state politics are it's uh it's big league politics in texas but it's the same

model and you had groups like young americans for liberty you had the national association for gun rights and their local affiliate, I believe is called Texas gun rights. And it was just the same thing, right? Mobilizing people, identifying people outside of the capital, inside people's districts, and connecting them with their legislators. So their legislators feel the heat. And it took some time. It took a lot of times up to bat, but eventually it did get passed. And this has been the same model that has worked in state after state. And to now, I don't even know how many states we're at right now. I know it's over half of the states in the country and over half the population. of the country. Last I checked, I think Florida was number 25. And maybe there have been a few since

then. I've been focused on defend the guard. So if there have been more constitutional carry states popping off, I'm not as totally up to date there. Yeah. Well, you know what? I took Texas government in government school and again in government junior college. And I had a really great teacher actually in junior college in my Texas government semester there. And one thing I know is how powerful the lieutenant governor is. And a big part of that is the legacy of northern occupation after the Civil War was they wanted a completely weak governor and all the power to be in the legislature. So that's why I refer to him as like the prime minister. He really does rule. And then the point being there is that the lieutenant governor's opinion is why.

what decides everything. It's what decides whether things get on the calendar committee at all, much less passed through. And the idea that the people of the state of Texas could force the lieutenant governor to do something he doesn't want to do. It's unheard of that I know of. You know what I mean? And I don't pay that close attention to Texas politics. But basically, no, that's not how it works. How it works is you cry all day and then the lieutenant governor does what he wants, period. But I know that in this case, it wasn't like that. I know that Dan Patrick,

I read enough things about it that he and the governor were trying to figure out a way to stop this thing, but they couldn't stop it. They had to bow down to it. So I don't know exactly what you guys did, but I know that they felt it was

the numbers, it had to have just been the sheer numbers of people communicating with them that, man, we're organized, we've got your name and you're going to not be lieutenant governor never again after this boy i tell you what and just he started to believe them right that like uh-oh this is really my political future here there's no other explanation for it yeah i mean i mean this is the um you don't rise to that level without being a man of ambition and you're always got your eyes on the next thing right well it's a big state

meaning that any one of us has very little power you know what i mean it's nice the kind of place where big machines and big interests have power and regular Joe's really don't compare to especially because it's such a there's so many very rich and powerful industries here as well there are a lot of interest groups who need and even the government employees too the government in Texas is huge so all those cops man all their unions and all of that it's I mean and as hard as it is to lobby like an individual congressman like a state senate seat in Texas is bigger than a congressional seat right Yeah. Wow. That's an interesting way to think about it. I didn't really think about that way. But yeah. So, in other words, I guess what I'm trying to say is extra double credit to the people who got this done. Because you don't get in Texas, you don't get to tell the lieutenant governor what to do. Like, you know, you may have whatever fraction of a choice in who your lieutenant governor is. But that's about it, you know? but yeah no major credit there too is the folks at young americans for liberty folks at texas

gun rights folks at national association for gun rights i really just showed up at the tail end and showed up to you know at the public hearing and said hey you know this has worked out really well in maine they said we were going to become the most dangerous state and you know blood would run through the streets and all that instead we became the safest state in america and you know maybe it'll work out well for texas too and i think it has um so um so major credit credit to them though it is kind of, it has been kind of nice to be, uh, in some ways. I, I feel like sometimes I'm like Forrest Gumping my way through kind of history and the Liberty movement, you know. You're doing great, man. Take that credit. You're doing good. Um, I know they all valued your

help, man. Yeah, yeah. Well, and, you know, I will say, you know, I want to give credit to you on one thing. You know, one of my favorite moments of like, of like history to have kind of been there for. And this is where I kind of really felt like, um, Forrest Gump a little bit was, you know, I was on the Republican National Platform Committee in 2016, representing the state of Maine. And because I listened to the Scott Horton Show and because I've read so many of your books and hear the interviews that you do, I was on the National Security Subcommittee because I was like, let me go fight with some neocons, right? And I opened it up in this platform and they say, this is 2016, mind you. You know, Trump is just getting the nomination, who knows if he's going to become president or not.

I'm opening it up in it. There's this whole section about, like, we want to give weapons to to Ukraine to kill Russians in the in this in the the the the the Donbass region at that point I didn't know a whole lot about you know all of this but I just reading this and it's like well that sounds like a really bad idea like why would we be doing that well why are we going to put this in our platform and and ended up anyway I think history has vindicated me but I only had those sensibilities Scott to be able to question all that and to create kind of this a little bit of a firestorm there. Wait, tell that story.

Wait, wait, tell that story, because this is a huge part of rushing it, because there was a false accusation that it was the Russians who intervened to change that. And then it turned out that it was some lady, but you're not some lady. You're some other part of that same discussion it sounds like. So tell us more, please, if you can. Yeah, I was just there. This is going in my next book, dude. Word for word, so choose them carefully.

Yeah, well, Forrest Gumping my way through history. I found myself at the center of Russia gate, apparently, not realizing what I was stumbling into. Like, there were no Russians in my ears. Like, no Russians were coming up to me and saying, hey, can you do something about this? I was just, you know, libertarian Ron Paul guy, like, who happened to have, like, positioned himself to be on the platform committee and seeing all these, like, war mongery things in there and kind of raising the question and like that we should strip it out. And then the Trump campaign did come in and once I had kind of made an issue of it and said, yeah, you know, maybe we should be changing this and kind of, and ultimately they negotiated something where they kind of watered it down and it was a little less explicit. It was still, I thought, pretty combative, you know, and being kind of involved in that region when we shouldn't be. But yeah, I know that kind of after the fact kind of was in the steel.

dossier or something, they kind of pointed to that incident as evidence that Donald Trump was, you know, beholden to Vladimir Putin or something. And really, it was just Eric Breaky there kind of raising a stink about it. That's so interesting. Okay, so now if I have the record right here, all they changed ultimately was the language changed from lethal defensive weapons to appropriate assistance. Does that sound right to you? That was the change that they made? That's, That sounds about right. Okay. Now, unfortunately, see, I'm looking at my file here of my book in progress,

and I don't have the lady's name in here. I just have the footnote. I'd have to follow somewhere. I'd have to find the right footnote and follow it. But they said, I thought I had the direct quote from her, didn't I? I guess not. they said eventually they said it was this lady who just did it who was just a local but um it would be better if i could pull her name up here so i could ask you if you remember

like did you have any friends in this argument when you were taking it up with that you remember you know it's been how many years has it been now yeah time flies I understand. Let's see. All right. Well, I just Googled myself. I just Googled myself, Eric Breaky, R&C, Ukraine. And I found this daily B startup because there were so many reporters calling me.

Oh, dope. You got to send me that. You got to send me that. All right. Well, so here it is. There were so many reporters calling me for like, you know, like years after the fact that a certain point, I just decided to stop taking their calls. But says Eric Brake, a main delegate who identifies as a non-interventionist, said he

supported the change, which was pushed in part by the Trump campaign. Quote, I guess this was my quote, I told them at the time. Some staff from the Trump campaign came in and came back with some language that softened the platform. Rakey told the Daily Beast, they didn't intervene in the platform in most cases, but in that case they had some wisdom to say, maybe we don't want to be calling for very, very clear aggressive acts of war against Russia. So I guess they put that as like me corroborating their kind of conspiracy theory, but all

us. Yeah. Yeah, and in fact, see, I have it wrong here. I don't know where I got it in my head that it was some lady. Man, I think there, at least that was one of the claims at some point, but I confuse it. Because what I have here in my book was that it was J.D. Gordon, a Trump campaign advisor. Was that who you discussed it with, maybe? Well, I never directly, I don't recall directly discussing it with any Trump campaign staff.

Okay. I see in this article by the Daily Beast from back then that mentions J.D. Gordon says, according to two Republican delegates, the Trump campaign efforts were led in part by J.D. Gordon, a Trump campaign official and former spokesman at the Pentagon. I don't remember ever talking to this guy. I think that I was just kind of, I raised the issue, and I don't know if it was already on their radar when I was making a public stink about it, or if my making a public stink about it is what made them like. say, hey, maybe we should address this. Well, I hope so. That's interesting. So I guess it's really not clear whether they made the change in reaction to what you had said.

It's what you're saying. Okay. Yeah. And I will say that on the platform committee the same year, I was also working with a former congressman who passed away, Walter Jones, to get in the platform to, you know, remember the big effort to declassify like the 28 pages of the 9-11. 11 report you know we were fighting to get that in the platform actually got a lot of support on and they killed it at the last minute but then like a day later they declassified it okay i don't know if it's related to our efforts there or not or the timing was just odd yeah well um the um muller report i was going to say the muller report i guess concedes that this guy gordon made the

change and it didn't have anything to do with the Russians tell on him to or whatever. And in fact, it didn't even have anything to do with the Trump campaign telling him what to do. He made the change on his assumption of what they would want. Like, took it upon himself to go ahead and say, yeah, let's water this down. So it's quite possible he heard what you said and thought that seems very reasonable. You know what I mean? And then just kind of in alignment with Trump's stated kind of policy of like i'd remember if you were in the muller report but apparently muller didn't bother bringing you up because muller said okay well we figured out who did it and it was this guy and he believably says he wouldn't act in as an agent of anyone but his own self when he did it

because he just thought it'd be a smart idea and that is probably what the trump guys would want if he asked them you know kind of a thing so yeah so that's very interesting okay well i think you just earned a walk-on part of the book there at least somewhere and like well i've been honored to be mentioned it's not clear whether anybody was listening but this still happen anyway you know you can find the clips of it on c span where i'm making us think about it oh really is that right and then yeah so what about the part where jd gordon comes in and makes the change is that on there too well i don't think that he was a part i don't think he was a member of the platform committee right so he wouldn't have been able to speak like during

the discourse and all that. I think he was just, you know, I could be wrong, but I don't remember him being on the platform committee. I don't remember ever meeting this guy. So I think he was just probably an observer from the Trump campaign who was, you know, monitoring like... Would you send me that C-SPAN stuff? I want to watch that.

Yeah, yeah, all right, I'll find it. And then you're the same one bugging me about when my book is going to be finished. Never, breakie, you hear me? It's never going to be finished. Leave me alone. All right. step giving me new stuff to write adding stuff to it um no this is great man hey look the more and

better i understand things the better for me i don't know if it'll be better for the reader the book is 1,198 pages today although some of that israel notes i left at the bottom of the page that doesn't count so well i hope that when you cut it down you also at one point release a fully unabridged version for all of us ready for the really deep dive. Yeah. No, there's only going to be one edited version of this thing, man, because, yeah,

I'm going to have to make some hard choices, I know, but I can't put stuff back in because then I don't want to. We'll deal with that, you know, half a suicide when I get to it. Anyway, I should let you go because I've got to do another interview in a minute here.

But thank you so much for all your great work, man. I'm so appreciative of it, and I know everybody else is. And you set such a great example that, like, hey, put your rubber meets the road out there and get some work done, and you'd be amazed what might come true. Yeah, I like trying to be like Johnny Appleseed, spreading liberty across the country. But just a real quick reminder to your audience.

You know, New Hampshire Liberty Forum coming up. NH.liberty.com. Get your tickets. And where is that again? What city is that in? That's in Nashua, New Hampshire. Okay. We've got Glenn Jacobs, Brian Kaplan, many other great speakers.

Derek Pru will be talking about Defend the Guard. Then, of course, Porcupine Freedom Festival, Porkfest in June. Sounds like Scott Horton's going to be there. So you can get your tickets there at Porkfest.com. That's Pork with a C, not a K. If you go to Pork Fest with a K, you might end up getting tickets for barbecue or something. I'm sure it'd be great, but it won't be the Freedom Festival that you want. So Porkfest with a C.com.

That's June 17th to June 23rd. Okay. Hey, and I just realized I have a ransom condition. I'll go to Porkfest in June if you want me there. But you got to publish my speech from last year about Ukraine that never got YouTubeed. Oh, the speech like in the committee hearing? No, it was at Porkfest. I did two.

I did one on Waco and one on Ukraine, but the Ukraine never aired, which might be, because it wasn't good, but I doubt it. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I'll talk to someone. I guess now that I'm the boss, like I have superpowers. I can go and talk to someone. Yeah, we're pulling rank here. Go push someone around for me there.

Yeah, no, I'm just kidding. I would like to see it, though, because I bet I said smart things about, yeah, watch this summer offensive fail, which it's already failing, right? Because it would have been at the beginning of June and me saying, see, I already told you so already, and then whatever. I don't know. It doesn't matter. All right. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

Hey, awesome, Scott. Thanks for taking the time. Hell yeah. The Scott Horton Show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.