Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - Scott's Defend the Guard Panel from Ron Paul's 90th Birthday Barbecue

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Scott sat down with Dan McKnight, Liam McCollum, and Lee Deming at Ron Paul's birthday barbecue to discuss the effort to pass Defend the Guard. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Incorporated; Moon Does Artisan Coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. 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

Now, I was supposed to talk over the bumper. Hey, I'm Scott. This Scott Horton show, a live stream edition from the Ron Paul birthday party, his 90th birthday party. And we're doing a big money bomb, of course, for the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, directed by the heroic Daniel McAdams, Ron Paul's right-hand man and partner and co-hosted Liberty Report and many-year foreign policy advisor back when he was a congressman and the rest. And so that's what we're doing here. We've already raised a ton of money. I forgot the number, but I saw the thermometer a minute ago, raised a bunch of money for the institute. So that is great.

And then I'm here with a hero of mine and a friend of mine and a new friend that I'm just getting to know. But it's Dan McKnight. He's the founder of Bring Our Troops Home.us and Defend the Guard.us. And then Liam McCollum, rising, new young star in the Libertarian Movement and activist from Montana. And Lee Deming, who is a member of the, I'm sorry, the state house or Senate there in Montauce? state house there in Montana working on the defend the guard legislation so we're going to start with dan mcnight who are you and what is the defend the guard legislation sir well scott thank you i can't tell you how excited we are to be here the defend the guard legislation is a a state-based

effort using the fundamentals of the 10th amendment and we are taking 50% of the active duty military force of the the force structure of the military and trying to put a little bit of restraint on them at the state level. And it's a bill that says if the National Guard from the state of Idaho or Texas or Arizona, wherever the bill passes, cannot be released into foreign service for the purpose of fighting war or participating in war unless Congress is first declared war as required by the Constitution. We started the movement about six years ago. It's a veteran-led movement.

We're all veterans of the global war on terror. And we've got the bill introduced in some form or fashion in over 30 states already. And we're fighting with incredible representatives like Lee Deming and activists like Liam call them all over the country and we are a rag-tag bag of former veterans that finally stood up and said enough yeah all right so already there's so much to talk about there but first of all tell us a little bit about your service at least um your participation in the terror wars and then uh let's get into why this law would be necessary yeah short story um you know i joined the marine corps in the 90s i served in the united states marine corps the active duty

Army and then I transferred into the Idaho Army National Guard after 9-11. I wanted to go win America's War. I wanted to win one for George W. And I served in Afghanistan from 05, 06, and 07, where I saw our mission changed five times, five different concepts, five different missions, never won definition of success. And so in my 18 months I was there, I realized that what we were doing was wrong and I started really looking into it and realizing that we didn't have an authority to be there because Congress had abdicated their responsibility and told President George W. Bush that he could send us anywhere he wanted

for any length of time, and they would just whip a check. And so I came home, frustrated. I was angry. I got hurt when I was there, and I was forced to retire. And I went underground. But while I was there, though, I saw something happen. The National Guard, which I was a member of, was kind of being abused.

Not intentionally, but we were part of the 10th Mountain Division and the 82nd Airborne, and neither one of them wanted to take responsibility for the National Guard. And when my men, I had 12 men that worked for me in a remote outpost, Their uniforms were wearing out, their boots were wearing out, and we needed help getting new supplies. Nobody would help us. And out of frustration, I did the only thing a pissed off dissident,

non-commissioned officer sergeant could do. And I grabbed a satellite phone, and I climbed to the top of the nearest mountain I could find it in the Pesh River Valley. And I got a clear signal, and I called home. I called the governor's office. And the governor was a man named Jim Rish. He'd just been elevated to the governor's position when our governor went back to D.C.

And so he was lieutenant governor, and he was the governor for about three weeks when I called him. And he answered the phone. And I said, hey, this is Sergeant McKnight. I'm calling you from Afghanistan. I'm a member of your Idaho Army National Guard, and I need your help. And I described the situation, and he told me, Dan, I don't know what I can do, but I do know that I am the commander-in-chief of the Idaho National Guard, and I'll do something.

So I hung up the phone, and two weeks later, my battalion commander kicked the door in. And he said, I don't know who you called. I don't know what you did, but we've got supplies on the way from Idaho. Now give me the damn satellite phone, and he took it away from me. So I held Jim Rish up as a hero. I got home, and I followed his crew. and he left the governor and he went to the United States Senate. In about 2016, 2015, 2016, I started following politics a little bit more.

I'd been underground. And this orange man came down a gold escalator. And this weird Polynesian lady from the islands was talking about war. And the orange man was talking about war being bad. And I started listening. They were saying things that resonated with me. And about that time, I met my new wife. And I was on my honeymoon and somebody handed me a book.

It was a book I think you're quite familiar with. It's Fool's Errant. It was one that you authored. And they said, you should read this while you're on your honeymoon. So I'm laying next to my beautiful bride in the Dominican Republic. She's asleep on a lounge chair. I'm kicking back, reading the book, and I start having these feelings, anger. You were saying all the things with footnotes that I had known in my heart to be true.

And I read that book in two days on my honeymoon. I came home and I said, I have to do something. And we started an organization. I rallied a bunch of veterans. I said, at the presidential candidate on both sides of the aisle are talking about this, it resonates with me. Scott Horton wrote this incredible book. I decided to put 100 veterans together and we raised some money. We went to Washington, D.C., and we said,

we're going to go tell our members of Congress that they need to advocate for peace and bring us home from these endless wars. They have to listen to us. We've got skin in the game. And we went there, and they all kind of patted us on the back and took a picture, pointed to the yellow ribbon on the door and said, we support the troops, but wouldn't commit to doing anything. But one congresswoman told us the truth.

One congresswoman, Liz Cheney, looked us dead in the eye, and she said, as long as I'm in here in Washington, D.C., we are never coming home from Afghanistan. We stood up and left. We felt defeated. The swamp had kicked our butt, and we went home, tell between our legs,

and decided we need to find a better way to fight. We can't fight in the swamps. We need to fight from the higher ground in Phoenix and in Boise and Bismarck. And we said we're never going back to Washington, D.C. again. And so we started the organization, bring our troops home. We found a gentleman out of West Virginia

delegate Pat McGeehan, an Air Force veteran who'd been sponsoring a bill called Defend the Guard, and we picked it up, modified it and started to run with it. We're going to fight in the states to restrain the war powers of the United States back to way they're supposed to be. And now here we are.

Rag-tagged bunch of veterans that are speaking the truth with people like you helping support the cause. Awesome. I love that story. You know what? I don't think you ever told me. Who was your friend that gave you the book? Terry's over here, but it was someone from an organization,

a Campaign for Liberty Organization in Idaho. His name is Bjorn Handine. Oh, okay. I know, him. I know Bjorn. He's down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great.

Okay, now the circle is complete. That's right. That's awesome. Okay, great. So, now could you please introduce yourself to us, a representative, a little bit, and explain how it is that we're going to war without declarations in the first place and how you think legislation like this could work? Sure, I was a 43-year educator in Montana.

Liam was one of my students. And I kind of came to the movement in a natural way. Kids kept asking me questions, and I'd have to go research the answers. In fact, Liam was the first person that ever tell me about Defend the Guard legislation in class. And I'd never heard about it. So I also had a class that Liam was in. then it's called on our civics that we'd go back to DC and I saw Arlington Cemetery and I spent quite a bit of time there and I said to myself if I can ever help people from getting

into this I would and then I got into the legislature and that's why I was a sponsor for defend the guard in 2023 and a 2025 session so that's great and then um so I mean, it's a complicated thing in a way, but, you know, politically speaking, it'd be a hell of a challenge to put the governor up versus the president and refuse to allow his troops to be nationalized in the event of a conflict. So it's a hell of a step to even pass a law like this, but how do you think it's doing in Montana and like what are the prospects and And how do you think it could work, say, if you were the governor? Well, I don't want to be the governor, to be honest with you.

The governor. Famous last words of a governor. Yeah. So the governor and all the governors need courage. That's all it takes. Because what they're actually doing is defending the people who have signed up to defend the country and the state. And so why not say to the president?

president, no, you're not taking our people to war. Number one, you got to follow the Constitution. You took an oath and you're not following it. So you really have to say to the governors, they grow a spine and do it now because people's lives depend on it. And the same thing goes for the Adjutant generals in the different states. They need to say no. These deployments are unconstitutional by the Declaration of War. And we've been doing that since It's 1942, as everybody knows, on this panel. Now I had a meeting with the Adjutant General of the National Guard in Montana in 2023, and he actually said to me, I said, we haven't declared war since 1942.

He says, well, we just don't do it that way anymore. And he shrugged. Well, how many people have died in conflicts overseas without this declaration of war, without following the Constitution? It's unconscionable to me, to be honest with you. Yeah, so yeah, governor's girl spying. Yeah, you know, it reminds me, and I looked, I don't know, if anyone on the internet can find this, please do find it. It's an old clip of Ron Paul.

It used to be on the C-SPAN website somewhere. It should be available somehow on C-SPAN. I looked and looked and couldn't find it, but it's a clip of Ron Paul on the Foreign Affairs Committee in 2002, right before they authorized the invasion of Iraq, sort of authorized Bush to decide whether to invade Iraq with their AUMF that October. And Dr. Paul introduced a declaration of war in committee and said, I'm voting against it, but all those of you who actually are supporting this war and want this war to happen and are going to vote yes to delegate your authority to the president, you need to stand by your decision and you need to vote for this declaration of war. And the chair of the committee was Henry Hyde, who was most famous for being the manager during the Bill Clinton impeachment.

And, and Hyde said, you have to understand, Dr. Paul, that that part of the Constitution is an anachronism. We just don't go by that anymore. And Dr. Paul was like, well, you know, I don't know. I took the oath to the whole thing. And they didn't say I got to mark parts out of it that I don't like or whatever. I don't know exactly how he phrased it. But that was the way he put it to that, well, look. And what he meant to say was now that America is the way.

the world empire, we have to start wars all the time to maintain global dominance, we can't just declare war because that would really restrict us in who we can fight. Because if you're going to get a declaration of war, that implies that somebody actually attacked you and you're defending yourself in some kind of way, or you have an interest at stake that's so vital that you could get the House in the Senate to put their name on something like that. But we kind of know that we can't do that. So that's why we do these authorizations instead,

and let one guy the president take the rap instead of the 535 who bear the ultimate responsibility. You know, and that's how they've done it since Truman. In fact, Truman sent the troops first and asked Congress later, and they went ahead and authorized it. H.W. Bush, when I was a boy, said, I don't need an authorization from Congress. I have an authorization from the United Nations Security Council. And they said, well, and I remember going, wait a minute. Like, I learned in junior high that that's not what it says in the rulebook there, you know.

And then he actually did bow down and go ahead and get an authorization from Congress anyway, but still far short of the declaration. And that authorization is still active today. It's still active. They haven't retired that authorization. That's what's wrong with that process. Yeah. And same thing for the AUMF of 2001. And I think they finally did retire the 2002 AUMF against Iraq. But then they used the broader 2001 AUMF to justify Iraq War III. And the continued occupation of Syria to this day and the rest is under that. So it goes to show. that they knew what they were talking about when they said you're not supposed to do it that way. As Madison said, the president is the one most interested in having a war. And so you don't want to let him decide. That's why, Scott, we always say that the speaking point, the one that's easy to say is before we ask our National Guard to put their boots on the ground, Congress should put their name on the line, right? And that's the way it's supposed to be. We're not saying that the National Guard

shouldn't fight and win America's wars. They should. That's their purpose. They're a defense mechanism for the United States. We're just asking that the authority that we gave to Congress, that's our authority, it's not theirs, that they used it for the way that they're supposed to, and they have no mechanism to give that authority away. They can't give away something that's not theirs, and they've done that, and that's the fight that we're having. Yeah. Okay, so I love this story about, and I remember well when this happened, we were on the phone and everything, when y'all went to Washington, and as someone who was told for years, many years, that look, If you weren't in the Army, then you don't get to have a comment on this stuff.

Then my guys come home from the Army and they try to have their say, and they don't get to have a say either. You know, they're too busy listening to what the Israelis and the Saudis want. They don't have time for the actual veterans of the Idaho National Guard. And so, but I like the great part of the story is how you learned your lesson on your first try. One try. We're not doing this anymore. Lesson learned, as you said, we're going to the high ground in the state capitals.

so where this can actually make a difference and where you know the whole thing about call your congressman you can really make a difference actually can have an effect on the state level whereas that's ridiculous mythology schoolhouse rock stuff on the national level but we know in those phones ring and I know that you guys have experienced this

when the people really get active when a talk radio audience is all calling in on the same day you can get things through committee and so see if we can get some anecdotes because this this attempted legislation has never been signed yet but we have many committees and then full state houses and state senators that have passed it just not all lined up where we need it to get to the governor's desk yet but tell us some stories and and about how this works and and then i want to hear from you young man too as well about um your role in

in pushing this thing uh in montana and and how far you're getting there yep i'll I'll kick it off and I'll hand it off to Liam because he actually participates quite quite heavily in this. We have a director of field operations, former Army Ranger, veteran from the global war on terror, Texas resident who leads and trains volunteers to give us five minutes during their lunch break during legislative session. Five minutes, a couple times a week, make five phone calls, get back to work, do your thing. He teaches them how to call the legislatures.

We pull the committees. We know where they stand if they're going to support the bill or not support it. And if people need a little bit of encouragement, we light the phones up. And these volunteers will call and make these calls during their lunch breaks. And even Representative Deming has even participated in this from his home in Montana. And we just, we asked them to call and just express their story. Ask them to support, defend the guard. Ask them why they're not.

Put pressure on them. And like you said, calling your congressman, they've got staffs to answer the phones. They've got volunteers, interns. But at the state house level, in some states, House representatives get no staff support. None. Sometimes the senator will get one. Sometimes the House will share somebody. So you start calling and blowing up that phone, and they start thinking, oh, my God, that world is on fire.

What is this issue? What does defend the guard? And then they read it, and it almost takes no explanation. No more convincing is necessary. Once you read it, you can't argue with it. It's constitutionally sound. The federal law already says it. We're just aligning the state law with where we want to go.

And so Diego trains these people, and we've got hundreds in the pool that join five minutes during their lunch break and liams one of them. And I want to hand it off to him for some anecdotal evidence of how effective it is. Yeah, I mean, Diego really is like a powerhouse when it comes to this stuff. Well, explain, because he didn't mention his name is Diego Rivera. Diego Rivera. Or Army Ranger friends. Heart and soul into this movement. I mean, in 2023, when I was actively participating in Helena with Representative Deming,

I was on the phone with him from like 8 in the morning to midnight some nights. And he is putting his heart and soul in this. And like Dan said, what we do is we call our legislators. We put pressure on them because I want to reiterate. what you said about D.C. versus at the state level. You know, when Matt Gates, when Rand Paul, when Thomas Massey put forward war powers resolutions to withdraw from certain countries, they receive at least like 10 votes. That's about it. But you come home to Montana. The majority of the Republican Party is in support of this bill. And we have, you know,

a handful of Democrats as well in Montana, 7, I think it is. But the way I got involved in this, I think it's worthwhile telling. I was just a kid from Montana, 2018, signed up for a representative of Deming's class. He was my civics teacher. And I was just like an average conservative was a Trump supporter at the time. And I go up to him and I say,

hey, have you heard of Ben Shapiro? Are you a fan of Ben Shapiro? And he goes, yeah, but you should check out Tom Woods. And from Tom Wood's show, I found you, Scott, and I heard you talking about the Defender Guard bill. And I went up to him and asked him about it. And he had never heard about it, but he decided to run for the legislature a few years later and decided to be the top sponsor for it. So I attribute that to you a little bit.

And also, I want to say, like, just to tie it to this event, too, he introduced me to Ron Paul as well. And a lot of people can't say that about their public school civics teacher, so I like to brag about it. I got a text from him yesterday while we were going through the airport that said, OMG, I hate the TSA. So it's pretty cool. And another story is he had a poster of Lincoln that he put up in front of his class. And he just wrote, worst president ever question mark. And he just wrote it up there and left it up there

and was waiting to see if any student would get provoked by it. But yeah, he introduced me to Ron Paul. He had a portrait of Ron Paul in his classroom the whole year I was in there. So you're both responsible for me being here today. That's really cool. Very good. Scott, that's how grassroots works, right?

You have to plant the seeds. You have to coal the soil. You have to till it. You have to fertilize it. Plant the seeds, nurture, it, grow it. And that happened with the Ron Paul Revolution in 2008 is all the people that were active in that revolution are now in positions of influence. They're big podcasters and authors of books. They're serving the state legislatures.

Hell, look in the White House. They're on the president's cabinet. That came from the Ron Paul Revolution. That's how grassroots works. And Liam's a great example of the next generation of grass. coming up and we are changing the scope of conservative politics in America, not in an evangelical conservative. I'm talking about conserving the Constitution. And it's been so effective that we've got people in key positions in so many states that when we go to the Republican Party in Idaho or in

Texas or in North Carolina or Kentucky, and we propose a resolution for them to change their party platform and adopt, defend the guard as a plank in the Republican Party, the war party, the neocon party, it's almost universally adopted first time through. So we've got nine state Republican parties that have adopted this into their platform. We got it on the ballot here in Texas last year, the primary ballot, the same ballot the president was on against Nikki Haley as a referendum for the state to vote on, and it passed with 84% of Republican support. Do you think Republicans support this bill? Absolutely. Do you think the Libertarian Party supports this bill? They're the national sponsors of it. So now we've got 84% of the Republican Party voting in favor of a

libertarian-sponsored bill. Importantly, wait, and slow that down again. This is the primary election where no Democrats are allowed. That's right. This is only Republican votes. Close primary Republican voters, and we received 60,000 more votes than Donald Trump did. This bill did. And coincidentally enough, the number

of no votes against the bill almost identically matched the number of votes for Nikki Haley. It was almost a direct correlation. I'm sure that's a total coincidence. Total anomaly. You're always bringing up these wild theories. That's right. We are way off to the right. But that's the power of grassroots.

And like we talked about Diego and Liam and represent Deming. I can go to 30 states and point to this story. Yeah. Almost exactly the same happening all across the country. And having a national mouthpiece like you championing the cause is a multiplier for us. Well, look, I mean, it's really a perfect story in the sense of, you know, as you say, the grassroots nature of it. But also like the bare bones letter of the law. constitutionalism of the whole thing they are breaking the law absolutely all you're doing is

insisting that the states now interpose and insist the federal government follow the law in the charter that allows their existence in the first place that all 350 million of us know that somewhere in article one only congress can declare war everybody knows that everybody knows they're breaking the law when they do otherwise and then having guys like you and diego who came home from these wars leading the cause being Ron Paul Republicans and libertarians and just setting that example for so many people. I mean, you're just kicking the door in on the permissible discussion of just what is all this about. And as you say, when these legislatures start, legislators, start wondering about it and start looking at it. Sounds right to me. It is right. And they're all for it.

They're all for it until somebody in a uniform with stars on their collar and trinkets on their chest, walks into the room and says, don't support that bill. They're all for it, every one of them, unanimously until that moment happens. So when the National Guard, Adjutant General from the state, parades into the state capital building, he has instant gravitas because he is a general. He is the foremost authority. And if you ask the general about the Constitution, just like Representative Deming said, they agree. That's exactly what the Constitution says, but we just don't do that anymore. Well, I don't remember an amendment saying that we don't. We have a process we want to change the Constitution. We have a process. And what's even more frustrating is if

you drill down and ask the National Guard where they get their authority from, they cite the Constitution, the Article 1, Section 8 clause, 15, you know, the militia clause, and they cite Title 10 of U.S. Code and Title 32 of U.S. Code. And if you read Title 10, it says that the National Guard can be called in a federal service for the purpose of fighting wars that Congress has declared. That's the law. It's already written in there. But five paragraphs down from there, it says, or for any purpose that the President sees fit. But that's not overriding the first one. That's in addition to those things.

So if it's something else other than war, the president can call for the National Guard. And so you can't get into a philosophical debate about it. You can't get into a legal debate about it. So what the National Guard and the members of the War Party do, they get into a fiscal argument about it. And they say that the states will lose their federal funds if they pass to defend the Guard. And Delegate Pat McGeehan gave the most memorable speech on the floor of the West Virginia House. And he said, who's going to look that child in the eye?

and tell them their dad didn't get to come home from a war that Congress wouldn't declare because we need federal subsidies to hell with that I know man I I was there when we first tried this in Texas and Diego testified up there and he just said I must have misunderstood did what did somebody out there just say money I know you didn't just say something about money did you my friend's in a box he's dead you're talking about money and it was like And they were like, oh, well, hmm, yes, we are talking about money, dude. You know, screw your friend basically was their attitude.

In Montana, I mean, the lead opposition against this is generals and lobbyists. I mean, they brought out legislators on a helicopter ride. They took them to the Army base in Montana, took them out on a helicopter ride and said while they were in the air, we will lose these helicopters if you pass that bill. And they came back and they switched their votes. So, I mean, I think it becomes incredible. transparent when you walk in the room and you go to testify who is on which side. Yeah. Because you see there's generals that are paid to be there and there are lobbyists

that are paid to be there. And then on the other side, you have rank and file people who have served in these wars. People like my friend Chris Inget, who was blown up by an RPG and suffers from PTSD as a result of it. Or, you know, the reason that I care so much about this is in 2012, someone really close to my family was in the National Guard and got killed in Afghanistan. And there are many people throughout this process, as I've lobbied for this bill, who have come to me as active duty national guardsmen and say that they would love to be there in that room to testify for it, but they can't because it would violate code. And yet you have generals come in and they're advocating against it. Representative, what's it like to be

in the middle of that circus and try to get something so legal and lawful and necessary through these people. Well, it's kind of fun to be honest with you. It really is because you can get people to admit, yeah, I'm worried about the helicopters that the National Guard has. Well, they're saying that, just like you said, friends in a box, and there's a helicopter. The bill that I introduced this last time got a fiscal note of zero for the state that we would not lose money from the state, but we'd lose $180 million. from the federal government. And so we just couldn't pass that bill.

And yet we're sending people in harm's way. But yeah, you wouldn't believe the vitriol and the hate that is generated for me just saying we should follow the Constitution. That's all I'm saying. And yet the guy of the American Legion has written some pretty horrible things about me and about the movement in general.

So it's actually a very, good thing to be a part of and I'm glad to be in the fight with these guys yeah and now the American Legion has been supportive in some places right so the the former national commander of the American Legion came out not about the bill specifically but at the time we were fighting and we have a quote in our in our pamphlet that we pass out he says that the American Legion has always been against undeclared wars always and we should only go to war when Congress has declared it and when we put that up and we show it to the members of the

American Legion it's just like the military people testifying all the rank and file members of the Legion and go, oh, let's get back over here where we know we belong, and the leaders of the American Legion, who are the lobbyists of the American Legion, they stay lined up with the generals. And you go into these rooms, the hearing rooms, and like Liam said, all the people that are testifying in favor of the bill are veterans that come home that have grown a long beard, you can see the pain in their eyes, you can see the real human cost of war, and they tell real stories. They tell things that are backed up by facts, things you can look up in the newspaper, and the generals tell fictitious stories of...

of threats of losing funding. Paper Tigers, no one will put their name on the threat. And in fact, at one point, Major General Timothy Orr from the National Guard Bureau called the Speaker of the House in West Virginia and asked him to take the conversation offline. Went offline and the speaker was a friend, listened and the general Tim Orr said, if you even let this bill get to a hearing,

we will close that little training base that's in your district, Mr. Speaker. We'll close it tomorrow and 650 of your constituents lose their jobs. I'm sorry, that's coercion. That's against law. It's also against the Hatch Act, which is a bill that says you cannot lobby in military uniform. And so we know that we're over the target. We know we are because we're catching flack. And watching Representative Deming stand up in that hearing, it's on our website or a YouTube channel somewhere. It's something that every activist should watch, every member of this movement should watch because he sits there and addresses

every single one of the general's concerns. And the general is on screen. You can see him sitting right behind Representative Deming, I don't know if that was intentional or not, but he sit there and you see him just get deflated. Every time Representative Deming brings up a point that's constitutional, ethical, moral, the man just coweres in his seat. And by the end of the conversation, he looked like just an empty suit sitting behind him, just completely defeated. Because you can't argue money when we're talking about lives

and the constitutional nature of sending people into war where they're going to sacrifice their lives. Yeah. All right. Now, war parties advocate here. you guys have been trying this for a while and it hadn't worked yet because evidently the National Guard's argument

is just too strong. That look they're going to take us out of the order of battle. We're going to lose our heckalopters and all of our little privileges and fun things and I could lose a few dozen or a few hundred jobs around here and get unelected from my position

and the bad guys keep winning so what's the key to turn it around? I think this one's easy. You go back to the Constitution again who controls the power of the purse? It's not the National Guard Bureau. It's not the DoD. It's Congress.

It's our representatives. They delegate the funds. They set the parameters of where that money goes. They define how much goes to bases, how much goes to National Guard. Then the Department of Defense and the National Guard Bureau, their job is to administrate those funds. There are several codes of federal law. In fact, we saw President Trump go through this recently. He wanted to defund USAID.

Maybe the most corrupt thing. Everybody in the world agrees that it's corrupt. Everybody. And what happened? The court said, you can't because of this section of federal code. You don't have the authority because Congress has already appropriated that money. So the threat that the DOD or the National Guard Bureau is going to strip money, helicopters, tanks, uniforms, bullets, all of it from the states. We think it's a paper tiger and it's not real.

We think it's a red herring. In fact, Representative Gozar from Arizona, one of the great liberty-leaning members of Congress, wrote an op-ed and filed it into the records of the halls of Congress that Congress controls the purse string and no state would be punished for passing the Defender Guard. So we've got a pretty good sound basis. It's just getting people to listen to it. Yeah. All right. So tell us about Pete Heggseth. Sure. He's the currently serving civilian secretary of defense. Let's call him the former Fox News host. That's probably a better title for, right? It might be. You tell me. So when he was on Fox News, we passed Defend the Guard through the New Hampshire House last January. And I wake up at the morning,

turn on Fox News, and there's Pete Heggseth talking about Defend the Guard. Guard in New Hampshire. And Pete was a lieutenant colonel, I believe, in the National Guard, an officer. And on national news, he says, this is a great idea. I support this. And he gave the constitutional argument that the National Guard should be used for the defense of the United States or that Congress should declare war before they go overseas. And we thought, well, that's kind of cool. Well, you fast forward to December of the same year. And Pete Hexeth gets nominated for the Secretary of Defense. And so I thought, well, now we've got a champion. And I flew down and met with him in West Palm, Florida at a private dinner and pulled him offline. I said, let's talk about

to defend the guard. He goes, I love that bill. What a great idea. What a great concept. What can I do to help? And at the time, we didn't know if Pete was going to get nominated or not. He was going through a real difficult confirmation. And we made agreement, hey, you get confirmed. We're going to do everything we can to help you. And when you get confirmed, we'll circle back and we'll get that endorsement letter from you. We did it in the wrong order. Look, I learned lessons one time. I learned in D.C. once, and I learned this one time. I'll never pass up the opportunity to take that endorsement ever again. He's not hiding from us. He's not saying he doesn't support it. He says, my statement on record stands. That's his statement. That's good enough right

there, dude. That's it. And look, I mean, that sounds like, you know, you talked about how people in the room reacted. And was it in Idaho when I was on? And I said, in Wyoming, I was testifying over the Zoom call there. And I said, you know, I'm sure there's some men and fancy uniforms in the room there. I think you guys might want to check with the Office of the Secretary of Defense because I think you might have some new standing orders on this and you may be insubordinate and out of line to take the position you're taking because currently serving Secretary Defense,

he says he supports this and he's the boss of you. And they were like, oh, but they went ahead anyway. But if he has said that his statement on that still stands, then I don't know, man. And I think that's enough to really, let's just focus only on that for a little while and see how much mileage we can get out of focusing on that back and force the fight on that. And in fact, perhaps even in the next hearing available, like, go ahead and tell these men that they, actually, it's not really a question. You are insubordinate and you need to call your office, dude.

You have no right to be here. The secretary defense has already said that he disagrees with you. and you don't have the authority to disagree with him at all, so beat it. That's a great strategy. We always say that the Constitution already says this, but if we take their position and they believe in this chain of command, this authority, hey, your boss already says this. And Scott's being a little humble here, by the way.

In that testimony in Wyoming, he didn't say, hey, you might want to check in with the boss. He said, hey, you should check in with the boss because you're being insubordinate. There was no hint. It was a direct accusation. It was one of the greatest moments. Well, good. The fact that their default is opposition without checking to see where the administration is at with it is just crazy.

Well, look, so we've gotten this thing through how many different state senators and houses altogether now? Well, if I miss one, Leon probably knows better than me, but if I miss one, he's going to jump in. So the first one to ever, ever pass it was Arizona. Arizona Senate with the great Wendy Rogers, retired lieutenant colonel, female pilot, 25 years of service. She's passed actually three years in a row. It's passed the Idaho Senate with a Marine Corps veteran sponsor, Ben Adams. It has passed the New Hampshire House of Delaware, or House of Representatives, which is the second largest legislative body in the entire Western world behind only Congress.

They passed it. The Virginia House of Delegates passed it 99 to zero, full bipartisan support. Oh, yeah. Am I missing a body? Virginia? I don't think so. Nope. And then it's been, it's passed committees in Maine.

It got out of committee in Montana. It's gotten out of committee in a couple of states, North Carolina, Georgia, I believe. But it's slow moving. Good legislation takes time. It shouldn't. But that's kind of the legislative process. Well, and this is grassroots stuff. It's not like this is a billion-dollar corporation asking for a favor.

Yeah. Yeah, this is short order. Yeah, man. This is a big deal. And look, so I try to, I don't know if I always do a good enough job of this, Dan. But, I mean, I think the point has really got to be made for especially veterans out there who agree with this like here's your next mission we have you already have leadership you have a very specific and achievable goal and time frames with which to achieve it and and activism that

is made to work and this is you know we talked about Diego before he's a good friend of mine and he's explained to me you know you just got tired of trying to educate these people some of them I'll go right for it. Some of them are kind of wish you washed me at the end of the day. That's not what determines their vote. As you said, give him a helicopter ride and they'll change, they'll flip on a dime. Anyway, so he just decided that he's just not going to stand for that anymore. And now he's just going to tell them, listen, do what I say or I'll destroy your career.

That's it. You read me, loud and clear? All right, good. Move on to the next one and let them know that this is either you support the troops or you're going to betray the troops. That's how we're framing this. You better get on the right side of it. And the thing is, the more. are you guys who have come home from the wars who really are willing to help, not just people

making phone calls, but combat veterans making phone calls. I'm with McKnight, I'm with Rivera, this is what we're doing, this is what you're voting for, and I know your name, and I'm watching, and let them know that this thing is really building, but it takes that support. It's a core group of leaders at defend the guard.us and at bringer troops home.us, but when it comes to the activism you need an army so that's it they sign up yeah if i want email you or go to either one of the websites uh if you go there and at the bottom you just sign up and put your name and address our email address in there

you'll start getting our newsletters and that's the that's probably the first thing to start really getting boned up on the issue but if you really want to get in contact and you want to be one of those boots on the ground one of the guys giving us five minutes making five phone calls go to defend the guard.us forward slash phone bank and put your name in there and that will go directly to Diego and he will reach out

and get you trained up and get you into a small circle I don't know if they're using telegraph or whatever they're using to communicate but then you'll be in that group that core group and doing your part and you are right

it does take some military efficiency we were all trained to do a mission not to follow order and you need more people to show up at these hearings too not just the phone calls You need, you know, I'll never forget that that same first day that we did the hearing in Texas. Brian Sharp went up there and he said, look, I'm a lieutenant colonel.

I went to West Point. And they went, oh, my God, West Point, like the one I heard of before? Oh, exactly. And it was like, this guy's a big deal now, you know, and they were really willing to listen to him. He quoted Daniel Webster. And they were like, Daniel Webster, that name that I heard of before? And they were, they were impressed, dude. And they were willing to listen to him and having, you know, I like to show up and try to help.

I fear I may be more counterproductive. What you need is more Diego's and more, more Bryan's up there. And more spouses and children of veterans. Yeah, that's a good point too. Sometimes you have to pull on the heartstrings and let the heartstring story tell themselves, but then you need people like Representative Deming, who is a champion. They're sponsors, people that sponsor bills, then there's champions of bills. And we need champions, the ones that will stand up and take the arrows because when they're taking arrows,

they know that they can do that and they've got the courage to it because they know they've got an organization behind them that's going to stand there and bunches them. And hell, we might even reach around and swat a couple arrows down on their behalf. But we do need more people to testify. Tell your story. You don't have to really have any special training to do that. You just stand up and tell your story. Because if it's overtrained, it comes across as overtrained. Right. Yeah, yeah. All right, good. Well, it's about time to wrap here. I just think this is fantastic. I know that we have a huge audience watching right now. Please everyone contribute to the Ron Paul Institute, but also, especially for you war veterans, but everybody else, too, please go to defend the guard.us and bring our troops home.us. Find out everything that you can. I guess the legislatures aren't in session right now. No, this is the time we build. This is when we build and get ready for next year. And I think we got a real good chance in Arizona for sure next year, right? And in a couple other places, too. So thank you for your great activism, Liam, and all your great work. on this and you congressman as well uh and don't represent we don't want to we don't want to

great his title he's congressman you don't call him a congressman when it's at the state level representative representative this better that's not that's not lower that's that's higher no we don't want to degrade it with a congressman title that's right that's right represented thank you for all your work i really wish you the best of luck and and especially if we can get states like montana and idaho and those leading the charge and let people really know like where this is coming from that this is you know in the spirit of the rom paul revolution right thanks for having me on yeah thank you scott yep and and thank you guys for having me and to the whole crew uh running everything here at rom paul's great 90th birthday that's been the scott horton show and i'm a scot horton dot org and

scott horton dot org and et cetera like that buy all my books and thank you very much thanks for listening to scott horton show which can be heard on a p s radio news at scott hortonshow dot com and the libertarian institute at libertarian institute dot org Thank you.