Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Oh, you're getting closer.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's Christmas Eve on the Twelve Days of Preston.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Good Morning friends. Gotta let the Morning Show orchestra do
its thing. So here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
The calendar says it's December twenty fourth, and it is, but.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
For the purposes of the twelve Days of Preston.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's the fourth show, which means the fourth month, and
so here we are. We are counting down the year.
This is our gift to you. We're on vacation, but
we're here because of the beauty modern technology, and so
(01:20):
we're still sharing time with you. We've invested a lot
of time to put these shows together and to help
recap the year, kind of a year and review kind
of thing, but also make sure that you're listening to
what well you seem to enjoy at least for twenty
two years you have and some change The Morning Show
(01:42):
with Preston Scott great to be with you this morning.
Jose of course producing the radio broadcast that we will
be airing pieces of well, let me go back and
say some of the some of the content you'll hear
it was produced by Grant Allen, who is the producer
at the time, but between Grant and Jose we got
(02:03):
you covered. And I am hosting these programs and we
always start every show with a devotional And so this
is day four of the twelve Days of Preston, and
I want to focus on the fact that the twenty
fourth represents the day before Christ came. Now, obviously, did
(02:28):
Jesus come on December twenty fifth, Probably not, But that's
the day that not just Christians, but the entire world
sets aside to honor and celebrate and revere the advent,
the coming of Christ. And so the gift of God's
(02:51):
truth is our focus today. That's Jesus. Now tomorrow being
Christmas Day, we'll figure out how how we're going to
wade through the month of May with Christmas. But we'll
get to that. But for day, for two day, I
should say, have people ever led you to believe something
that wasn't true? It certainly happens during shopping season leading
(03:16):
up to Christmas, especially with toys. You're convinced that this
would be the greatest toy that your kid would ever
possibly own, and it's oftentimes something less for less than that.
Sometimes it's a product that the advertiser glamorizes just to
make a sale. And only when we buy the item
(03:38):
and unpackage it and use it, maybe do we realize Eh, yeah,
maybe not so much. A truth meter would change everything. Right,
We have what I would refer to as discernometers. We
have something that if you are a Christian, you have
deep within you, that is to let you know when
(04:00):
things aren't quite right, so you don't get hoodwinked. Well,
let's start here. God never lies, never ever lies. It
goes against his nature. It's not who he is. So
it follows that when God became flesh, Truth became flesh.
(04:29):
Jesus was the embodiment.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Of that truth. If you look at John one verses
fourteen through eighteen. So the Word became human, made flesh,
and made his home, made his dwelling among us, and
he was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. We've seen
his glory, the glory of fathers. The father's one and
(04:54):
only son. John testified about him when he shouted to
the the crowds, this is the one I was talking about.
And John aight.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Jesus said to the people who believed in him, you
are truly my disciples, if you remain faithful to my teachings.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And you will know the truth, and the truth will
set you free. And there's the promise of Christmas, the
promise of truth that became flesh lived among us. What
happened was recorded, not just in the Bible. The Bible
(05:35):
is not just a book of history, but history records Jesus.
Time was split in two. We marked BC a d
by Jesus. How important was he? That's how important. Let's
take a peek inside the American Patriots Almanac. December the
(05:55):
twenty fourth, eighteen fourteen, United States and Britain sign a
treaty ending the War of eighteen twelve. In nineteen o six,
inventor Reginald Fethenden broadcast the first radio entertainment program from
Brandt Rock, Massachusetts. It was a.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Bible reading and a violin solo of all, Oh, Holy Knight.
How incredible. The first radio broadcast was scripture, at least
from an entertainment perspective. Nineteen twenty three, President Calvin Coolidge
presides over the first electric lighting of the National Christmas
(06:36):
Tree on the White House Grounds. Nineteen forty six, candlelight
services at Grace Episcopal Church in New York City becomes
the first religious service televised from a church. There's a
theme here the night before Christmas, and in nineteen sixty eight,
Apollo eight astronauts read from the Book of Genesis while
(07:00):
orbiting the moon man. Those are the good old days
when you could read the Bible and not get in
trouble on national television and not get excoriated and blistered
over the social media coals.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Oh, those are wonderful times.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
All right, let's reset. What's gonna happen here? As I said,
we are for those of you just tuning in, this
is the Twelve Days of Preston. This is the month
of December, and it's the day before Christmas. But it's
not as far as show content. Yeah, we're gonna have
(07:39):
some Christmas bump music and we're gonna let's just still
kind of keep the flavor of the holiday. Tomorrow even
more of that. But today's show is chronicling the fourth
month of the year, which is April.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
So what was going on in April? What was happening
in the news?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Who are our guests, the people that we talked to,
What were the stories that we're shaping the beginning of
the second quarter of the year, The presidential races, were
starting to come into focus, and so there was a
lot of a lot writing on what was going on
(08:20):
in the month of June April. So that's what we're
going to talk about today. We're going to relive the
month of April, So stay with us. Some great interviews, guests, topics.
Who knows what we're going to unfold or reveal or whatever.
(08:42):
This segment's too long for me to re record, so
I'm just going to leave that right there. It's the
Twelve Days of Preston. It's December twenty fourth on our calendar,
but it's the month of April here on the show,
So stay with us. Welcome back to the Twelve Days
(09:11):
of Preston, a look back at the year twenty twenty
four on now Christmas Eve, but this is the month
of April on today's show. It's the fourth day of Preston,
and boy, we hit it with a bang. April first,
(09:31):
we had a good visit with Florida's Department of Education
Commissioner Manny Diaz.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Hey, good morning. Great to be with you on this
April first. But I just want to make sure that
we know whatever we're talking about, there's no April Fool's
joke here.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
At Preston No none, I have been void of any
humor today unfortunately, Yeah, yeah, you released a note and
you sent it out to superintendent and then school boards,
college presidents of late dealing with tutor dot com.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
What should what should parents know about this?
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well, unfortunately, tutor dot com is owned by a Chinese
company based in Hong Kong called Fromavera Capital, and the
CEO and founder of that of that capital company does
have ties to the Chinese CCP, and so we wanted
to make sure that all parents number one, all school districts,
(10:32):
all college presidents are aware because of our major concern
with protecting student data. And here, unfortunately, we see this
all too often across sectors of industry in our country.
But here in Florida under this governor, we're going to
remain alert and make sure that everyone is aware and
eyes wide open.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
How does it work if a school district joins up
with an outside group for tutoring like this? Do they
have to get DOE approval or what is the process if.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
There is one?
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Now they don't when it comes to this kind of
situation here is this would be completely supplemental. This would
be a contract or an agreement that a district would
enter or a college would enter with an individual company.
This does not fall under our purview as far as
state standards and state adopted materials, this would be supplemental.
(11:29):
So that's why I wanted to make sure that all
of our superintendents and our college presidents are aware that
this could be a danger to our student data, can
be a danger to our students and a danger to
our state in our country. And you know, the response
has been overwhelming of alert. But there's a second issue here.
Precedent that happens with this situation is unfortunately this company,
(11:53):
and this may have happened before they were acquired, I'm
not sure, but this company does have some sort of
agree in a contract with the Department of Defense. The
Department of Defense has an education wing that does provide
resources to military connected students, and we know and in Florida,
we have a lot of military families. We're a military
(12:15):
friendly state, and so we are aware that this has
provided access is provided to these students. So we are
asking our superintendents to make sure they make those families aware.
And this has caught the attention of members of Congress
and members of the US Senate as well at this point.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
So this note that you've sent out at this point
is an advisory as opposed to a mandate.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Correct, This is this is something that if the district
has a direct contract or in agreement with them, we
are asking them to be Now, we did have one
district that had some sort of relationship with tutor dot
com immediately after the no immediately dropped their relationship with
Tutor dot com. And we're expecting than any others that
(13:02):
have had that would want to do the same because
they wouldn't want to put themselves or their students at
risk of having their data exposed or used by the
Chinese government commissioner.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Do you foresee this perhaps becoming a legislative issue in
the future.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Unfortunately, I do, Preston. I think that you've seen the
state of Florida, under the governor of their governor around
the stantus take action against things like the farm land
and sensitive ties to sensitive materials and agriculture. And I
think that you know, the Chinese are playing a chess
(13:43):
and unfortunately, the leadership in our country at this moment
is playing checkers, and it takes someone like Governor De
Santis and that kind of leadership from our legislature to
continue to cover all angles of protecting our data, protecting
our residents, protecting our secrets. And so this is just
another opening here where we're going to have to take
(14:04):
a look at this and figure out what we can
do to continue to protect ourselves.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
The morning Joe at Preston Scott go ahead, make my
day on news Radio.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
One hundred point seven WFLA.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Just a few more minutes with the Commissioner of Education
Many DIZ Commissioner kind of a similar type subject. I
suppose you know, there's a lot of discussion over whether
the United States ought to ban TikTok. There has been
a lot of talk over the disruptive nature of cell
phones in our schools. We've touched on it before in
our visits. Is there any more consideration of just outlawing
(14:43):
cell phones in the classroom, in the in the school
during school hours. Have it in the backpack, that's fine,
but if you use it. Amazingly, Orange County is enacted
a policy that seems to be working. They have to
use it in the office, they can't use it in
between classes, in the lunch room or anything. They're seeing
(15:03):
a better focus on studies and they're seeing less violence
in the school from set up situations that people want
to post online.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, no doubt, we've seen this also. You know, I
walked through the schools in afielda County, have a conversation
with the superintendent. They're of the same They put the
policy in place. This is thanks to the leadership of
our governor and the proposal he made went to the
legislature of saying to students that phones cannot disrupts from instruction,
(15:36):
and that's allowed these districts to go forward with further policy. Look,
I think government works best preston when the state lays
out the parameters and the local government is able to
actually put policies that make sense in place. Sometimes local
governments go awry. We know that and the state has
to step in. But in this case, I think you're
(15:56):
seeing it work. Where we laid out the parameters from
the state. The governor had said that this is going
to be a distraction. I myself have walked through and
I think that it is clear that when you don't
have these phone distractions, students learn better. We know that
these phones are not only a distraction but to the
(16:16):
detriment of our students. As much as the progress that
we've made with technology has information at students' fingertips, it's
also become to their detriment because of all the distractions
they have. So I think putting in the general policy
is good enough. Having districts put in a policy that
they can enforce and that they feel worse at their
(16:38):
local level, I think is the best case scenario, and
I think you're seeing that work here in the state
of Florida.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
I don't disagree it's best case scenario, but I also
know that, and you know this, there are rogue school boards,
school districts that are not going to do anything. But
when you look at the phone issue, it extends so
far beyond the classroom because you know, kids are bullying
other kids, they're set up fights, they're videotaping it, And
I think if we remove that from even happening, we're
(17:07):
going to save kids lives. I mean, we see those
stories routinely of kids that are bullied into suicide, and
I'm just wondering if maybe it's time to push that
a little bit further.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Look, there's no doubt what you're saying is true. If
you can eliminate the interaction on the phone, especially during
the school day. You can eliminate, you know, more than
I would say it's more than half, but it's probably
more than seventy five percent of the problems. You know,
before we used to see you had regular problems in school.
Not anytime that you put you know, a bunch of
(17:40):
kids or teenagers in one place at the same time,
there's always going to be what we always called normal
issues right across the board. But this has exasperated that.
And I think that removing the phone time, especially during
the school day, is imperative to having a return to
normalcy and a turn to paying attention to the right things.
(18:03):
You know, having but this isn't you know, this is
part of the teachers Bill of Rights. So the teachers
do have the ability to do that in their plassorms
now regardless of the policy of the school board, because
it's in state statue. What you're talking about is going up,
and I'm in favor of going above and beyond having
a policy that says that you know, it's either only
(18:24):
during lunchtime or before and after school that these these
phones can come out at all. I think those are
good policies. I think they work, and again I think
that we want to continue having the theme of having
parents involved in those decisions, in making sure that you know,
in the events of an emergency, which is really why
(18:45):
students should have a cell phone. Right at the end
of the day, I got to get picked up. You know,
I've let out my parents five minutes late. They let
me know before school I forgot something. I have a
project that I have to turn in. You know, I'm
been able to contact parent, but you know, the phones
in the main offices at the school still work as
far as I know, Preston, So I think some of that. Again, look,
(19:09):
parents are gonna technology exists and parents are going to
want that comfort. But with that comfort also has to
have an understanding that there's a responsibility and parents are
part of that responsibility.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Commissioner of Education for the Sunshine State, Manny Das.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
China Man, they'll.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
Do anything to get into our kids, to get into
our our country. And then there's just cell phones in general.
Got to get them out of schools. Can't use them,
that would be that would be the smart thing to do.
Can't use them during the school day, not a lunch hour,
not between classes. Not then all right, let's come back
with more of the Twelve Days of Preston. Back with
(20:07):
the twelve Days of Preston. And we're chronicling the fourth
month of the year today, and that's the month of April.
Here's a visit with Speaker of the House for the
state Legislator, Paul Renner. As we kicked off the conversation
with me just checking in to see how he was faring.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
Doing well, trying to get some sleep and remember what
normal look like. But we're still busy. It hasn't slowed
down a lot yet.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So give us a little insight. What does life look
like when you are an outgoing House speaker.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
Well, there's still you know, a lot of bill's signings
and with the governor and will be again on a
number of bill signings. There are housekeeping issues, HR issues,
lawsuits that were bringing or defending and the like, and
so there's still quite a lot going on, different things
that go through and every day is a different look
(20:59):
and a different challenge.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I know that the legislative priority for you, House Bill
one kind of became House Bill three, correct, that's.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Right, we had two vehicles. Three was originally just a
pornographic piece, and one was just the social media piece.
Those merged, uh and then merged again, and they merged
into HB one, and then they merged again into HB
three with some changes I requested by the governor and frankly,
once we started chatting, some that we thought made sense
(21:34):
and made the bill stronger in some aspects.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
When you say stronger, I'm going to just guess here
that you mean more likely to withstand a legal challenge.
Is that fair?
Speaker 4 (21:46):
That's a that's that is fair, And that's a good
clarification because obviously the two things we were looking at
is one to be effective, that it's not just a
messaging bill, a chance to you know, do a press
conference that actually works and does what we wanted to do.
And secondly, it's constitutional, so by that I mean not
more likely to be upheld as constitutional.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Let's break down with you at the helm here. What
does House build three do here in the state of Florida.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Well, it looks at certain platforms. It doesn't certainly ban
kids from the Internet or even social media platforms if
they don't meet all of the following conditions. They have
to have a personalized algorithm that essentially surveils your child
and gathers information and learns everything they can possibly know
about them, and then creates contact back to them to
keep them online as long as possible. Secondly, it has
(22:37):
to have one or more addictive features like likes and notifications,
the incinde. Scroll, things that make you want to stay
on long or make you feel good to be on.
It has to allow you to both upload content and
be able to download content from someone like a total
stranger in the middle of the night of your parents
have gone to sleep. And then finally, the fourth item
is it has to have evidence of addiction itself, meaning
(22:58):
some percentage of day the active users have to be
on the platform at least two or more hours a day.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
How is all of that verified? I mean, how do
you trust the makers of these platforms that, Okay, we
got rid of that algorithm.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
How do you know, Well, we can.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
See most of those things. Certainly, the addictive features we
can see by going online. We can see the upload
and download by going online. The algorithms can be known
through discovery. And that is a lawsuit, you know, And
so the age the Attorney General has some enforcement capability.
That's significant. That's one of the changes we may. We
(23:36):
ramped up the penalties, the amount of penalties, the ability
for punitive damages for the Attorney General to pursue if
these platforms do what they're doing today, which is systematically
ignore the law that is federal law today and let
kids that are eight, nine, ten years old online without
their parents' knowledge or consent, just just let them, you know,
run amok online. And the same is true for these
(23:58):
pornographic websites where you just have to go buttons thing
are over eighteen and some eight year olds watching kitty
porn online. And so we really have two different issues
in one bill, both of which are very important, both
of which need to survive constitutional challenge. The obscenity piece
is considered not speech by the core or is at
least given a lower standard of review, a more easy
(24:21):
standard of review. And the social media platforms is new.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Technology, and we've focused on technology.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
So the court doesn't look at it and say this
is a content based restriction on free speech. We believe
it's not because we've focused on the technology.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
One of the big stories we've talked about today is
the Florida State Supreme Court decision to allow it's a
four to three vote the abortion amendment to go before voters.
I really, you know, I'm not an expert in this stuff,
but I do read a little bit, and I'm really
struggling with this ruling because they have left the word
(24:58):
that viability just hanging out out there, and it is
so ambiguous. It reminds me of the argument with assault weapons. Okay,
let's define that. What are your thoughts first, just your
personal reaction. Secondly, is this something the legislature needs to
consider stepping in and defining viability.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
Well, it's an interesting question on whether we can do that,
and I think we could certainly. But you know, viability
can be twenty weeks, can be twenty five weeks, and
if you're the proponents, it's as long as possible. And
if you run the math on that we're talking about,
you know, five months, you know, bumping up on six
months of pregnancy, that the vast majority of Floridians would
say that.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Is too long.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
That is too long to go. Even if you call
yourself pro choice and say it should be allowed for
any reason through the first trimester, you know, twelve weeks,
thirteen weeks, fifteen weeks, this is much much longer than that.
And the other piece of it that even offends me
more is the next line. And that's where the real
trick is. I think Preston is the health exception, which
the court have handled by saying it's really anything anything
(26:03):
you want it to be, and so and by any
health practitioner, not a doctor, but by a health practitioner
health provider rather, which is also undefined. So it can
be the receptionist to the planned parenthood clinic who happens
to be providing healthcare as they see it. And so
it is really an extreme amendment, and voters need to
know that. Our voters need to know it, but also
(26:24):
pro choice voters that would call themselves pro choice need
to know this goes far, far beyond what they're comfortable with.
Allowing late term abortions, obliterating any kind of parental consent requirements,
if your minor child were to have to get pregnant,
these kinds of things that most people are not comfortable with,
would be included and required by this amendment.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Mister speaker, with all due respect, I'm going to pick
a little bit at the language that you and quite
frankly most people are using that are on the side
of life on this, and they fall into what I
think is a false trap on the wordability and keeping
it within the context of a pregnancy. The fact is
viability doesn't come until a child is maybe three, four,
(27:08):
five years old, and that's and to me, that's the
argument that needs to be advanced. Babies are not viable
on their own outside the womb at three months old,
six months old, a year and a half, and I
think we've got to push that issue a lot to
sway popular opinion.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
I think you're right.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
It's interesting you say that because I was making this
comment to someone on the way home last night. Is
you know, I've got a two year old just turned
two and one that's going to turn four in May.
And you know when they're born, they can't walk, they
can't feed themselves, they can't you go to the bathroom
on their own, they can't do anything on their own.
Speaker 6 (27:45):
Are they viable?
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Can they live on their own?
Speaker 7 (27:47):
No?
Speaker 4 (27:47):
They can't. In what you know the left doesn't want
to talk about is you know there's this continuum from
the time of conception all the way through. But you're right,
and we know brained when we go back to social media,
your brain is not fully developed, and some say until
your twenties, you know, depending on who you are, And
so we really are continuing to evolve as humans during
(28:11):
our lifespan, and so viability is a horribly vague term.
It's one that's intended to sound reasonable to the voter
so they can get their support, and as soon as
they do, they'll be coming in and making the arguments
that you pointed out, which is because it's vague, we're
going to argue that it's all the way through birth,
because that baby can can go out and feed itself
and get in the car and drive the work.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Last question for you your reaction on the decision by
the court to allow the marijuana proposal to go to
the ballot as well. I'm concerned does there need to
be legislative action protecting children from secondhand smoke?
Speaker 4 (28:45):
I think that's where again, and it's always true these
proponents they drafted and I'll call it cleverly deceptive, and yeah,
certainly it case to the abortion amendment, but also in
the marijuana where you read it seems reasonable enough if
you check the yes box in thirty seconds and you've
just entrined in the Constitution things that have a lot
of unintended consequences. That is one of them. Can I
(29:06):
smoke in the elevator? Can I smoke on a park
where a kid's playing on a slide, All these kinds
of things that Governor's pointed this out. It's something that
people need to wake up to, and we're going to
have to educate people. And the only way you beat
these things is by really educating voters before they walk in.
Because they're written by their proponents. It's all rainbows and unicorns.
(29:27):
It seems so reasonable that you can get behind it.
It's designed that way. It's poll tested, focus grouped to pass.
And you're right, this has got no restrictions on the
use in public and they can sit there and smoke
right next to your my four year old and my
two year old, and there's nothing I can do about
it because it's now a constitutional right.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Florida House Speaker Paul Renner with us early in April
during the legislative session. Here on the Morning Show with
Preston Scott.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
We'll be back with more of the Twelve Days of Preston.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
All right, you're listening to the Twelve Days of Preston,
which is a look back into the year twenty twenty four,
and this being the fourth day of the twelve Days
of Preston. This is the month of April, the fourth
month of the year. And in April I talked with Molly,
Lord of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of the
(30:35):
Big Bend, and talked about the challenge right now finding
mentors in the lives of young people. Now, we're going
to get to an event that's a dated event, so
the event's already happened, but there are some really big
takeaways from that event, and it presents needs that exist
(30:58):
right now. So give this a listen as I welcome
Molly to the program.
Speaker 7 (31:02):
Good morning, I'm great, How are you good?
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Tell me what if I were to ask you, what's
the status of what we're dealing with locally, and then
even more broadly, the need that exists for big Brothers
and Big Sisters right now more than ever, a little
better than it has been.
Speaker 7 (31:22):
Kind of give us the status well great questions. Since COVID,
we've actually started to see our numbers come back up,
which is great because COVID kind of put everybody in
a lot of different area spaces and things like that.
But on a local and a national level. We have
(31:44):
always and continue to struggle to find men to mentor.
And there's lots of young boys in our community that
are just looking for a friend. We the ladies love
to give their time and just apply and become big sisters.
It's really has been a struggle and continues to be
(32:06):
a struggle for us is to engage and activate with
the men in our community.
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 7 (32:14):
Uh, lots of different reasons, I'm sure. One that I
know off the top of our our head from the
research that we've done here and and just talking with
different folks in the community of all different ages, is
their their commitment. They're uh, you know, kind of afraid,
for lack of better words, afraid for a commitment, our
(32:37):
our time commitment. People think it's got to be every day,
it's got to be all month long, it's got to
be all my weekends, and that's not true.
Speaker 8 (32:44):
It's four hours.
Speaker 7 (32:46):
A month to become a mentor and it's not being
a father figure. I guess that could be a lot
of hold back for for men too, is that the
things can have to be this father figure for for
a child in the community, and really all we want
them is to be a constant and someone that they
can confide in, you know, someone that they can talk to.
(33:07):
So really you're looking for another buddy. Our littles are
looking for another.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Buddy in essence, you know.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
As I think about this, and I've spent a lot
of years prior to being back in media and radio,
I was a vocational pastor and a lot of that
time spent with young people, and it occurs to me,
Molly that some people might look at being a big
brother or a big sister, and we're focusing on.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Being a big brother as well.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
We're not solving the problem, and that is these boys
need male figures in their lives for a reason, and
oftentimes it is being an absentee father.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
That's part of the thing.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
And I would counter that by saying, well, this is
how you solve the problem long term, macro is by
being a fixture in that kid's life and then as
they grow older they recognize the importance of it as
they start having children.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Absolutely, absolutely for sure, And I think you hit home
on it is not solving the problem, it is it
is to help long term with this. You're not gonna
be there and fix the trauma that they've had because
their dad's not there. And trauma comes in lots of
different shapes and forms. Sure does be a divorced family,
(34:19):
it could be a death in the family. It could
be you know, a number of different things moving around
a lot that's traumatic for children, and it is. We're
really just looking for for folks to just have a
buddy and hang out and have fun. And our bigs
learn a lot from our littles and that's something that
(34:40):
they don't expect when they when they come through the process.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Your audio magazine a journey into whatever is left of
journalism and always pointing out and correcting what is not
the Morning Show with Freston Scott. It's the Mad Radio Network,
AKA Make a Difference, and we're challenging you to think
(35:06):
outside your box. Molly Lord with Big Brothers, Big Sisters
of the Big Bend. Everybody who's a football fan out
there knows the NFL Draft is coming up this month, Molly,
but you've got something coming up called the Big Draft.
Speaker 8 (35:19):
That's right.
Speaker 7 (35:20):
We're we're super excited for this. We've we've done it
a little bit differently in the past, but this is
the first time that we have had a physical activity
around this and who doesn't like to play a game
of flag football?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Come on, so tell us a little bit about it
and where and when and how people take part and
what kind of what you're looking for your expectations.
Speaker 7 (35:46):
Yeah, so before the break we talked about, you know,
what it's like to get involved with big brothers, big
sisters and to become a big brother and I had
mentioned it's four hours a month and this is an activity.
This is a day that we're calling all guys, all
men in the community. We have volunteers and mentors that
(36:07):
range from ages sixteen and get this, our oldest one
is eighty three. So you're never too young or too
old to become a mentor and to participate in this event.
So Saturday, April thirteenth, from ten to twelve pm over
at the Fred George Park on the west side of
(36:28):
Capital Circle over there, we're going to be playing an
old fashioned game of flag football. We have over one
hundred littles on our wait list and so we've invited
our littles to come out and participate, and we're inviting
the community to come and do the same. So we
want folks to register. They can go to Big Bend
(36:48):
Mentoring dot org and on the front page there they're
click that button that SO has become a big This
does not solidify them as becoming a mentor, just registers
them for this event for the stay and so we're
gonna be out there for a few hours playing a
game of flag football. So they get to understand and
get to feel what it's like to be a big
(37:09):
and just engage with youth in our community.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
When you say a waiting list of one hundred young boys,
it breaks my heart.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
What ages are we talking about.
Speaker 7 (37:23):
We serve children ages five to eighteen, so there's a
run of gamut in there. I would probably say you're
eight to fourteen is the largest age range that we
have for young boys on our wait list.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Tell me the process of the boys on that side
of this equation. Are these young boys that really want
a mentor want a big brother? Are some of them
kind of being advised by their mom or their guardian
that it's in their best interest? I mean, give me
their side of this.
Speaker 7 (37:57):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think you'd hit the nail on
the head. It is is a variety of both. And
so moms or grandmas who are raising their children for
whatever varying reasons, you know, think that it would be
best if they had a constant man in their life.
Speaker 9 (38:16):
You know.
Speaker 7 (38:16):
Sometimes those teenagers are really hard for parents nonetheless, and
or grandparents, you know, and they've already raised their kids.
So it's a it's a trialing time in a young
person's life because they're going through a lot physically and
and all.
Speaker 8 (38:32):
Of that stuff.
Speaker 7 (38:33):
So that is, you know, a key time for someone
else to get engaged and involved. Because person, I don't
know about you, but when I was a teenager, my
mom could tell me something until I was blue in
the face, but our neighbor across the street would tell
me the exact same thing. God or not, I believed
them before I believe my parents, ye was.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yeah, that's the way it works.
Speaker 7 (38:56):
Tell me this, we got about it, We got what,
you know, just the type of relationship that we're having
and the engagement with them and all that stuff. And again,
it's a critical time for a young person to have
someone outside of their family to be involved in them
and to ask their input and guidance and those types
(39:16):
of things.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Molly Lord of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters of
the Big bend and as I said, that event has
happened that we just talked about, but the need is ongoing.
So if at this Christmas season something's kind of poking
at your heart a little bit, respond to it. As
(39:38):
we like to say around this radio program, make a difference.
All right, that's the first hour in the books. Day
four of the Twelve Days of Preston continues with our
number two. Next, welcome back to the Twelve Days of Preston.
(40:02):
Our number two of the program. We start with a
visit back in April with J. D. Johnson of the
Talent Training Group talking about scenarios that you and I
might encounter and where we could make a difference. What's
the best guidance that we should think about if we
see a law enforcement officer in trouble and by that
(40:24):
I mean something's going bad when they're making a they're
pulling someone over, or they're trying to make an arrest.
Speaker 10 (40:31):
Well, you got you kind of have to let your
conscience be your guide and you're you have to understand,
you have to know yourself, your skill level, your ability
to actually help a lot of times being a good
witnesses is help. But yeah, I've been in a situations.
We're seeing it now back to back to everything being recorded,
(40:53):
we're seeing it's always happened. I had a I was
in a fighting against fighting three guys is one time,
and a guy stepped in and said, you can't do that.
He's a he's a police and grabbed one of the
guys that I'm literally okay, was that guy physically able? Yeah,
he was bigger than he was bigger than you or
(41:14):
bigger than me.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
So he clearly knew how to take care of himself.
Speaker 10 (41:17):
Yeah, And he grabbed one of the one of the
three guys that I was trying to detain, and you know,
and help me, and and and it wasn't a it
wasn't a life or death situation at least, it wasn't
at that escalated and escalated to that. But I was
sure glad to see him, you know. And and the
(41:37):
big biggest thing is I would say, if you're going
to help you, let that officer or officers that are
there know that you are there to help them. I'm
on your side, officer. What can I do to help
How can I help you? Alser, I'm here to help you,
And make it plain and loud and and so that
you don't become part of the problem.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
What is protocol from perspective of the officer in a
situation where you obviously you don't know when it's going
to go south. But I tend to think talking to
my brother and knowing you and Charlie and listening to
what you guys have talked about over the years, you
develop a sense you just kind of know. Most times,
(42:20):
if you're pulling over a car and it's filled with guys,
are you calling back up right away regardless of the
pullover or how quickly into the event? Are you looking
for help? In other words, it's help on the way
most of the time. When a traffic stop, let's just
talk about traffic stops. When a traffic stop.
Speaker 10 (42:38):
Excuse me, is initiated, you're trying to give information to
the dispatcher over the radio. You're saying it the location,
the tag number, the make, model, color of the vehicle,
number of known occupants.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Okay, you know.
Speaker 10 (42:52):
You're putting that information out. And you know, in my
experience listening to other people talk on the radio and
having them listen to me, you can tell by their
voice because you get really familiar with somebody's voice on
the radio, and you can kind of tell just in
the way they say what they're saying, whether or not
(43:13):
they're getting the whether or not their spidy senses tingling,
or you know, you don't. I didn't make a practice
of always asking for backup on every traffic stop, but
there were times when I immediately said, get me another
unit rolling this way, get another car rolling this way.
Sometimes that's a long way off, and then it's all
(43:36):
you have to take into account. And with today's technology,
officers pretty much know can have. They have a map
going on of GPS tracking of the cars and that
kind of stuff that everybody kind of knows where everybody
else is. They may not know exactly what they're doing
or how busy they are, but they kind of know
where they're at and what kind of call they're on.
So all that's taken into account.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
If I were to recommend motorists, obviously law says if
somebody's pulled over on the side of the road, that
you're to slow down at the very least, and if possible,
pull over to give space, save space. If I were
to suggest to listeners, as you're slowing down and driving by,
just take a look just pay attention to what's going on.
(44:19):
It might make a difference. Sure, is that good advice?
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 10 (44:22):
Absolutely, Well you need to be in that heightened sense
of awareness anyway, anytime there's a traffic stock absolutely going on,
you don't ever know how that might all of a
sudden affect you. And yeah, I mean it helps to
pay attention for sure.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Twenty one after the hour JD.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Johnson of the Talent Training Group, my guests are talking
personal defense. We've talked about how weather to intervene if
you see an officer in trouble. Let's talk about the
scenarios that we see all the time on video. We
see stories about it where something happens in a store,
in a fast food restaurant, some kind of business establishment.
(45:02):
You're there, you're you're having a meal or you're a
patron and you're just doing your thing shopping and someone
shows up with a gun at the at the clerk,
and uh, they're not just brandishing the weapon, they are
they are pointing it.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
The rules of.
Speaker 10 (45:19):
Engagement, well legal from a legal side of them, you
can put yourself in the shoes of the person having
the gun pointed at them, so legally, you're very justified.
I don't like to get into the forcible felony gives
you the you know, intervening in a forcible felony gives
(45:40):
you the authority, even though it does legally, But you
can put yourself in that person's shoes, the store clerk.
It's when you start interceding to prevent a forcible felony. Yeah,
that's the legal grounds. But who are you to who
(46:00):
are you? How do you know it's a forcible felony?
And but you can always say, Okay, if I was
that person standing behind the cash register and somebody's pointing
a gun at me, and if I had the ability
to defend myself, I probably would at that point. And
in today's world we see so many once, like I
said earlier, the value of human life has become so diminished.
(46:26):
I would say you're probably on safer ground for your
own well being taking action than you would be if
you're able to do so. Now, if you're the if
you're the guy or girl that has hits the panic
button and you become a gelatinous blob under stress, you're
probably you probably shouldn't intervene. You probably should run or
(46:49):
hide or whatever get away. If you have command of
your faculties, and you have training, and you have the
ability to do something, and you're paying enough attention to
wait for the right time to do that. You know,
I'm always going to take action in those situations.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
I watched and I told you about the video. A
guy decides to rob a fast food place. The only
couple in the restaurant dining happened to be a husband
and wife that were both police officers. She says to
her husband, is that what I think it is? And
they both immediately went and they went into tactical position exactly.
(47:26):
So my question then becomes for the average person, they've
done some training, they're proficient with a firearm, what are
the next considerations from that? You guys are trained to
just intuitively do They took angles where they weren't gonna
shoot and hit the clerk.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
That was first thing that I noticed. What about the
rest of us? You need to be thinking the same way.
Speaker 10 (47:50):
I mean, obviously, that's you have to limit the amount
of it to the best of your ability, limit the
amount of danger to innocent bystanders, and follow the cardinal
rules of firearm safety.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
You know, be sure of.
Speaker 10 (48:03):
Your target and your backstop, Yeah, target in what's behind
your target? You know, it would be a horrible thing
to do the right thing and still end up hurting
an innocent person. That would be a terrible thing. So you,
like I said, you have to be able to think
your way through this puzzle.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
Back with more of my conversation with JD. Johnson of
the Talent Training Group when we continue on the Twelve
Days of Preston. It's the month of April twenty twenty
four and day four of the twelve days.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
We'll be right back happy almost Christmas.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
It's Christmas Eve, but in this weird kind of time
warp that we're presenting, we are back in the month
of April. If you're just joining us, I'm Preston Scott.
Welcome to the Twelve Days of Preston. This is our
Christmas gift to you. As jose and I are taking
some time away from the program. We have worked feverishly
(49:24):
hard to give you a taste of twenty twenty four
and so this is kind of a year in review
and our Christmas gift to you. This is the Twelve
Days of Preston and day number four, which happens to
fall on Christmas eve is the fourth month of the year,
which is the month of April. This is a conversation
(49:48):
with JD. Johnson of the Talent Training Group and our
Personal Defense segment where we talk about a lot of
different things and sometimes we just pull out stories from
the news and try to figure out what we can
learn from. And so we picked up our conversation with
something that is growing all too prevalent in this day
and age.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
This is road rage, but it's not.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
This is a scenario that happens multiple times in every
city every day. In this case, a grandfather, though not
a very old grandfather. The guy was, you know, probably
younger than me. It's going to a Walmart, backs up
to look for to go into a parking spot. He
did not see the lady backing out of her parking spot.
(50:32):
He hit the car. Police describe it as a scratch
or two. He gets out of the car to apologize
for being at fault. She shot him in the face
and killed him.
Speaker 11 (50:47):
First of all, I don't know what he did wrong,
but I also don't know if doing the right thing
in this day and age is something you can do normally.
Speaker 10 (50:58):
Yeah, yeah, Without seeing his behavior when he got out
of the car. That's that's one thing you have to
look at, and then you know, pull the let's go
to the video. If he just got out to walk
back there and say he was sorry, then he absolutely
just got murdered. You know, that's just and and we'll
(51:18):
go back again to the value of the human life again.
So well, let's talk. There's the right thing to do there, Preston.
I mean, there's nothing we can't say.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Let's forget the apology. Yeah, you get into a fender bender.
By law, you're supposed to write, You're supposed to stop
and exchange insurance information, maybe take some photos if needed,
you call police.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
Do you always call police?
Speaker 10 (51:41):
I would recommend that in a traffic crash, Yeah, in.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
A park, in a private parking lot like the.
Speaker 10 (51:47):
You still have a duty to report that, Okay, okay,
if if the damage is there's a certain and it's
hard for us to say what there's a certain amount
of damage that requires a police report, and I don't
know what it is anymore. If it's one thousand dollars
or five hundred dollars or whatever, that requires a police report.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
Now that can be.
Speaker 10 (52:05):
A self report. Sure, there's the ability to self report
that crash for insurance purpose, but just to have an
impartial person there to do it. I would always call
law enforcement and let them tell you whether or not
you can file it over the phone or they'll send
an officer.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
In the case of you know, whether it's a fender
bender in a parking lot like this or on the
side of the road, I know that there's an immediate
pressure on those in the in the in the accident
or the crash to get out of the way, to
not hold up traffic.
Speaker 10 (52:36):
Correct move the car out of the out of the
road if.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
Possible, even if that's maybe changing the perspective of the incident,
still required to do it. Okay, So the law says,
move the car out of the flow of traffic. Yes,
all right. Having said that, are we at a point
now where you don't get out of your car if
you're armed, you keep a firearm handy, and you wait
(53:01):
for police to arrive before you approach the other person.
Speaker 10 (53:05):
No, probably not, because how do you know that's not
going to trigger them to get mad and walk up
to your window where you're in a more vulnerable position
sitting in a car. If they're mad enough to shoot
you in the face standing outside your car. They're probably
going to be mad enough to walk up to your
car and shoot you through the window.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
And what do you do?
Speaker 10 (53:25):
Assess the situation, do the best you can, and you
absolutely cannot prevent all of this stuff there there, It's impossible.
I mean, I'm sure that that man when he got
out of his car, if he got out of his
car to walk back and apologize or to just to say, hey,
what are we going to do about this, he probably
wasn't expecting that reaction.
Speaker 2 (53:45):
And that now that goes to my next question. Do
we then have to go to the step of assuming
that not everybody's going to receive your apology or exchange information.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Well, yes, and that is the.
Speaker 10 (54:02):
When we talk about minimal preparedness and paying attention to
your surroundings and all of these things. He needs to
be looking that you need to be paying attention to
the other person's reaction, what.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
Their hands and arms are, Yeah, what are the how
are they behaving?
Speaker 10 (54:17):
And that's the uh, that's the being aware of your
surroundings right there, what we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (54:23):
So you do all the right things, but you do
them with a sense of what could happen and being
prepared as you can be.
Speaker 10 (54:33):
Absolutely, and that's when you say, oh, I need to
go hide, run, fight, whatever it is I need to
do to survive this incident.
Speaker 1 (54:42):
What a tragedy though, Yeah.
Speaker 10 (54:43):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
One final segment here JD. Johnson, remember talentrange dot com
very simple, And that's kind of the the point I
want to drive home here, JD. Is you can actually
do something things other than just stand still and shoot
at paper targets.
Speaker 10 (55:04):
Sure, you know we we we built our range in
such a way where you can move. You can move forward,
move backwards, move laterly and put yourself in those scenarios
if I've got to move to cover, moving to cover, putting,
putting an obstacle between you and whatever the threat is
(55:25):
is such a huge tenet of good tactics. You know,
standing in one place. If you have a really really
good shooting stance when you're shooting, your tactics are terrible.
Uh that's kind of a that's kind of a running joke.
If you've got a great stance, your tactics are horrible.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
So uh so, assuming the position to fire practice, you.
Speaker 10 (55:49):
Talk about marksmanships. Sure, you talk about grip stance, side
alignment and trigger control. Those are your you know, side
alignments like picture, trigger control, Those are your tenants of march,
good marks, and ship. Well, if you're if you're practicing
all of those in a in a real life scenario,
your tactics are bad. If your if your stance is
good and your tactics are bad. So you know, the
(56:11):
first thing I would say is put some builds, some
movement into your drills. The other one, and the really
only truly true way to train for this stuff is
by setting up some sort of scenario to where you're
moving to cover. If your life, our doing life, our stuff,
you're moving to cover, you have cover there, you you
(56:32):
have physical barriers or whatever else. You have covers to
cover to move to, and you learn to shoot around
those covers from odd positions. One of the most valuable
trainings that is really difficult to do, is time consuming
and expensive, is scenario based training. We's got to ask
you or you have live players with either air soft
(56:53):
or paintball or or simmunitions or whatever. Law enforcement does
this all the time with uh simmunitions simulating stress you
are it is it is stress and ooculation is exactly
what that kind of training is called, where you're you're
putting the uh, the the stress or the fear of
getting hit with a projectile that stings. You can do
(57:16):
this with airsoft. You can do it with paintball. You
can do it with with the semunitions equipment, which is
very expensive. Semunitions equipment the law enforcement uses is very expensive,
but it's very worth it.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
You know.
Speaker 10 (57:29):
You can also do it with with with the the
paintball stuff. Some of your best tacticians combat tacticians are
guys that play paintball or girls that play paintball.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna mix metaphors here. I
had someone say, if you want to learn how in
the game of golf to be a good scorer of
the golf ball, don't practice with multiple golf balls at
the putting green. Take one one ball, chip with one ball,
and putt with one ball. Take the result of would
(58:03):
it be better to learn how to shoot effectively for
self defense reasons to not ever do the stance to
learn the fundamentals, but to do them in a more
practical application.
Speaker 10 (58:18):
Yeah, you still need to know. You still need to
understand the shooting platform. Okay, and the shooting platform most
of the time happens from the waist up the grip
and the placement of your arms and all that stuff.
The shoot a good shooting platform tends to happen with
your upper body. It never hurts to stand still and
shoot from one place. It's all just not afforded that right.
(58:41):
But in a real life situation, you don't want to
be standing still. If somebody is shooting back at you
or pointing the gun back at you, you definitely don't
want to be standing still. You don't want to be
where you were half a second ago. You know, you
always want to be moving to or from one place
to another.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
JD.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
Johnson of the Talent Training Group. He and Charlie take
turns and share their expertise with us a couple times
a month for our personal defense segments. These segments can
save your life if you listen to them, take in
the information, put into practice some of the suggestions. They
(59:22):
can absolutely make a difference. All Right, we've got more,
a lot more. In fact, we're about halfway through this one,
so we've got more to come. The Twelve Days of Preston,
day number four of the month of April and twenty
twenty four continues on The Morning Show with Preston Scott.
Speaker 1 (59:54):
All right, it's the second.
Speaker 2 (59:55):
Half of this particular show, day number four, the fourth
month of the year twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
We're recapping for you.
Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
It's kind of a best of the Morning Show with
Preston Scott and a recap of the year. And so
here we are in day four of the twelve days
of Preston. It's Christmas Eve. Getting last minute deeds done
is the order.
Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Of the day.
Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
I'm sure for many of you, little baking, perhaps, welcoming
of friends and family, and we'll keep you company sharing
some interviews. Now this keep in mind, this is April,
and we just received word that the Florida Supreme Court
was going to place Amendment four on the ballot as written.
(01:00:44):
It was an inexplicable decision to me, unconscionable. Of course,
by now we know the result of that. The election
has come and gone. But at that time I engaged
in a conversation with Matt Staver of the Liberty Council,
who is one of the chief opponents of this ridiculous amendment.
Speaker 9 (01:01:10):
Well, I think you said it. It's inexplicable because you
have three dissenting justices, all three of the women justices,
and they did a marvelous job pointing out why this
ballot initiative did not comply with Florida law.
Speaker 6 (01:01:28):
It was deceptive.
Speaker 9 (01:01:29):
People don't know what they're going to be voting for.
The ballot summary was not sufficient, It violates the single
subject rule. It will affect all three branches of government.
They were right on. And then some of those in
the majority, for example the Chief Justice, he acknowledged that
this ballot summary has a lot of vagueness and that
(01:01:51):
there's a lot of problems with its application that people
wouldn't know about. So he acknowledges the very problem that
we argued and that the Centers actually points out. He
acknowledges that. But then he goes on to say, and
this is the inexplicable part, that, well, this is just
part of judicial interpretation of any kind of statue. Well,
(01:02:14):
this is not a statue. This is a voter initiative,
and a voter initiative has to comply with certain aspects
of law. And when you go and read the ballot summer,
you need to know what you're voting for. Do people
know that they're voting for no law regarding abortion through viability.
Do they know that even after viability, a tattoo artist
(01:02:37):
is empowered under this particular provision to determine a medical
decision of viability. Do they know that even if the
person says the baby is viable, that they could override
any late term abortion law. No, they don't know that.
Do they know that health and safety regulations will be challenged?
Do they know that the only surviving law that could
(01:02:57):
possibly happen up through the late second, early third trimester
would be pronal notification? Every law is going to be
wiped out. No, they don't know that. That's exactly the problem.
And the Chief Justice acknowledge that. But then the Chief
Justice says, well, you know, that's just going to be
something that we'll have to deal with, you know, if
it's passed. Well, no, no, no, that's a statute.
Speaker 6 (01:03:19):
Maybe.
Speaker 9 (01:03:20):
You know, legislatures can pass statutes, they can have vague
language in there, they can get challenged, the courts can
have the job to interpret them. But that's not a
voter initiative because there's no debate on a voter initiative
unlike a statute.
Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Well, let me ask you, Matt, is is that in
and of itself that statement by the Chief Justice grounds
to challenge this again because he's calling it a statute
and it wasn't passed by this legislature. It's something that
we as voters are relying on the court to get
right for us to decide on.
Speaker 9 (01:03:54):
Well, he doesn't call it a statue per se, but
he makes the analogy to that's what you do with
a statute. And so that's a problem. And this is
not a statute because the reason why the law is
the way it is for voter initiatives is that there's
no give and take, there's no debate. Somebody who has
a special interest in this case planned parenthood in the ACAI,
(01:04:15):
they come up with a particular piece of writing, they
set it out there. They need to tell you exactly
what your yes is and what your no is, and
if they don't, then it can't go on the ballot.
You need to not be fooled. That's the problem.
Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
People will be fooled.
Speaker 9 (01:04:30):
So you have this decision that is coming forth and
it's inexplicable, and I think there's a real problem with
the courts interpretation not only of this but in general
of these voter initiatives. They've got to reform this system.
This is not right because this means anybody with money
can put basically anything on the ballot and fool the people.
(01:04:53):
And then when you fool the people, it goes in
the constitution and you're stuck with this, you know, And
when this happen and then health and safety regulations are challenged,
people are going to say, oh, my goodness, I didn't
think that this would knock those down.
Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Yep.
Speaker 12 (01:05:08):
You know.
Speaker 9 (01:05:09):
On the same day that we had the four to
three decision, which I thought it was just impossible that
we would have a four to three decision the wrong way,
and many others as well. On that same day we
had the six to one decision that ultimately resolved thirty
five years of our work to overturn this n R
t W case, going back to nineteen eighty nine, overruling
(01:05:31):
that terrible abortion decision.
Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
It's not lost on me that the four justices that
voted to allow this ridiculous amendment on the ballot are
men and the dissenting votes are women. Were these guys
bullied by the feminist movement that have been calling men
the purveyors of attacking their bodies all these years?
Speaker 9 (01:05:53):
I wouldn't say that that they were bullied about that.
I think that their legal reason was clearly off. I
just cannot understand this when you look at this particular amendment. Look,
you start with the title of it, to prohibit government
interference with abortion. Well you would think, well, maybe that's
(01:06:17):
the government is interfering, you want to prohibit it. No,
this literally takes any kind of government regulation out of
it totally. I mean, it gives unlimited abortion at any time,
for any reason, up to and including birth. That's really
what the title should have been. An amendment to provide
abortion at any time, for any reason, up to an
(01:06:39):
including birth. That's really what this is about. That would
have been a better title. So, I mean, even from
the title down to the ballot summary, down to the
actual language of this amendment, it was clear when you
look at all the cases, when you look at the
issues here, when you look at the brief, when you
look at the fact that they couldn't even answer the
right questions during oral argument and in the brief they
(01:06:59):
just didn't really address the subject of issues. I just
find it hard. As you said, it's inexplicable how four
justices would get it wrong, but they got it wrong.
Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
So now does it become a PR battle.
Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Do we have to now win this in the public forum,
which you know the mainstream media is going to fight us.
Speaker 9 (01:07:20):
Yeah, here's where there's two things. Number One, we need
to just make sure that they have all the signatures,
not only have the overall number of signatures, but they
have to have the distribution of signatures in each one
of these districts and precincts, and so we're going to
just double check and make sure that that's the case.
That's number one. Number two, we're going to look at
how they got these signatures. But number three, we're also
(01:07:42):
going to go into a huge PR battle to try
to let people know how broad, how radical, how extreme
this amendment is. More extreme than anybody thinks. Because how
these signatures were gathered is people went to these people
in parks in different events and they would say, sign
this petition to protect women. Okay, so they sign it, Well,
(01:08:03):
what's it about? They wouldn't tell you. I know, people
that were approached and they would have to ask multiple times,
what's it about?
Speaker 6 (01:08:09):
What's it about?
Speaker 9 (01:08:10):
Finally they would say, oh, it's about abortion, But they
would not tell that to most people so most people
sign this not even knowing what they're signing. So I
think we can stop this and beat it at the
ballot box. They're going to have to have sixty percent.
I don't think they're going to get that. But even
beyond that, here's the other thing. Beyond this case. No
matter how this happens, the three dissenters and even the
(01:08:32):
Chief Justice opened up the door for us to go
back and challenge personhood under Article one section of the Constitution.
It was raised, it wasn't addressed, it wasn't finalized. But
that's also a big concern. The people aren't aware of
Article one, Section two, how a person can have a
(01:08:53):
right to life, and that would include the unborn. So
this battle is far from over. I think we ultimately
win it. It was a terrible decision. It was a
great decision that we won on the other case where
we overruled all the thirty five years of abortion bad
decisions that we've worked for for thirty five years. But
I think we win this too. I think we win
it certainly in the media. I think we win it
(01:09:17):
by speaking truth. But I can tell you we're going
to be outgunned in terms of money because they're going
to spend maybe one hundred million dollars or more in Florida,
because they're making this not just abortion, they're making it
a presidential life.
Speaker 4 (01:09:30):
Absolutely, try to get people to the polls.
Speaker 9 (01:09:32):
That's really what this is about.
Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
More to come on the Twelve Days of Preston. Welcome
back to the Twelve.
Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
Days of Preston, Day number four, which is the fourth month,
which is the month of April.
Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
As we recapped the year twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Now, as we get to the top of the hour,
let's end this hour with one of our absolute favorite guests,
Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute. He co authors a
bunch of books with Glenn Beck. He's a prolific writer, researcher,
and he's brilliant. This particular month in April, we got
to talking about some things in the news, which, of course,
(01:10:23):
since Joe Biden took office, has been immigration. How did
we get to where a buddy of ours on the show,
Scott Beacon, he said, more illegals have entered in Biden's
administration than forty years of peak immigration through Ellis Island.
Speaker 8 (01:10:41):
Yeah, I mean it's absolutely astounding. I think we all
know how we got here. This is the easiest softball
question of all time.
Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Thank you.
Speaker 8 (01:10:49):
Democrats and a lot of establishment Republicans don't want to
do anything about border security. And over the past forty
fifty years we've seen that play out over and over
and over again. The problem has been getting progressively worse.
And finally what happened is we got an administration that
is so far to the left that they've essentially said,
(01:11:12):
just come on in. We don't care, we don't care anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Just come on in.
Speaker 8 (01:11:15):
Anyone can claim asylum, and it doesn't matter if you're
coming here under suspicious circumstances, it doesn't matter who you are.
We will not only welcome you into the country. We will,
you know, allow you to go to all sorts of
different places, will fly you across the country. We'll do
all kinds of things. And I think a lot of
people in Mexico and in Central America and South America
(01:11:41):
are and around the world who are coming across the border,
because we're finding all sorts of evidence that people from
China and other people are coming across the border through
Mexico now realize that this could be their last opportunity
for a very long time to have this, you know,
just walk across the border with no consequences, And so
I think that's what's going on here. This is sort
of the last ditch effort. If Donald Trump becomes president,
(01:12:03):
we know a lot of this is going to get
shut down, and a lot of other people around the
world know that as well. And that's why we're seeing
this massive flood that coupled with the radical policies as
the Biden administration, it's just been getting progressively worse, and
if Biden wins, it's going to get even crazier over
the next four years.
Speaker 2 (01:12:19):
I think we understand why the left side of the
aisle wants to do this. I think we get a
little bit of that. Tell me about the right side
of the aisle. Why are established Republicans? Is it because
they want to turn an eye for those that hire
these people or what is it?
Speaker 4 (01:12:37):
Man?
Speaker 8 (01:12:37):
I have heard all kinds of different explanations from people.
I think some of it is genuinely compassion. I think
they feel bad about the situation. They don't want to
just round up a bunch of people who've been living
here for years and sending them home. They I think
part of it is just it's really difficult to get
anything passed in Congress. Republicans couldn't even get Obamacare reversed
(01:13:00):
after they promised for years and years and years to
do that, you know. So I think there's a degree
of that. I think that there are some establishment Republicans
who have ties with big gigantic corporations, and big gigantic
corporations some of them benefit from illegal immigration because illegal
immigrants work for a lot less than than American workers,
(01:13:21):
and so, you know, big agriculture and you know, certain
industries like that I think benefit from it. So I
think there's a lot of different motivating factors on the
right on the left. I think it's just really simple.
They want more people to come here and then they're
going to hope that they'll vote for them, which I
think is all this is about.
Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Is it time to name and call out. Do we
know the actual names of the businesses the organizations that
are benefiting from illegal immigration and how do they get
around you know, the issue of wage laws and paying
people under the table and all that.
Speaker 8 (01:13:56):
Yeah, I mean I think that's all. That's a great question.
I think we should. I think we absolutely should. I
have not done the research to know exactly which corporations
are promoting this. But but if I were going to
look into that, and maybe I will, would I would
start with who is giving money to the various causes
(01:14:17):
and organizations that are promoting this ideology, Which corporations are
giving money to those causes, which donors, and which donors
are you know, shareholders of these big corporations and that
sort of thing that are giving money to promote these
policies in Washington, d c. And at the state level
and all of that. I think usually when you follow
the money, you'll find the answer that you're looking for.
(01:14:41):
I think, generally speaking, in a variety of different ways,
directly and indirectly. I think corporations kind of all benefit
from it in the sense that you know, regardless of
whether you as a corporation hire someone who's here illegally,
you might do business with a suppor that does, or
(01:15:01):
you might hire a building company that does, or you
might or or maybe you just have customers that do right.
And so there's just maybe you just think it's good
for the overall economy generally in your area. And you know,
so there's so many different factors that relate to this,
but I don't think you can separate that part of
(01:15:22):
it from the equation. I really do think that's one
of the most big motivating factors on the right with
establishment Republicans.
Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
I know that the left has been working so hard
to remove the term illegal from the immigration equation. They
want us to look at it as if it's just immigration,
but it's not. There's legal immigration and there's illegal immigration,
and they've conflated the two, and they do that quite intentionally,
and they do it well. So how do we What
(01:15:50):
do you believe is the answer and where does it lie?
Does it lie in the states? Does it lie with
the federal government?
Speaker 5 (01:15:57):
Right?
Speaker 8 (01:15:57):
So, I believe strongly, and this is a little bit
of a controversial view, but I believe strongly that states
have the authority to do a great deal on immigration.
I would argue that border states have the ability to
build whole border walls to stop what's going on right now.
I would argue that states have the authority to pass
(01:16:18):
all kinds of laws that would remove illegal immigrants from
their state and do other things like that totain illegal immigrants.
And the reason I believe that is because Article one,
Section ten of the Constitution says that no states shall,
without the consent of Congress, engage in war unless actually
(01:16:39):
invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit
of delay. And another section of the Constitution says that
the federal government shall basically protect states in the event
of an invasion. So I believe that what we're seeing
right now is clearly an invasions. I'm hoping that there's
a tipping point, you know. I think last year with
(01:17:01):
the law that was passed in Florida with ESG and
cracking down on financial institutions and ESG discrimination with banks
and pension funds and things like that in the state,
I really hoped that this year would be a wave
of anti ESG laws, and we saw a little bit
of that, but not as much as I would have liked.
But I do think that we are reaching that point
(01:17:23):
where states are realizing they have to do something or else.
Banks are just going to run wild with this, Other
financial institutions, insurance companies, they're going to run wild with it.
This year, actually, Tennessee is on the verge of passing
a very very good law. It's probably the closest ones
to the one that was passed in Florida of any
law that we've seen. Since it's already passed the legislature,
(01:17:45):
it's waiting for the governor's signature. They expect that he's
going to sign it sometime soon. So that's really good
news on the ESG front. So in America, I do
think we are seeing a pretty good pushback in the States.
I'm hoping next year we're going to see an even
bigger pushback, not only because I'm hoping the election goes well,
but also because next year we have some incredible, incredible
(01:18:13):
things happening in Europe that I think are going to
require states to really start taking this seriously. The European
Union is on the verge of passing its own ESG law,
except this ESG law is going to require massive companies
all over the world to basically impose ESG on their
(01:18:34):
employees if they do business in Europe. Wow, it's a
really crazy ESG laws. There'll be a vote on it
this month coming up. Implementation would start over the next
few years, and I think that's going to scare the
heck out of a lot of people if it actually passes.
Speaker 2 (01:18:50):
Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute just.
Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
As good.
Speaker 2 (01:18:58):
As anybody you will ever hear speak on any topic,
because he's a prolific researcher. He knows his business. And
I don't know how we found favor with this guy.
He's on Fox News, his work is published everywhere, and
he's as good a person as you would ever want
to know. And we're just thrilled that we can bring
(01:19:20):
guests like this to you here on the program. All right,
it's the Twelve Days of Preston two hours in the books.
Our number three is up next. Stay with us. Welcome
(01:19:41):
back to the Twelve Days of Preston, day number four,
which is the month of April, as we look back
at the year of twenty twenty four, and of course
it is Christmas Eve. And for this segment, our guest
is Scott Beacon. You can find his work at the
Bline blogger dot blogspot dot com. He's a data nerd
(01:20:01):
and this was an advance now of the election in
the month of April.
Speaker 13 (01:20:07):
Well, I enjoy looking at the polls. You know, I
think there's alwice questions about how accurate they are, but
I think they show some trends, and I think one
of the interesting trends that I'm noticing is that the
support of younger voters, particularly those eighteen to twenty nine,
appears to be eroding for Biden. And I think it's
(01:20:29):
very interesting looking at the data. For example, he won
that demographic by some twenty four points in twenty twenty.
Compare that Hillary only won that demographic by nineteen in
twenty sixteen, but a recent NBC poll shows him only
up by eight over Trump in that demographic, and a
(01:20:50):
Fox News poll actually showed Trump up by eighteen. So
whether you believe those polls or not, and they're probably
both in accurate, but you look at the broader trend
and it clearly shows a disillusionment of the young with Biden.
Whether they'll move to Trump as a question, but I
(01:21:10):
think that's an interesting trend to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1 (01:21:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:21:14):
One of the things we noted we came across a
story back a couple of weeks ago where a Democrat
operative a guy who is really highly thought of as
a consultant inside the Democrats circles. He was screaming at
the top of his lungs to party insiders to stop
registering kids to vote on college campuses. He said, you're
(01:21:38):
registering Trump voters they're swinging.
Speaker 13 (01:21:41):
Yeah, very interesting, very interesting. Now, just on the other
side of that is the thing that's a little concerning
for the Trump supporters is we're seeing older voters who
have kind of been a lynch pan of support for
the Republican Party over a number of years, seemed to
be moving away from Trump. So that's that's going to
(01:22:01):
be interesting to see both camps how they try to
bring each of those groups back into the fold. But
you know, those that don't believe this younger voter moving,
I mean, just look at what Biden is doing with
regard to student loans. I mean, he's already been told
clearly by the Supreme Court that it's unconstitutional right to
try to forgive these loans, and yet here he is
(01:22:23):
out hitting that again and again. And I think that
shows you how concerned they are about the young voters.
Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
I don't think it can be viewed in any other
way other than he's trying to buy votes, and he's
doing it in the only way he's got available to him,
even if it is illegal.
Speaker 6 (01:22:40):
Right.
Speaker 13 (01:22:40):
Well, it's very unfortunate too, because you know, they know
that any court action is not going to be done
until well after the election. So it's really it's really
sad to see how they're trying to use young voters
this way, because clearly this is unconstitutional and it will
be shown again, I think after the election, but at
(01:23:01):
that point it's going to be too late for the
young voters.
Speaker 1 (01:23:04):
Good morning, and welcome to the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Scott Beacon my guest this morning. Scott, you weighed in
on the Iran Israel. I don't know what we would
call it where we are with that right now? It
seems like every side has a spin to what's happening there.
I know where eye side, my allegiance is always going
to be with Israel.
Speaker 1 (01:23:27):
That said, your observations.
Speaker 13 (01:23:30):
Well, I think where we are right now is trying
to figure out what the next move is for Israel.
I mean, they're in a tough spot here. They're obviously
getting a lot of pressure from the Biden administration to
not do anything more, just to kind of take this
and leave it and not up the ante, so to speak.
(01:23:51):
But you know, I think you got to put some
of this in context. You know, they had the Israel
had three hundred and thirty one projectiles at their territories
from Iran, you know, came in Saturday night, you know,
sixty tons of ordinance. Now to put that in perspective,
you know, we talk about the MOAB bomb that the
(01:24:13):
US has dropped in Afghanistan, that's for per secutive that's
eleven tons. So what was coming to them was almost
equal to six Moab bombs when you put all those
three hundred and thirty one missiles and drones coming at them.
So to ask them to stand down, I think it's
a big ask with regard to the Israel and it's
(01:24:35):
going to be interesting to see, you know, where they
go with this.
Speaker 3 (01:24:38):
You know.
Speaker 13 (01:24:38):
The other thing I think it's been interesting is how
the mainstream medium plays this and even what Iran's position
has been. Well, they were just retaliating because their embassy
was attacked, But if you really look at what was
going on, their embassy was fully intact. It was a
building neck to their embassy, which they claimed to be
a consulate. But that constance so happened to have the
(01:24:59):
head command of the COODS force there along with six
other high level commanders. So what it begs the question
is that really a diplomatic mission or was that really
harboring you know, some terrorist forces with regard to the IRGC,
that really sows a lot of terrorism throughout the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Well, I made the argument that is really intelligence is
about generally, I mean, everyone makes mistakes, but generally is
about as good as it gets. They clearly, you know,
authored a very precise strike at a very precise target,
and it was meant to do what it did. It
was meant to send a message, and it was meant
to target people that they believed and had intelligence were
(01:25:42):
responsible for some of what has been going on in
the region. Scott, I've been making the argument, if you
start the fight, you don't get to dictate the terms
on how it ends exactly.
Speaker 13 (01:25:54):
And you know, the sad thing is is the Iranian
people and all of this. You know, I had a
note in my blog post it was kind of interesting
that if you go back to nineteen seventy eight, when
the Shaw was still in power, it took seventy one
reawls to equal one dollar. That's now six hundred and
sixty five thousand reawls. I mean, it's an incredible amount
(01:26:19):
of suffering economically that the Iranian people have taken with
the Mullos in charge there. So, yeah, the endgame here,
I don't know where the endgame is, but it wouldn't
it be poetic justice if out of all this we
ended up with a regime of Iran coming down and
the Iranian people could be free.
Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Scott, I want to just put a bow on the
topic of Israel and Iran. Clearly, one of the first
things Joe Biden did when he took office was hurt
our energy independence. In fact, pretty much ended what happens
if Israel targets Iran's only source of revenue, which would
be its oil.
Speaker 13 (01:26:57):
Well, you know, I think we we live on oil.
I mean, that's the way it is. I mean a
lot of people don't want to believe that right now,
but that is the reality in the world today. And
you know, I was around in the in the Arab
oil crisis back in the mid seventies.
Speaker 8 (01:27:13):
We had gas.
Speaker 13 (01:27:14):
Lines that would extend for miles. And you know, if
things get disrupted over there, either whether Israel attacks the
oil facilities or you can see Iran it takes retaliation
and tries to do something with the straits or moves
or whatever, we can have a major disruption in oil
and obviously the biggest problem we have right now is
we prepared for that eventuality with the strategic patrollum reserve.
(01:27:37):
But Joe Biden has drained half of that off in
the last over the last year, and we really don't
have the reserves that we did at one time if
we have a real disruption in oil. He's kind of
used it for political purposes, which is concerning. And that's
a big concern that I've had. I've written about several
times in bline. You know, what do we do if
we have a true disruption, a true emmerturgency, and not
(01:28:01):
a political emergency, which is how he's basically used it.
Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
Scottbeaconthebeline Blogger dot blogspot dot com is the website. You
can sign up for the free newsletter. You'll love the
detail you get and the data. All Right, We've got
more to come. It's day four of the twelve Days
of Preston. Welcome back to the twelve Days of Preston.
(01:28:45):
I'm Preston Scott. Instead of the normal morning show, we're
taking a year in review look back at twenty twenty
four and this is the fourth day of Preston, which
means the fourth month of the year, which means a girl.
And this is our monthly visit with US Congresswoman Kat Cammick.
And instead of starting out on policy and trust me
(01:29:08):
and we get there, I wanted to just dig in
a little bit to just asking about her welfare, her
state of mind, her condition, How are you? I mean
I when I talk to members of Congress, whether it's
the House of the Senate, I mean that sincerely, because
I can't get my mind around how difficult it must
(01:29:30):
be to have to find a way to plug into
that maneuver within it and then extract yourself with all
your brain cells intact.
Speaker 12 (01:29:42):
Well, I would tell you sincerely, but it might depress
your listeners. I'll tell you just obviously, everybody watched what
happened the day that we left DC and the votes
that went down and the things that happened, and you know,
I damn near cride on the house floor. I'm watching
my country slowly die in front of me, and it
(01:30:04):
feels like you're a little bit alone and trying to
save it, and so it's frustrating, it's maddening, it can
be a little bit depressing, But I think we need
a lot of happy warriors who can withstand all this negativity.
And that's a huge part of it, because it's just
DC is designed to drag you down. It is literally
(01:30:26):
a place that sucks the life force out of you.
And so it's nice to be back in Florida. I'm
sitting outside and having a cup of coffee getting ready
for the day, and it just reminds me of what
we're fighting for. Truly.
Speaker 2 (01:30:42):
We broke down the spending bill on yesterday's program CAT
and well spending might be the wrong word. Aid package
as it left the house. I want to give you
the opportunity just real quickly go through the individual parts
of that and why you voted the way you voted.
Speaker 12 (01:31:04):
Yeah, no, that I appreciate that, and I want to
be accurate. Let me see here.
Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
How about how about if I start with the Ukraine,
the funding for Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (01:31:13):
Your position on.
Speaker 12 (01:31:14):
That, Yeah, well, once again, I voted against Ukraine funding.
I'm really proud of the fact that I have not
supported any Ukraine funding in my time in Washington, and
that's for a number of different reasons, but the biggest
being there's no mission plan. It is an endless black
(01:31:35):
hole of what we would call a money pit, and
there's no accountability, there's no oversight. Now people would tell
you in this latest version that they embedded oversight into it.
Why haven't they done that in the first one hundred
and thirteen billion dollars. Why did it take us doing
another sixty for them to do that. That's ridiculous. That
(01:31:57):
should be a no brainer. And again, no mission, no
war termination plan, nothing that would show that this money
would actually go to help advance or stop Russia. And
so again, once again I was a no. And I
think a lot of people around the country are seeing
(01:32:18):
that this situation in Ukraine, this war in Ukraine, while
it breaks people's hearts. I mean you can't, you can't
look at the images and not feel something. Sure, But
that being said, we have our own problems here at home,
and so I have very specific reasons and some that
I've talked with the intelligence community about that I feel
strongly we need to really reevaluate all this money and
(01:32:43):
all these funds that we're sending. And so I was
again a no. And when it passed, you know, I
had Democrat colleagues handing out Ukrainian flags on the House floor,
which made my blood boil. I don't even wear lapel
pens of other nations on my collar. Often you see
people who wear like an American flag with a you know,
(01:33:05):
a Scottish flag or a you know, trying to think
of like, oh, here's a Brazilian. You know, they do
it for ceremonial stuff. I don't even do that because
I'm an American and I represent this nation. And so
to see US representatives waving a foreign nation flag on
the floor, it infuriated me. And so we actually, in
(01:33:27):
the aftermath, have introduced to legislation to prohibit and I
can't believe we have to do this, but to prohibit
a foreign nation flag from being flown on the House floor.
And you would not believe the pushback that we have
received on this. It's unbelievable. But if you can't even
agree as a body what nation's flag we're going to
wave on the House floor, which should be one and
(01:33:49):
only in that's old glory. If we can't even agree
on that, how in the heck did people expect us
to actually tackle the really important things, the tough things.
Speaker 8 (01:33:59):
You can't.
Speaker 12 (01:34:00):
So this is a starting place, basically, a reset of
what we're having to do. In introducing this legislation to
allow only the American flag to be flown and displayed
on the House floor in the chamber.
Speaker 2 (01:34:12):
Let's skip over the rest of that bill, but let's
talk about the I want to say it was the
rule that put them all together and then passed. Is
that how that all works? To send it to the Senate?
It had to be put together in one bill.
Speaker 12 (01:34:27):
Yeah. So there's been a lot of bad information about
what happened. In order for a bill to come to
the floor, there's two ways for it to come under suspension,
which means you suspend the rules and regular order and
it requires two thirds of Congress to pass it, or
you come under what's called regular order and it comes
(01:34:50):
under a rule, and that means a rule gets you
amendments that allows you to modify the bill. And any
good conservative would want you to actually be able to
amend and modify a bill. So that's why I was
pushing for a modified bill. Now people were upset saying, oh,
we could have killed it in the cradle. Actually you
(01:35:11):
couldn't have, because what would have happened, and this was
well established. Everybody in Washington knew this. If Republicans had
joined with the Democrats, as many of my colleagues did,
to try to kill the rule by effect stopping the
bill from coming Under a singular rule, the Chuck Schumer
(01:35:32):
bill would have been discharged on the floor, meaning only
about three Republicans, and there would have been far more
would have signed on to a discharge petition, bringing a
entirely clean meaning no oversight, no accountability, no nothing, straight
Democrat bill to the floor, and it would have passed overwhelmingly.
So that's the thing that people don't want to talk about.
(01:35:56):
That's the thing that people ignore. But it's critically important
to under in the process because for me, I believe
we should have single issue bills, and this allowed us,
even though I don't like the outcome, I was able
to stand on the House floor and vote up and
down singularly on Ukraine. Of course I voted no.
Speaker 1 (01:36:15):
How did we get a bill out of the House
that did nothing for our border?
Speaker 12 (01:36:20):
Simply put, we didn't have two hundred and eighteen Republicans
that would support a rule on a bill that had.
Speaker 4 (01:36:30):
Border in it.
Speaker 12 (01:36:31):
And I know that sounds crazy, but that's truly what happened.
I mean, I was in the room in the negotiating room,
and yeah, if you don't have two hundred and eighteen
Republicans that will hang stuff together, then you get a
more liberal outcome.
Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
So without naming any individual names at this point, because
that's not good for you and it's not helpful in
the process that you have to live and work in.
How to explain how Republicans are supposed that's supposed to
be the second or first biggest issue in twenty twenty four,
the southern border and the economy. How is it that
(01:37:06):
Republicans are not in unanimity on the need to fix
the southern border.
Speaker 12 (01:37:12):
If you talk to any Republican today that is an
elected official in Washington, they will tell you that they
support border security.
Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
Sure.
Speaker 12 (01:37:20):
But what we had in this particular situation, in order
to avoid getting the Chuck Schumer bill, Mike Johnson felt
that he needed to use the Ukraine aid as the
leverage point for border and because that was the situation,
he said, Okay, we can jam the Senate because the
(01:37:41):
Dems in the Senate and Joe Biden, they want Ukraine
funding more than anything. He said, let's pair Ukraine and
border together. And instead what we had was a group
of Republicans who got together and they said, if you
put Ukraine in this, I will not support the rule.
And he said, no, you have to understand trying to
use this as a leverage point. And they said, no,
(01:38:02):
we're going to take down the rule, which is unprecedented,
by the way, very very rarely have have Republicans taken
down a rule. It's become very new this Congress. And
so seeing that, you have to say, do I take
the Chuck Schumer bill?
Speaker 1 (01:38:23):
And so that was the choice though, and be forced
to take it. That was the option.
Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
You either if you don't, if you if you don't,
just go forward with the rule, you're stuck with the
Schumer bill.
Speaker 12 (01:38:36):
Yeah, because it would have been discharged and I know
it's very wonky and in the weeds, but it would
have been discharged on the House floor and there would
have been no border.
Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
What are the alleged conservatives, I mean, these are supposed
to be the people that are on our side are
and how are they defining it? How are they defending this.
Speaker 12 (01:38:52):
Well, because they're hiding behind policy and procedure. They're hiding
behind the fact that everyday Americans don't understand what a
suspension bill is or a rule Bill. They go out
there and they just really lay it out in a
way that is not one hundred percent truthful. And I've
called several of my colleagues up and I've said, you're
not being honest, and they have said, well, it's great
(01:39:14):
for fundraising, and it's disgusting.
Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
Well there you.
Speaker 2 (01:39:19):
Go, disgusting that sums up inside the Beltway from time
to time. All right, we're going to come back with
more of the Twelve Days of Preston. Welcome back to
(01:39:43):
the Twelve Days of Preston. This is day number four.
Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
It's Christmas Eve, and we're counting down till the end
of the year.
Speaker 2 (01:39:53):
And we do that by doing twelve shows that recap
the year that was, and so of a best of
and a year in review, all thrown together. And it's
our Christmas gift to you. So you get a little
bit of the best of content, some of our best interviews,
and one of our best guests, though it's not particularly
Christmas y is Lee Williams, and you can find his
(01:40:16):
work at the website The gun Writer dot substack dot com.
Sign up for the newsletter.
Speaker 1 (01:40:25):
You'll get some amazing content dealing with the Second Amendment,
primarily and the overreach of the federal government oftentimes, as
is the case with this particular story.
Speaker 6 (01:40:37):
We reported. I think we wrote five stories in total
this month on the March nineteen killing of Rian Melanowski.
He was the airport executive director there in Little Rock,
and the first thing that came out was a statement
from his family which said what everybody already knew. He
was defending himself. He didn't know he was shooting at
(01:40:58):
federal agents. And his attorney said something in that statement
too that a lot of people have missed. I don't
like talking about what Brian was accused of doing by
the ATF because he's not here to defend himself. But
let's say for a minute that he was guilty of
everything ATF said. Of selling firearms without a federal firearms license,
(01:41:18):
he would have gotten probation or probably some type of
diversion program pre trial diversion. He never would have seen
me inside of a prison, brother, and that to me
is damning for that serious in finger quotes of a crime.
He was shot and killed right after that. April seventeenth,
(01:41:41):
the Attorney General of Arkansas, Tim Griffin, demanded to see
bodycam footage from ATF But then a week later the
Senators Cotton and Bosman, a couple of Republicans from Arkansas,
put out of statement they'd talked to ATF and this
is going to be difficut felt for your listeners to
(01:42:01):
believe ATF agents when they hit the home, none of
them were wearing body cams. There is no body cam footage.
Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
Policy says they're supposed to have them.
Speaker 6 (01:42:08):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And that type of encounter is exactly
what body cams were invented for. You're going to go
into a man's home and judge has given you a
warrant to violate his Fourth Amendment rights. There's a possibility
they were going to use for us, and none of
them wore a bodycam. The only video footage was from
(01:42:29):
that raid was from Brian's rain camera, which is about
two seconds long, right before an ATF agent's covers that
camera with a piece of tape. It's shocking, it's stunning.
They went in there knowing full well that they didn't
have that serious of a charge. If they hit him
(01:42:50):
with ten car loads of agents and shot him in
the head. He died two days later. Then, once he
had spoken out, now the Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin
again his mum, he's suddenly mum. I sent him fifteen
questions man that I wanted answers for his handler wouldn't
(01:43:13):
allow him to be interviewed. He said he wasn't available
for an interview or a video conference interview or an
interview over the phone, which is odd because I never
told his handler when I wanted to interview. I guess
he's just not available for me. The most important question
I sent him was whether or not the Attorney General
there had been in contact with the US Attorney to
(01:43:35):
maybe try and work out some type of moratorium on
these deadly ATF raids until the questions could be answered
on the March nineteenth killing. But no, he didn't respond
to that.
Speaker 2 (01:43:47):
Lee The next steps, from your perspective as a reporter,
what are they?
Speaker 6 (01:43:54):
I've got a story coming out probably Monday on these
ATF Special Response teams they call them, and we are
comparing them not to other federal law enforcement agencies that
have special response units and some military special response units.
And let me just say this. You know, if you
(01:44:14):
want to be a member of the Secret Service Counter
Assault Team, that's a ten week course. Their sniper courses
even longer board Tax, the border patrols tactically Unit bore Tax,
you know, the one that took out that shooter down
at Uvaldi and the one that caught that fleet that
guy who escaped from prison. Theirs is a massively long
training course. And of course you've got Delta which is
(01:44:37):
six months long, DEBREW which is six months long, MARSK
Marine Raiders nine month program. How long do you think
ATF Special Response Team training is. Let me ask you
a question.
Speaker 1 (01:44:50):
I would say, I mean, you've set me up here,
and the way this is going tells me it's less
than a month. Two weeks, bro, That's what I was
going to guess. Yep.
Speaker 6 (01:45:00):
Yeah, And they still call themselves operators when they're done.
They call themselves operators in their literature that describes these unit.
Let me tell you they're not operators. Operators used worse
with surgical precision. These guys bootdoors and shoot homeowners in
the head. So we're taking a hard look at this unit.
It's leadership, it's selection, it's training, it's weapons to get
(01:45:22):
the get it out there. This unit scares me. Preston
the fact that they're out there and you know they
target God forbid a lawbiding gun under sells a firearm
easy to get on their radar, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (01:45:36):
And just just to put some context to this story.
The guy who's running this airport, he's a he's he's
just a he sells guns how often? I mean, what
do we know about his gun selling?
Speaker 6 (01:45:51):
He's fifty three years old, he makes two hundred and
fifty thous He made two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
a year at the airport. He would go to gun
shows and rent tables and sell and coins. He's a
massive coin collector too. I one of his customers called
me and told me that he had really helped him
out getting him some coins. So you see tables like
this at every gun show you go to. Now, have
(01:46:12):
a couple of guns, doesn't have an FFL, will sell them.
But you know, the way ATF made him sound in
their search worn appidavit is he's supplying guns to Isis
and al Cata. Not really the case here, bro.
Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
And Arkansas law gives a tremendous amount of freedom to
people selling guns.
Speaker 1 (01:46:32):
If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 6 (01:46:34):
No, you're correct, one hundred percent. You can it's a
private sale. You can sell a gun, but ATF, of course,
wants to change the definition of gun dealers right now.
They've got more rules out there that just were published
on this confusing crap whether or not you need an FFL.
It sounds like from some people who have read it
(01:46:56):
that if you sell a gun for profit, you may
you may need to get in FFL. Of course, the
Second Amendment Foundation for which I work and all other
program groups are going to sue the hell out of
ATF and will win. It's just Biden and the people
that handle him flexing on gun owners again.
Speaker 2 (01:47:15):
Tell me this, do you suspect that that or or
think that there's going to be a freedom of information
request on your part to try to get whether there
was any correspondence between the United States Department of Justice
in any form and the Attorney General for Arkansas.
Speaker 6 (01:47:32):
I never talk about what I'm gonna foy you usually,
but yes, the problem with when you foy a ATF.
I just got a response the other day from Damn
near three years ago. So they take their time. It's
unfortunate they're not They're the most opaque. They are non
transparent at all. The most opaque federal law enforcement agency,
(01:47:55):
and I'm getting sick of you and calling them a
law enforcement agency, because federal law enforcement acies don't behave
like this.
Speaker 2 (01:48:02):
At at some point you got to think that some
of these ATF agents have got to say, guys, what
we're doing is wrong.
Speaker 6 (01:48:08):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're an ATF agent
right now and you're taking down doors and going in
with fully automatic m fours made by Heckler and Cock
and shooting homeowners in the head who have not committed
any crimes, no criminal record, you know you better take
a look in the mirror to decide whether or not
you're on the right team here.
Speaker 1 (01:48:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
I mean, we're talking about a guy that had a
professional job that they could go see anytime Monday through Friday,
right right.
Speaker 6 (01:48:36):
What I would have done, and you know, I talked
to so many people, a lot of technical guys. You know,
ring the doorbell, wait till he comes down and answers it,
he sees everybody there in uniform, or do a call out,
call him on a cell phone, come out with your
hands up, or turn all the emergency lights on him.
They had ten vehicles there. This entire neighborhood would have
been bathed in red light, he would have known it
was the police. Instead they boot the door going and
(01:48:59):
shoot them.
Speaker 2 (01:49:01):
Yeah, not real Christmas, Ye, I know, but it is
what we were talking about and what is going on
in the news in the month of April. All right,
it is the best of sort of a year in
review and our gift to you the Twelve Days of
Preston continue.
Speaker 1 (01:49:46):
Welcome back.
Speaker 2 (01:49:49):
The Twelve Days of Preston. If you're just joining us,
well great, today's show's almost over. We'll be back tomorrow
on Christmas Day. We're gonna shake it up tomorrow a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (01:50:05):
I will make sure that we make it just a
little more Christmas y while still covering some of the
big news items and interviews from the month of May.
But today let's finish off April.
Speaker 2 (01:50:19):
It's the fourth day in the Twelve Days of Preston,
which means the fourth month, which means April. Now, I
rather than me set this segment up, I'm just gonna
let myself set it up from that particular interview in April.
We have this knack of finding great guests, and I'm
(01:50:46):
excited to talk with David Williams. The website is Book
David Williams dot com. It is National Small BusinessWeek, and
Dave is a He's a Florida guy. He's an entrepreneur,
founder of Team Higher as well as the Fifth Degree Academy.
He's been featured in I mean all over the cable networks,
all the publications, all the trades and David, welcome to
(01:51:09):
the Morning Show.
Speaker 1 (01:51:10):
How are you, sir?
Speaker 5 (01:51:11):
I'm doing excellent. How about yourself? Thank you so much
for having me today.
Speaker 1 (01:51:14):
It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (01:51:15):
It's a great topic because I think now more than ever,
certainly COVID put it on steroids, but more and more
people are looking at starting their own business. So being
an entrepreneur, you've got a vast amount of experience in
this How different is it now to try to start
a business than it was when you started? No?
Speaker 5 (01:51:37):
I think now, honestly, you know, the one blessing in
the silver lining that came out of COVID. I think
there's more opportunity in abundance than ever before before because
COVID created a whole new subset of problems, and those
problems need solutions to them. And in this new virtual
world that we're living in, I think there's more business
opportunity than ever.
Speaker 2 (01:51:56):
Is that kind of a good starting point for any
business is to find that niche.
Speaker 6 (01:52:03):
Yeah, I think it's finding that niche.
Speaker 5 (01:52:04):
I think finding that problem that you solve, and I think,
you know, a combination of having a good motivation. You know,
that's how I started, you know, kind of my my
long story short. I was a store manager at I
was a store manager at Cerca City in two thousand
and nine when I started one off of work on disability,
was told I was going to be on disability for life.
I fought through those challenges, came back to work, was broke,
(01:52:26):
and I had to find a solution. Knew I couldn't
work in retail anymore with my health condition. So then
the liquidators were selling all the merchandise. I had a
friend of the family and the insurance business. Decided I
was going to start my first insurance agency, and the
liquidators were selling all the merchandise, pennies and the dollar.
I took the last seven grand in my name out.
I'm a four oh one k one up about seventy
(01:52:46):
eighty grand worth of merchandise, resold it online, paid off
my debt, raised the capital for my first insurance agency,
and we scaled it to a twenty two million dollar
operation nine years later, and I exited that first one
and started these other ventures.
Speaker 2 (01:52:59):
So your springboard to that first business venture for yourself
wasn't even remotely related to where you wanted to go.
Speaker 5 (01:53:09):
No, I had no idea was God was closing one
door by force. And you know, that's how I really
started to look at challenges in my life because I
started that one moment in my life, Hey, God, why
are you doing things for me or to me like this?
But I realized he was doing them for me. On
the other side of every single challenge was the next
best phase of my life. And now I try to
(01:53:29):
look at challenges through those lenses that the next best
part of life is right on the other side of
solving that challenge.
Speaker 2 (01:53:37):
If you when you sit down and talk with people,
and sometimes I would imagine it's small, you know, somewhat
intimate gatherings where you just got friends and they've got
a friend who is just kind of curious about how
you've done what you've done. Other times, there are these
big seminars that you're doing and conferences and conventions. How
do you help someone determine that they're in a place
(01:54:00):
where they need to take this step or is that
something you can even lead anybody to.
Speaker 3 (01:54:06):
Yeah, well, I.
Speaker 5 (01:54:06):
Think it's I think some people know that right and
what stops us in life. It's fear right more times
than not. And I think you can define fear one
of two different ways. That can be forget everything and
run or face everything and rise. And I think it's
when we step on the other side of fear, we
have the right knowledge, we have the right mentors, and
you couple that with taking action. I think that's the
(01:54:29):
recipe for the start of any good business.
Speaker 2 (01:54:31):
David, Are the are the fundamentals of making the decision
to go into business?
Speaker 1 (01:54:36):
Do they vary.
Speaker 2 (01:54:39):
In terms of initial steps based on the type of
business or are there commonalities that are shared?
Speaker 5 (01:54:45):
Yeah, I think I think there's a lot of commonalities
that are shared, right because they're the same basic principles
that you got to do. You got to find that
right niche. I think one right one that's going to
be I'm a big fan of fining in a nine
out of ten offer.
Speaker 6 (01:54:57):
And what does that mean?
Speaker 5 (01:54:59):
Like something, if I offer that to ten different people,
there's going to be nine of them that are highly
interested in that product I think or service. I think
too often we have people going out there with a
product or service is there's not enough need for us.
So I think it's having the right solution first and foremost,
going after that right niche, and then really coming in again,
finding knowledge, finding the mentor, and putting in the work.
(01:55:21):
And it's that same formula kind of any business that
I've found being a serial entrepreneur myself, it's been that
same formula of business to business that I've stepped into.
Speaker 2 (01:55:32):
One of the things I've and I've got maybe a
few years on you, David, but one of the things
I've observed as just someone who's watching life and kind
of what I do for a living, I read and
I watch what's going on in culture, is I've observed
that that many of the younger people of today the
people that are most likely to start businesses. While there
(01:55:53):
are some real successful examples, there's still a lot of
people that have never heard the word no. They weren't
raised to you kind of fail if you will, to
come in third or fourth and not win a prize,
and they struggle dealing with that. How do you help
someone that's in this age group of wanting to be
an entrepreneur, but they've never fashioned that armor to take
(01:56:16):
no no.
Speaker 5 (01:56:17):
I think what that what really comes in handy for me.
There is mental reframing, so understanding that those nose those failures,
those challenges is all part of the process, because I
don't think you can do anything great in life without failure, right,
And that it's the failure in those moments that teach
us the lessons that we need to learn to really
embrace the process to have a successful business. So when
(01:56:39):
we don't look at it necessarily as a failure but
part of the process of having this ultimate successful business,
we look at it through a different lens, and you
can look at it through a lens of excitement versus disappointment.
Speaker 2 (01:56:52):
You know, you live in Florida, and I think a
lot of us in this audience would say, we're very fortunate.
It's not a perfect state. There isn't such a thing saying.
But in Florida, they're working hard to remove regulatory barriers
and things obstacles for small businesses and people that want
to to get into their own kind of line of
(01:57:13):
work from doing so. But that's not the case everywhere
and it's not necessarily the case federally. How adaptable are
your thoughts as it relates to the challenges that we
can't even predict their coming, and the ones that come
that are regulatory in nature and just make things difficult.
Speaker 5 (01:57:32):
Yeah, so one there. You know, obviously, you know, the
less government the better, The less regulation always the better,
I think when it comes to business. But I think
it goes back to reframing again, right so when we
look at the challenges that are out there, even in
some challenging states, well, everybody else is facing those challenges.
So I'm actually a fan of doing business in times
(01:57:53):
of challenges and in times of adversity, because that's when
there's the least amount of competition and everybody else is
running the opposite direction. And if you lean into it
during those times when everybody else is running the opera
the direction, I found that there's the most opportunity for
those that are looking for it.
Speaker 2 (01:58:08):
It's sort of like being being able to find that
wave in the stock market when everybody's doing one thing.
Speaker 5 (01:58:13):
You're the contrarian, absolutely, And I think that's the rule
of live by right there.
Speaker 2 (01:58:19):
David Williams a really interesting guy and a really good
guy too, and I hope you look up his material.
By the way, there was a lot more to that interview,
and so like a lot of our guests, there's more
than we are airing in the Twelve Days of Preston.
That's where the Conversations with Preston Scott podcast comes in. See,
(01:58:43):
with that podcast, we have select interviews that we push
out there and you can just listen to that interview.
So if you want to hear more from David Williams,
you just look up that interview on.
Speaker 1 (01:58:54):
The Conversations podcast from April last well this year twenty
twenty four. See, we're recapping the year of twenty twenty four.
Each and every day we're doing a different month. So
this being the fourth day in the Twelve Days of Preston,
it's the month of April.
Speaker 2 (01:59:12):
Tomorrow is the month of May. But tomorrow is Christmas Day.
Speaker 1 (01:59:17):
Oh, I can't wait. Join me tomorrow