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January 10, 2025 120 mins
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well, good morning, friends, and welcome to the third of
the Twelve Days of Preston. It's day number three, which
means today we tackle the month of March in twenty
twenty four. More on that in just a few minutes.
I'll kind of explain how we're doing what we're doing.
But as we always do when we start the Morning

(00:35):
Show with Preston Scott, we want to start with a
little bit of God's word. Now, let me give you
a little bit of an overview on that one too,
because we're approaching this a little bit differently. Now. Today
is just I mean, we're two days before Christmas. It's
the twenty third of December, and we'll get to that
date in history in just a moment, but we're taking

(00:58):
a twelve day of Pach to our devotional as well.
So even though we're gonna celebrate Christmas in a couple
of days here on the program, and I'm going to
air a couple of special features in our chronological look
at the year, it will be the month of May.

(01:20):
So to be kind of a weird juxtaposition, we'll be
covering the month of May on Christmas Day, but we're
gonna do some Christmas special content. I hope that makes
some sense to you, because I just think that's the
right thing to do. So it'll be a little bit
of a cut up program on Christmas Day because we

(01:42):
want you to really enjoy Christmas Day. So I'm gonna
kind of figure it out and we'll condense the month
of May and we'll do some expanded Christmas stuff and
so hang in there. But back to where we start
each show. We start each program with a devotional and
in this one, I want to turn to a couple

(02:06):
of different verses. First, John one one said, in the beginning,
the word already existed, the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. And the word there is the
word logos or lagos. I've always stumbled over which way

(02:32):
we go there, and it's referring to the entirety at
the very beginning was Jesus, because it's personalized. The word
was with God, the Word was God. He was with

(02:54):
God in the beginning. Jesus, this before he came, was
with God in the beginning, and was the Word. And
it was through the Word that all things were created.

(03:19):
And so as we start the program today, I want
you to just keep in mind that reality in John
one fourteen. It says, so the word became human, became flesh,
made his home among us. He was full of unfailing

(03:42):
love and faithfulness, and we have seen his glory, the
glory of the Father's one and only son. In verse
sixteen and seventeen, it says, from his abundance, we have
all received one gracious blessing after another. For the law
was given through Moses, but in Christ's unfailing love, in

(04:06):
God's unfailing love, correction and faithfulness, it came through Jesus Christ.
We can pause right there. It's a great way to
start the program. And remember, as we are heading to
Christmas Day, I really want to challenge you, maybe even

(04:30):
reframe the whole day in this way. For God so
loved the world he gave his one and only son
that whosoever believes in him would not perish but have
eternal life. And what I want you to pull out
of that, beyond the obvious, the invitation for salvation and

(04:54):
grace and mercy and the gift of eternity with God,
my goodness gracious, it's the I give gifts to my family,
my loved ones, out of a heart of gratefulness because

(05:14):
God gave me his ultimate gift, his son, And so
when I give gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning,
it's doing a very tangible expression of the ultimate gift

(05:40):
that God gave me and gave to my family. And
so I challenge you to just kind of reel in
the commercialism and the giving, giving, giving, to get, get, get,
and remind your family before you do a thing of
what the point of unwrapping a gift is. Unwrap that

(06:00):
gift is like that moment when you received the gift
of Jesus. Have you received that gift? If you haven't, well,
this might be as good a time as any to
think about it, just saying all right. Inside The American

(06:25):
Patriots Almanac for December the twenty third, seventeen seventy six,
Thomas pains The Great American Crisis is published seventeen eighty three.
George Washington resigns as General of the Army, retires to
Mount Vernon eighteen twenty three. Twas The Night Before Christmas
by Clement C. Moore is published nineteen forty seven. Of

(06:49):
Bell Labs researchers first demonstrate the transistor, the semiconductor device
that becomes a building block for modern electronic equipment. And
in nineteen eighty six, and I remember this, Dick Rutan
Jenna yeger Land the experimental aircraft voyager at Edward's Air

(07:12):
Force Base to complete the first NonStop around the world
flight without refueling. What an amazing accomplishment, Bert Rutan. Besides
that man being able to grow a wicked set of
lamb chop sideburns, that dude genius. And as a frustrated pilot,

(07:40):
someone who has soloed but has not ever had the
opportunity to finish and get his private license, I admire
Bert Rutan. He he was the guy who really paved
the way for private space travel. Not only was his
innovative airplane designs which he's demonstrated, but he really got

(08:06):
the whole SpaceX and what Jeff Bezos is doing obviously
Elon Muskin SpaceX. Bert Rutan was the guy who really
got that going. And so celebrating him and his accomplishments,
Yeah that works. December twenty third, all right, so we
are now the third day of the twelve Days of Preston,

(08:28):
which means we're in the third month, which means the
month of March. So in this program will highlight some
key interviews, maybe a topic or two, but we're capsuling
the month of March in the year twenty twenty four,
kind of a year in review. And because we're on vacation,

(08:51):
this is our gift to you, the twelve Days of
Preston here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott. It
just sounds like Christmas, doesn't it, And we're just a

(09:14):
couple of days before Christmas, But we're not because on
the Twelve Days of Preston, we're celebrating the month. We're
reflecting back on the month of March. So let's get
to it. At this point, we are wrapping up the
legislative session and so joining me in studio as always

(09:34):
with the legislative updates, Salnuzo. But Sal had an interesting
announcement to make regarding a bit of a job change.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
So I am serving as executive director of Consumers Defense,
which is a national nonprofit policy and advocacy organization. It's
functions very similar to JMI in terms of the policy buckets,
but it's dedicated to protecting markets and consumer from the
influences of crony capitalism, will corporatism, communist China. The main

(10:07):
focus of the group is combating the less efforts to
impose ESG environmental social and governance standards on the US economy.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
So you're going to be kind of on the front
lines with our buddy Justin Haskins.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Absolutely, and had the pleasure of working with Justin from
Heartland when JMI engaged on ESG legislation a couple of
sessions ago. And so the way that I have tried
to kind of explain it to folks who aren't as
familiar with the concept is, if you think about ESG
kind of like cancer. Cancer is a very broad term.

(10:44):
There's brain cancer, colorectal cancer. Absolutely, they look different, the
treatments are different, et cetera. Lots of different components infects
in different ways. ESG is very similar within each of
those letters that the buckets of environmental, social and governments
the left and by proxy China are looking to kind

(11:05):
of infect and spread policies that, ultimately, like cancer, destroy
the host organism. Sure, and so many of the things
that Jami had worked on over the years and that
I was pleased to be a part of, in things
like rooting out DEI on campuses, working on the pension system,

(11:27):
healthcare and kind of protecting the conscience rights of doctors.
All of those flow under a particular bucket of ESG,
and so it's kind of an umbrella term that consumers
Defense is working. I'm staying in Tallahassee. Florida's a very
pivotal state.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
I was just going to say, based in Florida's got
to be helpful because Florida is in fact leading the
way from a legislative perspective on fighting this stuff.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Absolutely, And so the group and the network that it's
a part of is based in DC, but it there
are executive directors of different nonprofits around the country. Florida
is a pivotal state because, as they had kind of
said to me as we were talking about the opportunity,
Florida is the proving ground for legislation, and there is

(12:15):
a sense that all eyes are on Florida from other
conservative states. So if a state like Florida, growing at
the speed that it is, the size that it is,
with the economy that it has, can enact some of
these things, it makes it a whole lot easier for
other in particular red states, to move forward on well.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
And on the news front, we've seen in recent weeks
the decision of some pretty notable banks across the country
getting off of one of these ESG pushes saying we're
no longer going to be part of that and making
a big deal of it. But also notably, I haven't
been able to talk about the story today. It's on

(12:52):
the schedule for tomorrow. Blackrock has admitted in its disclosures
for the first time ever YEP, that ESG policies are
detrimental to investors.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Well, and I would stress that the motivation for what
they're disclosing right now is a little bit of smoke
and mirrors, sure, And so the umbrella of ESG, because
of the work of kind of a lot of people
around the country, it's been more noticed. And so as

(13:23):
the as the brand of ESG kind of gets established
a little bit more in the public lexicon, what we
expect and this is why Consumers Defense is functioning the
way that it is is that the kind of the
motivation goes down to the policy areas. So we have
seen policies that have been kind of championed by groups

(13:46):
like the Team starch Union and Big Labor that fall
within the S bucket and how they are morphing from
Okay esg bad, but the policies contain they're in. They're
still going to be pushing them. A lot of what
we're going to be doing is figuring out some of
the headfakes, working on campaigns.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
To how they go underground, to do it anyway like
some colleges may try to do with the state of
Florida exactly. And so that's what we're on the forefront of.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
And I am just incredibly blessed to get to work
with an amazing group of people at Consumers Defense as
well as a great network, and the website is consumers
Defense dot com. It's a little bit of a shell
right now because when I came on board it was
kind of in a build out stage. There's a partner
group called Consumers Research, which has been around for about

(14:36):
one hundred years, and a huge network, but that'll all
be coming very soon.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Back with sal Newso Consumers Defense it's still less. It's
gonna take a little while, it's gonna take a minute. Yeah,
I'm not gonna point out you walked in with a
new hairstyle. I'm not saying that. I bet you did.
I didn't walk in with a new hairstyle. Yes she did.
I just didn't put stuff in my hair. It's a
new hairstyle. You walked out in public and you have

(15:05):
a new hairstyle.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Well, going from my garage to your parking lot is
that's not quite getting out of the public.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
But whatever you say, Pal, whatever you say, however you
want to try to sanitize that, that's progress. You got
a new look, all right. The veto of HB one. Yeah,
So the guns who got shocked by this? I don't
know that anybody was shocked by this. The governor had
indicated throughout the course of the sessions weeks that he
was uncomfortable with the provisions and the bill that were

(15:33):
kind of an outright ban. He wanted something, he said,
that would stick in the courts, and so he vetoed
HB one, And in the veto letter, it's my guess
that he had worked with the Speaker and maybe even
the Senate President on this in advance of announcing the veto,
because he also announced that the legislature is going to

(15:54):
use HB three, which was a bill aimed at age
verification for adult oriented sites, as a new vehicle to
push a what he would consider a better policy on
social media. The interesting thing to unpack is why that's

(16:15):
even allowed. HB three was passed by the House, but
the Senate took HB three and added it onto the
final version of HB one that ultimately got passed by
the full legislature. So HB three still technically exists as
a vehicle to move policy. So instead of vetoing it

(16:39):
and then having to either come back in a special
session or or wait until next year, they have a vehicle.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
So they are amending HB three to be They're going
to keep the ban in place, but they're going to
allow for parental consent. They will still have some form
of age verification. I'm waiting to kind of see the
final version of it for how aggressive the age verification, Well.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
That determine in your mind it's ultimate legality to court challenges.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Yes, I think if the age verification method becomes too
aggressive or butts up or comes too close to what
Arkansas passed, it's absolutely going to be litigated. Yeah, just
because it was litigated in Arkansas and in Utah. I
think if the age verification method is something a little

(17:29):
bit more passive, and I just don't know what that
could be yet, but if it is passive, it may
squeak by without litigation, but we'll have to see you.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
And you heard us talk about DEI. The jobs are dead,
you know, Long live the King. I mean, I've got
an email from somebody saying that, you know, even locally
at FSU, there's going to be efforts to hide some
of this stuff. Oh absolutely.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
And so the more left leaning an institution is, I
think the more of a of a liberal arts bent
you've got in a university, the more they're going to
try to push this underground. Hence what we're kind of
charged with in my new role with Consumers Defense. So
at UF, however, totally different story. The President Ben sass

(18:17):
kind of as a result of the legislature's kind of
rooting out DEI in the state university system, they took
the bull.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
By the horns. Last little note here on the governor
comparing this session to last. The fact that he didn't
have too many signing ceremonies. Is that a result of
his being in the campaign mode.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
I don't know if it's a matter of being in
a campaign mode, because what I looked at is they
have only passed fifty nine bills as of yesterday or
the day before, whereas last session they were just sending
stuff to him every week and they were doing things.
So it's a very different tack. It's a little bit
more traditional. I would say last session was more of

(18:58):
an anomaly. The impending campaign probably lean into that, but
this session much quieter in both chambers until now.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
More to talk about with Salnuzo in just a few moments,
as we continue to talk about the latter stages of
the twenty twenty four legislative session. It's kind of interesting
because this show is serving as a time capsule. We're
capturing the year twenty twenty four and now the month
of March and the first part of it, and Florida

(19:28):
Governor Ron DeSantis is busy campaigning, and it was a
very different dynamic as he was running for president. Things
changed when he came off the campaign trail, but as
of this moment, in the Twelve Days of Preston, he's
still running for the highest office in the land. All Right,
we'll continue Salnuzo with Consumer's Defense on the Morning Show

(19:52):
with Preston Scott. If you're just joining us, it's the

(20:16):
Twelve Days of Preston. We are in the month of
March recapping the year twenty twenty four, even though we're
just a couple days before Christmas and so we're picking
up with the legislative session and our visit was sal Newzo.
Are there any rumors of entanglements that could be problematic
for the budget?

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Nothing that could be problematic for the budget. The budget
conferences in full swing, so you have conference committees for
each of the major allocated categories, so you have agriculture
and natural resources, State administration and technology, criminal and civil
justice approches, education, health and human services, transportation, tourism, and

(20:57):
economic development. Their job is to basically go through the
general revenue portion of the budget, which amounts to about
forty six point seven billion. The rest of the one
hundred and fifteen is federal dollars that are coming through
for medicaid, a number of other trust funds and things
like that. But this is what the legislature can actually

(21:20):
direct money at on their own. So they have these
subcommittees on each of the House and Senate, and then
they kind of pass back and forth offers and they
reach agreement on him. If there's a difference that they
can't kind of bridge, what they do is they call it,
they bump it. They bump it up to the major
appropriations chairs. Now on the House side, that's Tom Leak

(21:43):
and on the Senate side it's Doug Broxon. Now when
it gets today, Oh yeah, very much so. In fact,
Tom Leak is running for a Senate seat because he's
term limited out, likely to win it assuming he makes
it through the primary, which I don't know that there's
anybody else in there. And I want to say Doug
Broxon kind of in the place of like he may

(22:04):
have endorsed him.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
I'm not sure. But because this process isn't always collegial.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Oh, there are years that I can recall, not in
the far too distant past, where in one year, one
of the chambers I want to say it was the
House actually adjourned and left the city, leaving the Senate
in Tallahasse. Yeah, it was just a crazy set of circumstances.

(22:31):
But no, it seems to be moving very cleanly, very smoothly.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
When do they have this thing? When do they have
to have it done?

Speaker 2 (22:38):
So they have to lock it in and kind of
get the budget finalized by Tuesday at some point, which
would trigger the seventy two hour cooling off period and
then they can vote in signeyed.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
I know this is weed stuff, but I think it's
interesting weed stuff. When you talk about lock it down,
get it done, does that mean printed or placed in
the legislator's hands via email? Do they? In other words,
at what point does it enter the hands of the lawmakers,
because that's part of the process, right, Yes, that.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
Is I'm assuming in the information age that all of
that is exactly the same, timing that as soon as
the budget is locked in and it's identical in both changing.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
So they're crafting it in process, yes, and the parts
like they have strikeouts and stuff that they need to finalize.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Oh yeah, and then there's a what they call an
implementing bill that goes along with it, and once those
two things lock in, then it goes to everybody in
the leg Oh gosh, that's an excellent question.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
I mean, I just you know, you just think what
happens if they get a decimal point wrong?

Speaker 4 (23:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:48):
You know, I mean, yeah, that's I that this is
one I want you to remember it. And next week
I'm gonna find out the answer to thank you who
proof reads for all the decimals and what happens I'm
even curious what happens if in misplaced decimal goes through
and it's not like what happens there.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
I do know they spend a trillion dollars on Florida
State University athletics.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yes, don't know. I do know there is an incredible staff.
The staff and the budget sides of both the House
and the Senate are incredible.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Two more segments with Sound News of Consumer's Defense. We
are talking about the legislative session. They still should have
taken our suggestion the you know, put the hanky down
at the beginning and then pick it up and then
they can drop it. We had that last year. Yeah,
I love that idea. Yeah, I floated it with a
few people and they just kind of laughed at me.
But you know, it's because they didn't think about it.

(24:45):
They think about it. It's a brilliant suggestion for a
granted it's an oxymoronic term, a new tradition, a new tradition.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, all right, bills that are dying bills are dying people.
We've got a lot in the hopper here are that
are dead. Life support, radical condition, County Commissioner, term limits dead.
The chambers couldn't agree on eight or twelve years, which
is weird because when I was looking at the Senate bill,
the Senate bill had eight years in there, but apparently
they came back and wanted twelve and they couldn't bridge.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
I'm just curious. Were they talking about making sure that
staff couldn't be retained.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
I don't know. I've got to figure out a little
bit more so. It's a good question to ask, though.
Negligence for civil liability for fetuses that are killed dead.
The Chambers had backed off of Senator Aaron Grahl's effort
to establish what many had considered a first step toward
a personhood statue.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
We need it and yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Basically the bill would have created civil liability if a
pregnant mother is murdered or killed somehow, that the fetus
also exists and there is civil liability there.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
HB sixteen thirty nine requiring official documents to list a
person's by a logical sex as opposed to their gender
identity made it through the full House, but the Senate
is not gonna hear it. In addition, that bill would
have also mandated any insurance company that covered gender reassignment
surgery they would also have to cover d transitioning. So

(26:17):
I expect this bill this may come back in wyetrear.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Why did it die in the Senate Not sure.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
The Senate President just said they would not be hearing
this bill, So I do not know if it was
something within the caucus or it was something that she
just did not want moving in her chamber.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Because right now, I mean, we're protecting women's girls' sports
in the state, are we not?

Speaker 3 (26:39):
We are?

Speaker 1 (26:39):
Indeed, we are.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Indeed, yeah, there is although I will point out there
is a rule that the Governor's office had issued to
the Department of Transportation Florida Highway Safety motor vehicles on
driver's licenses that they're not accepting gender changes because of transidentity.
It's something where you know, at least one fast to come. Yeah,

(27:04):
there's more to come. Senate Bill sixteen ninety, the human
trafficking bill that would have banned anyone under twenty one
from working in an adult establishment, also dead for ninety eight.
Repealing the state preemption on single use plastic bands by
local governments also dead. The Defamation Bill. It popped back
up this year. It would have changed some of the

(27:25):
laws governing defamation cases.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
In the state.

Speaker 2 (27:29):
Keep my speech in my computer pocket your speech for
next session if it comes back. Seventy to fifty THC
caps on marijuana dead, so you don't have to worry
about that if you smoke them. There was a separate
bill from Senator Colling Burton on what was considered the
fake THHC. The Senate moved it. The House has not

(27:51):
taken it up on the floor yet. I'm guessing paying
attention to this might be something that they horse trade
back and forth. So you got that House Bill seven
thirty five. It would have banned public officials from soliciting
gifts from ford and entities.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
That's dead.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Eleven ninety five my favorite bill of twenty twenty four.
It's on life support. It made it through the House.
This is the bill that would require a supermajority for
any commission looking to raise the millage rate. It did
not make it onto the appropriations calendar in the Senate,
so it would require a rules waving on.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
The Senate side.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I believe it could get brought over in messages from
the House because it's passed through, but the Senate President's got.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
To authorize it.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
HB.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Forty nine, revising employment rules for sixteen and seventeen year olds.
It's on life support, made it through the House. Senate's
a hold up there, Senate Bill fifteen sixty eight, which
was the Fantasy Sports Regulations. It's in critical condition, but
it's reversed. The Senate has moved it the houses. The
hold up there.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Interesting, yep.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
So that's what we've got in terms of the dead, dying,
and on life support list, and that's only a small
portion of it.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
But out of that list, what's the one bill that
you think needs to have a last gasp and chance
at resuscitation? Oh, eleven ninety five.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
I really would love to see truth and taxation move
in Florida. This bill from Rep. Garrison is the first
step in that, and I think there's more to be
done on that. But in order to get to full
truth and taxation, which we can talk about in another time.
Eleven ninety five, I needs to really move.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Sound newsoh with Consumers Defense a little taste of the
legislative session that was in twenty twenty four. We'll be
back with more of the Twelve Days of preston the
month of March twenty twenty four. As we continue just
a couple of days short of Christmas here on the
Morning Show with Preston Scott. All right, let's get right

(30:12):
to it back with the twelve days of Preston the
month of March being covered on today's program, and this
a visit with US Senator Tommy Tuberville, the coach from Alabama.

Speaker 5 (30:24):
Good more in Preston, I'm doing well as well it
could be expected up here in the clown world.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Is there a shot for that?

Speaker 5 (30:34):
I'm gonna tell I tell you what this place. You can't.
You can't put put a picture to all that as
it goes on up here. You know, it's just it's
really scared you, to be honest with you, Preston. You men,
you and I have talked before, and I will say
you that, I mean, this is a divisionist country like
I've never seen. And we've got a guy that doesn't
know what date it is is supposed to be our

(30:57):
leader in Joe Biden, and it's really scary.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Well, let's maybe try to find a little bit of
a view that's half full as opposed to half empty.
It was Super Tuesday yesterday Donald Trump all but clinched
the deal. What are your expectations of Nicki Haley.

Speaker 5 (31:15):
Well, she's had her fifteen minutes of fame. I've listened
to her speak before or five years ago, and she
is an establishment one hundred percent, and she she's going
to be a career politician, you know. And the thing
is that everybody should know about Donald Trump is he
loves the country, number one, but he also loves loyalty.

(31:40):
And he gave Nicky Haley an opportunity to be you
an basador. And then she said, well, I'm not going
to run for president. I'm going to do this or that,
And of course she lied about that and she ran.
She's just trying to get her name in the hat
and this will probably end of her career in national politics.
She needs to go get a real job for a while.
I understand how the American people are her ring and

(32:01):
the direction that this country is actually going, and it's
not going in the right direction right now, and she's
not somebody that needs to be even close to part
of this answer to all the problems we got right now.
He might make her something, but she gonna try to
hold him hostage and try to get some kind of

(32:21):
cabinet or vice presidential nomination.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Let me ask you this, I'm a big fan of
President Trump's policies. One area that I felt like he
fell short, which he's certainly not alone. This has been
going on for several decades now, is with regard to
our debt. Do you have assurances? Are you aware of

(32:44):
whether or not that will be something he will tackle?
Should he be, you know, find his way through the
maze of cheating that the Democrats are likely to do
in November.

Speaker 5 (32:55):
Well, exactly, he knows that's our number one national security problem.
Talked about. I've played a lot of golf with him,
talked about it, and you know, I've given him my
thoughts of what I've seen up here on Capitol Hill
the last three years in the direction of a lot
of these neo cons to fight all these wars, and
you know, nobody looks out for the American people up here.

(33:16):
And that's the reason Donald Trump is so popular. He
talks like he's for the for the American people, and
he's going to be for the American people. The problem
he ran into was COVID, and it cost us treeions
of dollars. And we don't know really what happened with
COVID we're finding out more and more. I'm on the
Health Committee and there's a lot of shenanigans that went
on with that, and President Trump was not given a

(33:38):
lot of the correct information about what was going on.
But yes, I think he's going to really address the debt.
We're going to have to. We have no choice. We
can cannot continue to print. We're print and barring eighty
thousand dollars a second, four point six million a minute
as we speak in this country, and the American people know,

(34:00):
everybody thinks the economy is okay. We'll look at stop market.
It's been going up. Well, that's pumped up by all
this money that the federal government and Joe Biden's putting
out into the economy. And sooner or later, we're going
to have to realize, hey, we're going to tighten her belt,
pull in the strings, and say listen. For us to

(34:21):
get back to a normal country that can survive, we
got to do something about the debt. And President Trump.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Knows that the Resident of the United States continues to
nominate really weak people for important positions. Secretary of Labor
nominee Julie Sue. You uncovered some details about her tell.

Speaker 5 (34:38):
Us well, I mean, she she is one that's very
very far left progressive globalist socialists, and she was before
she was assistant a Secretary of Labor, which is what
she's doing now, she's actually running the Labor Department, whatever
that is. But we found out she was sent letters

(35:00):
to Ice that you do not do your job, you
do not arrest people here because they're here illegally. And
we found out those those letters and those emails, and
it is really resonated up here. But again, the Democrats
are still going to try to push her through probably
this week and be the full time Secretary of Labor.

(35:23):
But that's just the things that we deal with up here.
You know, the border is a disaster, and we saw
yesterday three hundred and twenty five thousand illegals have been
flown in from other countries and we didn't know it.
Joe Biden's doing it on his own. Folks were done.
If we continue this past, we can't we can't survive.

(35:45):
I don't know whether we can survive another year or this,
but surely the goodness to American people wake up and
see we have got to make a change in Washington,
d C. In the federal government.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
You know that underscore is a question I wanted to
ask you. Obviously, the president is is vital to all
of this, but so is getting control of the Senate,
and not by just a voter to senator. What are
the prospects. What are you hearing about the race for
the Senate and control of it for November?

Speaker 5 (36:14):
Well, and the prospects are good for Republicans. The map
is good this time. They've got a lot of tough
races on their side. Hopefully we can win Montana, Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania.
I think the prospects could win in fifty three fifty
four are good. Now can we do that? Well, not
just wait and see. There's a lot of shenanigans goes

(36:34):
on in the elections. We know that we saw it
in two thousand and twenty. But the main thing is
we just got to go do our work and go
out and sell the prospects and the candidates that we have,
because we've got some really good ones that are really
very conservative. They believe in the country, they believe in
the things that the Constitution has got us to the
point of the best country in the world. But they

(36:55):
also don't understand the problems so I think we've got
a good opportunity.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
I'm curious, how is it that flying three hundred thousand
plus into this country is not some form of an
active treason.

Speaker 5 (37:08):
Oh, that is an act of treason, especially when the
federal government, the Senate and the House, have no clue
about this. That's the reason may Orcus has got to go.
This guy's lied to us. Well, they impeach him in
the House. Humor is not gonna bring it up. That's
not ever gonna happen. But these people can't tell the truth.
But they're globalists. They want people to come in here
to take over this country because they want power, they

(37:31):
want votes. They don't care about the country. They care
about them continuing in power. But it's you know, it's
just wait and see. Here's what's going to happen. What's
happening in Gaza right now. I would imagine even before
the election, you're going to see a mass of flyout
in palace in Gaza and bringing people from Gaza into

(37:54):
the United States, hundreds of thousands. And I'm telling you,
you know, we like our freedom, we like our country,
we like our Christianity, but we don't want people here
that doesn't like us, right, and they hate us, and
so that's just a problem that we're in and we
can't control it. I mean, election have consequences. Joe Biden's president.

(38:17):
Somebody's running the show. We don't know it is, but
I think it's president by committee right now, but that
will continue it to happen if if we, for some reason,
the American people put this guy back in office.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Last question, I know you got a role a coach,
but you mentioned Chuck Schumer not allowing you know, certain
things to come to the floor. I'm curious what role
you think Mitch McConnell's going to play in all of that.
I feel like he's been an obstructionist to real conservative
values for quite a while now.

Speaker 5 (38:47):
Yeah, well the center McConnell's really changed since I've gotten here,
and for the worst. Health wise, he fell and hit
his head on some marvel about a year and a
few months ago. Had been the same. He should have
sat down last year when his health really got bad.
He's trying to hold on to November. I keep telling people, folks,
we can't have a lame duck going into this election.

(39:09):
We got we got to put somebody in that position.
Now because that person also needs to get on the
plane support Donald Trump and support candidates in these states
that we need to get elected. Yep, he's not going
to do that. Ms McConnell's not going to do that.
So I think John Cornyn John Thune will probably the
two front runners for that, but you never know. But again,

(39:30):
before we get to the convention time, we need somebody
in leadership role that's going to help President Trump and
the country with new senators in the lot of these
swing states.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
US Senator Tommy Tubberville. As we polish off the first
hour of day number three of the Twelve Days of Preston,
more to come. All right, welcome to the second hour

(40:03):
of the third day of the twelve Days of Preston,
and let's get right to it. This is the month
of March and our visit with you, as Congresswoman Kat
Cammick from Florida's third congressional district.

Speaker 6 (40:17):
Good mornin. Always great to be back with you.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
I feel like I need walk up music, you know,
like we need like a theme song for you. It's
it's been a minute since you've been with us, So
there's so many things to talk about. What let me
just let me turn this around. If if you were,
you know, calling the shots, and you had had people

(40:42):
across America listening to you as you do what's most
important on your mind right now? As a member of Congress.

Speaker 6 (40:51):
Oh man, if I were queen for a day, well,
first walk up music, theme song, entrance music, it has
to be Tom Petty, you know, won't back down, you know,
especially repen the Gator nation. Of course, got to make
sure that you're paying tribute to the man. But obviously
the hill to die on for us is the border.

(41:11):
So within the first millisecond, it would be securing the border.
That that has to be the first thing I would.

Speaker 4 (41:22):
This.

Speaker 6 (41:22):
This is why I could never probably run for higher
national office, because I would flash and burn so many
federal agencies that it would be unrecognizable. I would cut
so many government agencies and unelected, nameless, faithless bureaucrats that
it would be unreal. I would pare down the size
of government by like eighty percent or so. It's just

(41:46):
so overgrown. And that right there would solve so many problems.
Because you think about the regulatory environment, you think about
how Congress is essentially hamstrung. It's because of the imbalance
and washing defining. Fathers always wanted us, through Article one
authority to make the laws to have the most power

(42:07):
of the people leveraged so that the executive branch would
execute on those laws. Well, now we have effectively an
imperial presidency, so it's completely out of whack. So of
course I think border would be number one. Slashing the
size of government would be number two. Instituting a structured

(42:27):
debt repayment plan number three. No one ever gets to ask.
No one asks me these questions, Preston. It's like if
I was cleaned for the day, what would I do?
There's just so much.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
We're funding Ukrainian farmers and we're supporting the Ukrainian border
and protecting it. We're not protecting American farmers. We're not
protecting our border. Let's talk about agriculture for a second.
What's it going to take to turn around what's going
on in the regulatory environment and just in general to

(43:00):
keep farmers from going out of business every day?

Speaker 6 (43:03):
Oh, it's and it's so important for Florida. Florida is
a massive ag state, top ten in the nation, number
one in cowcap production, three hundred specialty crops. I mean,
people always think about our state's economy and they think
it's you know, yeah, they think they think that it's tourism.

(43:23):
And in any given year, agriculture is the number one
economic driver. Of course, tourism is a big one. Sometimes
it's number one, sometimes it's number two. But we have
the most to lose if we continue to erode agricultural
production and support in this country. And of course the
farm bill is coming up, and everyone's very, very focused

(43:43):
on that. That being said, I don't think that there
is a legislative piece of work that is going to
save us from this mess. It will help, but we
have to stop thinking about agriculture in the United States
as a nice to do, and we have to start
thinking about it as a need to do. This is

(44:03):
national security. A nation that can't feed itself is not secure,
and we are dangerously close with all those things that
are happening to the family farms around the country, the EPA,
the cost of input, fuel, labor, all these things that
are continually happening that are just unsustainable. You think about

(44:24):
in Florida, we have so many multi generational operations and
the thing that is so heartbreaking to me is I'll
talk to these families and their newest generation that is
part of the operation. There's always at least one kid
that is in real estate and they're selling off pieces
of the family farm.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Continuing with Congress women, caccamick, all right, in a minute
or less, react to this. How do we keep Bill
Gates from single handedly ruining the cattle industry because he's
endeavoring to do that. How do we make some carve
outs and make sure that we incentivize people to grow,
you know, raise cattle to to you know, to survive this.

Speaker 6 (45:06):
A lot of that has to do with the regulatory
environment and the president. You and I both know that's
my number one thing is we've got to get these
nameless Fathok bereaucrats out of the way. You know, respecting
personal property rights. That is a core fundamental issue in
this country, and we are seeing more and more assaults

(45:27):
on that. You have to protect a family farm. You
have to make it so that we don't have ridiculous
tax structures that force people to sell the family farm
to these people like Bill Gates, or even worse, you've
got these Chinese nationals that are doing the bidding of
the CCP buying up farmland all over America. We have
got to get back to a place of incentivizing all

(45:48):
the right things rather than continuing to punish people for success.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
I want to get your thoughts on the continuing resolution
plague that is hit government for decades. Now, how do
we get out of this pattern of CRS and we say, Okay,
we're going to do one more. It's going to get
us through the rest of the year, and then it's
a budget next year, or we're not doing anything. We're
gonna shut government down because a bunch of us aren't

(46:14):
really scared of the government shutting down.

Speaker 6 (46:17):
Yeah, and I absolutely despise CRS, these continued resolutions. I
have not supported one and I don't know why. But
now all of a sudden, some of my good friends,
could conservative friends, are saying we should do a year
long CR with a one percent cut a couple of
things on that. It's going to lead us right back
to where we are because people just they haven't felt

(46:40):
the pain and there's no consequences. The other thing is
a R is just a rubber stamp of Nancy Pelosi's
policies exactly. I would be damned if I'm going to
continue her horrific destructive policies. And then the other thing
is everyone says, oh, well, you know, I had a
couple of my good friends like Chip Roy and others
a cat we need that one percent cut. I said,

(47:02):
we need way more than one percent cut. And also,
let us not forget when you do a er and
you do it with a cut, the president, the OMB
director and the president are the ones that determine where
those cuts come from. And if people think for one
second that Biden is going to be okay with across
the board cut, no, they're going to cut us where
it hurts Republicans most, or it hurts rural America most,

(47:26):
and he's going to protect things in the urban clusters
and areas where there's blue states and cities. So there's
that element. But then pressing there's another thing that I
always hit on that no one wants to talk about,
and that's with the fact that the one percent cut
would basically equate to what we borrow in a week.

(47:47):
If we're borrowing seven point eight billion dollars a day,
and that one percent cut comes out to you know
that that delta is about a week's worth of borrowing.
Don't stand there and tell me that you're some fiscal
concern it is, and that you are all in for fighting. No,
we need to really take a hatchet to it. We've
got to start going after all the debt and the

(48:09):
interest on the debt, which has now outpaced our defense spending.
There's real problems and the politics of telling people that
you're fighting for fiscal conservatism insanity. It's just it's so wrong.
When people are like, yeah, but we're doing this and
we're doing that. I'm like, yeah, you're literally scratching the surface. Yep,
we're going to be right back where we were just

(48:29):
a year ago.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Always a good visit with US Congresswoman Cat Camick, very candid,
lover takes on a lot of things we talk about
here on the program. All Right, we're back with more
of the twelve Days of Preston. Don't you dare leave us.
I'll be offended and hurt. Doesn't that just scream Christmas?

(49:11):
Good morning friends. It is December twenty third. But if
you're just joining us, it's sort of not when it
comes to the content of this program. For the content
of this program, we're taking the wayback machine to March
of twenty twenty four. This is our year in review.

(49:32):
We present it as our gift. It's the twelve Days
of Preston and this is day number three, the month
of March. Now, our guest for the next couple of
segments is absolutely worth your time. He is New York
Times best selling author Peter Schweitzer. He sits atop the
power rankings of guests here on the Morning Show and

(49:55):
has for years. And we're talking about his book Blood Money.

Speaker 7 (50:01):
Hey, great to be with your presidents always, Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
I uh, I, I've we've we've known each other for
a while now. There have been there have been a
few books, and and your books tend to have this
interconnection seemingly, they they just seem to always have some
commonalities in the players and how these sort of ominous

(50:26):
events take place. Take me back to where the idea
came from that there needed to be a book devoted
to what's going on in China that you've entitled Blood Money.
Why the Powerful turn a blind eye while China kills Americans?
Where'd this all begin?

Speaker 7 (50:46):
Well, it really began in noticing that corruptions become globalized
in America. I mean, we're all used to you know,
the politician who's trying to get a federal paving contract
for his nephew or something like that, or the politician
who's taken one hundred thousand dollars in money from a
shoe in a shoe box from a lobbyist. That's kind

(51:07):
of the corruption we're used to. That's bad enough, But
what's really happened over the last decade is corruption in
America has become globalized. You find these politicians both sides
of the aisle who find, you know, foreign oligarch's, foreign
governments that are willing to stuff money in their pockets.
Now they do it kind of in a more subtle

(51:29):
way than a shoe box. You know, they'll set up
a family member and a quote unquote private equity deal
that's funded by, you know, a foreign government. But I
wanted to look at this nexus, and this book I
think is a little bit different than the others that
you know, before the problem concern was always the corruption.
In this particular case, I really wanted to look at

(51:49):
the things that China has done over the last five
six years that has killed literally millions of Americans, and
the fact that we're getting very little attention paid to
it by positions of authority. I mean, in other words,
this is corruption that actually is a life and death
issue and has affected the United States dramatically in so

(52:10):
many ways.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
You say, you really focused in for the last five
or six years. If I were to try to maybe
kind of look at this as a plant, all right,
that's the growth above the ground. Where do the roots
of this thing begin? Does it start with, you know,
capitalism trying to find a way into China and US
embracing that.

Speaker 7 (52:32):
Yeah, I mean that was the origin, right. The idea
was great and it was one that I embraced for
a long time. The idea was, you know, China's developing
world country, you know, going back in the eighties, and look,
if we give encourage them towards free markets and capitalism,
they're going to become more like us. They're going to
become more liberal. And for a while people thought that's

(52:54):
the way things were going to go. And that abruptly
ended with the rise of President g uh more than
a decade ago. And so what you have is in
China is you don't have a market economy. Uh, you
don't have a Marxist economy. You have what I call
a market Leninist economy, so you have certain elements of capitalism,

(53:19):
but you have the Leninist you know, communist control system
and the allure of China. You know, you look around
the world if you're a Wall Street investor, or you're
a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, the lure of you know, the
world's most populous country growing rapidly, the prospects of making

(53:40):
enormous sums of money is enormous. Uh And their ability
to you know, tap into politicians, family members as as
a lure is powerful and has been quite effective. And
so that's kind of the origins in the headwaters of
it which you have going on at the same time, though,
Preston is really a concerted effort in China what they

(54:03):
call disintegration warfare, and that's something that was written about
in twenty ten. They've embraced it. And really what it
is Preston is you know, their view that they are
at war with the United States, but it's not a
war with tanks, it's not a war with aircraft carriers,
but it is a war with casualties. And it's based
on the idea of what can we do to disintegrate

(54:27):
fragment American society in a way that would allow us
to beat them without actually getting into a kinetic fighting war.
And that's what we're seeing unfolding. Whether it's s fentanyl,
whether it's COVID, whether it's violence in American streets, whether
it's a lot of the social division that we're facing
in the country today. They didn't cause it, but they
are absolutely fanning the flames in a very very aggressive way,

(54:50):
and our leaders don't want to talk about them.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Peter Schweizer with us. The book is Blood Money subtitled
why the powerful turn a blind eye while Chin of
kills Americans. We're going to get to that with a
little more detail, Peter, for the benefit of our listeners
and for me broadly set up who are the main
players in this particular story.

Speaker 7 (55:15):
So the main players on the side of China is
President G. And I think what people are going to
get is a different look at President G than they
previously heard. Part of it is understanding who this man
is and what his motives are. He really revers his father,
who is a CCP leader, and he built a mausoleum.

(55:40):
His father's perhaps most famous act was as a young
man at the age of fourteen, G's father tried to
poison his teacher because the teacher was not sufficiently revolutionary,
and G thinks that was a bold, courageous act. So
I think that offers insight into kind of his view
and perspective. The other thing that stand about G is

(56:01):
that his wife is a very famous singer in China.
In fact, she's so famous, I would say even infamous
because after the Tieneman Square massacre in nineteen eighty nine,
she was brought in to serenade the troops who had
just massacred people in the square. So this is a hardened,
hardened tough man who has a very different view than

(56:23):
we do on our side. It's a series of people,
you know. It includes President Biden, It includes Republican leader
Mitch McConnell. It includes people like Governor Gavin Newsom who
have entanglements with Chinese entities, not even with Chinese entities,
but in some cases they're brushing up against Chinese organized

(56:45):
crime networks that are actually involved in things like the
Sentinel trade. So it is a mosaic that includes characters
on both sides of the aisle, and it's I think
really these story of what America is facing today because
when you look at a lot of the challenges that
we are facing in this country, social division, violence in

(57:10):
our streets, a lot of this is being the flames
are being fanned by China. They didn't cause it, but
they're absolutely exaggerating it because they are seeing the strategic
benefits of doing so.

Speaker 5 (57:22):
Peter.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
In the news just this week, we talked about an
arrest in Georgia four nationals, one at least here illegally
involved in what they believe is a potentially international marijuana
grow farm. We're also seeing that ninety percent of the
illegals coming in across the border in San Diego are China.

(57:44):
They're coming from China. This is all connected to your story.

Speaker 7 (57:48):
Correct, That's exactly right, Preston. I've got a section in
the book. It's about the drug warfare that China's engaged in.
You know, they are the senior partner in the fentanyl trade.
The Mexican cartels are the junior partner. But also to
your point, this problem with legal marijuana grows in the
United States is massive. In the state of Maine alone,

(58:13):
there are three hundred known large scale marijuana growing operations
that are run by Chinese nationals, many of which have
come into the country illegally. These are financed with money
from China. And what they're doing President is they're not
producing the you know, the marijuana you know in the
nineteen nineties the kids were smoking in college. This stuff

(58:34):
is highly, highly potent, much more potent than the stuff
sold legally. It can be laced with fentanyl, of course,
and this is part of what China calls explicitly cognitive warfare.
They want to certainly profit from this, but they also
want to sort of dumb down, destabilize, and soften American culture.

(58:54):
So when people wonder why people are, you know, Chinese
nationals are crossing the border in Ago, I would argue
a big part of it is they have a large
need for labor. These illegal marijuana grows are in Maine,
they're in Oklahoma, they're in Washington State, they're in California,
They're all over the place.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Peter Schweitzer, and that's part one of an interview that
we did back in March of twenty twenty four. So
here we are, day three of the twelve Days of
Preston and it's the month of March that we're bringing
to you kind of a best of segment, and we'll
continue with our visit with Peter, author of the book

(59:38):
Blood Money, as well as a bunch of other New
York Times bestsellers. So stay with us on the Twelve
Days of Preston here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott.

(01:00:07):
Welcome back to the Twelve Days of Preston. The month
of March in the year twenty twenty four is our
gift for you today, and this is a continuation of
my visit with author Peter Schweitzer. We're talking about the
book Blood Money. Peter, you said something previously and I'd
read this as well, that you know, China thinks it

(01:00:28):
can win the war literally and take this nation without
firing many bullets. It needs to for infrastructure for all
kinds of reasons. But is that where TikTok comes in,
the ability to analyze what Americans are digesting, consuming and
are moved by.

Speaker 7 (01:00:45):
Oh. Absolutely. I've got a whole section in the book
on TikTok. And what I would say, Preston is, you know,
don't take my word for what TikTok is doing. Take
the words of the Chinese officials and military officers. I
quote them book. We got access to documents from the
Chinese military, uh you know, military journals, et cetera, from

(01:01:07):
the Chinese minister Ministry of Propaganda, and they're very explicit.
I mean they say explicitly that TikTok is a trojan horse,
and they dissect and they explain I quote from them
extensively as to how they are using it to grind
down America's youth, creating sort of this this you know,
dopamine loop where you know they need this constant, urgent

(01:01:31):
hit by watching these short videos and that the video
content is very dumb down, but it's also injected with propaganda,
and they lay out explicitly how they do it. The
purpose is not to be like explicit, you know, you're
not going to have placards of you know, Chairman Mao,
you know, marching and marching down in videos. But what
you are going to get is videos that are designed,

(01:01:52):
in their words, to strip America's young people of their
understanding of their historical past, to strip them of reverence
for their national symbols, because by doing so, they are
then able to deconstruct America's youth and build them up
in the image that they want them in and you know,

(01:02:13):
looktech is TikTok is run by byte Edance, the parent company.
The senior leadership there is all populated with people that
work at the Ministry of State Security or used to
or at the Ministry of Propaganda, senior officials and the
Chinese Communist Party. And byte Dance, the parent company of TikTok,

(01:02:35):
has a joint venture with the Chinese Ministry of State
Security to study artificial intelligence and how it can be
used to manipulate people online. This is the company that
people are allowing their children unfettered access to. I mean,
it's just remarkable. And the reason not much is being
done in Washington, and as I lay out both Republicans

(01:02:57):
and Democrats and I name names, is because they're there
is so much money being made by certain American investors
that they are hiring an army of people in DC,
former senators and congressmen, former campaign officials for Barack Obama
and Donald Trump, and they're dolling that money around to
prevent you know, any serious action being taken.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Okay, is that genie permanently out of the bottle or
are there enough people in Congress, enough people running states
that can take action and do something about it.

Speaker 7 (01:03:36):
A great question. There are some people that I think
have been very very good on TikTok, of both Republicans
and Democrats. Of course, you know, people like Marco Rubio,
Rick Scott have been very good on TikTok. On the
Democrat side, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia has been very
very vigilant on TikTok. And the solution in my mind is,

(01:03:58):
I don't know that you can ban it in the
sense that something else can just emerge. That's similar. But
I do feel that Trump's solution in twenty twenty, which
was to force the sale to an American company, while
not ideal because I got problems with American big tech
companies too. You're in a whole lot better case where
you can regulate and try to control a Microsoft than

(01:04:21):
you can a company that is owned by basically the
Chinese state. So that was the right solution, of course.
Joe Biden rescinded that one of the reasons is that
some of his biggest supporters of the Kyle Carlisle Group
are major investors in TikTok. And at the same time,
on the Republican side, there's a gentleman named jeff Yass.

(01:04:42):
He's a big funder for Club for Growth and Republican politicians.
He is persuading some Republicans to take a hands off
approach to TikTok. So there are some very very good people,
but the battles there, and we need to convince our
elected officials that this matters to us. This matters to
us is this is about the future of our country

(01:05:03):
and our future generation.

Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
I have long believed that any tough talk coming from
the Biden administration relating to China is saber rattling that
when it's all said and done, he can't do anything
against China because China has all the dirt necessary to
absolutely overturn Biden and probably the entire administration. I feel
the same way about Ukraine. Is there anything to that, Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:05:28):
No, I think that's absolutely correct. In fact, the Chinese
have a phrase they use for leaders in the West
that they've co opted with money, financial ties, and the
phrase is big help with a little bad mouth. And
what it means is what it sounds like, as long
as you are delivering what really matters to them. But

(01:05:50):
what really matters to China is unfettered access to our markets.
Unfettered access to our capital markets, minimal interference as they
sort of continue to rise against the United States. If
you want to, you know, talk tough on Taiwan, if
you want to mention human rights, they're completely fine with
that because they know you have to realistically, to be viable,

(01:06:12):
you have to have tough talk. And in the case
of the Bidens, it's really really clear why he will
not talk tough on issues. I mean, take the issue
of fentanyl. You know, China is involved in every stage
of the sentinyl production that is poisoning Americans. It's now
the leading cause of death for Americans under the age

(01:06:32):
of forty five. Here's the problem for Joe Biden. If
he calls out China, they are then going to be
able to pull levers And what is that lever Well.
The Chinese gang leader who created the fentanyl crisis in
America is a guy named White Wolf. He's the head
of a gang called UBG. They made the Sineloa cartel

(01:06:55):
in Mexico, the kings of fentanyl. Everybody acknowledges that in Mexico.
Here's the problem for the Bidens. In twenty seventeen, White
Wolf's business partner gave the Biden family a five million
dollar interest free forgivable loan that the Bidens have never repaid.
So you literally have preston one degree of separation between

(01:07:19):
the King's offense and al trade and the Biden family.
So does Joe Biden really want to call out China
and say China is poisoning Americans. We need to stop this,
we need to confront them, we need to do something
about it. No, he can't. It's deeply embarrassing, and that's
just one of the entanglements that he has that I
think prevents him from taking any strong action on this

(01:07:42):
vital issue. What about Donald Trump, I don't think they
have anything on Trump in that sense. I think, you know,
Trump did do a lot to sort of enter reorient
our relationship with China. I think the challenge that he
faced was sort of self created, and that Donald Trump,
I think has obviously supreme confidence in his power of persuasion,

(01:08:05):
his ability to get people to do things, and so
in you know, twenty eighteen, he met with President G
and to his credit, first American president only American president
so far who confronted China on the issue of fentadol.
President G told him Okay, we'll stop it. We'll we'll
ban it, we'll prevent it from being produced. We won't
be involved anymore. And you know, President Trump took him

(01:08:28):
at his word and sang his praises. That's not really
the way China works. You've got to be tough, You've
got to be consistently tough. I do think that Trump
has learned the lesson from that. I think also during
COVID I have a section of the book on COVID
on how China maximized our body counts. Part of the
way that they did at Preston was they knew what

(01:08:50):
the virus was, they knew where it was going, and
they cornered the market on masks and medical supplies. When
the virus hit us, we lost a lot of medical
personnel because they didn't have access to any of that equipment.
Donald Trump saw that and was put in a difficult situation,
and he told people in his administration, we can't talk

(01:09:11):
too tough to China right now, because they will withhold
more equipment from us. The point being is, I think
Trump has learned those lessons.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Peter Schweitzer and the book Blood Money Peter is the best,
so much Command of the information that he and his
team research, dig out and then write about it does
lead the legislation at times, though watered down because that's
what Congress does. Still, his books are impactful. There's not

(01:09:40):
a one that I've ever read that hasn't been just
filled with really important information that every single one of
you should know. Hence the Twelve Days of Preston and
the gift of Peter Schweitzer's interview once again from the
Month of March. We'll be back with more.

Speaker 8 (01:09:56):
Don't leave us, Welcome back to the Twelve Days of Preston.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
We're chronicling the month of March in the year twenty
twenty four, and this a visit with Rachel Gressler of
the Heritage Foundation where we discussed social security. I need
to give people an overview of the history. Where did
social security start? And why?

Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
Thank you for wanting to talk about this and to
start at the beginning, because I do think that that's important.
So social security started in the wake of the Great Depression,
when many Americans had lost their entire life savings. So
it started as part of President FDR's Economic Security Council,
and they recommended that there'd be some form of retirement
program so that younger generations would not be financially responsible

(01:10:54):
for older generations if they lived long enough that they
had outlived their savings are no longer able to work.
So it was intended to be a relatively small anti
poverty program. People would pay into it, they'd get a
benefit out in the future, but it has grown massively
over time that benefits now are about three and a
half times what they were to begin with. Life expectancy

(01:11:17):
is also about three and a half times what it was,
and so over time, instead of it actually being a
program that people contribute into and then the money waits
there and earns a rate of return from treasuries and
is there for them a retirement, what's actually happened is
that Congress has spent all those contributions as payroll taxes
that we all pay, and they've essentially borrowed them. I

(01:11:40):
believe it was designed to be in perpetuity, but it
was designed so that at one point the first generation
of recipients would get more than they had paid in,
but that that would be made up over time, so
that it would not be, as it is today, a
pay as ego system where every dollar in goes immediately
out to pay current benefits was not intended.

Speaker 1 (01:12:01):
Yeah. I remember the day that I told my mom.
It was the nineteen eighties. My mom has since passed away,
but I said, Mom, all your social Security money is gone.
It's been spent. And she looked at me like I
had just shot her best friend. She didn't believe it.

(01:12:21):
And that's something that I think most people that are
older don't fully understand. They thought it was a savings account.
It is anything but that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:32):
Exactly, And that's really important to start there, because that's
why reform is so difficult, because everybody feels like you're
taking something away from me that I put into this
account and it's there, and that's just not the reality.
And that's why we want to kind of shift out
of Social Security being such a big program.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
I feel that it's incumbent upon folks to understand this,
despite the fact that it might be political suicide. The
fact of the matter is Social Security is not a
guaranteed benefit. Congress, if they wanted to, could stop paying it.
They're not obligated to pay it.

Speaker 9 (01:13:07):
Correct, That is correct.

Speaker 4 (01:13:10):
There we have no true entitlement to Social Security, and
that was actually a decision of a Supreme Court case.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
I when I heard Nancy Pelosi years ago say it's
a guaranteed benefit. No it's not. And even the Social
Security website uses the word guaranteed, and that is a lie.

Speaker 4 (01:13:30):
It is a lie. And that's the problem with a
lot of Social Security and some other predominantly one define
benefit pensions. We talk about these paying a guarantee, but
the guarantee is really just whatever is left there. And
today we can count a seventy five percent of what
Social Security today pays to actually be there for anybody

(01:13:52):
who is fifty six or younger when they retire.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
All right, let's let's set the actual lay of the
lane here. What is the status of the account? What's
in it? What? What are the unfunded portions of this?
Where we what are we looking at?

Speaker 4 (01:14:10):
So social Security is notional trust fund. There is actually
no money in it, but it will be insolvent. There
will be nothing left, no right to even reclaim past borrowing,
beginning in twenty thirty three. At that point, benefits would
be cut across the board by twenty three percent.

Speaker 9 (01:14:27):
That's the status quo.

Speaker 4 (01:14:29):
Congress does nothing, So that's about a five three hundred
dollars cut per year. If we want to avoid that,
what do we need to do?

Speaker 7 (01:14:37):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:14:37):
Social Security has promised about twenty two point four trillion
dollars in unfunded obligations. So if you think twenty true trillion,
what does that mean? But break that down to per
household level, that's one hundred and seventy two thousand dollars
for every household in America. That is essentially the cost
of keeping the program as it is today, no increases

(01:14:58):
and benefits, just maintaining current benefits. In terms of taxes,
the tax today is twelve point four percent. Depending on
whether you use Social Security or the CBO, that tax
needs to rise to about fifteen point eight to seventeen
point five percent. So that's an extra roughly thirty eight

(01:15:18):
hundred dollars per year potentially for every household to have
to pay in Social Security taxes if we want to
keep the program as it is today and have no
benefits cut.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
There is no bright side of this story.

Speaker 5 (01:15:30):
There's not.

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
And that's a difficult problem. When I'll start to talk
about reform and they get criticized saying you're going to
cut Social Security and you want to throw gram off
the cliff, Well, the reality of the program today is
that everybody gets a significant benefit cut if something's not
done to reform the program, And so talking about reform
is actually preventing those much larger benefit cuts from happening

(01:15:53):
or those much larger tax increases. The longer that we wait,
the bigger that the consequences are that twenty two point
four trillion dollars back in twenty ten, it was only
five point four trillion. So you start with shifting the benefits.
I would move towards a universal benefit based on a
number of years that you have worked and contributed to
the system, because when you think about it, it doesn't

(01:16:16):
make sense for a social insurance program to pay the
highest benefits to the people who have the highest earnings,
and then we'll end up with the system in which
the lowest income earners might still be living in poverty
while getting that social Security benefit. So if you gradually
shift down benefits at the top and you actually increase
them at the bottom, in you know, three four decades

(01:16:37):
from now, everybody who's worked the same number of years
earns the same benefit, and it's something that keeps you
out of poverty if you have a full career and
then you address the fact that people are living longer,
and so you index the age of eligibility to life expectancy.
You can use a more accurate inflation measure that gets
you to solving the program and actually saving money. So

(01:16:58):
Social Security take twelve point four percent of everybody's paycheck today, Well,
originally it took two percent, and the founder said, this
will never take more than six percent of your income.
So we've got to get that back so that people
can actually have some money left over in their paychecks
to save on their own. Let me actually get to
the second step.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Well, so let me ask you, Well, let me ask
you a question before you get to step two, Rachel,
what would you say to those out there, because I
can hear the ruminators of this program thinking, yeah, but
I had more taxes taken out of my paychecks. Yes,
I earned more money, but I also had more money
taken out.

Speaker 4 (01:17:36):
Yes, and that I hear that, and it is a
bad deal. That is the reality of Social Security today.
And that's why the people who are close to retirement
there's going to be very little change for them. But
it's going to be the younger generations who are just
starting off to work today who are going to be
into this new system, and by being in a system
that has a lower benefit, you're not going to see

(01:17:57):
that twelve point four percent go up to seventeen point
five if instead is going to go down over time
to ten percent. So yes, you're going to have a
smaller benefit, but you're going to pay significantly less in
taxes over your entire career. And by the way, if
you don't love this system, you can have an opt
out wherever you are in your career. You can say, look,

(01:18:17):
I've earned some type of benefit whatever's payable to date,
but going forward, I'm not going to earn any more benefits,
and I'm going to get to take my portion of
the Social Security tax that half of it paid by
the employee, and that's going to go in my own
personal account, similar to like the government's thrift savings plan,
and you're going to actually earn a positive rate of return.
And the result of that, for probably nearly every American

(01:18:40):
is going to be that you'll be better off having
half of your money earn a rate of return than
having all of it go into Social Security.

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
What about the employer's portion under this proposal, do they
continue to contribute or are they then alleviated of the burden.

Speaker 4 (01:18:54):
Under our proposal, they would continue to contribute and that
would go towards making the program solvent. Bit of a buyout, saying,
I'm still willing to contribute into this program, but I
just want to take at least my half of the
tax with me, and I think I can do better
off than most people can.

Speaker 1 (01:19:10):
If we don't do something and we have to raise
payroll taxes, that is going to create more and a
significant pressure of inflation on the economy.

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
Absolutely, it is because employers are going to be paying more.
Employees are going to have smaller paychecks, even if it
costing employers more to pay them. And the result of
that is that they actually are going to reduce overall wages.
And it's just taking more out of the economy into
this program.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
Rachel Gressler of the Heritage Foundation, my guest, we'll be
back with the third hour of the Twelve Days of Presston.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
God is it a knowledgical the Sounds of Christmas?

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Hey friends, welcome to the third Hour the Twelve Days
of Preston day number three, the month of March in
twenty twenty four, got a special interview here. My favorite
hobby is golf, and I had a chance to visit
with Bob Herrig talking about his new book about Tiger
Woods called Drive. Bob. Let's talk about the timing of

(01:20:55):
the book. What made this the right time to talk
or write about Tiger, Well.

Speaker 10 (01:21:01):
I just figured that the five year anniversary of his
twenty nineteen Masters win, and it's kind of hard to
believe that much time has gone by already, was a
good time to re examine it, and in diving into it, obviously,
there was a lot that went on for him to
win a fifteenth major, his fifth Masters. He had had

(01:21:21):
a very very serious back surgery just two years before,
and I think I thought a deep dive into the
backstory of that win would be enlightening for people. But
as I got into it, I realized that, you know,
that sort of Tiger's career, it's his to come back
from something like that was sort of unheard of, and

(01:21:43):
yet he's sort of been doing that his entire entire career.
He just doesn't say no, he doesn't quit, he doesn't
He has this resiliency that most of us don't have.
And so that's what I tried to explore here it
goes beyond the twenty nineteen Masters into a lot of
his great accomplishments and how he got there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
If you were to maybe pinpoint for us the beginning
of i'l borrow your word for the title, the drive
to the twenty nineteen Masters, What was that point?

Speaker 10 (01:22:15):
Well, the beginning was probably two years before at the
Master's Champions dinner that he attended and he could barely walk,
and I don't think he believed at the time it
was the beginning of a return to winning the Masters.
He just he was trying to get through the night,
and he had plans to go overseas to consult with

(01:22:38):
specialist and how to best get some relief. Frankly, he
was looking for quality of life. His handlers basically had
come to the conclusion that we got to find a
way for this guy. He's still young, use he was
forty one at the time. We need to figure out
a way that he can play with his kids and
play leisure golf and walk properly. And they went and

(01:23:00):
visited these consultants in London for a battery of tests,
and they came back with the recommendation that he go
see a spinal fusion doctor in Texas, and that occurred quickly.
Two weeks later he came back and without anybody knowing
about it, had this surgery was announced out for six months,

(01:23:22):
couldn't swing a club, a lot of doubts about his return,
and yet the very following year, in twenty eighteen, he
was back to playing golf and playing quite well.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
Bob. When Tiger went through the difficulties of his personal
life with the reports of the extramarital affairs and all
of that, as a golfer, I thought, Okay, he's done,
because golf is so much between the left and the
right ear. But the fact that he wasn't done, that
he recovered from all of that between the years, is

(01:23:56):
that sort of the undergirding to the drive his real
inner character and determination.

Speaker 10 (01:24:03):
That was certainly part of it, because that was really
hard to overcome. I mean, that's another aspect guy address,
and you know that was the rest of them. A
lot of them were physical. This one was was a
huge mental burden, and you know, he was embarrassed and
and and he spent a good bit of time getting ridiculed,

(01:24:24):
and it was the first time in his life that
that really had faced any adversity in terms of his personality,
you know, his aura. You know, he was mocked. Uh
there was his peers that that bought less of them
and he and he actually, you know he was he
was away from golf for five months. Uh and and
he picked the Masters to come back.

Speaker 7 (01:24:44):
Out of all places.

Speaker 10 (01:24:45):
You know that it wasn't going to be like this,
this subtle return. It was at the biggest tournament of
all and and he somehow finished fourth. Uh And yet
he was it was probably one of the rare times
that there was some inkling of of not giving it his.

Speaker 11 (01:25:01):
All on the last day.

Speaker 10 (01:25:03):
He put himself in a position to maybe win that tournament.
But he was so down on himself for how well
he was playing, when really he should have recognized that, man,
I'm playing way beyond what anybody expected. And yet he
still finished forth that Phil Nicholson that year, having gone
through all of that, and you know, it's just sort
of another example of his resiliency, of his drive, that

(01:25:27):
he was able to overcome all that negativity and put
himself at least in that position.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
When you're tackling a topic, even if you're looking at
the window of what surrounded his win in twenty nineteen
at the Master's Bob It's Tiger Woods. I mean, you
could argue Jack Nicholas is the greatest champion of golf,
but it's hard to argue that anyone's had a greater
overall impact on the game. How did you determine what

(01:25:54):
you were going to fit within the scope of this story, because,
as you said, it just broadens itself because as of blue,
Tiger Woods.

Speaker 10 (01:26:01):
Is right, no question. Well, there were you know, as
I was getting into it, I started thinking back to
all the time, in all the instances where it required
a lot more than just his skill to get there.
For example, he has a PGA Tour record one hundred

(01:26:22):
and forty two consecutive made cuts. Now that might be
one of his most underrated feats because it's just, you know,
just making the cut right. The longest cut on the
pg Tour at this moment is forty two by Xanderschoffwey.
That's one hundred behind Tiger. Tiger didn't miss a cut

(01:26:42):
for seven years. And it's human nature that and the
game of golf is such that you're not going to
always have it. Sometimes a guy's playing two three weeks
in a row, and then the third week he's out
of gas. His game's a little off, he's missing home,
and I'm Friday, you know, early Friday afternoon. He's a
couple over part. He starts thinking, you know, it'd be

(01:27:04):
great to have the weekend off, and his mind starts
to wander, you know, and it's human nature. He starts
thinking about his flights and I can work on my
game at home, I can see the kids. Whatever, I'll
get back after it next week. Tiger never let that
happen for seven years, from nineteen ninety eight to two
thousand and five. And now there was a few events

(01:27:24):
in there that didn't have thirty six hole cuts, but
everybody else faced the same thing. The fact that he
made it all those times was really pretty remarkable, and
I mean, nobody's gotten halfway since. And the record that
he beat of Byron Nelson was one hundred and thirteen,
which was accomplished in a different era when no offense

(01:27:44):
to Byron Nelson. It was a terrific great golfer Hall
of Fame golfer himself that it was done in the
nineteen forties when there wasn't as much competition and they
probably wasn't full fields all the time, you know a
tiger did. There was just you know, But yet we
don't talk about that like we do all of his
wins and his majors and you know, some of the
feats that he's accomplished. But yet that's one that shows

(01:28:06):
this is resiliency. You have to have an incredible mindset
to keep doing that. And there's other examples. You know,
at the Masters in twenty twenty, the year he was defending,
you know, it was the COVID year, there was no
spectators and on the same hole where a year before,
the tournament changed for him. The part three twelve, he
hit three balls in the water and made a ten.
It's his highest score ever as a pro on any hole.

(01:28:29):
And you know, he could have just mailed it in
after that, it's the last round and he burdied five
to the last six. You know, he has a lot
of pride. The man has a lot of pride, and
he wasn't going to finish, you know, with a whimper.
You know, even though it didn't really matter. He doesn't
care at this point if he finished his thirtieth or fortieth,
it doesn't matter. Last tournament of the year for him,

(01:28:50):
and yet he just dug down and did that. And
I think those are some pretty good examples of what
we're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Great golf writer Bob Herrig. The book I've story about
tiger Woods background, just fascinating. Love the game all right,
Back with more The Twelve Days of Preston the Month
of March. Welcome back to the Twelve Days of Preston.

(01:29:23):
This the month of March, the third day of our
twelve days. We're just a couple of days away from Christmas.
This is a visit from the month of March with
Scott Beacon, the Bline blogger, where I shared a personal
story to lead into the topic of fairness. I started

(01:29:44):
a near fight at a rotary club meeting fifteen years
ago when I just asked the members define fairness. And
I think it's interesting, how do you define the word fair?

Speaker 12 (01:29:58):
Well, it's hard to define fair without taking a step
back and looking at the numbers with regard to what
you're talking about, and specifically we're talking about, you know,
what is a fair share.

Speaker 11 (01:30:08):
Of income taxes?

Speaker 12 (01:30:10):
And we hear the narrative a lot, and you're going
to hear it more and more during this coming election cycle, right,
is the other not paying the fair share or you're
not paying your fair share? And you know, if you
look at the survey data, which I have I'm a
big believer in look at survey data and poll data,
you know, you'll see typically that everybody thinks that they're

(01:30:33):
paying their fair share, but they think that everybody else
is not paying their fair share. It really comes in
the beholder, and I can see why a fight almost
started at a rotary club meet.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
He got a second. Scott. Of course, only some of
us can be accurate when we say that we're paying
our fair share. The rest of you just don't understand.
We're going to get to those numbers. Scott Beacon with
us again bline blogger dot blogspot dot com. I guess

(01:31:07):
to Scott Beacon the b line is the blog we're
talking about, and a recent one came out late last
week called fair Share. When I was privileged to get
Scott's contact information, I said, Hey, I'm going to talk
about this and I'd love to talk about it with
you since you provided the inspiration. So let me ask
you this what poked you? I mean? Is it the

(01:31:29):
fact that we're in the election season and this is
going to be a topic, or did something nudge you
to do some digging on this.

Speaker 12 (01:31:37):
No, I've been following this topic for a number of years,
you know, going back to my days when I was
a tax attorney and a CPA. You know, the IRS
produces every year what they call statistics of income. It
usually take them a couple of years to put everything together.
So it was only the end of February that they
came out with the data for twenty twenty one tax returns.

(01:31:59):
But I've been following this for decades really, you know,
looking at these numbers, and so it's something that I
have written probably over the years, probably five or six
times in my blog about these statistics. And the most
recent numbers came out, and it's it's pretty shocking when
you look at it. I always like to when I

(01:32:21):
get someone that likes to talk about, you know, the
rich but not paying their fair share or whatever, and
you go back to your question, press and well what
is the fair share? And you you say, what do
you what do you think the top one percent should
be paying as part of their fair share? And you know,
you might get numbers all they have to be paying,
you know, twenty percent of the total and then you,

(01:32:43):
you know, you tell them what the actual number is,
and usually shock goes over their face.

Speaker 1 (01:32:49):
Yeah, and it's to me, it's not all that different
from the same type of discussion that happens over the
minimum wage. Well, if if it's going to be twenty
dollars an hour, or why not seventy five dollars an hour?
And then suddenly someone goes, well you can't do that.
I'm going, well why, And then you have to start
unpacking all of the foolishness of a mandated minimum wage

(01:33:11):
being the way it is. But when it comes to
the fair share of personal taxes, what do the numbers
show you.

Speaker 12 (01:33:19):
Well, in the most recent year, the top one percent
of income earners, which would basically be those above seven
hundred thousand dollars of income, in the year twenty twenty one,
they paid forty six percent of all income taxes in
the United States. And that's the highest share by far.

(01:33:39):
I mean, if you go back, for example, a year
two thousand, let's go back about the time you started
the show, they were paying thirty seven percent of the
total tab. It's increased now to forty six percent of
the total tab. The top five percent is now paying
sixty six percent, the top ten percent six percent, and

(01:34:01):
the top fifty percent ninety eight percent, which means the
bottom fifty percent is only paying two percent.

Speaker 1 (01:34:10):
It immediately speaks to why our founders were so worried
about a government that eventually handed a checkbook over where
people were in essence able to live off the government exactly.

Speaker 12 (01:34:26):
And if you go back to the Constitution, the Constitution
as written by the Founders prohibited the imposition of direct taxes,
which an income tax is a direct tax. It was
only you know, through the sixteenth Amendment, I think it
was that we allowed an income tax to be imposed

(01:34:48):
in the United States. So it was not in the
original founder's view because exactly what you're saying, they were
worried about how government could use direct taxes to really
infringe on my minority, which really what the Constitution was
all about.

Speaker 9 (01:35:04):
You know, majority right.

Speaker 12 (01:35:05):
But also minority rights. You would not have a majority
in Frendy on the rights of a minority.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
If you listen to the show for very long, you
know that I've talked about this for twenty two years.
It's it's been a bone of contention for me, and
so When I raise it at a rotary club meeting,
a near fight breaks out because you've got the people
that are very liberal and left in the room that
just think that big business and wealthy people ought to
pay more. And you know, scott businesses never pay taxes.

(01:35:36):
They pass it on to consumers. And people don't seem
to understand where this all leads. What does the data
say to you when it's all said and done in
the in the macro.

Speaker 12 (01:35:48):
Well, you know, one thing I think that needs to
be mentioned is.

Speaker 9 (01:35:51):
That there's no question over the last you know, forty years,
that the share that the one percent has, the top
one percent has also increased, you know, compared to nineteen eighty.

Speaker 12 (01:36:04):
And a lot of people say, why is that the case?
And part of the reason is is the way the
economy has changed and the way the tax code has changed.
You know, when I first started practicing as a CPA
tax attorney, you know, the top marginal rate was seventy percent,
and at that point in time, you know, many people
incorporated because the top corporate rate was forty eight percent,

(01:36:27):
and so the rich would have all their money in
corporations and they wouldn't have it exposed to individual income
taxes because it didn't make much sense. Well, as the
marginal rate came down, that forced people more to go
to partnerships subest corporation so they would not be double
tax but that then exposed their income to individual income taxes.

(01:36:50):
So a big reason that the one percent amount that
the income as the one percent has has gone up
is that has gone into individual tax returns. And the
other thing that's going on is technology. You know, back
in nineteen eighty you had workers, auto workers, steel workers,
et cetera. The manufacturing sector was still robust in this country,

(01:37:12):
and it took a lot of workers, to example, to
produce a manufacturing product. As the technology advanced to where
we are today, you know, seven or eight guys can
sit around and do a game, a video game, and
they can make millions of dollars. That goes into income
and the one percent. So you've had a fundamental shift

(01:37:34):
with regard to how some of this has worked so
that that has an effect. So there's no question that
the income share of the one percent has increased. But
the question they really have to look at as a
society and as a country is, you know, we're one
point nine million at one point nine trillion dollar deficit
this year, you know, and we're borrowing and borrowing and borrowing,

(01:37:56):
and we borrowd eleven trillion dollars in the last four years.

Speaker 11 (01:38:00):
How do we fix this?

Speaker 12 (01:38:01):
How do we have any semblance? And it certainly cannot
be done by taxing the one percent. It's not going
to happen. And if you look at what's happened in
Europe with their social systems, the tax burden is much
much greater on the middle class and the lower class
in those countries.

Speaker 9 (01:38:19):
Than it is in the United States.

Speaker 12 (01:38:20):
So we're going to have to decide in this country,
you know, how we're going to get this financial house
and order?

Speaker 1 (01:38:28):
Is it going? I mean, it has to involve at
some point government's going to have to cut it's spending.

Speaker 12 (01:38:36):
But will they Well you would think they were going
to have to, but to this point it just seems
to accelerate. And this goes to another point that I've
made time and time again in the pages, is you
have to understand politicians, elected representatives, Republicans or Democrats, their

(01:38:56):
power really comes from taking doc dollars from one person
and given it to another. Ran That aeroids probably with Democrats,
but the same thing exists with Republicans with ear marks, etc.
That's the nature of the beast. They don't have any
power unless they have your tax dollars that they can

(01:39:18):
give to somebody else. That's the name of the game.
So it's very hard to break that. And uh, I'm
not real optimistic when I look at the history where
it's gone that we can go another direction. It's going
to be very, very difficult. But the voters are ultimately
or the ones that are going to have to determine

(01:39:39):
where it goes because politicians will eventually listen to the voters.

Speaker 1 (01:39:43):
Scott Beacon the B line Blogger, Boy, that is a
that is a blog you want to subscribe to. It's
real simple. It's bline Blogger dot blog spot dot com.
Scott Beacon my guest. More to come on the Twelve

(01:40:04):
Days of Preston as we chronicle the month of March.

(01:40:28):
Welcome back to the Twelve Days of Preston. And yes
I'm Preston, Scott. It's our gift to you. We're on vacation.
So what we're doing is we're chronicling the year twenty
twenty four and this is the third day of the
twelve days, so hence the month of March. Now each
month usually we have a great visit with the gun Writer,

(01:40:53):
the website the Gunwriter dot substack dot com, and the
guest is Lee Williams. I always love spending time with you.

Speaker 5 (01:41:03):
Lee.

Speaker 1 (01:41:03):
I'm a little fired up today. Spent yesterday afternoon watching
over and over again the video of the southern border
getting crashed by illegal invaders of our country. Before we
get to an article that you have written about the
Florida State Guard and what Governor round DeSantis has been
busy doing. Why aren't we just shooting him a fine

(01:41:25):
rubber bullets? But why aren't we just shooting him? Why
are we allowing this?

Speaker 11 (01:41:30):
Yeah, this is beyond bizarre. I mean, you're not a
country if you don't have secure borders. Go to Europe, okay,
see what they have over there. Go to any other
country in the world and you'll see their border protection
and their border protection strategies. This is absolutely amazing to me.
We should be allowed to use force. However, the problem

(01:41:51):
is the National guardsmen down there and the Border patrol
agents down there know that if they do use force,
the Biden Harris administration will not have their back. Look
at that leged whipping incident. The administration went crazy at
the thought that their horseback Vpas on horseback, we're whipping people.
They investigated. Turns out they weren't. There was no whipping whatsoever.

Speaker 5 (01:42:11):
But it's senna.

Speaker 11 (01:42:12):
It had a chilling effect on the amount of force
that the border patrolmen are willing to use.

Speaker 1 (01:42:18):
Well, and Democrats have resurrected that. I don't know if
you saw it, but overnight Democrats are resurrecting that false
story and trying to trying to bring it back up again.
But Lee, at what point does Texas just say, Okay,
the Supreme Court gave us the okay to enforce our law,
and the Fifth Circuit screw them. We're just going to enforce.
We're going to follow the Supreme Court.

Speaker 11 (01:42:41):
I gotta think they got to do it soon. I mean,
look at those guys who are coming across with the
neck tattoos. They're telling us who they are. Yes, hey,
they're gang members. They're all young, military age, gang age males.
It's not families, it's not older people. These are these
are hard dudes, okay, who are sneaking into our country
to do god knows what.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
All Right, let's use this as a pivot point and
help our listeners understand the difference between the National Guard,
if there is any and what Governor Ron DeSantis did
about two years ago reactivating the Florida State Guard.

Speaker 11 (01:43:18):
I love that he did this, Okay, I really do.
Because when the SAMUS created the resurrected or whatever you
want to call it, the State Guard, they were telling
Joe Biden that he should federalize some of the National Guard,
that we're already on the border in Texas and send
them to Timbuctoo. The president has the ability to federalize

(01:43:39):
any state's National Guard, make them federal and send them
to wherever they want. Our State Guard is immune from that.
And in twenty twenty two, on June fourteenth, the SAMUS
announced he was reactivating, which is fantastic. A couple guys
saw that and said, hey, we should send the proposal.
And these are a couple of hardcore special ops veterans,

(01:44:00):
Beanies and a ranger And they wrote a proposal and
come to find out and disantus and the administration accepted it.
They proposed to create a sixty man special Operations company
and they got a contract in the contract was hard.
I mean it's they had two weeks to recruit, train,
and vet sixty special operators. Now, the US government spend

(01:44:24):
millions of dollars already on these guys, training them, getting
them up to speed. So if they were just kind
of piggybacking on all that training, but right now, we
have a sixty man Special Operations Company as a component
of our State Guard that can be sent anywhere. And
when I see the crap coming across the border, and
when I hear that Haitians have been caught off shore
by FWC officers and that not only did they have

(01:44:45):
guns and drugs, they had night vision. They had night
vision press. Have you ever priced that?

Speaker 5 (01:44:51):
Oh?

Speaker 11 (01:44:51):
Yeah, that's that scares the hell out of me, because
when you're fighting with night vision, you have an tremendous
advantage over your enemy. And law enforce been in Florida,
their night vision is a white light. Okay, our cops
don't even have good night vision. So when I heard
they were coming to shore with that kind of stuff,
I'm glad we have the Special Operations Company. And dude,

(01:45:13):
this is full of really hard guys. I mean there's
there's SF rangers, seals, Marsac Marines, Air Force, Special Operations,
and a few guys that we can't really talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:45:27):
Lee, you mentioned that the Florida State Guard could be
deployed anywhere, anywhere inside the boundaries of Florida or literally anywhere.
Like if Texas said, Governor, we need some hardcore guys
here help us out.

Speaker 11 (01:45:41):
They could easily go to Texas. I mean, their deployments
are up to the governor. And that's what's nice about it.
It's really a flexible force and we need them now
more than ever before. A lot of the media doesn't understand,
the mainstream legacy media doesn't understand what the capabilities these
guys have to offer, and you're going to see a

(01:46:01):
lot of negative press out there. And the guys that
created a special Operations company they knew they would get that,
they were ready for it. They don't care. This is
something good for our state. These guys are really trained up.
They're armed. Okay, they've got sig guns and sig car beings,
which are not bad. But you got to understand, this
force has been around since World War Two, basically when

(01:46:25):
they federalized all our National Guard. Florida legislature created in
them and it's a heck of a thing to have
around here, and they are very well trained.

Speaker 1 (01:46:36):
Good to know you have been following, and I'm quite
certain the ATF has been following you. You've been following
what's going on with the ATF. You've got another story
of another likely violation, at least in terms of misconduct
by staff. Tell us about it.

Speaker 11 (01:46:56):
Yeah, sadly ATF killed a man Tuesday. They shot a
guy in Arkansas and he died yesterday. He's a fifty
three year old. He's the executive director of the Bill
and Hillary Clinton National Airport. He made two hundred and
sixty four thousand dollars a year. He lived in an
exclusive part of Little Rock West Little Rock. They did

(01:47:17):
a no knock search warn on his house Tuesday morning,
and you know, there's no way to know whether he
knew he were federal agents or if he thought he
was a home invasion. They traded a little gunfire. One
agent received non life threatening wounds. They shot him in
the head with an ar and he was brain dead
for two days and he passed away yesterday. That story

(01:47:38):
has been reported. Yesterday we found out the horrible crimes
that this guy did to get himself killed in his
home by ATF. He sold guns, he didn't have an FFL.
He sold guns at gun shows. He brought a lot
of guns and he sold them. That's pretty much the issue.
There were a couple of guns that he sold that
were showed up in crime scenes. He sold guns without

(01:48:00):
an FFL to undercover ATF agents. I mean, what we
have here is basically a licensury issue. Okay, he didn't
have an FFL. He should have had an FFL. We
should have been able to go to court and contest
these charges. Again, this is just ATF's allegations. We don't
know whether they're true or not, because unfortunately this guy's
dead and not around to defend himself. And then, to
make matters worse, family wanted to donate his organs ATF

(01:48:24):
would release the body. The whole thing's terrible. It just
proves Preston that ATF has never valued the sactity of
human life. I mean, look at their history, Waco, Ruby Ridge,
Fast and Furious. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people
have died as a result, and they don't care. You know,
this could have been done so much easier, and having
been in law enforce and having gone on search wards,

(01:48:45):
having planned arrest strategies, all they need to do is
go to the airport and pick this guy and say, hey,
we got to search more through your home.

Speaker 5 (01:48:51):
Let's go.

Speaker 11 (01:48:52):
But no, they love the no not early morning crap
and a good man is dead as a result of it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:59):
And although we deal with the mainstream media and some
members of Congress making up stories like the one we
talked about at the beginning of border patrol agents on
horseback whipping illegals which never happened, this story, which did happen,
is going to get buried.

Speaker 11 (01:49:21):
Yeah, they're not going to do it. Because guns. Anybody
who owns guns, anybody who sells guns, must be bad
according to the legacy media.

Speaker 5 (01:49:29):
No.

Speaker 11 (01:49:30):
I mean, this guy was well within his rights. He
should have probably got a license. The key tipping point
for whether or not you need a FFL is if
you're making a huge profit. That thing, to me is crazy.
I don't see any historical statutes from the founding era
that have anything to do with FFLs, so hopefully that
can get challenged. Basically, this guy was selling guns and

(01:49:52):
they kill.

Speaker 10 (01:49:52):
Them for it.

Speaker 1 (01:49:53):
Again, is website where you can find his work and
sign up for the emails great articles delivered to your
box on the Second Amendment related stories thegun Writer dot
substack dot com. More to come on the Twelve Days
of Preston. Here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott,

(01:50:32):
just a couple of days short of Christmas. The final
segment of the Twelve Days of Preston, day number three,
which is the month of March in the year twenty
twenty four. Now about every month we visit with our
resident historian, doctor Ed Moore, with a little more history.
But boy, this time, doctor Moore tossed me a bit

(01:50:56):
of a curveball. What caused you to want to take
this route this day?

Speaker 3 (01:51:00):
I was just I was watching one of the news
shows and I don't do that talking. You know, they
were talking about immigration. I thought, you know, one of
the things we need to take a pause in how
we acquired all the lands to create the United States
and think about where all the people came from. And
you know, essentially, I mean, everybody at some point in

(01:51:21):
time has a history of an ancestor absolutely from somewhere else.
Even the original colonials, they were you know, dispair. It
more disparate than most people give them credit for being
Usually they think of oh, they were all English Durst,
you know, No they weren't. They were Irish Scott. I mean,

(01:51:44):
there was northern northern Europe predominantly, but kind of from
all over and a little bit out of the east.
You know, Germans were here. And then of course when
the Brits used Hessian soldiers in the Revolution, well they
didn't all go home. They stayed here, and then they
attracted their relatives to come here. So over the time

(01:52:06):
it's immigration has been a good part of our history.
And you always hear people go, well, you know, they
all used to go through Ellis Island, and the reality
on that is, no, they didn't. That didn't really start
until the eighteen nineties. It was in an Irish lady,
young lady Anymore was the first one to sign the

(01:52:27):
book at Ellis Island relative of yours. No, I don't
think so now, but eighteen ninety one was when that started.
I believe January of ninety one when they actually started
trying to track at least in New York Harbor. But
people would still were coming in through Boston or Philadelphia
wherever they could get off a boat on the rivers

(01:52:47):
and come into America or come down from Canada, which
was a very common thing.

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):
When when did the term legal immigrant or I mean,
when when did that all begin? When was immigr into
this country a process of legality from the very beginning?

Speaker 3 (01:53:04):
Actually, they were trying to control on it. The Constitution
under Article two, Section eight doesn't really give that power
to Washington. One of the things that I really encouraged
people to read on this history because it's really fascinating.
The first fifty to years or so states controlled with

(01:53:28):
acquiescence from the federal government, because it's one of those
powers that has been given to Congress by interpretation by
Supreme courts over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:53:40):
They didn't but in the lifetime of the Founders, because
the Founders span of life really ran through the thirty years.

Speaker 3 (01:53:48):
Yeah, they started getting concerned about immigration in the seventeen
nineties more so than any other.

Speaker 1 (01:53:54):
Time as our governance started.

Speaker 3 (01:53:57):
Yeah, you know, yeah, the alien and sedition since seventeen
ninety eight, I think, and one of which there was
four acts, and one of which the Alien Enemies Act,
is still in place today and still used today, which
is kind of interesting. The other three were felled into disfavor,
particularly the Sedition Act as being unconstitutional, But the Alien

(01:54:21):
Enemies Act is still kind of in place today, and
presidents over time have used that. When they in turned
the Japanese d World War two, they were using an
act passed in seventeen ninety eight to give the federal
government authority to do that. So the more things change,
the more they say the same. I've said that to

(01:54:42):
you before. When you go through two hundred plus years
of history, they dealt with the same issues we're dealing
with today. And after the break we'll talk about Mexico
and how that came about.

Speaker 1 (01:54:57):
We're talking immigration through history, dream looking at a very
common topic, a hot topic, a troublesome topic, but through
the lens of history.

Speaker 3 (01:55:13):
The Cato Institute actually has a great study online if
people want to read it, on the history of immigration
in America. My view on it, the more I look
at it, I realized that it's been convenient not to
solve and really get a handle right up to today.
It's convenient not to solve for various reasons. You think

(01:55:36):
about World War One World War Two, particularly like World
War One, from say eighteen ninety to nineteen thirty, huge
waves of immigrants came to America and they still the
Irish were coming in. But then it switched over and
it was the Germans and the Italians and people fleeing
evolving fascist type governments were coming here and they would settle.

(01:56:00):
If you look at settlement in America, it's a whole
different story. Even the Germans came here, a lot of
them went to the Midwest and the Upper Midwest. They
came from northern Europe. They were up in You're part
of the world up in Minnesota and those areas, and
once people settled, their families would come. US policy on
immigration over the years change emphasis changed. Initially it was

(01:56:24):
worker oriented, we need certain kinds of people. Then they
moved over to family. If you had a person here
that you were related to, you'd move to the front
of the line to be able to come over here. Spouses, children,
and parents. That would change a lot. You know, there's
three ways to become a citizen in the United States
in statute, and one is by the soil jose lee

(01:56:52):
that you were born here. If you're born here, and
there's probably only thirty seven and thirty eight countries in
the world that grant you citizenship by birth if you
happen to be born here, even if your parents are foreign,
you're a US citizen. There's by blood if you travel
overseas and your spouse is pregnant and has a baby

(01:57:13):
in Rome, there's still a US citizen because you are
a US citizen. And then there's by the pledge of allegiance,
where you swear allegiance of the country, which is the
normal naturalization process. But the whole history of it is
who was coming here. Great Britain used immigration to get
rid of They called it transportation was the actual term use.

(01:57:38):
Were undesirable's criminals, people that you really don't want around
in your country anymore. Send them to the colonies, or
send them to Australia, which was a criminal thing. Georgia
was basically a penal colony in the early days, and
all those people were used as farmly. If you transer

(01:58:00):
pose that to the modern era now and look what's
occurring with people coming across our border. What do you
think a lot of those countries are doing with their
undesirables When you hear stories of Venezuela.

Speaker 1 (01:58:14):
Yeah, Venezuela immediately came to mind.

Speaker 3 (01:58:16):
Yeah, emptying their prisons sent them to America. That's been
done before. Nothing new under the sun.

Speaker 1 (01:58:23):
That's the difference being we have the ability to curtail
it if we chose.

Speaker 3 (01:58:28):
To, and we knew who was coming. And there's a
huge difference to sure. When once you start or stop
paying attention to who is coming across your border, then
you've lost control. And that's that's pretty much where we
are today. And that's how it was kind of early.
I mean, the ships came in, you got off the boat,
and you know, you walked ashore and there was granny

(01:58:50):
over there or whatever, and you had a place to live,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:58:53):
And even if she was a criminal from the other
part of the world, it didn't matter.

Speaker 3 (01:58:57):
And a lot of those criminals were debtors, you know, sure,
they just couldn't pay their bills, so the cheaps got
to get them out here, right. My family came over
in a number of different ways. Indentured servitude was a
common way back in the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds.
That's how my headbright in America came here. As an
indentured servant. You came in, people would pay your bail

(01:59:22):
and pay your way over and you had to work
for them for a period of years.

Speaker 1 (01:59:27):
You know, it's frightening, folks. He hasn't even looked at
his notes, doctor ed Moore with a little more history. Remember,
you can hear any of the interviews that we've done
in their entirety on the iHeart Radio app. Just look
for my name Preston Scott in the artist's search and
then switch to podcasts. Boom you'll find the Morning Show

(01:59:48):
with Preston Scott. You'll find conversations with Preston Scott as well.
All Right, that polishes off the month of March. Next
up tomorrow, April, on the Twelve Days of Preston. Thanks
for joining us.
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