Twelve Day's of Preston: January

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome friends, and so we begin a look back. Can
you believe it already at another year. It's the twelve
Days of Preston. That's and if you're brand new to

(00:32):
this little adventure, when we take time away for the holidays,
we don't want to leave you in the hands of shabby,
faulty programming, nay nay, And so we have spent the
year producing for you our gift. It's a look back
at the year and the news as we talked about

(00:57):
it on the Morning Show with Preston Scott in order,
and we simply call it the Twelve Days of Preston.
And so this is show number one, which means we
are covering the month of January twenty twenty five. What
a month, Oh my goodness. And we'll reset all of

(01:19):
that in the coming three hours. But just so you know,
we don't deviate from what we do here on the program,
and so we start each and every show with some
scripture look back in history if you lodds and ends,
and then we'll start unpacking the month of January for

(01:40):
our first of the Twelve Days of Preston. But let's
get to the season. We will, by the way, be
on the air for Christmas, and so we're going to
take you all the way through the rest of the
year and into the new year until we're back doing
live shows. But this is Thursday, December the eighteenth. More

(02:01):
on that mere moments. But you know, Jesus is a
person of history. His importance is marked by the simple
division of time, right, I mean, if nothing else, the
world determined that the birth of Christ was significant enough

(02:23):
that we started counting years differently. We instead of counting down,
we started counting up. And so this is the year
twenty twenty five of our Lord because we started counting
roughly based on the birth of Christ. Christ, a person
of history, says in Luke one thirty five that the

(02:47):
Holy One who is to be born will be called
the Son of God. Jesus wasn't born from this world.
He was born into it. And just as God loves
to do, God brought redemption through his son through the

(03:14):
birth of a woman who was a virgin. Jesus was
conceived by the Holy Spirit, fully maned fully God. Now
for some of you you're struggling with that, that's like
really really difficult for you to get your arms around.
Well you'll hear me talk about this from time to

(03:36):
time in the course of a year, and I'm sure
you've heard me mention this from time to time. Faith
is something that every single person lives with. I once
saw an apologist doing a open form at a major university,
and if I'm not mistaken, it was the University of Florida.

(04:00):
And this campus preacher is just preaching and he's taking
questions from people coming up, and he had one antagonistic
young man, and I was fascinated because this guy, this
street preacher, took the exact angle I'm about to describe
to you. He talked about the number of times in

(04:21):
the course of one's day, let alone your life, that
you live by faith. When you're in school, he said
to this young man, you have faith that you're going
to be graded fairly. You have faith that your professors
are teaching you faithfully and honestly and for the benefit

(04:45):
of your knowledge. He said, when you drive through an intersection,
you have faith. Now that wrung very familiar because I've
used these same arguments for years, but that one in particular.
You have faith that others are going to stop or
follow the laws as revealed through the lights on the stoplight.

(05:06):
Or at the stop sign. You have faith that your
breaks are going to work. You have faith that the
guy cooking your food didn't spit in it. You have
faith all day long for any number of things. So
it's not a question of whether we have faith, it's
a question of where we place our faith. And the

(05:28):
best thing that I can do for you as we
approach Christmas this year is for those of you that
might be doubting, maybe lacking the quote faith to embrace
and believe the truth of Christ is ask yourself what
do you place your faith in? Because once you strip

(05:53):
it all away and you recognize the amount of faith
that you live with every single day, you begin to
realize that you are a person of great faith. Now,
all we're asking is what do you believe in? And

(06:13):
I submit that believing in the historical person of Jesus
who evidenced his divine nature in front of hundreds, thousands,
tens of thousands of witnesses. Look, you take it by

(06:34):
faith that Abraham Lincoln exists because there's a written record.
You weren't there. That's how I look at the Bible.
All right, let's take a look at this date in history,
the eighteenth of December seventeen seventy seven, Americans observed the
first National Day of Thanksgiving, interesting to celebrate the surrender

(06:56):
of the British at Saratoga two months earlier. In seventeen
eighty seven, New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify
the Constitution in eighteen thirteen during World War During the
War Sorry of eighteen twelve, the British capture Fort Niagara.
Nineteen thirty two, in Chicago, the Bears defeat the Portsmouth

(07:18):
Spartans nine to nothing in the first ever NFL playoff game.
Somehow they figured out a way to play that thing
indoors because of a blizzard. Where did they find a
space big enough? In nineteen thirty two and in nineteen
forty three, the ninety ninth Fighter Squadron, a unit of
the Tuskegee Airman, flies almost every day during December nineteen

(07:40):
forty three in support of Allied bombers based in Italy,
and oh, by the way, achieved great success. All right,
Today is National Twin Day. Not a lot of people
celebrating that. By comparison, I I suppose, and today is
answer the telephone like buddy the elf day. I'm not

(08:06):
I have yet to watch all of ELF in its entirety.
So I'm not quite quite sure what to say with
that one, but I guess it's there you go. It's
it's national answer to the phone, like Buddy the ELF Day,
So you have did I say Elf? Elf? You have

(08:28):
fun with that? Right when we come back, we begin
to unpack the month of January as our year in
review begins the twelve Days of Preston. Here on the
Morning Show with Preston Scott. So don't leave us. Some
of your favorite segments and interviews, even calls are coming
up this morning, and it's going to be a lot

(08:49):
of fun sharing the year in review over these next
twelve days. So settle in and enjoy the twelve Days
of Preston. Welcome back to the Twelve Days of Preston.
I'm Preston Scott. It's the Morning Show with Preston Scott.

(09:13):
You know all that, and Jose and I are taking
some time away from the program as a result the
twelve days we're recapping the month of January. We're fortunate
we've made friends with some unbelievable guests over the tenure
of this show, which is now twenty three and a
half years more than that. Actually, one of them is

(09:37):
the congressional representative for Florida and it's third congressional district,
and she is one of the best that's out there
joining us on the program as promised US Congresswoman Cat
Cammick from Florida's third congressional district. Hope you had a
wonderful holiday, Kat, How are you, hey, friend?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
We had a great holiday, very low key. I actually
got to read all the books that I've been meaning
to read, so it was great.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
How about you, Well, let's get to things that really matter.
How late did Christmas decoration stay up in your home?

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Okay? This is how This is pretty embarrassing. It used
to be that we I like to have a Christmas
tree in every room, and so I've been working up
to that, and it used to be that we would
end up leaving a tree in a room for months
and months and months. It got so crazy busy that
this year my husband got one of the trees out

(10:36):
up and it never even got decorated. That's how bad
it was.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, so I didn't even decorate the tree and it
came down immediately after Christmas because it was just embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Gotcha. So you need like one of those pop up trees.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (10:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
After the horrific year in Washington that we had had,
I got home and I took one look at the
tree and I was like, I don't have it. I mean,
I just wanted to sit up.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Okay, since we're talking about depressing things, all right, tell me,
tell me give me the scoop on the vote for
the Speaker of the House. What what were your thoughts
on Mike Johnson as speaker and continuing forward?

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Well, listen, I mean I've seen this this song and
dance on, you know, speaker drama going back to twenty thirteen,
not as a member of Congress, but I was Ted
Yoho's chief of staff, and I remember when we took
on Bayer and we you know, we formed a Freedom
Caucus and we did all these things. And the thing
that I have learned over the years of trying to

(11:46):
take speakers out and whatnot, especially in a majority of two,
which is what we have, it's virtually impossible to get
all of the A type personalities on board because what
it turns into is not a fight for the principles
of certain policies and different positions. What it ends up

(12:08):
turning into is people making demands for offices and capitals
and an increased budget for staff and all kinds of
ridiculous things. And no surprise, that's what this turned into
with Mike Johnson. And keep in mind, just a few
months ago, no one stood up and voted against Mike

(12:29):
Johnson in the closed vote, the closed doorge session where
we make the decision of who we're picking for whip
and majority leader and all that stuff.

Speaker 5 (12:38):
It was unanimous.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
But when there's a TV camera involved, all of a sudden,
people stand up and they're like, oh, I have something
to say about this now. They'll say that it's because
of this policy or that, But what they won't say
is what they're doing behind closed doors. And there were
demands made by people for office space in the capitol,
for money for staff, for committee assignments, for gabbles of committees.

(13:02):
And it doesn't work that way. So when it becomes
a personal thing, you know, for yourself, and it's not
about the mission, it's not about the country, that's when
I get really irritated.

Speaker 5 (13:12):
And so do I think.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Mike Johnson is perfect? Absolutely not, No one is. But
I think given the circumstances of what we're dealing with,
he was the best choice. And we don't have any
time to waste. We have very little time and a
ton of work if we're going to do the America
First Agenda the way it needs to be done. So
I thought it was important that we get it done

(13:36):
on the first ballot. Both Nancy Mason and I we
worked to get to get this done on the first ballot,
working with the Parliamentary and Nancy called Trump and we
worked with the holdouts and the Speaker to try to
get to a place that was okay. But in the
end it worked out. But you know, it really doesn't
matter who the speaker is ultimately, because every single member

(13:57):
of Congress at this point is like a senator and
can stop a bit, can do whatever it's At this point,
the Speaker is just trying to keep the wheels on
the bus. For lack of a better say.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Kat, you mentioned the America First Agenda. There's so much
that we all agree on, we all voted for, we're
all excited about. I think we're seeing north and south
of the border, the chain reaction from Donald Trump's election. However,
I have to ask you, because we've talked about it before.

(14:30):
Donald Trump wants the debt ceiling lifted. Give me your
thoughts on all of that, because that is the one
weakness in Donald Trump's agenda, is not dealing with the debt.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Well and pressing. You know, I can't remember what I
had for breakfast yesterday, so I can't remember if we
talked since that vote right before Christmas on the debt ceiling.
I was one of thirty eight members who voted against
the package to suspend the debt ceiling indefinitely, and I

(15:05):
took a lot of heat from that. I mean, we
got death threats from that, and people were saying, you're
not supporting the Trump agenda. Well, the Trump agenda is
the America First agenda, and America first means that we
have to be strong militarily, we have to be strong economically.
And if you raise the debt limits, what you're telling

(15:25):
me is that you're not interested in cutting spending. Because
never once in the history of the world has anyone
ever said, well, in order to cut the debt, we
have to increase the debt limit. It doesn't work that way.
And so what we had proposed was, listen, we know
that there's going to need to be some flexibility here,

(15:46):
but a blank check is not acceptable. And I don't
care if you're a Republican or Democrat. I'm a fiscal conservative,
a constitutional conservative, and I'm not going to watch as
our country gets spent into oblivion. And so we met
with JD. Vance the next morning after the vote with
the Speaker, and we said, listen, how about we start

(16:08):
doing for every dollar that you want this increase, we
do two point five in mandatory savings, because it's the
mandatory spending that is driving our debt. The interest on
our debt has now outpaced what we spend on defense,
which is insane.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Yes, and we've.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Crossed that tipping point where no nation has ever been
able to come back from this level of financial chaos ever.
And so if we're not serious about cutting spending and
reducing the side and scope of government, we're not going
to be able to get the America First Agenda done.
And so we're continuing to have those conversations. We're continuing

(16:47):
to get to a place where President Trump will feel
comfortable as well as members of the House. But it's
ridiculous to think that if you give a blank check
that we're going to be able to get these things done.
It's just like putting a sentinel way band aid on
an open wound. It'll make you feel good for a
little bit, but then you're ultimately going to kill the

(17:10):
patient or og in that case.

Speaker 4 (17:12):
Kat.

Speaker 1 (17:12):
I've tried to explain to our audience over the years
that this is no different than you and I when
we max out our credit cards and we go to
the bank and the bank says, I'm sorry, you have
to cut the amount you're spending every month. We can't
lend you any more credit. The difference is the government
doesn't ask for to borrow money from us. It just
takes more money, exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
And it's common sense. The more money that the government
is spending, it's not monopoly money. This is our money, yep.
Every day, every single dollar that's the government spends, it's
coming out of your pocket. And so if you're truly
for an America First policy and you want to reduce
taxes and you want to reduce spending, you have to

(17:57):
cut the debt. And lifting the debts does not cut
the debt. And when you get in the room, and
I'll tell you, you know, this is some behind the scenes,
you know, information that was never reported. You know, we
sat there and we pulled out a sheet of paper
and we lifted out five trillion dollars worth worth of
things that can be cut. And we looked around the
room and Jade Vance was sitting next to me, and

(18:19):
we all kind of looked at each other and we said,
there's gonna be a lot of pissed off people. And
we all kind of just gave ourselves a glance and
each other a glance, and we said, yeah, but this
is what we have to do.

Speaker 6 (18:31):
You know, I have to lose weight.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Does that mean that I want to, you know, stop
eating pizza. No, But I'm gonna have to write like
you have to make the difficult decisions. And if everybody's mad,
then that might be an okay thing, because if everybody's happy,
then the person or the entity or the organization or
in this case, the country that's losing is America. So

(18:55):
everybody's gonna have to give a little something. And I'm
talking like these different orger oranizations and associations. We can
cut five billion dollars, We can do it and really
drain the swamp and take on the regulatory regime. But
it's going to be difficult. It's going to be tough,
and people are going to have to really think critically
about the long term goal here of getting our country
back on track.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Kat. I love visiting with you. You just make my
day a better day, and I appreciate knowing that you're
in Congress fighting for us, and you have a great
television hit and just find a way to sneak my
name into its warm.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
It's breathing up here, but I know it's cold back
home in.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Florida, it is.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
You'd be awesome as always. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Thank you talk too.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
I don't know if she got my name in that
Fox hit, but that's all right you it's congress Woman
Cat Camick. All right, let's do some news and weather,
et cetera, and come back with more. It's day one
of the twelve Days of Preston on The Morning Show
with Preston Scotten. Welcome back to the twelve Days of Preston.

(20:07):
This is day number one, the month of January. I
am Preston Scott in lieu of the Morning Show. We're
taking a look at the year of twenty twenty five
in review. This is my January visit with the President
of the James Madison Institute, Doctor Bob McClure, and I
have been counting the number of days this country was
held hostage by the Obiden administration. Now I'm counting it down.

(20:29):
We're down to twelve days before the new administration. What
are you most excited about with the new administration and
doctor McClure, what are you most apprehensive about?

Speaker 6 (20:41):
Well, first, Preston and I want to wish all your
listeners a happy new year in wonderful twenty twenty five
as well. What is disheartening to me is what I'm
seeing from the Biden administration on the way out the door,
whether it's the pardons, the release of the Guantanamo Bay

(21:02):
hostage terrorists, what they've done with oil and gas, and
the list goes on. In terms of what I'm saying,
it is very disheartening. It's Unamerican, I'll say it. It
is horrific. People have compared it to, you know, the
crazy ex girlfriend who's you know, gonna burn everything down

(21:26):
on the way out of the door. But I think
it's worse than that. And while I think the new
administration can change a lot of that of what it's
been done. It's going to take time. It just hand
strings them and slows them down. Having said that, what
I'm most excited about is that we have adults back

(21:48):
in charge. We have a president, whether you love or
hate his tweets or his personality, who knows where he's going.
He ran on very clear, very pacific, common sense policies,
and I love that he didn't run on platitudes. And
we have adults back in charge, and they are not

(22:10):
waiting and they're not messing around, and so I'm very
excited about where we're going to go over the next
two years.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
The president coming in Donald Trump, obviously he has benefited
by the fact he's been there before, and I suspect
he's learned some lessons. What is your sense, doctor McClure,
because you are as well connected inside the state of Florida,
because that's your focus, JMI is all about Florida focus.
What is your sense of what these first hundred days

(22:40):
of the Trump administration and its impact by selecting certain
members of Florida's congressional caucus or you know, some of
Florida's best to serve in his administration, what will the
impact of those hundred days be on the Sunshine State.

Speaker 6 (22:56):
You know what I think fascinating is that. And I
was having this conversation with someone yesterday. Florida has a
thirty year history, and you and I have talked about this.
Starting I would say, let's just say with Jeb of
movement conservatism, I mean like deep thinkers on tax and regulations,
on school choice, on all of these different issues, unafraid

(23:20):
movement conservatism, which is very different than Mitch McConnell's Republican Party.
You know, Mitt Romney's Republican Party is very different, and
I scream it from the rooftops. We have this brain
trust that has been made strong in an iron sharpens

(23:41):
iron kind of way here in the furnace of Florida.
Whether it's Susie Wilds or James Blair, who's a new
policy director who many of your listeners won't know under Trump,
whether it's Pam Bondy, Marco Rubio national Security with Walts,
the list goes on. They're gonna all move to DC
and they're going to work to make Washington more like Florida.

(24:04):
Now it's different, it's going to be harder. There are
a lot of reasons we can talk about, but what
I'm most excited about, Preston, is that the bench here
in Florida is so strong. There are so many strong
movement conservatives, starting with our governor, but Byron Donalds, and
the list goes on, who are not going to be

(24:26):
in this new administration, who are still here to make
Florida the shining city on the hill, to continue our success.

Speaker 7 (24:35):
So that because what.

Speaker 6 (24:37):
I'm seeing, Preston is people don't care anymore. I mean,
you're seeing people on CNN coming out and acknowledging, you know,
Trump is going to be a success if he hasn't
been already. You've seen the New York Times acknowledge some
of some things, and people don't care anymore. They're not
afraid now that he's won, now that he's won the
popular vote, and they're looking to Florida for guidance on

(25:01):
policy these other states, the other forty nine states. The
reality is that all of this brain trust that has
been refined by fire is going to DC and it's
not leaving a vacuum here in Florida. There is tremendous
conservative leaderships still here in this state and the other
forty nine states have been following Florida's lead for so long.

(25:22):
That's going to continue, and now we have an opportunity
to impact for the generationally Washington d C. With these
same kind of quote free state of Florida values.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
You've been through this legislative session thing for years. The
Republicans have controlled the legislature for quite a while now,
and they kind of have it down to a science.
The way that they move leadership in and out. Is
there much of a break in time for the new
leaders in the House and the Senate.

Speaker 6 (25:53):
Not really for the leadership. The break in time comes
with the newly elected officials, so they have supermajorities in
both the House and the Senate. But you have a
fair amount I don't know the exact number of newly
elected House members and newly elected Senate members. So you
you know, you there is a training and a learning

(26:14):
for those men and women to understand how the process works,
how it's going to work. You know, uh, those those
freshman classes, particularly in the House or or are electing
their speaker because we have term limits, even though that
speaker is years away from becoming speakers, so that can
be a little disy sometimes. One of the things that

(26:36):
we do at JMI, and we're doing it actually next week.
Is we are doing a legislative process where we're bringing
in some of these new legislators and teaching them not
the ropes of the process, that's the role of leadership,
but what is federalism? Why do states matter? How can
we push back against the dictats of the of DC

(26:57):
and things like that. So that's where the education comes
with a lot of these newer members. Because we have
term limits eight years, Preston, there's a lot of turnover
on a regular basis well, And.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
That leads me to my next question, and only someone
in your position can really answer it, Bob, How does
Florida or how has Florida protected itself from what has
infected Washington d C. Obviously they've got a year round
legislature and I can't stand it. Florida does a part
time legislature, But how do they keep it so the

(27:28):
bureaucrats don't end up running everything? As you said, you've
got new members, you got to break in, but you
still have the people that aren't elected that do have
a lot of sway.

Speaker 8 (27:39):
It takes time.

Speaker 6 (27:39):
I was having this conversation with someone yesterday in Naples
and they were saying, you know, it's four years enough
for Trump. Well, Washington is different from Florida, and this
for two reasons. One of the bureaucracy is massive and
more firmly entrenched. But secondly, there are no term limits.
And I really believe that those term limits really matter.
With fresh blood and new energy and then attitude. I

(28:04):
think term limits, you know, people come in. I had
a legislator tell me he was the former Speaker of
the House. He said, you know, Bob, my first four
years in office, I looked at every bill, I read
every John Entittle. I was prepped for every committee meeting.
By the fifth year, sixty or seventh year. What does
staff tell me to do? What should I be doing?
And that's what happens. And you think about that writ

(28:27):
large in d C. So term limits in Florida bring
in fresh blood, new energy, new ideas. But we have
also pressed and been blessed with tremendous again. I go back,
starting with Jeb but with Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, Danny Webster.
I mean all these old names of people, John McKay,

(28:47):
Paul Renner. But later you know movement conservatives who are
unafraid and what we have found is that good policy,
and I've said this on your show before, is good politics.
It takes time, but once you implement good policy and
politicians realize nobody died, nobody got shot, and you can

(29:08):
get re elected, it just becomes a flywheel with momentum.
And now that's what we have here in Florida is
this conservative movement in the most diverse state in the country.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
Now, remember any of our interviews that we share on
the twelve days, some of them are cut down a
little bit edited for time. You can listen to all
of them. Just go to the iHeartRadio app and check
out the Conversations podcast. You'll find our special guests right there,
doctor Bob McClure of the James Madison Institute. We've got

(29:41):
so much to cover. It was an interesting start of
the year and we're capturing it all here on day
one of the Twelve Days of Preston on the Morning
Show with Preston Scott. All right, welcome back the Twelve

(30:10):
Days of Preston. Let's get right to it and continue
our look at the month of January in the year
twenty twenty five. Joining us is Peter Murphy. Peter is
a senior fellow at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
It's known as sea Fact. We've had guests from sea
Fact over the years with us to Washington, DC based
organization in support of free market technological solutions to energy

(30:33):
and environmental challenges. Peter, Welcome to the show. How are you, sir?

Speaker 9 (30:37):
Good morning, Preston. I'm great, thank you, and good.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
To be on.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yesterday we highlighted Joe Biden's efforts to leave a lasting
mark if you will damaging our country. Let me first
ask you before we get into the nuts and bolts
of that, Peter, who do you think is really making
these decisions? Because Joe Biden just puts his signature on it,
and someone may very well be moving his hand for
all I know. But who do you think is really

(31:04):
authoring these policies? Is this Barack Obama? Are these baroxick
of fans? Who's behind this?

Speaker 9 (31:10):
I think the baroxick of fans is an apt description
what the Democratic Party has become in the twenty twenties
and progressively pun intended throughout the century. The first quarter
of this century is they become a much more hard

(31:31):
left Marxist party, and Joe Biden made a deal with
this devil to be the moderate faith the fake cave,
to be elected he and of course Missus Biden, to
occupy the White House, to be president, to have all

(31:52):
the perks, and to do whatever this party had become,
to implement whatever it is have become, and that is
a much more left wing party.

Speaker 10 (32:03):
Now.

Speaker 9 (32:03):
Joe Biden's career, which of course spans from Nixon's re
election in nineteen seventy two, that's Biden's first election to
the Senate, he was always in the middle of where
the party was, whether it was a you know, dominated
by Southern Democrats who were the chairman still at the

(32:24):
time of the Senate Committees, where it became a kind
of more law and order, more centrist party under Bill
Clinton in the nineties, to now this far left, progressive
radical group. That's what he is. And he has no
he has no compass whatsoever, he has no principles, and

(32:47):
so he just went with it and it got him
the presidency because again he was this moderate face, this
exterior charm that prevailed and made all kinds of promises
that they never meant. So he's been there, he's been
there fake aid as they implement all this stuff right

(33:08):
till the time they leave.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Tell me this we got We got about two minutes
before we take a quick break. What does this executive
order do?

Speaker 9 (33:17):
In practicality, it shuts off unless it's reversed. This executive
order involving the offshore offshore oil exploration. Yes, it puts
a it makes it untouchable. And you know, we have
to grow our economy. We need affordable energy, period, end

(33:39):
of story. It's what drove the worst inflation in the
late seventies, the cost of energy. It and it's and
we have to tame inflation by lowering the price of
energy and making America more competitive and in the global marketplace.
So you have to expand our our reach, our resources.

(34:01):
And there's this vast six and twenty five million acres
is a third of the land mass of the United States.
He put that all off limits with this ancient law,
and that's got to be reversed. It can be, but
it's not as simple as it sounds.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, I want to get to that next. Peter Murphy
with me, he's a senior fellow with sea. Fact we're
talking about Joe Biden. I mean, why not end the
way he came in day one, he killed the Keystone
XL pipeline and put us on an IV with everybody
who hates us to find the energy, the sources of
energy that we need and then move this to this ridiculous,

(34:38):
untenable ev nonsense. Back with Peter Murphy. Peter, we were
talking about this executive order. Now, I would immediately come
to the conclusion that, look, this is going to get
reversed on January twenty at the moment Donald Trump takes office.
You mentioned it might not be that easy.

Speaker 9 (34:59):
The law is not clear that a president can reverse it.
The laws is clear that you can put impose conservation
or in the name of conservation, you can impose off
limits to development. It's not clear that you can reverse
that in the law. So that has to be tested

(35:21):
in the courts. Donald Trump should not assume anything other
than he can reverse it. I mean, you know he
needs to, and I'm sure he will act to reverse it.
Then there'll be a lawsuit. The Greens will bring a lawsuit,
of course, and the courts will be tested by this. Now,
but this goes to show this, you know, in the

(35:42):
modern era, I mean, I guess back in the day
when this law was put in place. You don't anticipate
presidents abusing it. Right, this is an abuse of this law,
and especially when you're the lamest of lame ducks. You're
actually leaving office in ten days, and so to act
this way, I mean, it's a really disgraceful approach. And

(36:04):
that's certainly not what Congress had intended. Nor has it
been acted on this way for seventy years. It's been
in existence, and so so the courts may recognize that
abuse of it. But this goes to a long standing
problem of the Congress of the United States is it
don't make laws specific enough. They leave too much discretion

(36:27):
to the executive branch, and which is now you know,
scores of agencies and unelected bureaucrats who are interpreting things. Now,
the courts rolled some of that back. The agency's ability
to interpret laws or reinterpret them is the key. The
courts did roll that power back somewhat in this last session.
But nonetheless, Congress needs to be more specific in the

(36:51):
laws that they pass. And if the law, if a
new circumstances arise, then you go back to Congress and
you change the law.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
That's how it should be.

Speaker 9 (37:01):
And this is a result of just decades of Congress
being very vague and leaving too much discretion to the
executive branch, which is now comprised not so much of
the president's people as these lifelong bureaucrats who have their
own agenda.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
I was going to ask you, Peter, in closing as
many things as you and I could point to and
absolutely agree on that Joe Biden his administration and I
call it the O Biden administration, have done to damage
hurt this country. Couldn't you argue the real lasting legacy

(37:38):
is what you just defined, This ability to dig in
and find ways to take legislation and twist.

Speaker 9 (37:46):
It well, progressivism as they practice it, and this really
began under Woodrow Wilson, or even to be fair of
Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah, they are not governed by law. They
are governed by their own agenda, which they view is
higher than law. More important, there's a moral superiority to
their agenda, and the laws are for basically for the

(38:08):
other side, not for them, because this is their religion
in effect, and the lasting legacy. You know, they're using
this climate issue, which is so manufactured and fake and unscientific,
to do whatever they want you have not a few
Democrats in Congress who want a climate emergency quote unquote

(38:28):
climate emergency like a COVID emergency that gives untrammeled power
to the executive branch. Now, they're not going to want
it now, but when Biden was in office, Chuck Schumer,
Jeff Merchant of Oregon, many others, we're calling for climate emergency.
This is a dangerous time for because progressimism is not

(38:49):
bound by laws and constitutional principles. They will do what
they want until someone can stop them. That's their mentality
and it's a dangerous one going forward if they should
get back into power.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Peter, thank you, preciate your insight and expertise, and look
forward to having you back on the show sometime. Thank you, sir.

Speaker 9 (39:04):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Preston, appreciate it. Peter Murphy with us from Sea Fact.
There you go. I thought it was as easy as
putting your signature to it. Not so much. That's a
very important clarification. But he's so right. They just weasel
in there and say, oh wait a minute, we can
do this with that law. We can do that. And

(39:24):
he's right. It's due as we say, not as we do.
Absolutely positively that's the progressive mantra, all right. The first
hour is in the books, unbelievably, it's show number one,
which means it's day number one of the twelve Days
of Preston. I mean, in our calendar, we know it's
December the eighteenth, but humor me as we go back

(39:48):
to the year that was here on the twelve Days
of Preston on the Morning Show with Preston Scott. This
is our version of the best of the Morning Show.
It's kind of our gift to you, the Twelve Days
of Preston day number one. This is our number two

(40:08):
of our December eighteenth show, and we're looking back at
the year twenty twenty five, and this the first show
the month of January, and we are thrilled to have
with us US Senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville. Coach. How
are you, sir?

Speaker 8 (40:24):
Good morning. You know, I'm doing pretty good, a lot
better than a lot of people across the country right now.
But we're cold in DC, we're wet, we're frozen, but
we're just waiting for what eleven, ten, eleven, twelve days
from now to get this nightmare over with.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, we changed from counting how many days we've been
held hostage to now counting down to the days of freedom.
I'm with you on that. You all have met recently
with the President elect. How'd that meeting go?

Speaker 3 (40:51):
Well?

Speaker 8 (40:51):
I talked to him quite often on the phone, but
he came in last night spent a couple hours with
just senators alone. There's we only have fifty two right now.
Justice has not sworn in because he's waiting until his
governorship is over with next week, but we'll be at
fifty three. But he came in, had a great talk.
He obviously did a lot of talking early and then

(41:12):
asked questions and let us ask questions. And he's on
a roll. I tell you what you know. I played
a lot of golf with him, and the last two
years I was the first senator that came out for him. Obviously,
came in last night face to face with about half
senators in the room that this time last year was
not for Donald Trump number one. They didn't think he

(41:32):
can win. And of course up here they think everybody
thinks they know everything. But we needed a leader like him,
and so he just opened it up. He said, listen,
I know we've had disagreements, but we got all worked
together for the American people for the next four years.
We only got one more shot. He's exactly right, So
it was good informative. He gave us his opinion on
a lot of things that he'd like to do. We

(41:54):
talked about the reconciliation. That'll work itself out, but it's
just good to have a leader, somebody that leaves in
America coach.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
You know. One of the reasons why I'm so grateful
for you to take time with us, and I said
the same thing to Congresswoman Kat Camick, is you don't
just feed us lines. You tell us the truth of
what's going on, what your heart's telling you is going on.
And I appreciate that, and our listeners appreciate that. So

(42:25):
I say that in preface to asking this, do the
rest of the Republicans in the US Senate do they
get it? Regardless of what they might deep down think
of Donald Trump, do they get the importance of the
moment that we find ourselves in.

Speaker 8 (42:41):
You know, I think most of them do, but we've
still got ten or twelve that think that they're more
relevant than they are. You know, the seventy seven million
people voted for a change in this country and mandate,
and I think they're still tugging against that rope, saying,
you know, you know what, we don't really want to
lose our power. We want to stand up to, you know,

(43:02):
to Donald Trump, because you know, he's really not the
guy we wanted. But at the end of the day,
I think the people back in their state who they
should represent. I represent people Alabama, and they told me,
you know, whatever he wants to do, let him do it.
And because what this group up here has been doing,
and I've told I've told our Republican Caucus. You know,

(43:23):
those of you that are not for Donald Trump, you know,
you've you know, you've come a long way since I
told you I was for him, and now you're leaning
his way. But what you've been doing up here for
the last lot of you that are holding back against
President Trump pay they're the old guards that have been
up here twenty five thirty years. What you've been doing

(43:44):
ain't working, folks, It ain't working. The American people are
suffering because your decisions. Now it's time to get on
a different ship and a different way of running the country,
which is by leadership and by doing things for the
American people and getting big government out of our life.
And if we don't do it, it is our fault.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Now, is John Thune going to cut significant ties with
Mitch McConnell enough to properly represent the Republican Caucus.

Speaker 8 (44:11):
You know, that was one of the first times that
we had a group meeting with President Trump. Obviously McConnell
was sitting back, you know, with the rest of US
peons that are just just normal senators. He's not in
the leadership or anything soon set by President Trump. It
was good to see that. Uh but you know, as
I've told everybody, I think John Thune will be fine.

(44:32):
He wasn't my first choice, but at the end of
the day, you know, he's a fresh breath of air. Obviously,
McConnell and President Trump don't get along, never have. McConnell
is old school, you know, he's he's from the old
regime that thinks that they know the right way. But
that hasn't worked. But as I've told President Trump several

(44:54):
times since the election, you know, you're the leader of
the Senate, you are the speaker the House. Whoever we
have there are going to listen to you, and if
they don't will run him out, and he understands that
because he has a different way of doing things. You know,
he's one of these guys, as you usually said, you know,
the Gulf of America, you know, by Greenland, straightened out

(45:18):
Panama Canal, bring in Canada, and you know what he did. Serious.
Don't think he's not serious. You know, a lot of
people say, well, he's talking and the things that can't
get done. Don't count him out, folks, do not count
him out because he's looking out for the future. He's
not standing still and say, listen, you know, let's just

(45:41):
keep doing things. You know, with the greatest country on
the face of the earth, if you're not growing, you're
going backwards. He's exactly right about that. And so we've
got to grow. We've got to do things different for
national security, because let me tell you, China is buying
up things all up into Mexico, all up into We've
got Chinese ships and submarines all around in the Pacific,

(46:03):
close to California, in at the Atlantic, close to Cuba,
close to Florida. We live in a dangerous time. And
if we don't act like we are and continue to
grow like President Trump says, we're gonna be extinct.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
I'm going to read the headline from town Hall. Tommy
Tubberville reintroduces measure to stop biological males from competing in
women's sports.

Speaker 8 (46:28):
This group, they're all against gender. They don't want women
a part of anything because they want everybody to be
masculine and just kind of rip the heart out of
the opportunities for young women and girls. I'm, for the
third time since I've been here, opening up to Protection
Women and Girls Act and trying to get people to
understand we have to keep transgenders out of women's sports

(46:51):
and dressing rooms and showers. And I'm telling you, I've
got my first granddaughter coming in about a month, and
she in no way she's gonna dress the man or
a young boy or participate against them. This is just
common sense. But you know, the radical left is they've
lost it. And I think I can get it, hopefully
get it past this time, but who knows. I've got

(47:13):
to have sixty votes in the Senate, and You've still
got a lot of people over there in the Democratic
side know that it's right. But if they vote my way,
then Chuck Shechmer won't give money to get re elected
it's all about getting re elected up here. It's not
about doing the right thing.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
But that's what the vote revealed, is that there are
people that will you and I would describe as moderate Democrats.
They voted for Donald Trump. They had to for him
to win the popular vote the way that he did,
and that they look at this issue. This is low
hanging fruit, this is common sense.

Speaker 8 (47:47):
Yeah. Well, next week on Monday, he's going to go
back after being inaugraded. He will make an executive order
saying no no more, no more transgenders and military, no
more transgenders against in women's sports. The problem we have there.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Is you have to make it a law, Yes sir.

Speaker 8 (48:02):
If you just do an executive orders, the next Democrat
president will change it back. So we've got to do
a law here. Thanks for President Trump for what he's
gonna do for the next four years for this, but
we were I'm gonna be steadfast on this and if
we lose this time, I'm gonna bring it up again
in six seven months. We're gonna keep hammering it and
we're gonna get this done for girls and women because
it has opened up the eyes of a lot of

(48:25):
people and give young people especially young girls that opportunity
say look what I can do. Look a look at
so and so. You know what they've done in sports
or what they've done in business. That are women, and
give them that site of hope for the future.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
US Senator Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, as we continue the
Twelve Days of Preston right here on the Morning Show
with Preston Scott, Welcome back to the Twelve Days of

(49:02):
Preston the month of January of the year twenty twenty five.
It's kind of a year in review and our gift
to you didn't mean for that d rhyme, It just
kind of did you know? I love works of nonfiction,
So author Michael Knell. The book is Blood and the Badge,
the Mafia, two killer cops and a scandal that shocked

(49:23):
the nation. Michael, welcome to the program.

Speaker 6 (49:25):
Are you good morning?

Speaker 5 (49:26):
Thank you, Thank you for having me my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
Now, before we talk about the setting, nineteen seventies nineteen
eighties New York City, When did this story cross your path?
How did this become an interesting potential book for you?

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (49:42):
I had written a book that came out four years
ago about the mafia in the nineteen thirties and forties
a book called A Brotherhood Betrayed about the Murder Incorporated,
which was the assassination arm of the mafia in those days.
So I was reading and talking to people and researching

(50:06):
in the mafia field, and I became aware of this
story set in a later period in the in the eighties,
when two highly decorated elite detectives were on the mafia payroll.
These were accomplished detectives who were passing information to the mob,

(50:30):
information about who was under surveillance, whose phones were tapped,
who was about to be arrested, most importantly, who in
the mafia was a rat, a squealer, a canary, who
in the mafia was secretly cooperating with the government. And
what's more, these two cops would then be paid a

(50:55):
bonus to facilitate the murder of these of these these
traders in the mafia. It seems like it seems like
a story you would find in a movie. In fact,
it's all true.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Wow, you know, as you were talking, I'm seeing a
half dozen movies just kind of run through my head
as you're even describing the storyline. Here. Let's talk about
the two main characters, Lewis Epolito and Steven Karakappa. What
let's talk about them pre mob You said they were
highly decorated. Were they good cops at one point? And

(51:33):
then something happened? Tell us about him before they got
mixed up in this.

Speaker 5 (51:39):
Yeah, I mean it's a very odd story. Louis Epilido
was the prime mover in this story. Was born into
a mafia family. His father was a Gambino crime family
capo or captain. He led his own crew. He was
known as Fat the Gangster, and he worked with with

(52:00):
Louis's uncle, who was known as Jimmy the clam I mean,
these are names right out of the Sopranos, right, and
no surprise, Fat the Gangster was an abusive character, a
violent character. So Louis Epulita grew grew up in a
kind of abusive atmosphere in his household, and when his

(52:21):
father died of a heart attack weeks later, he joined
the police department as an act of rebellion against his family.
I mean, his friends and family couldn't believe that he
would do that, to join the to join the police
was you know, it was an act of betrayal. He
did join the police. He became a detective. He was

(52:42):
a he was a really good cop. He earned he
earned headlines in the New York newspapers. He was partnered
with somebody who was his exact opposite in many ways,
a detective named Stephen Kara Kappa. Louis Epilita was a big, loud, boorish,

(53:02):
boasting guy, and Stephen Kara Kappa was the opposite. He
was very quiet and circumspect, and he dressed in a
you know, very very particular, uh manicured way. And but
together they entered into this collaboration with the with the mob,
and uh, you know, Eppolito, who had grown up in

(53:27):
the mafia family, he got reeled back in by his family.
You know, we g it's hard, sometimes hard to escape
your bloodlines.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Great book to pick up and read, Blood and the
Badge by Michael Kanell. My guest, Michael, you talked about
Louis Eppolito getting reeled in by the family, the bloodline
sort of holding sway here, did did his partner? Did
Stephen have an had an I have an option here?
Or is this one of those things where okay, if

(53:57):
you don't say yes, you end up dead.

Speaker 5 (54:00):
No, I think Stephen had having an option. Who knows
what conversations occurred between these two men that facilitated these
these activities. Stephen had had a criminal background of his own.
He had been charged with a felony crime as a teenager.

(54:21):
He had been caught stolen uh loading stolen construction goods
into a rented truck. The charge was dismissed. He went
to Vietnam. He came back from Vietnam and joined the
police department at the same time as at Balido. Did
he do this for money? Was this about money? I mean,

(54:43):
some of the detectives that I spoke to have suggested
that it was simply about money. I don't think that
tells the whole story. I think Kara Kappa did it
because he liked he liked having this secret life. He
liked pulling one over on people. For Epildo, it's a
more complicated question. I don't think in his own mind

(55:06):
that he really knew if he was a detective masquerading
as a mafiosi or if he was a mafiosi masquerading
as a cop.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
When it's all said and done, what was it that
they started doing and how did they start doing? It
who brought the idea together on what their role would be.

Speaker 5 (55:28):
There was a high level drug dealer in those days
named Bert Kaplan, and he went to prison and his
best friend in prison, his jailhouse buddy was Louis Epilito's cousin.
And in jail, this man whose name was Santaura said

(55:50):
said to Bert Kaplan, you know when we get out,
if you ever, if you ever need to have a little,
a little extracurricular work done by some cops, my cousin
will do it for you. And Bert Kaplan didn't want
to have anything to do with the corrupt cops, but
in fact he got into a situation where he needed

(56:11):
he needed their help, and he hired them to abduct
and kill somebody that he had worked with. And then
later Bert Kaplan began to work as an intermediary between
these corrupt cops and the lou Casey crime family.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
When you say corrupt cops, that almost well, I mean
it implies it. Before they ever went to work for
the mob, they were sketchy, were.

Speaker 5 (56:38):
They, well, certainly Louis Epolito was. He was engaged in
all of the all of the petty corruptions that you
might expect existed in the NYPD in the seventies and
the eighties. He was I mean, it's kind of a
kind of a contradiction. He was an effective but he

(57:00):
was a dirty.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Cop the seventies and eighties. If we were to kind
of put a pinnacle on the mob in New York City,
is that the pinnacle of it the seventies.

Speaker 5 (57:14):
It's a really interesting question. It was a period of
transition for the mob. You know, organized crime really became
organized in the nineteen thirties and the forties, right, you know,
pro Prohibition flooded the mob with money, and for all
of those decades the mob operated by very very strict rules.
In the seventies and the eighties, that began to change.

(57:36):
A lot of drug money came in. The old bosses said,
let's not you know, we're not going to get involved
in the drug trade. We'll leave that, We'll leave that
to somebody else. But in fact they did because they
just couldn't resist it. There was too much money involved.
And so then you have this new generation of younger
mobsters who come in and they're they're making a lot

(57:57):
of money and they don't really want to they don't
really want to follow the old rules, and at the
same time, Rudy Giuliani and other prosecutors are using the
Rico laws to bust the Mob. The big bosses for
the first time are starting to go down. And so that,
to answer your question, it was a it was in

(58:18):
a way the peak because it's when they were really
making big money, but also it was the beginning of
the end for the Mob.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
What's the fascination? I mean, obviously you're writing a book
and people are buying this book about the Mob? What's
the fascination? From the Godfather to the Sopranos, to The Departed,
to all of these documentaries. Why the fascination with this topic?

Speaker 5 (58:43):
It's such a good question, and I wish, I wish
I had a super smart answer. I mean, I've thought
about this a lot. Why why do we root for
Don Corleone? Why do we root for Tony Soprano? They're
not they're not They're not really sympathetic characters. It's something
about it's something about the American anti hero. Is really

(59:05):
the best answer I can give, and kind of maybe
goes back even before there were mob movies. There there
were movies about, you know, about outlaws and Cowboys, and
we rooted for them. It's just, you know, it's something
about the dark glamor of these of these characters, you know,

(59:25):
and it will you know, it will probably go on forever.
I mean, Robert de Niro is in another Mafia movie
coming out in March, written by the great Nick Polege,
and it just seems like this, you know, this just
it goes on forever.

Speaker 1 (59:40):
After you're doing that interview, I just felt like going
a A is the twelve days of Pressed in the
month of January. Here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott,

(01:00:03):
Welcome back to the twelve Days of Preston the month
of January. We brought in sal Nouzo from Consumer's Defense
to weigh in on legislative matters and who was Governor
Ron de Santi is going to choose to be the
next US Senator from Florida. It is definitely the sixty
four thousand dollars question of the week.

Speaker 11 (01:00:21):
Now, DeSantis did say the governor said he wanted to
make the pick before the inauguration, So we're looking at
some time this week, and I think if you put
all of the names in the mix, you still got
Ashley Moody you've got lar Trump, You've got James Upmeyer's
chief of staff. An interesting name popped up over the

(01:00:44):
past week, and that is Congressman Corey Mills from over
in the Atlantic side. He is a decorated veteran ye
getting a lot of notoriety, and he publicly stated that
regardless of who the governor picks, he plans to run
for the seat in two years when it's up for reelection, So.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
That could go into the mix.

Speaker 11 (01:01:04):
I think if we set all of the politics aside
and just look at kind of the dynamics of Florida
and try to make an objective selection, I think if
I were making the choice or advising it would likely
be the Attorney General Ashley Moody appoint her to the
Senate seat, which would open up the ag position, and

(01:01:27):
then the governor could put James into that role. Because
James being James Upmeyer, his current chief of staff, who
had been the General Counsel and is a very very
good attorney in his own rights. So there are some
dynamics at play politically that we'll go into this mix.
Along with the impending appointment of a CFO because of

(01:01:53):
Jimmy Petronas's resignation to run for the congressional district out
that Matt Gates vacated. So, but setting all of that aside,
that seems to me to be the logical selection.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Ashley Moody, then maybe your outside number two pick would
be a Corey Mills. Yeah, I mean, I like Corey
election sets up another special election.

Speaker 11 (01:02:15):
It sets up another special election, which would be the
third in Congress. Because you've got Mike Waltz in addition
to Matt Gates, and so there's a lot of permutations
of how those dominoes could then fall. Because in addition
to that, if let's just say he were to do
Corey Mills, you have that special election, who from the

(01:02:36):
legislature might consider running for that? And then you'd have
even more dominoes. So it's a dynamic time. It's fun
to be a fluoridian.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
Right now. You said it first. You said it first,
Matt Gates. I said the name, Yeah you did. So
he sends out a note and he says, yeah, I'm
thinking about running for governor. I made the comment that
I'm not sure that he can win a statewide race
with the luggage that he does have. He does have

(01:03:05):
some Oh, I get some luggage. I think he's a
brilliant apologist for the conservative cause. I think he's exceptional
on his feet. I think he has a great command
of facts. But he's a lightning rod. He is.

Speaker 11 (01:03:18):
And to that end, I've mentioned in the past a
Democrat senator from down in South Florida, Jason Pizzo, is
kind of the what should be the new face of
the Florida Democrat Party, center left, moderate Democrat. He saw
that post from Matt gets and he tweeted out or
posted with it saying he looks forward.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
To kicking his hind end.

Speaker 11 (01:03:42):
Yeah, And then on that our friend John Steenberger then
reposts the Jason Pizzow post saying, don't worry, Senator, you
won't have a chance. We're going to do it in.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
The primary, which made me chuckle.

Speaker 11 (01:04:01):
To that end, I think a Matt Gates run for
the Republican nomination for governor in two years, and this
is all as it stands. Two years is a lifetime
in politics right now, or it's actually five lifetimes in
politics these days.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
It's going to.

Speaker 11 (01:04:18):
Be a dynamic in which you have someone who's a
lightning rod like Matt Gates, but who you are exactly right.
He is an incredible apologist for conservative movement principles. If
Donald Trump's agenda takes off and the populist movement continues
to gain momentum, I do believe it benefits Matt Gates

(01:04:40):
for a potential run because Florida is a very deep
red populist state that it has shifted populist versus the
fiscal conservative, social socially modern or socially conservative to slightly
more socially moderate, I think, and I think that's going

(01:05:00):
to benefit Gates in a primary. If Trump's agenda takes off,
It'll be interesting to talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
And you and I discussed where we'll deal with that
in the soft season when we're done with the session.
But you think there's a possibility, and I've read the
governor's discussing a potential special session before the session tell
us about this.

Speaker 11 (01:05:22):
Yeah, So the session begins the second to the first
Tuesday in March. Prior to that, they do have some
legislative committee weeks, but the governor is announced that he
would like a special session to come for the primary
purpose that I'm reading and seeing on immigration legislation, largely
to make sure that Florida's ready to assist with any

(01:05:45):
federal efforts on deportations. So my guess is there could
be some state preemption language on locals, especially if you've
got areas like Tallahassee or other center left cities that
may try to fight back against some of that or
may try to Yeah, So my guess is it could

(01:06:06):
be somewhere along those lines. But I really would not
be surprised if another topic or two gets added into
a special session ahead of it. I keep hearing grumblings about,
you know, the possibility of tweaking the condo inspection law
that passed a year ago, because, as we've talked in

(01:06:26):
prior sessions when I've been in that the implementation of
that law is hitting hard on people who have long
standing residencies in areas like South Florida or out on
the Panhandle, where all of a sudden they're getting hit
with assessments for multiple thousands of dollars that they just
cannot afford. You know, there's a ton of different things

(01:06:48):
that they could take up. I'm hearing, you know, the
possibility of either in a special or in the regular
going back to the open carry debates that we've had,
there's a ton of possibility, and I'm really starting to
get my intenta up on it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Our legislative session preview, and we'll preview it one more
time before we actually get to the session, and then
we'll preview the session right then and there. How quickly
does the kind of the marching orders of the session
come out? I mean, and does it come from the
governor along with the new president and the new Speaker.

Speaker 11 (01:07:23):
Well, typically over the course of the governor's I would say,
the meat of his term, which I would say is
the second two years of his first term, Yeah, and
the first two years of his second term. I would
suggest he did a whole lot of the calling, the
plays on the priorities that especially under Speaker Paul Renner,

(01:07:47):
that they took up. And to his credit, he got
just about everything he wanted policy wise and in his
agenda and mostly in the budget. I think what we're
going to see in Speaker Danny Perez and Senate President
Ben Albritton is not necessarily pushback, but a little bit

(01:08:11):
more of a level of independence on the legislature that
will kind of bring its own color and flavor to
the governor for some items that may not be in
the governor's you know, prior top five or top ten
priority list.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
The final two years of governor round the Santas match,
the two year term of a Senate President and a
new Speaker, and then everyone's going to be new together.
We're going to have a new governor, We're gonna have
a new Speaker and a new president. So how much
of that might modify what the House Speaker and the
Senate President do because at least they know they've got

(01:08:50):
a bonified conservative in the in the governor's office.

Speaker 11 (01:08:52):
Yes, definitely, And I think there's going to be some
of that at play because it's not even a re
election year, it is a term out in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
You also have the dynamic of and I know.

Speaker 11 (01:09:05):
It is Speaker Perez's first session as Speaker, you have
Speaker Designate Sam Garrison beginning to take a hold of
some of the things in his committee chairmanships, and as
an incoming Speaker, even though it's not for two years,
he's beginning to ascend and get more under his belt

(01:09:28):
as well. So you've got these things at play that
take hold in ways that do not really reflect in
other states that I've worked in over my years.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
From Consumers Defense Executive director Sal Nuzo. With me here
on the Morning Show with Preston Scott, looking back at
January twenty twenty five, it is the twelve Days of Preston.
Don't go Anywhere. Great guests and segments still to come.

(01:10:11):
All right, as we wrap up this second hour of
the Twelve Days of Preston, let me give you the
lay of the land here. If you're just tuning in
and you're going, what is this? This is weird? Well,
first of all, if you've never listened to The Morning
Show with Preston Scott, this is a very different presentation

(01:10:36):
because it's not really the Morning Show with Preston Scott
though it it kind of is. This is something that
we're doing while we're away on vacation. We're taking a break.
I do it every year at Christmas time. I spend
time with my family. I spend especially some time with
my wife. We celebrate our anniversary in the midst of

(01:11:00):
all of it, and we just unplug from doing shows
and push everything away for a while. But several years
ago I realized that you got a little testy, you
regular ruminators. When we were away for a while. You
could handle a day or two of Gordon deal, but

(01:11:21):
not two weeks of it. So I really thought long
and hard and decided, well, why don't we do the
best of the year and combine that with sort of
a gift while we're away, a placeholder, if you will.

(01:11:43):
And so what was born was the twelve Days of Preston.
So we are doing shows while we're away on a break,
and we will be back on Monday, January fifth with
live shows for the new year, god willing. But these
shows are a look back at the year, so it's

(01:12:06):
sort of a best of and a chronological look at
the year. So there are things that are dated in here,
but it's as the year unfolded, a reminder of how
the year unfolded. And going back to January, I had
jury duty, but I was excused, and so I had

(01:12:27):
originally scheduled Grant Allen to come in and fill in
for me to be the designated host, but I was
able to be there, and BOYD did the news cycle
cooperate for me. I am here dutifully doing my job,
which isn't one, but I'm grateful to share this time

(01:12:48):
with you. Jose Can you see over there in Studio
one A and I have been holding on to this.
I've been gathering a little bit of sound so that
I can properly lay this out, and and I think
it's worth spending a little time on because it is instructive.

(01:13:10):
A week could go. Tomorrow, Donald Trump jd Vance their
families gathered with other dignitaries for the National Prayer Service
at the National Cathedral, offering the message the homily the

(01:13:37):
sermon Bishop Marianne Edgar Buddy listen in part to just
a remark or two of.

Speaker 10 (01:13:56):
Ms Buddy, Mister President, millions have put their trust in you,
and as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt
the providential hand of a loving God. In the name
of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon

(01:14:19):
the people in our country. We are scared now. There
are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and
independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people,

(01:14:41):
the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings,
who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants, who
wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work
the night shifts in hospitals. They they may not be
citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority

(01:15:02):
of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and our
good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues,
widara and temples.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
If you're not careful, you can listen to that and go,
what's wrong with that? We'll set aside the discussion of
a female bishop giving the message. We'll set that aside.

(01:15:43):
It says in one Timothy four. Now the Spirit expressly
says that in the later times some will depart from
the faith by the devoting of themselves to deceitful spirits
and teaching of demons through the insincerity of liars whose
consciences are seared. The majority of immigrants are absolutely just

(01:16:11):
as she described, Except here's the problem. We're not talking
about immigrants. We're talking about people who have broken the
law and are here illegally. This is one deception, the
deception of wordsmithing, the deception of conflation. See, those are

(01:16:36):
the very things that signal to you her political beliefs,
and she used what was supposed to be a national
prayer service to deliver a political message there that is

(01:16:57):
not supported by facts. LGBTQ people aren't fearing for their
lives from Donald Trump. They're fearing because of lies told
by the mainstream media. They're fearing because gender mutilation might
be banned and barred in this country, which it should be.

(01:17:21):
They're fearing because they have been caught. Their efforts to
propagandize children and sexualize them have have been called out.
But there's another little twist in this story. I just
want you to remember what she just said about immigration,

(01:17:44):
though it was wrong, and about these political issues, these
social political issues. Now, I want to pick up right there,
because when pastors alleged ministers of the Gospel, she is
not one. When they decide to get into political issues

(01:18:09):
and social issues from the pulpit, they forget that they
are supposed to be teaching God's word, that's what they're
supposed to be doing, and allow that to speak to
the social political issues of the day. You see, government

(01:18:29):
is never meant to impact the church. And that's what
this woman is guilty of allowing. The hypocrisy she displays
is whoof man. She's omitted a lot of the Bible
from her biblical reading. She's just like breezed right packed

(01:18:52):
right past major sections of Scripture, including the Book of Jude.
But I think the big takeaway for you and me
is this, you need to study God's word for yourself.
You need to take ownership of what it has to
say so you're not deceived by bad teaching. And I'll
be honest with you, we're living in an era where

(01:19:14):
bad teaching abounds. It is all over the place. How
are you going to test and approve the teaching of
God's word and whatever church you attend for the protection
of you and your family. If you don't read God's
word enough to know it something to think about, all right?
When we come back, more great guests. Another very interesting

(01:19:38):
segment here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott. It's
January on the Twelve Days of Preston. Welcome back to
the Twelve Days of Preston number one, the month of January.

(01:20:01):
Let's get right to it. And a visit with Zach
Cass fourteen years as a strategist with Open AI and
the guest at the Power Forward Speaker series. I've got
to know before we start talking about the event a
little bit and what kind of led you down this
path you're in in your career. And in your life,
how do you come up with? I mean, that is

(01:20:23):
a bold thing to put on the business card. Futurist.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
That's when that's I'm glad you asked. Listen. I run
an advisory firm, so at this point you know the
title of my business card is CEO of ZKI Advisory
and we work with Global Fortune one thousand and governments.
The term that gets people excited to come listen to

(01:20:50):
a talk is usually futurists. And because of my work
at the University of Virginia in sort of future studies,
you can you know I could bend an academic title
in the same way. I cannot tell you that I am,
by any definition precisely deserving of the title, but it

(01:21:12):
does give some credit to the work that I do.

Speaker 1 (01:21:14):
Now tell me about that path for you, Zach, Where
did it start? Was there like a thing that pushed
you towards this direction.

Speaker 3 (01:21:26):
I went to Berkeley and I studied history and computer science.
Graduated during the midst of the global financial crisis, and
it took the only job I could get at the
time in San Francisco, which was for a company called CrowdFlower,
eventually became known as Figure eight. And it sold to appen.
Some people know it. It was a machine learning company,

(01:21:47):
and that's how I cut my teeth professionally, and I
never left machine learning. And then machine learning gave way
to you know AI. It basically was statistical machine learning,
which gave way to neural nets and modern AI. And
I cannot tell you that I had much prescience or
that this was a really prescriptive path, but it certainly

(01:22:09):
played out nicely. And then my sort of fashion and
fascination with the science and now the cultural and organizational implications.
Have you presented a pretty exciting career.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Do you remember the first time or where you were
when you heard the words artificial intelligence? What was the context?

Speaker 3 (01:22:34):
That's a good question. I tell you the first time
it would have been when I was a child, right,
I mean, we've been using the term artificial intelligence for
quite some time.

Speaker 5 (01:22:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:22:43):
The closest thing that I can think of would probably
be in a film. And if I had to guess
what film it was as a kid, you know, sky
Net could be up there, Terminator certainly, sure will Smith's films,

(01:23:04):
but by the same name in a professional setting. The
first time I heard it was probably certainly when I
was at you know, when I was applying to jobs
and crowd Flower. Talk to me about what data labling was.
Was human data labeling was used for.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
When did the academic background and the learning and your
career what you were doing, When did it get to
a place where you started the sense? Okay, the potential
of AI in business in people's everyday life.

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
When you know when we were doing at crowdslawer Is
provides training or provided training data for companies building these
large statistical machine learning models. And what's all you really
need to know about these models is that disgical machine
learning was so expensive because it required so much data
and so much compute, and it wasn't very good. So

(01:23:57):
the efficacy was so low that only the really big,
really well funded companies were doing it. And you knew
at the time that if companies could have access to this,
it would become far more prolific because companies like Facebook
were selling ads better. Google was, you know, distributing the
information on the Internet better. Amazon was doing demand forecasting

(01:24:19):
and search better. But I don't think it became really
obvious to me until twenty nineteen when I first saw
GBT two that was open a eyes third product, and
that probably was the moment for me where it became
clear that neural nets were going to win, that in fact,

(01:24:40):
statistical machine learning was not the right architecture, and that
all the people you know who had been making a
case for neural nets were right, and that natural anks
processing was going to be the future, and that we
were on this incredible new trajectory. And now obviously GBT
three for a lot of reasons really excited me. And
that was the moment that I started telling people, Hey,

(01:25:01):
your lives are going to be very different in five years.

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
You do this type of thing, you talk with businesses.
You mentioned that you consult with companies. How frequently now
are you needing to kind of adjust and change what
you're sharing because of how fast this technology is moving.

Speaker 3 (01:25:18):
Part of the reason that the advisory business I run
is so successful now and part of the reason that
I get to travel around the world, you know, As
I mentioned, I'm currently on my honeymoon and Courchavell and
the reason we're here is because I spoke at Davos.
And the reason I spoke at Davos is because while
there are many people who want to talk about AI,
there are many people. There are many of those of

(01:25:40):
us who are staring at it for this long and
actually have sort of used this technology to this degree,
and so a lot of what is required now is
just context switching and updating information presents every day, knowing
how it fits into the broader scheme. What's real, what's not?
You know, that's a full time job, and uh yeah,

(01:26:02):
it's I mean, it's a blast. It just it requires
it requires quite a bit of attention and compute computational power.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
What is your best guess on what you see as
the potential pitfalls? What are businesses going to need to
navigate to avoid inside this new world?

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):
In the interest of your listeners, I think I would.
I think I'll answer this question slightly differently. Businesses are
going to have a couple of problems. We can talk
about those. I think the pitfalls are actually probably more societal. Okay,
I'll answer it. I'll be fair, I'll answer it, and
then I'll answer the other question. Companies are going to
struggle to realize that it's not about AI per se.

(01:26:47):
Making it about AI does a disservice to the actual
change that's coming. Fusion, quantum computing, these technologies are are
are around the corner and simply stillaring at AI and saying,
we're going to update to this technology right now.

Speaker 5 (01:27:03):
You know, it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:27:04):
Actually future proofing your company in any real way.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
Okay, So I think.

Speaker 3 (01:27:08):
Companies are going to get stuck because they're not going
to update to the paradigm shifts. They're going to hire
people who are very very insistent that they practice to
study a job to become a very specific kind of employee,
and that if their job changes, it won't be good
for them. And I think we're just going to be
mired in this massive, colossal change management issue which some

(01:27:32):
companies will navigate very well and others won't. And it's
not actually the technology that's going to make or break
a company, it's the people within it and their willingness
to update to the fact that the world is just
changing so much now for society. Of the pitfalls and
I think this is far more interesting. Are probably going
to come down to one dehumanization. This idea that you

(01:27:54):
know some this is my theory that some percentage of
the population will at some point have a greater interest
than a virtual reality than a physical one. I talk
to the audience a lot about that and then the other.
And I think this is one that we just we
have to talk about early and often, is identity displacements. Right,
so many people are fixated on the economic implications of

(01:28:15):
job automation, when in fact, almost certainly the deflationary result
of that is going to be economically good for everyone.
It won't, however, serve most of us emotionally, and it
will leave many people, if not all of us, feeling
some sense of loss in our professional identities. And what

(01:28:36):
we do because of that will sort of determine how
well we come out of this next chapter, and you know,
how well we design our lives for the future.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Back with more of the Twelve Days of Preston on
the Morning Show with Preston Scott. Back with the Twelve
Days of pre in day number one, the month of January.
It's kind of a year in review, and so we're
back at the beginning of the year twenty twenty five.

(01:29:07):
And as you know, I love authors who write about
stories of history, and I've got another great book to
share with you right here, Buddy Levy. But he's the
author of more than ten books. He has appeared on
the History Channel's programs Greatest Mysteries and the Unexplained. And

(01:29:28):
his latest book is Realm of Ice and Sky. It's
a true story subtitled Triumph Tragedy in History's Greatest Arctic Rescue. Buddy,
welcome to the program. How are you, sir Presson?

Speaker 7 (01:29:40):
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
My pleasure. I appreciate you you joining us here. I've
got to ask on the front end here. Now, more
than one of your books deals with cold temperatures. I'm curious,
do you just when you start researching, do you find
stories that have never been told? As you're researching one
story and decide, okay, this needs to be told in

(01:30:03):
a later book.

Speaker 7 (01:30:05):
That's exactly what happens.

Speaker 3 (01:30:07):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:30:07):
I bumped into Realm of Ice and Sky, the story
of the first attempts to fly dirigibles to the North Pole,
while I was researching my book. And so you know,
I'm on an Arctic swing here. This is my third
one in a row. And yeah, I can't seem to
get enough of icebergs, freezing rain, sleep, and you know,

(01:30:31):
floating ice flows.

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
All right, set the stage for this particular story. Give
us kind of the time frame what was going on?
Because when you say darrigibles and the Arctic, that almost
seems oxymoronic.

Speaker 7 (01:30:46):
That's a great observation. Yeah, so it's it's the turn.
It's the early nineteen hundreds and you know, the right
brothers have just started testing out in the planes at
Kitty Hawk, and the airship or dirigible or what we
think of now as a blimp is a very new technology.

(01:31:07):
And men have been batting their head against the ice
for one hundred or two hundred years trying to get
to the North Pole. And this American name Walter Wellman
has the great idea to try to fly a prototype
lamp essentially to the North Pole. And the story is

(01:31:28):
really a three part story about the men who attempted
to fly to the North Pole. When it looked like
making it there by the traditional dog sled method was fraud,
let's say, fraught with terror and death and tragedy.

Speaker 1 (01:31:45):
Is this a typical story when you talk about you know,
Walter Wellman and his pioneering of you know, obviously not
just the polar thing, but the transatlantic airship aviation thing.
Is this one of those classic stories of well, we're
going to do it because it's there and no one's
done it before.

Speaker 7 (01:32:02):
I think that's part of it, Preston. But you know,
there's also we're on the cusp at this period of
a great technological advancement and scientific discovery, and so North
Pole is this big blank space on the global maps.
Certainly there's an element of fame and immortality involved, you know,

(01:32:28):
it to be the first one to make it to
the North Pole guarantees financial just I mean, you're untold
rich is really a lecture tours and book deals and
newspaper articles, and so you've got this kind of frenzy
to try to be the first. And there's also a

(01:32:49):
great deal of national pride involved. So in the book,
you know, we've got the American named Walter Wellman, this
famous Norwegian explorer ruled Almondson, and this Italian airship designer
later named Lumberto Noble. So there's a whole lot going on,
and so I would couple it with discovery, exploration and

(01:33:13):
then also a search for the unknown.

Speaker 1 (01:33:16):
Joining me on the program is Buddy Levy. The book
is Realm of Ice and Sky. You know me, I
don't do novels around here. True stories is what we
focus on the program. Buddy. It seems to me that
one of the things that your book accomplishes, whether intentionally
or not, is you recategorize Walter Wellman. He seems like

(01:33:37):
a guy that, prior to your book and your writing,
is kind of noted in history as sort of an
also ran, a guy didn't quite get much done.

Speaker 7 (01:33:47):
That's true. I actually had never heard of him, to
be honest, and the guy is really fascinating. I mean
he's as well Ohio born, self taught kid who ended
up starting his own newspaper at age fourteen. And by
the time we need him really in the book, you know,
he's middle aged and is one of the most famous

(01:34:08):
journalists in America. He hobnobbed with captains of industry like
JP Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, and he ended up having
a hustle because he's really interested in science and exploration
as an Arctic explorer. And you're right, you know, if
you put him on the Mount Rushmore, you would not

(01:34:28):
put him on the Mount Rushmore of Arctic explorers. And
he's kind of a footnote. But the way I interpret
him is that he's an incredible pioneer because he's the
first to attempt to fly to the North Pole in
an airship, and he also makes the is the first
to attempt flying across the Atlantic in an airship later.

(01:34:50):
I don't want to give too much away, but he's
really really fascinating and was also you know, the first
to create fireless technology at the Arctic in the Arctic
and using Marconi's new wireless telegraphy, and so the guy
was just kind of a polymath. Really.

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
It's interesting because you know, you talk about the aviation
component of this story, and if we try to push
above that and go to take the sixty thousand foot
view of this, like you say, not give a ton
of way, but still kind of paint the picture of
this book. You've mentioned some names that a lot of
people know. They know the name Robert Pierry, they know
the name rold Emonson. They've at least they've heard those names,

(01:35:34):
and they connect that with Arctic exploration. What's the nexus
of all of these players. How do these people end
up kind of in the same world.

Speaker 7 (01:35:43):
Yeah, that's that's great question. You know, there's this confluence
happening where the airplane, as I mentioned, and the airship
are both being developed simultaneously, and we forget that that
it was not exactly a done deal that the airplane
is going to have supremacy of disguise. In fact, when

(01:36:04):
this book sort of opens in nineteen oh six oh
seven o eight, the airship has a lot of advantages,
and so men are trying to see which technology is
going to be the most practical, not only for military
capabilities but for commercial travel. That's sort of the primary driver.

(01:36:26):
And so I like that you point that out, because
after the Wellman section of the book, which is part one,
we encounter Roll Dominson, who's mostly known because you know,
he was the first to the South Pole, first through
the Northwest Passage, and then I argue and others concur
with me that he was verifiably the first of the

(01:36:47):
North Pole. But you also have characters in this book
like Richard Byrd, who ends up in this and they
all convene ultimately in this place called Spalbard, which is
roughly halfway between northern Norway and the North Pole, which
is a kind of ground zero for leaping off to
attempts at the North Pole. And you know, you've got

(01:37:11):
this incredible scene where you've got Richard Byrd and his
Josephine Ford and then this massive airship called the norga
three hundred and fifty foot long airship, and you know,
there's sort of this race for the North Pole and
it's a global media event. There's many journalists are up

(01:37:33):
there in the far frozen North and it's just an
amazing scene.

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
Buddy. We we've talked a little bit about the airship
component of this. I'm still fascinated by the fact that
how did they think that an airship which relies on
air for you know, its its ability to stay aloft
along with you know, the motor component over such cold temperatures.
Who thought that was a good idea?

Speaker 7 (01:38:00):
That's a great question. Well, so these airships were in
there fledgling stages, and you're right. I mean when Wellman
initially begins, you know, he straps a seventy five horsepower
motor on a hydrogen inflated, flammable, hydrogen inflated one hundred
and eighty five foot craft, and you know, you kind

(01:38:22):
of wonder what could go wrong. But by the time
we reached the second and third parts of the book,
the airship has developed significantly. With Zeppelin in Germany and
the Italians in the military. Mussolini's Italian military had created
these three hundred and fifty foot long really advanced airships

(01:38:42):
which could then go seventy five miles an hour at
a top speed, but they cruised at about fifty and
there was still a lot of danger involved because you've
got you know, flot gasoline powered engines connected to a
hydrogen filled craft. But they were you know, and some
had blown up. I mean, this is twenty years before

(01:39:03):
the hennen Burgh right by the time Aminson and Umberto Noble,
the Italian designer, get involved, but there had been an accident,
so it was always a looming.

Speaker 1 (01:39:12):
Fear, realm of ice and sky story written by Buddy Levy,
an amazing true story, fantastic adventure. All right, we got
more to come final half hours ahead of us the
Twelve Days of Preston. This is day number one. As
we're away on vacation, we're not leaving you alone. We're

(01:39:34):
here with you in spirit and with a little technology
rolled in as well. So we're recapping the year that
was and being the first day of the Twelve Days
of Preston. It's the month of January. More to come
here on the Morning Show with Preston's con Welcome back

(01:40:06):
to the Twelve days of Preston day number one, the
month of January. Looking back at the year that was,
we tackle a lot of big issues and we bring
in some big guns like Hans von Spakowsky, a constitutional
scholar and expert from the Heritage Foundation. I reached out
to Hans to help us better understand this issue called

(01:40:29):
birthright citizenship and the fourteenth Amendment. Hans, welcome back to
the show, my friend.

Speaker 9 (01:40:34):
How are you, Preston.

Speaker 12 (01:40:36):
I'm doing just great, heading into Washington, which is still
roiling as if it's been hit by the Trump tornado.

Speaker 1 (01:40:46):
You're laughing, but people in your world have to be
loving what's happening.

Speaker 12 (01:40:52):
Oh, let me tell you. It's the middle of the week,
a week and a half after he came in, and
every single day, with the moves that Trump is making,
it's as if I'm having Christmas Morning every single day
and I'm going down to the tree and every present

(01:41:13):
I could ever have wished for is under the tree.
I mean, it's just.

Speaker 1 (01:41:18):
Great, absolutely love it all. Right, let's dial in here
for a second fourth on the fourteenth Amendment. Explain to
our listeners. Let's go back and bring up the fourteenth
fourteenth Amendment in its context. What was its purpose.

Speaker 12 (01:41:32):
Well, the purpose was to make sure that newly freed
slaves would become citizens of the United States. But everyone
today who is saying that this also means in the
fourteenth Amendment that the children of aliens who are in
the United States, whether they're here legally or even illegally,

(01:41:55):
are also citizens, are just wrong. They are ignoring not
only the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, but it's history.
And this is very it was very easy to understand.
All those who say, if you're born in the US,
you're a citizen, they're only looking at the first half
of the fourteenth Amendment. What the fourteenth Amendment says, very simple,

(01:42:16):
is you're a citizen if you're born in the United
States and subject to its jurisdiction. And what the sponsors
of the fourteenth Amendment in Congress said, this is very clear,
it's in the transcripts of all their debates, was that
subject to the jurisdiction of the United States meant you

(01:42:38):
owe your political allegiance to the US. Your subject to
the US's political allegiance. You don't owe it to any
foreign nation. And the easiest with folks to understand it
is this if a German tourist comes to the US
and she has a baby while she's here, that baby's
a German citizen. Why but well, because their mother is

(01:43:00):
a German citizen, her political allegiance is owed to who
the German government because he's a German citizen, She's not
a citizen of the US. And by the way, President's
only three cases ever before the Supreme Court of US,
all in the late eighteen hundreds. In one of them,

(01:43:21):
in eighteen seventy two, the slaughter House Cases, the Supreme
Court said the Fourteenth Amendment the way that terms should
be interpreted, means that the children of foreign citizens in
the US are not citizens in the US. A few

(01:43:44):
years later, an American Indian sued the government, saying, Hey,
I'm a citizen of the US. I was born in
the US, and the US Supreme Court said, no, you're not.
You are subject to the jurisdiction of your tribe government,
not the US government, and therefore you're not a US
Citi's Native Americans only became citizens in the nineteen twenties

(01:44:09):
when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Backs. If being born
in the US made you a US citizen, there would
have been no need for Congress to pass that pass
that law.

Speaker 1 (01:44:20):
How did we get to where we are right now
over the last couple of decades, where the interpretation of
the fourteenth Amendment has expanded so much, and it might
have taken place prior to the last couple of decades.
But is it conflation? I mean, that's something the left
loves to do. They love to take the issue of
immigration and merge it with illegal immigration, and they're two

(01:44:41):
distinctly different issues. Is that what happened here or something.

Speaker 12 (01:44:44):
Else that's part of what happened. There's a third Supreme
Court case. I think it was wrongly decided, but it's
the one that the supporters birthrights is and always pointed to.
In the late eighteen nineties, there was another case before
the Supreme Court. In this case, it was the sun

(01:45:06):
of two Chinese immigrants who had come to the US.
They were here legally, they were permanent resident aliens. But
you'll recall that we had passed these things called the
Chinese Exclusion Acts, which said that no Chinese individual could
ever become a US citizen. So the Supreme Court said
that because these were permanent resident aliens, their son would

(01:45:31):
be considered a US citizen. Now I think that's a
misinterpretation of the law. But even if you take that
case into consideration, all that means is that the kids
of permanent resident aliens, which is a very small number,
might be considered US citizens, not the kids of illegal

(01:45:52):
aliens or diplomats. What happened, as far as we've been
able to trace, and we've done as a Heritage und
we've an extensive research of this, it seemed to change
during the Prize surprise the Roosevelt administration, when they were
doing a lot of things. The Roosevelt administration apparently decided, well,

(01:46:14):
you know, if you're born in the US, we'll give
you a US passport. And it kind of devolved from there.
So all those people who are saying the Trump is
wrong about this, they're shooting from the hip, and including,
by the way, the judge in Seattle who said, oh,
it's blatantly unconstitutional what Trump is doing. Oh, he's blatantly

(01:46:38):
ignorant of the history of this. And you know, nobody
should pay any attention to what that judge said. Think
about this Preston. Trump issues the order. The next day,
a lawsuit is filed, and within a day, the judge
issues an injunction against it. How much research do you

(01:46:58):
think he was able to do in a day on this?

Speaker 5 (01:47:01):
Why?

Speaker 12 (01:47:02):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (01:47:03):
He stated that he believed that the states suing have
a great likelihood of success. But in reality, has there
ever been a testing of.

Speaker 12 (01:47:15):
This before the US Supreme Court?

Speaker 3 (01:47:17):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:47:18):
Well, I mean time.

Speaker 12 (01:47:20):
The only time it's been tested is in those three
cases in the late eighteen hundreds, and those cases are
all on the other side. And the only way this
judge could issue an injunction against this is by ignoring
ignoring those Supreme Court cases.

Speaker 1 (01:47:40):
I was going to say, they likely found the right
judge at the right in the right district to hear
the case, but didn't Trump in essence, do this just
to provoke that type of response, So it ends up, yes,
in front of the Supreme Court eventually.

Speaker 12 (01:47:56):
Yes, that's exactly what's going on. The Supreme Court needs
to one hundred and twenty five years or more after
the last decision on this, they need to put the
final word in on this. The same way, remember the
Second Amendment, the right of all of us personally to

(01:48:17):
bear arms, that really had never been before the Supreme
Court until what ten years ago when the Supreme Court
finally got a case on this and finally said, yes,
it is a personal right, and that's the same thing here.
We need to get a final disposition from the US
Supreme Court on it.

Speaker 1 (01:48:35):
Hans von Spakowski back in January on the Morning Show
with Preston Scott to paraphrase the great Rush Limbaugh probably
smarter than both you and I combined, with half his
brain tied behind his back. It still makes me laugh

(01:48:57):
when I think of Rush saying that stuff. It's the
Twelve Days of Preston. This is day number one, which
means the month of January. If you miss any of this,
we will be posting this on the podcast down the road,
So don't you dare worry. The entire sequence of shows
will be available to you to listen to. But yeah,

(01:49:21):
we're offering this in lieu of us being on the
show live because we're taking a little commercial break the
from doing the program. We're just away for a while,
but we didn't want to leave you with just Gordon
deal for three hours for twelve days. So we've got

(01:49:41):
the twelve days of Preston, and so tomorrow will be
the month of February. Here on Friday, December the nineteenth.
But we've got still one more segment to go, so
don't you dare leave us. It is the Twelve Days
of Preston. Here on the Morning Show with Preston's con

(01:50:09):
Welcome back. Final segment of the Twelve Days of Preston
Show number one. This is the month of January twenty
twenty five. It's a year in review plus our gift
to all of you who faithfully listen to the program. Now,
I'd love to end this show with something kind of
humorous or uh, this is good news, but just a

(01:50:33):
little bit different because it's from the pages of what's
going on. This was from the final show of the month.
Matt Staber, founder and incredible litigator for Liberty Council, join
me on the program. Give everybody a snapshot of the

(01:50:54):
Center for Medical Progress and what Sandra Merritt and Dave
Dallandoon we're doing and how it l into them in
trouble in California.

Speaker 4 (01:51:02):
Yes, David de Lighten and Santa Mark, both of those
Back in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, they got together. They
had never met each other before, but David reached out
to Sandra, and they began to investigate the organ trafficking
scheme with Planned Parenthood abortion doctors and executives and then
organ procurement companies as they would purchase them from the

(01:51:24):
abortion clinics and then sell them to the research labs
that was actually funded by the NIH under doctor Fauci's
direction and oversight. So this particular situation resulted in a
lot of investigation. They looked at all the recording laws
and they realized that if you did a recording undercover

(01:51:46):
where the other side didn't know you were filming them,
there's an exception to the recording law if it's done
in a place where there's no expectation of privacy, like
a very heavily trafficked public place. So all of these
recordings were over dinner or at conferences, lots of people
coming to the table, lots of people around, and that's
what they did. And they sat down with these abortion

(01:52:09):
clinic doctors from Planned Parents and other executives and the
organ precurean companies, and the videos were shocking. What we
found is that they were having late term abortions and
that even some of the abortion doctors. Doctor Nukotola was
changing the procedure of the abortion to grab the baby,
bringing the baby out feet first in a breach position,
and then leaving the rest of the body of the

(01:52:31):
head inside but everything outside, and then taking the organs
from the baby while the baby was still in the
mother's womb via the head, so they would think, oh, well,
it's not an abortion because the baby hasn't taken its
first breath yet. They did that to get more intact organs.
More intact the organs, the higher the prices. Some of
these baby body parts sold for seventeen thousand dollars apiece,

(01:52:55):
and they did this over and over again. They sold
them to these they provide they did these abortions. The
women oftentimes most of the time, they didn't know, they
didn't know their babies were being aborted. For selling their
baby body parts. While they're still out in front of
the abortion clinic throwing up. They're whisking these body parts
off in various express trucks to be sold. So what

(01:53:18):
happened is as a result of those videos, there was
a huge backlash, a huge outcry with what was going
on with Planned Parenthood and these abortion clinics. Kamala Harris
was the Attorney General, she began to do the criminal
investigation and she raided David's house, took all of the
rest of the videos so none of them could be
shown anymore. And then Exavior Besara took over her position,

(01:53:40):
and then he got sixteen felony charges against both Sandra
and David. And that's been going on now for eight years.
So just recently, just this week Monday, after eight years
of litigation, we whittled the sixteen felonies down to about eight.
But any one of those could have sent Sandra and

(01:54:01):
David to prison for ten years. This would have been
a jury in San Francisco, a two month trial involving
planned parent and abortion, and any one of those could
have been a ten year prison sentence. So we have
been defending, appealing, litigating over and over for eight years.
Very intense, highly expensive proposition. But you know, life has

(01:54:24):
no value other than it's You can't put a value
on it, and so to have these people thrown in
jail would be an injustice. On Monday, we had a
dramatic breakthrough when we were in court. The case is
now over and that means Sandra Merritt will not She's
entered a plea of no contest to one count that

(01:54:46):
will be wiped away, and then she has no jail time,
no fines, no restoration. Sandra and David are now finally
finally free after all these years with Damocles sword hanging
over their neck of the extended prison sentences.

Speaker 1 (01:55:02):
Matt, Now what happens to those videos? What happens to
the work that they did?

Speaker 8 (01:55:09):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:55:10):
The interesting thing is when we went to a preliminary
criminal hearing where they decide whether they will continue the case,
we were able to show a few of the videos,
but then we went to the other case involving plant
parented and civil the judge didn't allow us to show
any So these videos have basically been under court order
because the Kamala Harris, not to be released for the

(01:55:31):
past ten years since they were produced in twenty fifteen.
But last year Marjorie Taylor Green subpoena these videos and
showed them in Congress in a congressional hearing, and as
a result of that, these videos are now public. So
we haven't been able to share most of these videos,
but now we can, and now you can see exactly

(01:55:54):
what we're talking about. The judge did not want in
these cases, the juries. To see the these videos and
you'll see why, because they are absolutely disturbing.

Speaker 1 (01:56:03):
I remember when they came out, they were horrific.

Speaker 4 (01:56:06):
Yeah, they're horrific. I mean, there's one video and there's
one testimony in the case from an expert. She wasn't
an abortionist, but she was a research facility professor and
scientists at the university in California, and she was doing
research on mice. But one day they got a package
delivery wasn't hers, it was one of her colleagues opping
it up, but it was a.

Speaker 3 (01:56:26):
Baby beating heart.

Speaker 4 (01:56:28):
Sandra and David spoke to her as part of their investigation,
and then we brought her on the stand. The state
threatened her they would prosecute her if she even testified.
She testified anyway thanks to her bravery. And what she
said was this heart beating while it got to the
lab had to still be beating when it was taken

(01:56:48):
out of the baby. She was shocked that this would
have been extracted from a baby that was still alive
when the heart was taken out. And they did that
so that they could get higher for their organ procurement.
Now some of the organ procurement companies. Prosecutor in Orange
County came after them for violating state and federal laws.

(01:57:09):
Some of them went to bankrupt because of the fines.
Others are still in existence. But Planned Parenthood and these
doctors that are part of this that we're wearing the
Planned parenthood abortion his hat and the organ procurement hat
and going back and forth between the two, not a
single one of them have been charged. This is the
injustice that we see, the weaponization of government. You know,
Donald Trump's talked about this, Sandra Mayer, David Lytton is

(01:57:31):
an example of California weaponizing the government to protect abortion,
Planned Parenthood. They're big campaign funder and try to stop
pro life speech. You know, in this case, it's not
going to work. It didn't work, and they're not going
to silence or intimidate those who want to bring out
the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:57:51):
Tell me, we've got about a minute left, Matt, and
thank you for the time, But just tell me what
you expect moving forward with this specific issue. Now that
we we have a totally new administration, a new Congress,
is Planned Parenthood going to get the scrutiny that it
should have gotten all along?

Speaker 6 (01:58:07):
Yeah, I think Plan.

Speaker 4 (01:58:08):
Parent will get the scrutiny. We had congressional inherents before
because of these videos, but it was during the Obama
administration there were recommendations to go and investigate and prosecute
Planned Parents from the House and the Senate. Now we've
got a new sheriff in town, obviously, and I think
not only will Planned Parenthood be defunded and all their
abortion providers, but also more scrutiny, and frankly, I hope
justice happens so that Planned Parenthood's butchery will be brought

(01:58:32):
to life, brought to light and ended. And I think
now we have a great opportunity. Our team in Marshton,
DC is certainly working very hard across the nation and
certainly with the new administration on these and other issues.

Speaker 1 (01:58:45):
Matt, God bless you and your staff and the team
of attorneys representing people across the country. Thank you for
what you're doing well.

Speaker 4 (01:58:52):
Thank you, Scott.

Speaker 3 (01:58:52):
Good to be with you.

Speaker 1 (01:58:53):
Thank you, Matt Staver and it's Libertycounsel LC dot org.
I'll just go ahead and say we support it financially,
and I'd love for you to consider doing the same,
and I really do hope that you consider supporting Liberty
Counsel AGAINLC dot org. Be awesome. The work they do

(01:59:17):
benefits so many of us in ways large and small.
I don't know that I mentioned it, but Matt gets
before the US Supreme Court and just doesn't lose because
he's got not just truth, but God on his side.
All right, that's it. Back tomorrow with another addition of

(01:59:41):
the Twelve Days of Preston