September 9, 2026 • 32 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time. Lock and load. The Michael Berry Show
is on the air. One of the most important elected officials.
(00:35):
It's very little attention. Used to get more attention, interestingly.
Used to be a path to much higher office. And
you would see individuals go into elected or appointed prosecutorial
roles and go from there. Sort of an Elliot Ness
type character. Rudy Giuliani came out of that. Chris Christie
(00:57):
came out of that. You would see guys that were
firebrand prosecutors. And it would launch a career and you
could see the talent, you could see the skill and
the passion. I think Aaron Reitz, who's our new U.S. attorney,
is going to be very, very good in this manner.
(01:17):
Ken Paxton in his capacity as Attorney General, I think
lives up to that. We turn to Fort Bend County.
And I'll tell you that when I got to Houston...
or shortly thereafter. Fort Bend County was, if not the
most reliably rock-ribbed Republican conservative county in the state. It
(01:42):
was darn close to it. It was a county that
launched Tom DeLay, but it launched a lot of careers,
and it was a very, very solid Republican county. Composition
of the county changed, and so did those in office,
(02:04):
and unfortunately, so did the policies, and Fort Bend County
is not what it was. And that's unfortunate because it was,
in my opinion, it was a high-water mark for the region.
Sean McDonald is the candidate for Fort Bend County District Attorney,
having won the Republican primary, and he's our guest. Welcome
to the program, Sean.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Thanks, Michael.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate you giving me the time.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So you're running against a fellow named Middleton. I'm not
going to give him a lot of attention. I'm told
he's a Soros district attorney. The research I did suggests
that he is absolutely awful. But for you to run
against an incumbent, I'm going to ask you before you
talk about yourself to tell me why you need to
(02:51):
defeat him. What is he not doing right?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, Michael, I'm a dad first, and I've been out
of Fort Bend County since 2015. And I'm in the
Fort Bend County Courthouse four or five days a week
and have been for a little over 20 years. And
what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from clients is
Fort Bend County doesn't have the reputation they used to
have of being tough on crime. You know, Montgomery County
still has that reputation.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
In fact, they have a billboard.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
When you drive down 45, it says we support law
enforcement and we prosecute. And my clients are telling me
now that Fort Bend County doesn't have that reputation.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
And, you know, we've.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Seen skyrocketing dismissal rates and plummeting jury trial rates out
in Fort Bend County because he's given these cases away.
And we're on a trajectory that's going to get very,
very dangerous for our community if we don't do something
about it.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And what will you do about it? Well, actually, let's
go back to who you are. Give me the two-minute
elevator pitch on who you are. It can be as
hokey as it needs to be.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, I'll start with this. When I was probably eight
or nine years old, I grew up in Montgomery County
in Conroe, Texas. And my mom would take me to
this office off of Gladstone Road in Conroe. And I'd
stay there for a couple hours. And it was full
of signs. And no one was typically ever there. And
she would work for a few hours. I would go
play in the woods. And we did that for two
(04:15):
or three days a week for, man, it seems like
several years.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
And I really had no idea what that was all about.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, come to find out, as I got older, she
was the Democrat county chairman for Montgomery County for several years.
And so something I learned at a very young age
is I wasn't a Democrat. I wasn't sure I was
Republican either because my mom, all she seemed to do
was bash Republicans.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Um, but I knew at a very young age, I wasn't,
I wasn't a Democrat.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Um, fast forward a little bit. I, I played a
little bit of college, college sports and volleyball and football
and went on to.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Be a prosecutor in east Texas. Simply because they.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Dropped me in a felony court right out of law
school and gave me a docket and gave.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Me a felony judge.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And I prosecuted cases for almost four years and tried
a ton of cases. Uh, then came up Fort Bend
County for almost three years. I was a prosecutor in
Fort Bend County. And I opened my own firm in 2006.
In that time, I've been a law school professor. I
was a judge for the city of Sugar Land for
several years and had to resign when I decided to
(05:19):
run for DA.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I'm just scared for my community at this point.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
The direction that these dismissal rates and these lack of
trials is going and these pretrial diversions is alarming to me.
And I have a 12-year-old daughter and my wife. I
just don't like I don't like what's happening in our community.
And I can't really complain about it if I'm not
willing to step up and try to make a difference.
So that's, you know, I'm not a big political guy.
(05:49):
I'm simply running because it's the right thing to do.
You know, I heard your opening that a lot of
these DAs aspire to be something positive. Bigger in politics,
and that's not really my thing. I think I can
touch local politics and make a bigger difference locally with
the people I love and care about in Fort Bend
County than I could on a national level or state level.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I think Johnny Holmes did as district attorney and will
be remembered for a long time because I didn't mean
to suggest that you or anyone else is a DA.
In order to launch, I was simply talking about the
types of personalities that used to become DAs And now
we've seen these sort of Soros stooges. I want to
get to one other thing before we're gone. Sean McDonald
is our guest. You want to roll back these pre-trial
(06:34):
diversion programs. Why does this happen? Obviously, I think it's
a Soros-driven. But what is the reason for these people
before they go to trial? I understand they're trying to
get their dockets cleared. Got it. But what is the
reason that bad guys are being released back out on
the streets?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, the pretrial diversion specifically, it keeps sole control over
their success with the district attorney's office. So you completely
take out any judicial oversight for these programs. So if
the DA's office wants to be soft on crime, well,
they put this defendant in a pretrial diversion program, and
if they mess up, they can remain in the pretrial
(07:13):
diversion program and don't have to answer to anybody. As
opposed to someone who's placed on a regular probation and
they mess up, then they have to face the judge.
And there's accountability with the judge rather than the soft-on-crime
DA who keeps just this revolving door of these pretrial
diversions where there's never any accountability. And if they mess up, oh, well,
we'll keep them in the program. And it sends this
(07:36):
message that Fort Bend County, you can just get a
pretrial diversion on a defense out here, and there's no
real accountability. And if you mess up, that's okay. The
DA is kind of on your side anyway.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
We'll keep you in the program.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It just completely takes out the judicial oversight.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Which I think is a safe communities. That's what we want.
And the district attorney is foremost in that as a
partner with law enforcement, Sean McDonald. I will say this.
I've done a fair amount of research. He is the
candidate that should win. Hopefully we'll win. I hope Fort
Bend residents will get involved. We'll vote for him. We'll
(08:11):
support his campaign. I am support. I don't endorse Fort
But I am supporting him. I would vote for him
if I lived in Fort Bend County. Sean McDonald, Fort
Bend County District Attorney. I don't think Tom T. Hall
is a good singer. I don't think he'd win a
voice contest or any of these TV shows they have
(08:32):
where someone gets up and just blows you away with
a Michael Bolton type voice or was it Susan Boyle
or whatever else. And that's what I find to be
very charming about him. He knows his limitations. He cannot
hit notes outside of a very narrow range, and so
(08:54):
he almost speaks his songs. He's a fantastic songwriter, and
he's almost always singing only the songs that he wrote.
Of course, he wrote Harper Valley PTA, and Ginny C.
Reilly made that famous. But there's something very charming about
Tom T. Hall. He has always seemed about 60 to
(09:16):
65 to me throughout the course of his career and
as you as you listen to his career he wasn't
always 65 but he always kind of sounded 65 and
sort of like ZZ Top because they were hiding under
those beards you you never really knew you never noticed
them aging they just always sort of looked the same
(09:36):
they looked older than they were when they were younger
and then they seemed younger than they were when they
were older because you'd never noticed a difference because Because
the creases occur in places you couldn't see. The memorial
for Frank Beard was held. A beloved member of our
community and resident of Richmond, Texas. Our thoughts and prayers
(09:59):
go out to Nico and Rory and Debbie and the
entire extended Beard family. We had a good one there.
We definitely had a good one. I will not have
a lot of candidates on between now and November because
there is... Well, let me not get into that. Let
(10:22):
me say this. I will be supporting, not endorsing, but
supporting every Republican who's running, period, end of story. I
will devote more time to some offices than others because
they're a close race that could use a bump. I
don't do what candidates want, which is have them on,
(10:43):
because the goal in all of this, and this is
important to understand, is to win elections. Candidates think, I
need to be on your show. No, you don't. You don't.
It's typically not good radio. In fact, it's typically awful radio. No, no,
it'll be good. I do radio. You do you. It's
(11:04):
not compelling. It might be compelling to a base of
our listeners who love that stuff. And there are other
shows around the country where they just sit and talk
to candidates all day. And they have eight listeners. We're
not going to do that. But I will be supporting Republicans,
and I will be supporting them aggressively and continuously and consistently,
(11:25):
hopefully right up to the point that you're tired of
hearing it, and then I dial it back, but I
can't know because that varies. It's a sliding scale. I
will be calling out certain candidates who I think are
particularly special for attention. There's a state representative named Matt
Morgan who also happens to be a public adjuster, and
(11:46):
that's what interests me the most. because sharing my values
is important, but understanding and advocating on behalf of people who,
like you and me, pay for insurance hoping we'll never
need it. Insurance companies have always been a hated behemoth,
and in many cases for good reason. Large insurance companies
(12:12):
collect premiums And often don't want to pay out what
you hedged against when it legitimately occurs. And I want
to make sure that we have advocates on our side.
And that's why I think Matt Morgan does a good
job as a state representative. And, and I will be
mentioning his name. I will be mentioning the name of
(12:33):
Orlando Sanchez, a fair amount. He is the candidate for that,
just as Alex Miller was four years ago. He is
the Republican candidate for Harris County judge. Now, I will
tell you, I got a little frustrated and I have
to be careful because I'll snap. But I posted a video,
I think we've got it, I'll play it in a minute,
(12:54):
of Looney Lena. And she was having an episode yesterday.
And I said, and I was being serious, I wasn't
being funny. I hope you can tell the difference. This
is past funny. She's in a very, very, very bad place.
She's in a bad place. And everybody can see it.
And I will laugh up until the point that we
have reached That it's not funny anymore. She needs to
(13:19):
step down. She's not going to because these are her
last moments of glory, and then she's going to fade
out into oblivion, and it's not going to be good
because she's not going to have all the taxpayer days.
She's not going to be doing interviews. It's not going
to be good. But the county deserves better. If she
was the quarterback of the Houston Texans, you'd say, she's
got to go. We're losing every game. But I posted
(13:43):
that video and I received a number of comments and
I'm not picking on anybody. I'm making a point. I
received a number of comments from people who said, thank
God she's almost out. How long is she there? I
can't wait till she's gone. Can't wait till January. This
is going to get her out of there. Do you
know there is an election to choose her replacement? Did
(14:04):
you know that? Yes, she's out, but somebody else is
going to be in that seat. Oh, okay. Well, It's
Letitia Plummer, a black Muslim nut job who is a
hand-picked puppet socialist of Rodney Ellis. And I assure you,
(14:25):
she's going to be far worse than Lena Hidalgo. That's
not hyperbole. Mark my words. Remember I said this, because
she is. She's going to be worse. And you're going
to see every story once she's elected. that she's a
black Muslim woman representing Houston, the formerly conservative Houston, and
(14:47):
it's going to be bad. Orlando Sanchez, the Republican candidate,
has a real shot at winning. Well, Michael, there was
a poll yesterday, the Chronicle reported she's going to win.
That was her own poll as printed by the Houston Chronicle. Folks,
believe nothing of what you see. Trust me on this.
I told you Paxton's going to win this race, and
(15:09):
he's going to win this race. The race didn't start
until Labor Day. And there are already leaks of what's
going on inside the Tallarico campaign. They're doing a lockdown
on him doing transgender interviews, him giving speeches to freak clubs.
Our next round of polling, mark my words, Paxton will
(15:30):
be up. The Michael Berry Show. David Malsby was pastoring
a little church in a strip center. devoting his life
to the ministry as he has the entirety of his life,
making peanuts, taking care of his wife and kids and
(15:54):
ministering to his flock. When he was asked to come
to a property behind the racetrack off the beltway, that
didn't look like it looks today. I'm not saying it's
the Taj Mahal today. But it didn't look like it
did then. It was a little modular unit. The land
(16:16):
hadn't even been donated yet. It was just being used
because it was overflow for the industrial facility across the way.
The owner of the industrial facility had a vision that
this could be special. We could take these veterans who
were coming home and killing themselves, take these veterans and
(16:37):
through a Christ-based program. Veterans can help veterans. And what
we'll do is these veterans will come in and the first,
it's like the, Ramon, what do you call that when
(16:58):
you do the sourdough?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
No, no, no.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Proofing is how you cook it. Like Sandy Peterson does
this stuff. You take your first little, huh? No, no,
you're talking about what you do with it. What is
the first little part of it that you use, and
then you give this guy a little bit of it,
and they all go out and create their own little,
it's like seeding, but it's not seeding. You know what
I'm talking about? There's a term for it. You have
(17:27):
the first little, like the concentrate. Does that make sense?
It's like you start with the concentrate of a drink,
then you pour water to it, and now you have
the drink. But the concentrate is what's a valuable part. Anyway,
so that was started, and he was brought in. And
(17:50):
the idea was we'll teach these veterans how to, we'll
give them the tools to deal with the things that
are causing them to kill themselves. And we will teach,
we will go ye therefore. And we will spread that word.
(18:10):
And as we bring each veteran into the program, six-month
Christ-based program, when they are done, they will go out
and say to other veterans, hey, if you're struggling with addiction,
which they all do, every single person that comes into
Camp Hope is suffering with addiction. But addiction is not
(18:31):
the problem. I've said this for years. The bottle does
not make people do crazy things. The needle in the
arm does not make people do crazy things. That is
not their primary problem. That's hard for mothers of addicts
to understand. People do crazy things through the off-ramp of
(18:55):
drugs or alcohol or whatever leads them to it. It's
a starter. It's called a starter, Ramon. From now on, No,
a mother, well, okay, but whatever. But the reason someone
abuses drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever, is because of something
(19:19):
that's broken inside that has to first be fixed. So
you can take away alcohol, but you've got to solve
the problem. We're not all just walking around okay, and
all of a sudden someone says, would you like this
this fermented yeast that's really cold if it's Coors Light,
and you can drink it, and all of a sudden,
(19:40):
a year later, I just had too many, and I'm crazy.
Doesn't work that way. You're broken. You're broken by an experience.
And there is a lot of research now, it took
well over 20 years of forever wars, and we didn't
get this perspective during Vietnam. There's a lot of research
(20:01):
about the continued application of trauma to the human brain.
Why is that different than World War II? Because in
World War II, and I do think it happened there,
we called it the thousand yard stare. When Pawpaw came
home from the war and sat and stared at the
television that wasn't on. Most powerful moment in the Chris
(20:23):
Kyle biography to me was where Taya walks into the
living room and he's sitting in a chair staring at
a TV that's not on. So David Malsby came and
did that, again for Peanuts. You know, I don't think
that you have to take a vow of poverty to
(20:44):
do good work. Some people do good work by making
a lot of money and using it to help other
people pay their bills to do good work. That is
donating to good causes. But some people suffer financially over
their cause in life. And they suffer with dignity. And
(21:08):
they suffer with a smile because their joy and happiness
is in their purpose and fulfilling it. So David Malsby
came to Camp Hope and he started building. He started
building as a pastor would be a church builder. And
he started ministering to these men. There would be some
(21:29):
women who would come in time, but they were men
at the beginning. And in time, some people started noticing.
And Ray Hunt, the head of the police officers union,
they were teaming up with them because they had a
lot of police officers that were having trauma. If you're
a police officer and you have to put somebody down,
your buddy gets shot. So they started sharing resources. What
(21:50):
can we do? Because police officers have high addictions and
high suicide rates and high trauma, these sorts of incidents.
And a lot of police officers are former service members anyway.
So over a period of time.
They started sharing resources. So a couple of years into it,
maybe a little over a year into it, Ray Hunt said,
(22:11):
I need you to come out and see this. And
so I did. I didn't want to because we were
kind of spreading around. I felt spread too far. And
I went out and it just changed me. And it's
changed everybody I've taken out there. And I was just
so blown away. The Bible talks about being in the
presence of Christ and how it changes you. because of
(22:33):
the goodness of this person, what he represents, the decency,
the reason people want to touch the hem of his garment.
And David Malsby, for not a moment other than that,
he's not Christ, but he is a godly man. And
what he has done for so many veterans, and how
(22:55):
many lives he has saved over all those years, and
He got me involved, and I got Russell Ibarra involved,
and Russell Ibarra got Jonathan involved, and Russell got Gary Peterson,
and all these people, and Stacey Hunt, and all these
different people that were brought in, and Donnie Meismer, who
gives every single month, Marine veteran. And it's just amazing
(23:18):
the ministry that David Malsby has carried out while going
through brain cancer and his wife having cancer. So happy birthday, David.
We love you.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
This is the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It is campaign season. You're going to hear me talk
about elections, policy, candidates, way more than you ever do
because this is when it matters. This isn't sport. I
don't do it year-round. This is when it matters. A
number of you were emailing me, what is Paxton doing?
(23:53):
Why isn't Paxton doing more? What is Paxton doing? And
I said, hold your horses. They are reloading. They are fundraising. Okay. Well,
let me ask you this. The Kardashians own five Rolls Royces.
(24:14):
Why don't you? Where are your Rolls Royces? I can
see their house in Beverly Hills with five Rolls Royces,
and I don't see one in front of yours. Why? Oh,
you don't have the money.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Paxton went through a brutal primary. People email me all
the time. We've got to have term limits. We do.
They're called elections. You can't beat an incumbent. We just did.
We beat a sitting congressman. We beat a four-term U.S. senator.
It can be done. It can. The establishment doesn't want it,
but it can, and we just did it. Now we've
(24:51):
got to close the deal. It's like when a team
wins the AFC championship. Now they made it to the
Super Bowl, but the The toughest team was in the
AFC championship. But you still got to close out to
be Super Bowl champions. So we got to close out.
And we will close out. And that's what we're doing.
But for everybody who said to me, what's Paxton doing?
(25:14):
He's not on TV. And Tallarico's on the Astros game
every day. Tallarico's got a lot of money from California. Look,
I'm sorry to tell you, there's a lot of money
in California that wants to buy more than two senatorial seats.
They don't want us to have two and them have two.
They want to have four and us have none. That's
(25:34):
why they funded Beto against Cruz in 2018. And they
are funding Tallarico big time this time. And so you
might say, well, why don't we fund? Okay, how much
are you in for? How much can I put you
down for? A lot of the people who fund these
campaigns were with Cornyn. They're not with Paxton. And that's
(25:58):
the hard part for you to understand. It's a hard
part for us all to grapple with. There's a lot
of big money boys that liked Cornyn. He was their guy.
They don't trust you. They don't feel comfortable around you.
You live in trailer parks. You live in modest homes.
(26:21):
Your nails aren't done. Your truck's beat up. That's not
their politics. They need your votes, but you're very, very different.
And there's more of you than there are of them.
And when you defy what they tell you and what
Karl Rove tells you and you vote on your own,
Ken Paxton, it makes them mad. And then guess what
(26:45):
they do? They pout. And they're pouting. They're not writing
checks to Ken Paxton. But here's what we're going to do.
So Elon is in. Elon has started coughing up some cash.
And Trump's PAC is in. Well, Michael, what about the
National Republican Senator? Uh-uh, they're not going to. Cornyn was
one of their three or four top guys. And we
(27:07):
beat him. It's not just Paxton who beat him. You
beat him. And they're punishing you right now. And there's
nothing you can do about it except the joy of winning.
But we can't sit around saying, well, how come they
won't give us any money? They're not giving you money.
Karl Rove is not giving you money, and he controls that.
Mitch McConnell doesn't know where he is, but if he was,
(27:29):
he wouldn't give you money. Lindsey Graham wouldn't give you
money if he was still alive. John Thune is not
giving you money. John Thune knows you're calling for his head.
He's not going to send another guy up there who's
a Trump guy who's going to be criticizing him. He's
not going to do it. So we're going to have
to win this on our own. How do we do that?
(27:49):
Trump won without spending hardly any money in 2016. He
had what is known in the business as earned media.
And earned media is exactly what it sounds like. There's
paid media. There's earned media. Do you know what Donald
Trump's earned media was? CNN couldn't turn him off. Zucker
(28:10):
told their staff, I don't care if we are in
the middle of the biggest documentary it took us two
years to produce. If Trump gets up and speaks, you
cut to it. That was number one. But number two
was you. Don't underestimate the power of you. Every time
Trump spoke, you posted about it. Every time you saw
(28:30):
a video of him speaking, you reposted that. You said simple, punchy,
powerful things about your personal support for him. And it
made a difference. I've never seen a juggernaut like that
in my life. I've studied careers. I've never seen a
campaign like that. Nothing else compares. Not in the modern era,
(28:52):
nothing going back. That campaign was not Donald Trump being
the most amazing person in the history of the world.
If you believe he is, that's fine. But he still
had to have people act, and they did. They took action.
So you're going to see a lot of videos and
things on social media, and if you repost every one
(29:15):
from now until Election Day, we'll win. That's a fact.
Because the overlap, the concentric circles, the Venn diagram of
your influence and our influence is going to win. Ken
Paxton released a TV ad exposing Tallarico's weaponizing of the
Christian faith for political gain. This was important to do.
Listen to this.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
In the beginning, God was non-binary and he wasn't a Christian.
And God said, let there be six genders and there were.
Then God so loved the world that he gave us
his only son, who was a radical feminist and never
asked people to worship him. Look, I always think of
myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
James Tallarico. Wrong for Texas. America is not a Christian nation.
And wrong for America, too. I'm Ken Paxton, and I
pray this passage. What's great about that ad is the
part you can't see. There's a James Tallarico lookalike writing
with crayon in the King James Tallarico Bible, reciting his
own spin on scripture. To most of us, rewriting the
(30:13):
Bible sounds crazy, but I bet the liberal media thinks
this might be a good idea. They're as crazy as Tallarico,
and they're less Christian even than he is, if that's possible.
They would praise the King James Tallarico Bible. The following
program is only made possible by contributions from listeners like you.
(30:33):
Good evening.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
This is Hard Facts, Soft Voices, and I'm Wesley Cardigan. Tonight,
a modest proposal, and I want to say it out loud,
into a microphone, so it becomes real. James Tallarico should
rewrite the Bible. Now, I've read the Gospels, parts of them,
adjacent to them, and I think we have to be
(30:54):
honest about Matthew... mark luke and john they were men
of their time untrained unsourced no editor no sensitivity reader
four separate accounts that don't even agree with each other
and nobody fact-checked it and it just went out and
they were writing for a first century audience fishermen tax
(31:18):
collectors People who had never once examined their own privilege.
James is writing for an evolved audience. Because James doesn't
just know scripture. James understands the modern gospel. The gospel
of grace, of inclusion, of universal pre-K. Imagine the Beatitudes
(31:38):
with a land acknowledgement. Imagine the loaves and the fishes,
but plant-based and equitably distributed with a QR code.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Matthew gave us a genealogy. James would give us a framework.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
We here at Hard Facts Soft Voices believe in scripture,
in revision, in fleece. The King James Tallarico Bible. Coming,
God willing, and she is. I must remind you that
immediately following this program, rain...
It's that time. Lock and load. The Michael Berry Show
is on the air. One of the most important elected officials.
(00:35):
It's very little attention. Used to get more attention, interestingly.
Used to be a path to much higher office. And
you would see individuals go into elected or appointed prosecutorial
roles and go from there. Sort of an Elliot Ness
type character. Rudy Giuliani came out of that. Chris Christie
(00:57):
came out of that. You would see guys that were
firebrand prosecutors. And it would launch a career and you
could see the talent, you could see the skill and
the passion. I think Aaron Reitz, who's our new U.S. attorney,
is going to be very, very good in this manner.
(01:17):
Ken Paxton in his capacity as Attorney General, I think
lives up to that. We turn to Fort Bend County.
And I'll tell you that when I got to Houston...
or shortly thereafter. Fort Bend County was, if not the
most reliably rock-ribbed Republican conservative county in the state. It
(01:42):
was darn close to it. It was a county that
launched Tom DeLay, but it launched a lot of careers,
and it was a very, very solid Republican county. Composition
of the county changed, and so did those in office,
(02:04):
and unfortunately, so did the policies, and Fort Bend County
is not what it was. And that's unfortunate because it was,
in my opinion, it was a high-water mark for the region.
Sean McDonald is the candidate for Fort Bend County District Attorney,
having won the Republican primary, and he's our guest. Welcome
to the program, Sean.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Thanks, Michael.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Thanks for having me. I appreciate you giving me the time.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
So you're running against a fellow named Middleton. I'm not
going to give him a lot of attention. I'm told
he's a Soros district attorney. The research I did suggests
that he is absolutely awful. But for you to run
against an incumbent, I'm going to ask you before you
talk about yourself to tell me why you need to
(02:51):
defeat him. What is he not doing right?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, Michael, I'm a dad first, and I've been out
of Fort Bend County since 2015. And I'm in the
Fort Bend County Courthouse four or five days a week
and have been for a little over 20 years. And
what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from clients is
Fort Bend County doesn't have the reputation they used to
have of being tough on crime. You know, Montgomery County
still has that reputation.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
In fact, they have a billboard.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
When you drive down 45, it says we support law
enforcement and we prosecute. And my clients are telling me
now that Fort Bend County doesn't have that reputation.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
And, you know, we've.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Seen skyrocketing dismissal rates and plummeting jury trial rates out
in Fort Bend County because he's given these cases away.
And we're on a trajectory that's going to get very,
very dangerous for our community if we don't do something
about it.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
And what will you do about it? Well, actually, let's
go back to who you are. Give me the two-minute
elevator pitch on who you are. It can be as
hokey as it needs to be.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, I'll start with this. When I was probably eight
or nine years old, I grew up in Montgomery County
in Conroe, Texas. And my mom would take me to
this office off of Gladstone Road in Conroe. And I'd
stay there for a couple hours. And it was full
of signs. And no one was typically ever there. And
she would work for a few hours. I would go
play in the woods. And we did that for two
(04:15):
or three days a week for, man, it seems like
several years.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
And I really had no idea what that was all about.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, come to find out, as I got older, she
was the Democrat county chairman for Montgomery County for several years.
And so something I learned at a very young age
is I wasn't a Democrat. I wasn't sure I was
Republican either because my mom, all she seemed to do
was bash Republicans.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Um, but I knew at a very young age, I wasn't,
I wasn't a Democrat.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Um, fast forward a little bit. I, I played a
little bit of college, college sports and volleyball and football
and went on to.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Be a prosecutor in east Texas. Simply because they.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Dropped me in a felony court right out of law
school and gave me a docket and gave.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Me a felony judge.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And I prosecuted cases for almost four years and tried
a ton of cases. Uh, then came up Fort Bend
County for almost three years. I was a prosecutor in
Fort Bend County. And I opened my own firm in 2006.
In that time, I've been a law school professor. I
was a judge for the city of Sugar Land for
several years and had to resign when I decided to
(05:19):
run for DA.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I'm just scared for my community at this point.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
The direction that these dismissal rates and these lack of
trials is going and these pretrial diversions is alarming to me.
And I have a 12-year-old daughter and my wife. I
just don't like I don't like what's happening in our community.
And I can't really complain about it if I'm not
willing to step up and try to make a difference.
So that's, you know, I'm not a big political guy.
(05:49):
I'm simply running because it's the right thing to do.
You know, I heard your opening that a lot of
these DAs aspire to be something positive. Bigger in politics,
and that's not really my thing. I think I can
touch local politics and make a bigger difference locally with
the people I love and care about in Fort Bend
County than I could on a national level or state level.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I think Johnny Holmes did as district attorney and will
be remembered for a long time because I didn't mean
to suggest that you or anyone else is a DA.
In order to launch, I was simply talking about the
types of personalities that used to become DAs And now
we've seen these sort of Soros stooges. I want to
get to one other thing before we're gone. Sean McDonald
is our guest. You want to roll back these pre-trial
(06:34):
diversion programs. Why does this happen? Obviously, I think it's
a Soros-driven. But what is the reason for these people
before they go to trial? I understand they're trying to
get their dockets cleared. Got it. But what is the
reason that bad guys are being released back out on
the streets?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Well, the pretrial diversion specifically, it keeps sole control over
their success with the district attorney's office. So you completely
take out any judicial oversight for these programs. So if
the DA's office wants to be soft on crime, well,
they put this defendant in a pretrial diversion program, and
if they mess up, they can remain in the pretrial
(07:13):
diversion program and don't have to answer to anybody. As
opposed to someone who's placed on a regular probation and
they mess up, then they have to face the judge.
And there's accountability with the judge rather than the soft-on-crime
DA who keeps just this revolving door of these pretrial
diversions where there's never any accountability. And if they mess up, oh, well,
we'll keep them in the program. And it sends this
(07:36):
message that Fort Bend County, you can just get a
pretrial diversion on a defense out here, and there's no
real accountability. And if you mess up, that's okay. The
DA is kind of on your side anyway.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
We'll keep you in the program.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It just completely takes out the judicial oversight.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
Which I think is a safe communities. That's what we want.
And the district attorney is foremost in that as a
partner with law enforcement, Sean McDonald. I will say this.
I've done a fair amount of research. He is the
candidate that should win. Hopefully we'll win. I hope Fort
Bend residents will get involved. We'll vote for him. We'll
(08:11):
support his campaign. I am support. I don't endorse Fort
But I am supporting him. I would vote for him
if I lived in Fort Bend County. Sean McDonald, Fort
Bend County District Attorney. I don't think Tom T. Hall
is a good singer. I don't think he'd win a
voice contest or any of these TV shows they have
(08:32):
where someone gets up and just blows you away with
a Michael Bolton type voice or was it Susan Boyle
or whatever else. And that's what I find to be
very charming about him. He knows his limitations. He cannot
hit notes outside of a very narrow range, and so
(08:54):
he almost speaks his songs. He's a fantastic songwriter, and
he's almost always singing only the songs that he wrote.
Of course, he wrote Harper Valley PTA, and Ginny C.
Reilly made that famous. But there's something very charming about
Tom T. Hall. He has always seemed about 60 to
(09:16):
65 to me throughout the course of his career and
as you as you listen to his career he wasn't
always 65 but he always kind of sounded 65 and
sort of like ZZ Top because they were hiding under
those beards you you never really knew you never noticed
them aging they just always sort of looked the same
(09:36):
they looked older than they were when they were younger
and then they seemed younger than they were when they
were older because you'd never noticed a difference because Because
the creases occur in places you couldn't see. The memorial
for Frank Beard was held. A beloved member of our
community and resident of Richmond, Texas. Our thoughts and prayers
(09:59):
go out to Nico and Rory and Debbie and the
entire extended Beard family. We had a good one there.
We definitely had a good one. I will not have
a lot of candidates on between now and November because
there is... Well, let me not get into that. Let
(10:22):
me say this. I will be supporting, not endorsing, but
supporting every Republican who's running, period, end of story. I
will devote more time to some offices than others because
they're a close race that could use a bump. I
don't do what candidates want, which is have them on,
(10:43):
because the goal in all of this, and this is
important to understand, is to win elections. Candidates think, I
need to be on your show. No, you don't. You don't.
It's typically not good radio. In fact, it's typically awful radio. No, no,
it'll be good. I do radio. You do you. It's
(11:04):
not compelling. It might be compelling to a base of
our listeners who love that stuff. And there are other
shows around the country where they just sit and talk
to candidates all day. And they have eight listeners. We're
not going to do that. But I will be supporting Republicans,
and I will be supporting them aggressively and continuously and consistently,
(11:25):
hopefully right up to the point that you're tired of
hearing it, and then I dial it back, but I
can't know because that varies. It's a sliding scale. I
will be calling out certain candidates who I think are
particularly special for attention. There's a state representative named Matt
Morgan who also happens to be a public adjuster, and
(11:46):
that's what interests me the most. because sharing my values
is important, but understanding and advocating on behalf of people who,
like you and me, pay for insurance hoping we'll never
need it. Insurance companies have always been a hated behemoth,
and in many cases for good reason. Large insurance companies
(12:12):
collect premiums And often don't want to pay out what
you hedged against when it legitimately occurs. And I want
to make sure that we have advocates on our side.
And that's why I think Matt Morgan does a good
job as a state representative. And, and I will be
mentioning his name. I will be mentioning the name of
(12:33):
Orlando Sanchez, a fair amount. He is the candidate for that,
just as Alex Miller was four years ago. He is
the Republican candidate for Harris County judge. Now, I will
tell you, I got a little frustrated and I have
to be careful because I'll snap. But I posted a video,
I think we've got it, I'll play it in a minute,
(12:54):
of Looney Lena. And she was having an episode yesterday.
And I said, and I was being serious, I wasn't
being funny. I hope you can tell the difference. This
is past funny. She's in a very, very, very bad place.
She's in a bad place. And everybody can see it.
And I will laugh up until the point that we
have reached That it's not funny anymore. She needs to
(13:19):
step down. She's not going to because these are her
last moments of glory, and then she's going to fade
out into oblivion, and it's not going to be good
because she's not going to have all the taxpayer days.
She's not going to be doing interviews. It's not going
to be good. But the county deserves better. If she
was the quarterback of the Houston Texans, you'd say, she's
got to go. We're losing every game. But I posted
(13:43):
that video and I received a number of comments and
I'm not picking on anybody. I'm making a point. I
received a number of comments from people who said, thank
God she's almost out. How long is she there? I
can't wait till she's gone. Can't wait till January. This
is going to get her out of there. Do you
know there is an election to choose her replacement? Did
(14:04):
you know that? Yes, she's out, but somebody else is
going to be in that seat. Oh, okay. Well, It's
Letitia Plummer, a black Muslim nut job who is a
hand-picked puppet socialist of Rodney Ellis. And I assure you,
(14:25):
she's going to be far worse than Lena Hidalgo. That's
not hyperbole. Mark my words. Remember I said this, because
she is. She's going to be worse. And you're going
to see every story once she's elected. that she's a
black Muslim woman representing Houston, the formerly conservative Houston, and
(14:47):
it's going to be bad. Orlando Sanchez, the Republican candidate,
has a real shot at winning. Well, Michael, there was
a poll yesterday, the Chronicle reported she's going to win.
That was her own poll as printed by the Houston Chronicle. Folks,
believe nothing of what you see. Trust me on this.
I told you Paxton's going to win this race, and
(15:09):
he's going to win this race. The race didn't start
until Labor Day. And there are already leaks of what's
going on inside the Tallarico campaign. They're doing a lockdown
on him doing transgender interviews, him giving speeches to freak clubs.
Our next round of polling, mark my words, Paxton will
(15:30):
be up. The Michael Berry Show. David Malsby was pastoring
a little church in a strip center. devoting his life
to the ministry as he has the entirety of his life,
making peanuts, taking care of his wife and kids and
(15:54):
ministering to his flock. When he was asked to come
to a property behind the racetrack off the beltway, that
didn't look like it looks today. I'm not saying it's
the Taj Mahal today. But it didn't look like it
did then. It was a little modular unit. The land
(16:16):
hadn't even been donated yet. It was just being used
because it was overflow for the industrial facility across the way.
The owner of the industrial facility had a vision that
this could be special. We could take these veterans who
were coming home and killing themselves, take these veterans and
(16:37):
through a Christ-based program. Veterans can help veterans. And what
we'll do is these veterans will come in and the first,
it's like the, Ramon, what do you call that when
(16:58):
you do the sourdough?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
No, no, no.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Proofing is how you cook it. Like Sandy Peterson does
this stuff. You take your first little, huh? No, no,
you're talking about what you do with it. What is
the first little part of it that you use, and
then you give this guy a little bit of it,
and they all go out and create their own little,
it's like seeding, but it's not seeding. You know what
I'm talking about? There's a term for it. You have
(17:27):
the first little, like the concentrate. Does that make sense?
It's like you start with the concentrate of a drink,
then you pour water to it, and now you have
the drink. But the concentrate is what's a valuable part. Anyway,
so that was started, and he was brought in. And
(17:50):
the idea was we'll teach these veterans how to, we'll
give them the tools to deal with the things that
are causing them to kill themselves. And we will teach,
we will go ye therefore. And we will spread that word.
(18:10):
And as we bring each veteran into the program, six-month
Christ-based program, when they are done, they will go out
and say to other veterans, hey, if you're struggling with addiction,
which they all do, every single person that comes into
Camp Hope is suffering with addiction. But addiction is not
(18:31):
the problem. I've said this for years. The bottle does
not make people do crazy things. The needle in the
arm does not make people do crazy things. That is
not their primary problem. That's hard for mothers of addicts
to understand. People do crazy things through the off-ramp of
(18:55):
drugs or alcohol or whatever leads them to it. It's
a starter. It's called a starter, Ramon. From now on, No,
a mother, well, okay, but whatever. But the reason someone
abuses drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever, is because of something
(19:19):
that's broken inside that has to first be fixed. So
you can take away alcohol, but you've got to solve
the problem. We're not all just walking around okay, and
all of a sudden someone says, would you like this
this fermented yeast that's really cold if it's Coors Light,
and you can drink it, and all of a sudden,
(19:40):
a year later, I just had too many, and I'm crazy.
Doesn't work that way. You're broken. You're broken by an experience.
And there is a lot of research now, it took
well over 20 years of forever wars, and we didn't
get this perspective during Vietnam. There's a lot of research
(20:01):
about the continued application of trauma to the human brain.
Why is that different than World War II? Because in
World War II, and I do think it happened there,
we called it the thousand yard stare. When Pawpaw came
home from the war and sat and stared at the
television that wasn't on. Most powerful moment in the Chris
(20:23):
Kyle biography to me was where Taya walks into the
living room and he's sitting in a chair staring at
a TV that's not on. So David Malsby came and
did that, again for Peanuts. You know, I don't think
that you have to take a vow of poverty to
(20:44):
do good work. Some people do good work by making
a lot of money and using it to help other
people pay their bills to do good work. That is
donating to good causes. But some people suffer financially over
their cause in life. And they suffer with dignity. And
(21:08):
they suffer with a smile because their joy and happiness
is in their purpose and fulfilling it. So David Malsby
came to Camp Hope and he started building. He started
building as a pastor would be a church builder. And
he started ministering to these men. There would be some
(21:29):
women who would come in time, but they were men
at the beginning. And in time, some people started noticing.
And Ray Hunt, the head of the police officers union,
they were teaming up with them because they had a
lot of police officers that were having trauma. If you're
a police officer and you have to put somebody down,
your buddy gets shot. So they started sharing resources. What
(21:50):
can we do? Because police officers have high addictions and
high suicide rates and high trauma, these sorts of incidents.
And a lot of police officers are former service members anyway.
So over a period of time.
They started sharing resources. So a couple of years into it,
maybe a little over a year into it, Ray Hunt said,
(22:11):
I need you to come out and see this. And
so I did. I didn't want to because we were
kind of spreading around. I felt spread too far. And
I went out and it just changed me. And it's
changed everybody I've taken out there. And I was just
so blown away. The Bible talks about being in the
presence of Christ and how it changes you. because of
(22:33):
the goodness of this person, what he represents, the decency,
the reason people want to touch the hem of his garment.
And David Malsby, for not a moment other than that,
he's not Christ, but he is a godly man. And
what he has done for so many veterans, and how
(22:55):
many lives he has saved over all those years, and
He got me involved, and I got Russell Ibarra involved,
and Russell Ibarra got Jonathan involved, and Russell got Gary Peterson,
and all these people, and Stacey Hunt, and all these
different people that were brought in, and Donnie Meismer, who
gives every single month, Marine veteran. And it's just amazing
(23:18):
the ministry that David Malsby has carried out while going
through brain cancer and his wife having cancer. So happy birthday, David.
We love you.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
This is the Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It is campaign season. You're going to hear me talk
about elections, policy, candidates, way more than you ever do
because this is when it matters. This isn't sport. I
don't do it year-round. This is when it matters. A
number of you were emailing me, what is Paxton doing?
(23:53):
Why isn't Paxton doing more? What is Paxton doing? And
I said, hold your horses. They are reloading. They are fundraising. Okay. Well,
let me ask you this. The Kardashians own five Rolls Royces.
(24:14):
Why don't you? Where are your Rolls Royces? I can
see their house in Beverly Hills with five Rolls Royces,
and I don't see one in front of yours. Why? Oh,
you don't have the money.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Paxton went through a brutal primary. People email me all
the time. We've got to have term limits. We do.
They're called elections. You can't beat an incumbent. We just did.
We beat a sitting congressman. We beat a four-term U.S. senator.
It can be done. It can. The establishment doesn't want it,
but it can, and we just did it. Now we've
(24:51):
got to close the deal. It's like when a team
wins the AFC championship. Now they made it to the
Super Bowl, but the The toughest team was in the
AFC championship. But you still got to close out to
be Super Bowl champions. So we got to close out.
And we will close out. And that's what we're doing.
But for everybody who said to me, what's Paxton doing?
(25:14):
He's not on TV. And Tallarico's on the Astros game
every day. Tallarico's got a lot of money from California. Look,
I'm sorry to tell you, there's a lot of money
in California that wants to buy more than two senatorial seats.
They don't want us to have two and them have two.
They want to have four and us have none. That's
(25:34):
why they funded Beto against Cruz in 2018. And they
are funding Tallarico big time this time. And so you
might say, well, why don't we fund? Okay, how much
are you in for? How much can I put you
down for? A lot of the people who fund these
campaigns were with Cornyn. They're not with Paxton. And that's
(25:58):
the hard part for you to understand. It's a hard
part for us all to grapple with. There's a lot
of big money boys that liked Cornyn. He was their guy.
They don't trust you. They don't feel comfortable around you.
You live in trailer parks. You live in modest homes.
(26:21):
Your nails aren't done. Your truck's beat up. That's not
their politics. They need your votes, but you're very, very different.
And there's more of you than there are of them.
And when you defy what they tell you and what
Karl Rove tells you and you vote on your own,
Ken Paxton, it makes them mad. And then guess what
(26:45):
they do? They pout. And they're pouting. They're not writing
checks to Ken Paxton. But here's what we're going to do.
So Elon is in. Elon has started coughing up some cash.
And Trump's PAC is in. Well, Michael, what about the
National Republican Senator? Uh-uh, they're not going to. Cornyn was
one of their three or four top guys. And we
(27:07):
beat him. It's not just Paxton who beat him. You
beat him. And they're punishing you right now. And there's
nothing you can do about it except the joy of winning.
But we can't sit around saying, well, how come they
won't give us any money? They're not giving you money.
Karl Rove is not giving you money, and he controls that.
Mitch McConnell doesn't know where he is, but if he was,
(27:29):
he wouldn't give you money. Lindsey Graham wouldn't give you
money if he was still alive. John Thune is not
giving you money. John Thune knows you're calling for his head.
He's not going to send another guy up there who's
a Trump guy who's going to be criticizing him. He's
not going to do it. So we're going to have
to win this on our own. How do we do that?
(27:49):
Trump won without spending hardly any money in 2016. He
had what is known in the business as earned media.
And earned media is exactly what it sounds like. There's
paid media. There's earned media. Do you know what Donald
Trump's earned media was? CNN couldn't turn him off. Zucker
(28:10):
told their staff, I don't care if we are in
the middle of the biggest documentary it took us two
years to produce. If Trump gets up and speaks, you
cut to it. That was number one. But number two
was you. Don't underestimate the power of you. Every time
Trump spoke, you posted about it. Every time you saw
(28:30):
a video of him speaking, you reposted that. You said simple, punchy,
powerful things about your personal support for him. And it
made a difference. I've never seen a juggernaut like that
in my life. I've studied careers. I've never seen a
campaign like that. Nothing else compares. Not in the modern era,
(28:52):
nothing going back. That campaign was not Donald Trump being
the most amazing person in the history of the world.
If you believe he is, that's fine. But he still
had to have people act, and they did. They took action.
So you're going to see a lot of videos and
things on social media, and if you repost every one
(29:15):
from now until Election Day, we'll win. That's a fact.
Because the overlap, the concentric circles, the Venn diagram of
your influence and our influence is going to win. Ken
Paxton released a TV ad exposing Tallarico's weaponizing of the
Christian faith for political gain. This was important to do.
Listen to this.
Speaker 5 (29:33):
In the beginning, God was non-binary and he wasn't a Christian.
And God said, let there be six genders and there were.
Then God so loved the world that he gave us
his only son, who was a radical feminist and never
asked people to worship him. Look, I always think of
myself as a Christian who hates Christianity.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
James Tallarico. Wrong for Texas. America is not a Christian nation.
And wrong for America, too. I'm Ken Paxton, and I
pray this passage. What's great about that ad is the
part you can't see. There's a James Tallarico lookalike writing
with crayon in the King James Tallarico Bible, reciting his
own spin on scripture. To most of us, rewriting the
(30:13):
Bible sounds crazy, but I bet the liberal media thinks
this might be a good idea. They're as crazy as Tallarico,
and they're less Christian even than he is, if that's possible.
They would praise the King James Tallarico Bible. The following
program is only made possible by contributions from listeners like you.
(30:33):
Good evening.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
This is Hard Facts, Soft Voices, and I'm Wesley Cardigan. Tonight,
a modest proposal, and I want to say it out loud,
into a microphone, so it becomes real. James Tallarico should
rewrite the Bible. Now, I've read the Gospels, parts of them,
adjacent to them, and I think we have to be
(30:54):
honest about Matthew... mark luke and john they were men
of their time untrained unsourced no editor no sensitivity reader
four separate accounts that don't even agree with each other
and nobody fact-checked it and it just went out and
they were writing for a first century audience fishermen tax
(31:18):
collectors People who had never once examined their own privilege.
James is writing for an evolved audience. Because James doesn't
just know scripture. James understands the modern gospel. The gospel
of grace, of inclusion, of universal pre-K. Imagine the Beatitudes
(31:38):
with a land acknowledgement. Imagine the loaves and the fishes,
but plant-based and equitably distributed with a QR code.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Matthew gave us a genealogy. James would give us a framework.
Speaker 4 (31:51):
We here at Hard Facts Soft Voices believe in scripture,
in revision, in fleece. The King James Tallarico Bible. Coming,
God willing, and she is. I must remind you that
immediately following this program, rain...
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