Explore Russia-Ukraine Relations with Thomas Grove and Delve into the Republican Party with Dan McLaughlin

Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds Radio! In this week's episode, we dive deep into a range of thought-provoking topics with our fantastic lineup of guests. First up, we have Thomas Grove, a renowned WSJ reporter, who provides valuable insights into the latest developments in Russia and Ukraine.

Then, our friend of the show, Dan McLaughlin, also known as the 'Baseball Crank' on Twitter, joins us for an engaging conversation. Dan shares his thoughts on how to refocus the media's attention on critical issues beyond Trump, including discussions on polling trends for both Trump and Biden, the upcoming presidential election next year, and his insights into the Speaker's race.

And, of course, we can't forget Kiley Kipper in Kiley's Corner! Tune in to hear Kiley's unique take on various subjects this week, including the mysterious world of Tupac, the Citizen app, and the enchanting puffin season in Iceland. Join Kiley as she unravels the story and discusses its implications, all from her corner of the studio.

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ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Thomas Grove covers the confrontation between Russia and the West for The Wall Street Journal. He is based in Warsaw. Before that Thomas covered Russia for more than a decade and he has traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion. He writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and the Russian defense sector as well as great power competition.He started his career in Istanbul with Reuters writing about the economy and the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP. Thomas has since reported from across Central Asia, the Caucasus region and the Middle East.

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Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute. He was formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York City, a contributing editor of RedState, columnist at the Federalist and the New Ledger, a baseball blogger at BaseballCrank.com, BostonSportsGuy.com, the Providence Journal Online, and a contributor to the Command Post. His writings on politics, baseball, and law have appeared in numerous other newspapers, magazines, websites, and legal journals.

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Transcription

Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, fantastic guests up for you today, folks. We're going to lead things off with Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. He's been covering in depth the confrontation between Russia and the West. And obviously he is based in Warsaw, previously covered Russia for more than a decade. He's traveled to Ukraine regularly since Russia's invasion, writes on Russia's military, the arms trade and Russian defense sector, as well as great power competition. Thomas, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program.

Thomas Grove: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Chuck Warren: Thomas How did you get started in this business? It seems like you've done great reporting, starting with Reuters and now you've just planted your flag out there in Eastern Europe. Was this a career path you wanted or you just sort of fell into it by doing various stories?

Thomas Grove: That's a really good question. I studied Russian in college, and I was just fascinated by kind of what was the kind of referred to more frequently at the time as the kind of the post-Soviet space. So all of Central Asia, the caucuses, Russia itself, you know, it was all just wild and fascinating. And I couldn't get enough of it coming out of college. So I basically after that just basically washed up, started with Reuters, and things just kind of took on a life of their own, really. So spent spending ten years in Russia, you know, we left just right before the war, just a few months before, luckily. And I went to I was going to Israel just to kind of start something completely new, turn a new page. And that lasted about 4 or 5 months. And before I knew it, I was back in Ukraine again. I'd covered the 2014 war and and now it was kind of I really didn't expect. However, when I went back in 2022 that I'd be seeing the biggest land invasion in Europe since the Second World War. It was obviously a surprise. At least it was for me. You've been so much for others.

Chuck Warren: You've been to Ukraine a lot in person. Do you feel sort of like you're reliving a World War One video from junior high? I mean, is it you know, here's one thing you see on our side. You see these you don't get to see many photos, but you see some about the trenches and the the bloodshed. And then you see Ukraine where it doesn't look like anything's going on. And there are some on the conservative side who say, see, this isn't a big deal. Tell us a little about what you see on the ground when you go.

Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, that's a really that's a great question. I think probably the best way of explaining it is is explaining the journey. You know, you have to take to get there. You know, there's no airports in Ukraine. So anybody who who makes that trip, they come from most of the time from Poland. You know, we're just based to and you cross the border and you're in western Ukraine and everything feels, you know, you're in Lviv and things are bustling. You know, stores are open. It's a, you know, a beautiful city full of, you know, 17th, 18th, 19th century buildings. You know, it's it's gorgeous. And you think, well, you know, it is hard to reconcile that with what, you know, lays ahead. And obviously, you know, the closer you get east, closer you the further you get south, you know, it becomes that that reality becomes a lot more dramatic and the scenes are a lot more dire as well. And, you know, it doesn't take long, you know, until. You are in Bermuda and you see things that you simply can't imagine happening in the in Europe in the 21 century.

Chuck Warren: That would that would seem to me to be a very interesting article for you to work on, because I think there is this this disconnection here with the American public.

Sam Stone: There's definitely not much understanding of what the real conditions.

Chuck Warren: And so and I think it's part of the problem with the funding, to be honest with you. I think if more Americans knew what was really going on in the Eastern and south and there was more pictures because we live in a very social media picture, visual society, I think there'd be some difference there because what you see, especially on conservative media, because, you know, Sam and I always have this conversation with people, look, both, you know, Korean Ukraine has corruption and Russia is bad. They're not mutually exclusive. You know, you just can't let a country do this to another country. And people say that and they sort of, you know, nod their shoulders and say, yeah, you're right, you know, But I think that type of thing would happen. So let me talk about something's happened this week, which has been quite amazing, actually. And you wrote about it on October 4th. Russia Withdraws Black Sea fleet vessels from Crimea base after Ukrainian attacks. And my understanding is in your articles is because Ukraine can't use the drones or the missiles from France or England or even the United States to attack outside of certain areas, and especially in the sea Black Sea, that the Ukrainians have created their own missiles. And, you know, tell us about that.

Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, what we're seeing is kind of the culmination of a few things here. And, you know, on one hand, you know, we have to think about the fact that in the first weeks of the war, much of the Ukrainian navy was was destroyed. And so, you know, it didn't have the kind of it was certainly not on an equal footing with Russia beforehand in the Black Sea. I mean, the Black Sea fleet. If we could just take a moment to talk about what this is. I mean, this is kind of a jewel in the crown of Russian naval power. You know, it's kind of it is what it is. It is the the Russian empire's power projection, the most important power projection it probably had in kind of the latter part of the Russian empire. So it's in the Russian narrative and the Russian myth. It's an incredibly important fleet. Um, you know, started under Catherine the Great, you know, if you can imagine kind of what that means for people. And so it's only been, you know, vessels have only been withdrawn from Sevastopol three times as far as we know, you know, um, since, since they started to base there and twice during the two World wars, one in the First World War, just after the First World War and the other one right in 1942.

Thomas Grove: So you have this incredibly important symbolically and just in terms of capabilities as well, naval power that's there in the Black Sea, which Russia's, you know, has been very proud of. And then you have, you know, the Ukrainian navy, which, you know, they mentioned before, was was kind of wiped out. And so what the Ukrainians have done is they've just been improvising, basically, you know, and I think they kind of did this very early on that was kind of, you know, one of their first impetuses was to to really try to to improvise. They didn't have the the defense industry that that Russia had. So they had to basically kind of try to make things that that would work on the fly. Right. And so what we've seen is these Neptune what are anti-ship missiles but have you know and was used effectively against the Moskva you know Russia's flagship last year, we've seen them start launching their own kind of naval drones, these kind of unmanned surface drones. And so, you know, they have some capabilities of their own. But, you know, two of those, you know, they've added what the British and the French have given them.

Thomas Grove: You know, the the storm shadow missiles. And so I think it was a very potent kind of mixture that sorry here, the terrain behind me apologize for that. But yeah, so you had a very potent mixture of of of of weapons that Ukraine was using against Russia in the Black Sea. And so, you know, it made the officers on the ground feel unsafe because they flattened and flattened it. But they, you know, sent, I think, two rockets right through it, the Black Sea fleet headquarters. And then you saw an attack on a submarine and a landing vessel not too long ago as well. And so I think it was it was really a calculation made by the Russians that this is just it's not worth it right now. They weren't really the Russian ships weren't able to affect the grain corridors along the sea as much as they hoped they would. Be able to. And apart from that, I think they realized that if they were to just withdraw a little bit further east, it really wouldn't hurt their capabilities in terms of doing what they were doing before in terms of sending missiles into Ukrainian cities. It doesn't really make a lot of difference.

Sam Stone: Their weapons have the range from those ships, regardless of if you move them a little bit.

Chuck Warren: With Thomas Grove. Exactly. Thomas Grove, Wall Street Journal reporter. He's based out of Warsaw, Poland. We're going to call him the Indiana Jones of The Wall Street Journal because he seems to be going all the hot zones here in Eastern Europe. Let me ask you a question. In your article that we talked about, about Russia withdrawing from the Black Sea. They moved their ships to, you know, a new port in the Black Sea. And you made a comment that I thought was really interesting. You wrote, While the move may represent only a temporary measure to safeguard against further Ukrainian strikes, the logistical headache of relocating some of Russia's heaviest ships underscores the threat of Ukraine's strike capabilities. Why is that such a logistical headache? And I ask this because I think most people are like, I get on a boat, I turn the key, I leave the dock. Why? Why is this why is this such a logistical headache?

Sam Stone: People do not realize.

Chuck Warren: Oh, no. So, you know, it's like you always hear the old saying. It's like turning the Titanic. Why is it so hard? Why is it such a logistical headache to move them, though?

Thomas Grove: Because I think basically you're talking about several kind of docking issues and you're talking kind of diverting the fuel and the supplies that you would need for for these crews to stay on ship or stay stay on board and maintain the ships. You know, we're talking you know, you're rerouting trains, you know, and you're trying to figure out exactly when that happens, where they come from, where those supplies come from. And, you know, this this is all and as we've seen, logistics has been has been a sore spot for the Russians.

Sam Stone: Yeah, there's a there's the very famous military quote, and I don't know who came up with it but but said that bad generals talk tactics, good generals talk strategy and great generals talk logistics. As we're we're coming to the end, We have about a minute and a half left in this segment. We're going to be coming back with more from Thomas Grove, The Wall Street Journal, covering this. One thing I want to get into. Thomas When we come back, is, is there or do you see a solution to this that isn't a negotiated solution that costs Ukraine some territory they had before this invasion? And the reason I ask that and I apologize for kind of springing a lengthy question on you as we come to the end of this segment. But the reason I ask that is, is you just look at the demographics and, you know, there are as many military age males in Russia as there is, you know, total population in Ukraine. That's a really big mismatch long term in a war of attrition. How does Ukraine account for that?

Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, I think if you were to talk to the Ukrainians, I mean, they would say that it's about defending your homeland and, you know, basically trying to fight off somebody who is trying to take your, you know, your very house from you, so to speak. So, I mean, I think there's no shortage of guts, as we've seen on the Ukrainian side. But I mean, I think, you know, we do have to acknowledge and I think I think the Ukrainians have acknowledged in conversations with Western officials that it is absolutely necessary to kind of maintain the flow of weapons if they're going to continue fighting. Otherwise, it really does become just just very difficult for the Ukrainians.

Sam Stone: There's there's no way for Ukraine to supply its own armament needs in this war. We're going to be coming back with more in just a moment. Breaking battlegrounds. Back in just a second.

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Sam Stone: All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone continuing on the line with us in just a minute, Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. But folks, you've been hearing me talk about Y refy for a while now? A lot of people are talking about this investment. So I'm going to just quickly review the basics with you. First off, it's true, you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. That's not correlated to the stock market. You can turn your income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There are absolutely no fees. There is no attack on your principal. If you ever need your money back and you'll get your monthly statement each month, No surprises if you're not sure. If you trust this economy, this secure collateralized portfolio may be a good option for you. Check them out. Invest Y refy.com that's invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888 y refy 24 tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. Thomas Continuing on, I hit you with a big long question. At the end of that, here's 30s. Yes.

Chuck Warren: Solve the war for us.

Sam Stone: Go ahead. Right. But just continuing on in terms of, you know, without Western support, as you as you alluded to at the end in terms of military support, supplies, civilian and military, there's really no way for Ukraine to stay in this war. They definitely have, as you you mentioned, a significant will to war, which is obviously a big deal when you're being invaded. You have much higher will to war. That historically has been a big decider in these type of contests. But Russia is still a behemoth with manufacturing, with a huge population base and a manufacturing base that far exceeds anything Ukraine has. So continuing on with that, how does Ukraine get out of this eventually?

Thomas Grove: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, it's a really important question. And I think one that, you know, everybody is probably thinking about right now. I mean, you have I mean, Russia's economy has basically switched to a war footing. And so, you know, you you had you had factories in Russia that were, um, you know, producing, say, a hundred train wagon cars a year and maybe two tanks. And now they're producing no wagon cars and nothing but tanks. So obviously, you know, there's a there's a great industrial capacity here. You know, all of Russia, just like much of the Soviet Union, had a kind of dual use capacity. Everything was there was a civilian capacity to most factories and there was a military capacity. And so you could kind of you could switch back and forth between them. Russia's obviously gone all in with the with the military capacity at this moment. So obviously that leads has left a lot of people wondering about what we do going forward. And so I think, you know, one of the things that's been talked about is a negotiated end to the fighting. And I think whenever we look at that, you know, on both sides, both sides see that as nothing but a pause in fighting. I mean, it's I think it's ultimately unacceptable for the Ukrainians to have Russians on their territory. And I think it will always be unacceptable for Putin and for Russia to have anything less than all of Ukraine. You know, unfortunately, I think a negotiated settlement will help stop things, maybe ease the burden for some time, unfortunately. I mean, I think I think unfortunately for Ukraine, I think a cease in fighting would probably favor Russia more, but it would just buy time for the next round of fighting, which, you know, could turn out very different differently from what we're seeing, you know, last year and this year.

Chuck Warren: What a wonderful way to live, really in my eyes. Let's talk briefly here. You wrote about really interesting piece. I mean, you wrote about this in your article that Russia is constrained in the Black Sea due to the decision by Turkey last year to implement an international treaty that bans warring states from bringing additional warships through the Turkish straits, which is a strategic checkpoint, which means Russia can't bring ships that are based in the Pacific or elsewhere in. Right. And exactly. It's always amazing how Turkey pops up in all these conversations now, isn't it?

Thomas Grove: Isn't it?

Chuck Warren: I mean, it is. It's fascinating. It's fascinating.

Sam Stone: They have always been really good at using their geographic centrality to European and Asian conflict

Chuck Warren: Everything you read about Middle East, the Ukraine war. Turkey is in there somewhere, right?

Sam Stone: That's their location. Their literally central. Yeah.

Chuck Warren: So. Yeah, exactly. So how has this hindered Russia?

Thomas Grove: Well, I mean, so basically what you have to do, I mean, because because Ukraine has been so focused on the Black Sea fleet, I mean, obviously there's a lot of ships that are being that have been damaged right now. Well, you only have so many shops that can repair those various ships that have been hit, you know, And so if you're if you're backed up, if you're if you're if you're backed up, you know, you are it's like, you know, it's like playing a hockey game and you have three, three players out, right? So it's like, you know, quite honestly, if you can't bring more people in, more, more guy. Let me think back to the to the war. If you can't bring more ships in, you know, you're stuck with this huge disadvantage. I mean, you know, Russia has the ships that it needs to continue bombing Ukraine. I mean, let's not forget that. But in terms of what could do operationally in the Black Sea, it's been greatly hindered. And I think part of that speaks to why Russia has been not as effective as it would would like to have been in terms of stopping Ukrainian grain shipments, exports out of out of out of Ukraine and through the Black Sea.

Sam Stone: Thomas This is a little bit of a tangent, but our navies around the world, looking at what's happened to Russia with this asymmetrical warfare and the the hits they've taken on so many of their warships from these drones and that sort of thing, are they looking at this and starting to reconsider how they're going to defend their own ships at sea?

Thomas Grove: That's a fantastic question. I mean, I think I mean, I think the use of drones here has kind of revolutionized the way we think about a lot of things. And I think, you know, obviously, this isn't the only theater in which we've seen kind of naval drones pop up, but they've they've been pretty effective. And so I think people do have to account for that down the line. I have to admit, I'm an expert in naval power, but I would have to imagine that this is this is something that people who are much more intelligent than I am are thinking about a lot.

Chuck Warren: So Russia pulled out of this grain treaty we had so we can ship Ukrainian grain throughout the world and alleviate poverty and food inflation and so forth. So my understanding from reading and I wish everybody here could just have a map of the Black Sea in front of them, which we're doing this on video. So basically the grain export now is they take they hug the coast of Ukraine, right? And then they go past Bulgaria and Romania, which are members of NATO. So Russia can't really do anything, right?

Thomas Grove: Exactly. I mean, Russia has played it has played it a little bit dangerous and they've gone very close. Right. I mean, we have seen strikes on Ukrainian grain terminals that literally are miles away from Romanian territory, for example, right on the Danube River. So, I mean, they're they're not they've made some pretty risky moves. But so far we've seen, you know, whether or not it's because of NATO or whether it's, you know, for other reasons there. Yeah, we've seen them. We've seen them back up, but the ships have hugged the coast and that's exactly what they have to do.

Sam Stone: Yeah. We have just about a minute left here. Thomas. How do people follow you and your work? Obviously, folks, you should be subscribing to the Wall Street Journal if you're not already. I think that's one of a handful of papers that if you want to be informed, you need to have in your inbox. But Thomas, how can folks follow your work specifically?

Thomas Grove: I mean, you know, we still use is it Twitter that X.

Sam Stone: I started calling it Twix.

Thomas Grove: Twix. I think that looks pretty well. I'm You drove.

Chuck Warren: TG Grove. Perfect. Perfect. Thanks. Thomas. Thanks a million. And stay safe out there. And we hope you'll join us again in the near future.

Sam Stone: Yeah. Chuck, we're going to be coming back here in just a moment, folks. We're going to have a friend of the program, Dan McLaughlin. He is the baseball crank at baseball crank coming.

Chuck Warren: On and National Review, the primary job, baseball, just a hobby. National Review.

Sam Stone: Let's talk about the important stuff here, Chuck. We're going to have this guy on and.

Chuck Warren: Thomas Grove is fantastic. Oh, he was phenomenal. We got to have him back on. And literally, people really should look at the Black Sea map today. You'll understand a lot more of what he's talking about in Turkey. We got to we got to get flake on. We got to get Ambassador Flake on talking about.

Sam Stone: Turkey in just a moment. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Moran and Sam Stone. Thank you to Thomas Grove of The Wall Street Journal. Fantastic information about Ukraine there. And up next, friend of the program. And it's the right time to have this gentleman on. Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at the National Review Institute. He's also on Twitter as at baseball crank, which gives you an idea of the most important topic we're going to discuss today. Chuck and Dan, who's winning this next round of playoff series and who's your World Series pick?

Dan McLaughlin: I mean, you know, I think this is one of those years when your presumption has to be that the favorites are going to win, that we're going to end up with the the Braves and of all teams, the Orioles. You know, certainly you can't count out, you know, the real veteran teams like the Dodgers and the Astros, but the Dodgers in particular are just awfully banged up.

Sam Stone: The Dodgers pitching is a is a nightmare right now. Like they have nobody.

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, No, they're they're a mess. They're a mess. Um, and you know, I mean, you just you don't want to get into October having felt like you've already burned most of the gas in your tank.

Sam Stone: I see. Chuck I'm actually calling it for the Orioles. I think that's just the team that's just scrappy, fiery, tough right now.

Chuck Warren: I wouldn't be surprised. I think it's going to be the Braves or Phillies that win it all. All right. So let's talk a little politics here. So last night and this morning, if you turn on any of the cable news or broadcast news, it's all about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. But, you know, we have Iranian spies infiltrating the White House. We got bond yields soaring, China's economic downturn. We've got Ukraine. People can't buy a home. It's 8% mortgage Now. I'm guessing by the end of the year it could be nine. But we just keep talking. Trump How do we get the press serious about serious things?

Dan McLaughlin: Um, you know, I think that I think as long as Trump is there, they're not going to be and they're going to be caught by surprise by a bunch of things. I mean, the polling the polling at this point is just comical if you look at the general election matchups. Right? Because on the one hand, you look at like, you know, you look at these polls that are like, oh, you know, Trump versus Biden on the economy. It's like Trump plus 30, right? Trump versus Biden on national security, like Trump plus 25. What's the bottom line of this poll? Biden's ahead of Trump by two, you know, or you get on the other side, you get like voters, you get you know, you get an electorate where they're like. So 67% say that Trump should be in jail. So what if we ask these people who should win? Oh, it's like, you know, Biden 46, Trump 46. Right. So literally, people are just they're looking at the economy and everything that this White House is doing. They're looking at Joe Biden and saying anybody but him. And then they look over at Donald Trump and all the drama and just everything with Trump and they're like just anybody but him. And then you ask them to choose between the two and they're like, Oh, man.

Chuck Warren: I literally saw this morning before we started the show a poll that was done of new registered voters the last six months in Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. And they have their Trump's winning by five with these new people who moved into the state and registered to vote. So Trump's winning by five in Georgia. He's losing by five of these people. And Arizona, he's basically even with them in Nevada. But what was interesting, the next question was, do you support a Republican majority or Democrat majority in Congress? It was like literally 15 to 20 point Republican majority in each of those three states. So people really.

Sam Stone: Are Trump is an enormous drag and people.

Chuck Warren: Really are making a decision. I think I mean, I think you're going to see so many split tickets this time unless something dramatically changes. I don't think we've seen it before. And it's going to make every political scientist lose his mind.

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. And I mean, it is entirely possible that that if it's Trump, Biden, you're going to get more money and energy than usual behind third party tickets. I mean, you could easily have three of those tickets, right? Because you got Cornel West, you got RFK Jr, you got the No Labels people who are talking about maybe running Larry Hogan or Joe Manchin. And, you know, it could end up looking like, uh, I mean, you know, I remember the what was it, the Texas governor's race, I think, in 2006 when Rick Perry was running for re-election. They had a four way race. They had Kinky Friedman in there. It was like this wild thing. But, you know, of course, our history with four way presidential races is not good, right? So those have typically ended in chaos or worse.

Sam Stone: Yeah. I mean, one one thing, Chuck, is we're heading into this and everyone's pointing at RFK. He seems to be pulling more from Republicans and libertarian leaning folks than he does from Democrats.

Chuck Warren: It seems like it.

Sam Stone: Is that. Is that.

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. I mean his, his his he he really has succeeded in alienating, I think the Democratic base.

Chuck Warren: 100%.

Sam Stone: Well, and unless you tow the line 100%, you're going to alienate the Democrat base. I mean, Kirsten Sinema has voted literally like twice in her life outside of outside of the Democrat majority, and they ready to burn her at the stake for it. Folks, we're going to be coming back with more in just a moment from Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review and National Review Institute. He's a fellow there, formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York, a contributing editor at RedState, columnist at The Federalist and the new New Ledger. I can't speak today. And a baseball blogger at baseball Frankcom That's what we're saying is the important stuff and breaking battlegrounds. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

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Sam Stone: Welcome back to Breaking Bad with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, I can't say enough about investing with Y refi. This is a fantastic opportunity. You need to just go and check it out for yourself. Go to their website, invest Y Refy.com. That's invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a ring at 888. Y Refi 24. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. That's not correlated to the stock market, where you'll know what each monthly statement is going to look like, but no surprises. Again, that's invest refi.com or give them a call at 888 refi 24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you.

Chuck Warren: Dan, you recently came out with an article in the National Review entitled What's a Ban? What's Not a Ban? Talking about what progressives call everything a ban. Now, could you give us a little overview about it? And what, for example, on books, what do they consider a ban? And we'll go from there?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. I mean, one of the leading sources on book banning and there's all this alarm. Oh, book banning. There's all this book banning going on is a group called Pen America, which has at times in the past been a more reliable kind of just pro-free speech group. But they've clearly taken a very partisan tack on this one. And their definition of a book ban extends all the way to anything that is age restricted for very young children. That book has been banned even if they have a book that was already age restricted. And they say, well, you slightly changed what grade it was, you know, it was appropriate for. That's considered a ban, which is ridiculous, particularly when you consider that, you know, I mean, you've got a lot of the books that there are controversies about, you know, sexually explicit books or books that, you know, are otherwise just you would think that everyone acknowledges that these are books that are inappropriate for very young children, you know, and yet somehow this is getting turned into a ban. And my point is that that's, you know, this extremely vague and broad definition of ban not only misleads the reader of these reports when they give statistics, it's also inconsistent with how, you know, left wingers look at what is and isn't a ban in other contexts.

Sam Stone: Dan They also want to pretend, I think I think I have two points here, but they also want to pretend that these books are the equivalent of, say, The Catcher in the Rye. But I've been actually getting a bunch of them because this is relevant to a lot of the campaigns here. Reading through them myself, these are not exactly profound literature for the most part that they're talking about. And quite frankly, I can't read any of them on the air here with you. I mean, right now with our adult audience, the Federal Communications Commission would throw this program off the air if I read these things. How has this discussion gotten so out of hand, that saying that that type of book can only be read by a ninth grader and up becomes a ban?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, No, it's ridiculous. And it's yeah, I remember Ron DeSantis did a press conference on this where he was reading out some of the books that were in, you know, lower grade children's libraries. And literally all the TV stations were like, whoa, we got to cut out from this because we can't have him say this stuff on the air. Um, it's it's nuts, but it's, you know, part of it is I think that simply the hunger for partisan point scoring, but part of it is also that there is kind of a, you know, an ideological faction that genuinely wants to indoctrinate kids in a certain sexual ideology. And so, you know, they really, really don't like it when these books get taken out of circulation because they want to push this on kids.

Chuck Warren: Which is just weird, right? I mean, let's just call it for what it is. That's weird. The sexualization they're trying to do with kids.

Sam Stone: Sexualization of other people's children.

Chuck Warren: Yeah, it's.

Sam Stone: Really, really odd.

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. No, it is weird and creepy, and we shouldn't be afraid to call it weird and creepy.

Chuck Warren: You know what we should do? Dan, we need to fly you out here to Arizona. Then the three of us on a show will start reading. We'll pick 50 of their top books that are banned and start reading, and we'll have an FCC former employee in here and some of the producers of the local TV stations and tell us what we could put on air and what we couldn't. That would be a real interesting show. That actually would be fun. Just tell us, would this pass could you put this on the 6:00 news?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. You know, do it, do it live. So the cops come up and raid you in the middle of it.

Chuck Warren: I think we're going to look at doing that. We may get you out here to do that. That'd be fun for us. All right. So Hillary Clinton being the menace. She is came out and said there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the Trump cult members. Your thoughts?

Dan McLaughlin: You know, look, I give Donald Trump credit for the one thing that he has genuinely done for the the quality of American politics was to finally put the Clintons out of business. So it is good it is a good thing that she's just giving these interviews instead of, you know, having being speaking from the Oval Office or anything. She's weird and creepy in her own way, in a sort of more menacing way. But it's also she's bitter, you know, She's just bitter. And look, you know, are there people who are Trump supporters who are, you know, absolutely could use to be to be unplugged a little bit from how they follow? Trump? Absolutely. But, you know, when you start talking about it in phrases like, oh, you know, we need formal deprogramming of these people, and you've been in the government for years, that's that takes on a much more menacing cast.

Chuck Warren: Oh, very much so. Very, very much so. All right. Let's talk about Biden did a 180 on the border wall and it's been fascinating to listen and watch the various Democrats try to explain this. And first of all, what do you think would have happened if Trump said, I am waiving 26 laws to build the wall just unilaterally? What would been the press reaction?

Dan McLaughlin: Oh, yeah, no, there would have been all sorts of stuff about tyranny. And there was I mean, at the time when Trump was trying to do various things to get, you know, a modest, fairly modest amount of the wall built. And Biden is is also building only a fairly small section of wall here. Let's not. Right. Let's not kid ourselves. It's not he's he's just doing what he thinks is the bare minimum.

Chuck Warren: But even but even 100 yards is a wall. I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean, he's doing everything he's complaining about all the time.

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if your position is well, you know, there are better ways to cover the border than a wall, and then you rethink that. Well, okay, that's a bit of a change of position. But people reassess the situation. But when you're like, oh, you know, the wall is like a violation of the poem on the Statue of Liberty. And this is like, you know, fascist, fascist knight falling over the country and everything. Maybe, maybe that's a little bit of a problem when you go turn around and have to do it yourself.

Chuck Warren: Well, Dan McLaughlin, he's with The National Review. Dan, Speaker's race, what's going to happen? I mean, this has been sort of a complete cluster in a very untactful way of saying it. But what happens with the speaker's race?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, I can think of a number of ways to describe what's going on, none of which one could say on air. I mean, now. Well, of course Trump had to had to wander his way into that first. He was of course, he was taking in the accolades of a few people who were like, Why don't we draft Trump for speaker? And then he threw his support behind Jim Jordan, who I think is not really well suited to the job and probably not a guy who's going to get the support of the caucus. I mean, we're in a weird position, right? Because if you held a vote just among the caucus, you'd get 210 votes for McCarthy because that's what you just got and eight votes against him. And so it's this it's this weird math where, you know, you can't get anybody elected unless you've got everybody on board. You know, I think Steve Scalise is the most naturally unifying figure there. Obviously, there are some concerns about his health. He's being treated for cancer. But, you know, he seems to feel that he's up to doing this. And, you know, but but now they're going to they're going to have a TV debate, which is just ridiculous. So this is just no way to you know, it's no way to run a circus.

Chuck Warren: Well, I mean, how this never was going to end. Well, former Speaker McCarthy, I mean, when you go on, say, one person who has a bugaboo on his tail about it, it's never going to end well. Right?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. I mean, the problem from the start was, I mean, first of all, they have such a small majority that they need to get everybody to agree, which gives an enormous amount of power and leverage to anybody who wants to be disagreeable. And then one of the conditions he agreed to as a condition of being elected speaker was that anybody could bring a vote to the floor at any time to unelect him. And that just that just gave everybody a veto over him, and particularly the people most likely to use it.

Sam Stone: You know, and I agree with everything, Chuck, you're getting at there. My one point with this is that the major condition McCarthy agreed to was doing the spending bills individually and in order. And then his leadership, they did not move those forward in a timely fashion.

Chuck Warren: And he quickly blamed them for it, by the way.

Sam Stone: Yeah, but but at the end of the day, we didn't hear anything about it. So if that's a failure of communication on McCarthy and the leadership's part, okay, but they need to rectify that. I mean, at some point the getting back to regular order was a very legitimate thing for that caucus to demand, and it would be hugely beneficial if they do. What kind of commitment are you going to get from the next speaker to follow through with that? I guess that that would be my question. Is it going to get better or is this just a totally pointless fight?

Dan McLaughlin: Well, and the problem is, you know, I think McCarthy was making progress in that direction. I don't think he was meeting all of his deadlines. But, you know, again, you can't meet all your deadlines without the cooperation of a whole lot of people, some of whom threw sand in the gears because they wanted to stop this. I mean, you know, I think it's kind of telling that Chip Roy voted to keep McCarthy because Roy was really among the people who were holdouts in January. He was sort of the leader of the people who were very serious about imposing particular process. Right.

Sam Stone: Gosar and Schweikert here in Arizona, same story.

Chuck Warren: Yeah.

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. And Roy has been kind of vocal about, you know, obviously he has some things he thought McCarthy should be doing that he wasn't. But, you know, the fact that he voted to keep him suggests that that, you know, he thought that they could still make some progress on the budget.

Chuck Warren: Presidential race. So Trump has this huge double digit lead. Okay. Who do you see possibly being the two other candidates right now that could have the possibility of something happens of becoming the nominee that that names, not Trump?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah, I mean, I think it seems now pretty clear that I mean, Ron DeSantis is obviously still in the number two slot he has held by any realistic measurement, the number two slot all along. Obviously, there's always the question of whether people are going to drop out if they, you know, somebody like DeSantis decides that he doesn't have the, you know, as many resources as he expected. But but, you know, he's got a lot of money. And I think right now, the person who has edged out everybody else for the number three slot is Nikki Haley. You know, I think she has really used the debates and used her focus on New Hampshire to effectively push Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Chris Christie off to the side. And they're the only other people running who are actually running to win in any sense. I mean, you know, Vivek Ramaswami is really there to to help Trump, to try to improve his brand, to maybe get in a spot in a Trump administration if he's not running to win.

Chuck Warren: Right. Right.

Sam Stone: With Haley in particular. And I think this truck is Chuck and Dan has plagued DeSantis also. We have just about two minutes before we come to the end of the program here. But has she done enough or have any of these people done enough to actually outline a positive future vision for America? It seems like it's kind of like set talking, stayed talking points and attacks on Trump and not much of a where's the Reagan, where's the hopeful positive future?

Dan McLaughlin: Yeah. And I mean, granted, you know, Reagan Reagan established himself as a tough guy before he got around to reminding people that he was also, you know, a genial and optimistic character. I mean, one of the things DeSantis certainly has done and I think that he can do more effectively than Haley, is to just say, you know what, I'm going to govern the way I've governed in Florida. Look at my record, which is sometimes a good predictor, right? I mean, George W Bush, for example, on domestic policy, his agenda in Washington was pretty much exactly what he did in Texas. But I think, you know, I'm not I don't think that DeSantis or Haley has really been ambitious enough in really laying out a full view of what their presidential agenda would be. But frankly, I think, you know, I think the voters I think the voters are at the point where they deserve to have a smaller debate stage where they. Can push the major candidates on that and they deserve to hear from Trump.

Sam Stone: Yeah, I thought it made a lot of sense for Trump to skip the first debate, but I was bitterly disappointed in him skipping.

Chuck Warren: He's not he's not joining he's not joining any of these debates ever. Dan, thanks a million for joining us again. Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute. You can visit him on Twitter at baseball crank and follow his writings. He does great stuff and really suggests you take a look at the piece on book banning and just the word banning being used by progressives and conservatives and so forth. Yeah, and.

Sam Stone: Make sure you stay tuned, folks. We have a podcast segment coming up, if you like our podcast, if you like our show, make sure you're downloading that podcast. It's available wherever podcasts are available. You can also find us at Breaking Battlegrounds. Vote and stay tuned because we've got Kiley's corner coming up. The irrepressible Kiley Kipper, she found good news.

Kiley Kipper: I did. I did.

Chuck Warren: Dan, thanks a million. Have a great weekend.

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Sam Stone: All right. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. We're going to lead off with Kiley's Corner here in just a moment. And then, Chuck, I want to get to something that's happening here in Arizona. You sent me the article. I'd actually already read it this morning. Arizonans are soon going to be drinking their own pee.

Chuck Warren: Yep, that's true. Yeah. Kiley, pick up your newspaper and read it every morning. You'll learn things.

Kiley Kipper: This was not part of Kiley's corner.

Chuck Warren: No, drinking your urine is not part of Kiley's corner.

Kiley Kipper: But continue. Okay. Well, the first story I want to start with is I was in Seattle this weekend, and last week I had downloaded an app called the Citizens App, which I've had like a couple of years before, but I don't think it was like as developed as this is now. But you can pretty much see like all the crime that's going on around you and all the registered sex offenders and everything like that. So naturally, first of.

Chuck Warren: All, why did you download it?

Kiley Kipper: Because someone was telling me how you could see the the sex offenders that are around you because my mom just got a notice in the mail that a sex offender moved into the neighborhood. So I wanted in Arizona or Washington in Arizona. So I wanted to see if there was any that lived in my neighborhood. So was there. Yeah, there's one there's one from a crime in 1990. Um, so I, you know, got to keep my head on a swivel. So naturally, I open it up.

Sam Stone: You know what? Look, honestly, if you committed a crime in 1990 and you've done nothing since, you're.

Chuck Warren: Probably okay.

Kiley Kipper: Well, that's a sexual crime. I don't know about the other crimes.

Chuck Warren: That's true. That's true. Right. Don't generalize. All right. Go ahead Kiley.

Kiley Kipper: And it was on children, which.

Sam Stone: Yeah, okay. Not.

Kiley Kipper: No, but good.

Sam Stone: I'm all for just castration, and then we can solve this problem.

Kiley Kipper: Yeah. So I open up my app when I'm in Seattle, and I just want to read what was all within less than a mile from me that was occurring.

Chuck Warren: And this was at a hotel, right? Yes.

Kiley Kipper: So I was at a coffee shop technically, but it was like right downtown.

Chuck Warren: But downtown Seattle. Yeah. Okay.

Kiley Kipper: Right next to the baseball and football stadium. It says Person fighting security guard at Central Library Report of woman wielding a knife. Body found report of a man armed with a knife steals items from a shop and shoplifting suspect threatened to kill employees at the drugstore.

Chuck Warren: You feel like the body found would get a little more detail?

Kiley Kipper: Yeah. No, it just says police are responding to a report of a body found.

Sam Stone: You know what, though? That's so in the age of fentanyl. Oh, yeah. The police reporting and responding to bodies found. I can tell you from talking to my cop friends here in Phoenix, it's every day.

Chuck Warren: It's just a body from a drug or from a drug overdose.

Sam Stone: Yeah, there's a body every day somewhere. Basically.

Chuck Warren: You have to put that screenshot on.

Kiley Kipper: Yeah, I will. But I just thought that was I was just I mean.

Sam Stone: One of the things so, so one of the things I actually, I was reading another piece about Seattle and they were talking about the significant rise in ODS and they're going to start having like everybody in the city, they want to start carrying Narcan basically, right?

Kiley Kipper: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Sam Stone: And here's the thing. This did not this was not the case five years ago. These new drugs are totally different and they're trying to use these death tolls, whether it's here in Arizona for the heat issues, whether it's in Seattle. They're trying to get in any little litany of liberal policies out of this. But at the end of the day, I got to tell you, Chuck, I have a lot less sympathy for this issue than I used to in that there's resources, there's help available, there's ways to get off the street and get. I don't want it. No, they're not. They're choosing this lifestyle and this lifestyle ends in death because.

Chuck Warren: And they don't want to change because they don't want to know. I mean, I mean, you know, some that is going to sound harsh to the audience, but there are people who literally just say, I don't want to.

Sam Stone: All the time.

Chuck Warren: Yeah. And and what do you do to force somebody saying, but we don't want you to die. Right. Right. We like you around.

Sam Stone: Well, this is where and so interestingly for all the bagging on Trump, one of the things I appreciated when he was president was a lot of his policies actually worked. They were kind of common sense. A lot of them work. If you go and look at his current platform, one of his things on on this drug addiction is, look, we need ways to put people in treatment against their will. That is common sense. The left will lose their mind over the idea they have when we put it in Kari Lake's platform here, they have another. But at the end of the day, that's the only solution here to this problem other than just letting them die.

Chuck Warren: Yeah, correct.

Kiley Kipper: But a great lead way is we were asking about the sex offender that's in my neighborhood is the it was a child crime. So if you guys follow us on Facebook and Instagram or Twitter, you should if you don't. But I posted a poll this week because.

Chuck Warren: I then I talked one morning. We want to see if people supported capital punishment for kidnapping a child that they don't know. It's not even a relative.

Kiley Kipper: But I said so the question was, do you think kidnapping, abuse, touching a child in any inappropriate way? And I posted this on social media, Twitter. I got. 89% say, yes, they support the death penalty. 5.6 say no and 4.9 said undecided. And then on Facebook, 97% said yes and 3% said no. And as I was reading, because for the no, there was an option to say why. And on Twitter I got no depends or like I didn't get great explanations. But on Facebook they still lean in like no, he should suffer an entire life sentence. Why take him out of his misery or yes, life without parole? Most people, you know, stuff like that. Why are we taking him out of his misery? Make him stay there. So those were the knows where Twitter was. I had some people try to explain it to me. I said, okay, explain it. They want it. But I thought those numbers were.

Chuck Warren: How many people replied to the poll?

Kiley Kipper: A total of 490 between Facebook and Twitter.

Chuck Warren: It's funny about explaining things on Twitter. I got Sam involved in a little discussion this week because, as you know, my big thing right now is this national debt. I think everything that is that is the hub. Everything else is spoke to the wheel, right?

Sam Stone: Like, for instance, we were talking about Ukraine in the first segment with Thomas Grove and continuing to fund their operations. Right. Right. That's tied up in our debt discussion right now. That's tied up. If we did not have the national debt crisis, we have funding, Ukraine would be a nothingburger.

Chuck Warren: So so Sam and I sometimes I respond to people and I especially do they have a Ukraine flag on it. Now, folks know I'm a conservative who does not think Russia should be in Ukraine. So I'm not going to back away from this belief. But we talk I put a comment on somebody saying we need to focus on the debt. Right. The national debt. And so this person goes and starts. He says we need to raise taxes on the rich and raise taxes, period, primarily on the rich, but we want to raise taxes.

Sam Stone: He was very specific on the rich. He did not want middle classes because we.

Chuck Warren: So then so I asked the follow up question, what would you cut? And they were they were just so minor and so dumb that immediately understood as all these people who I engaged with don't understand the crisis at all. Right. So, of course, Sam jumped on Shea, jumped on the guy.

Sam Stone: So he ran into a more intellectual set of Republicans than he was planning.

Chuck Warren: But my favorite thing of it was he was going to cut defense as he has a Ukrainian flag and his profile. And does he not understand where that money's coming from?

Kiley Kipper: Wanted to cut it in half.

Chuck Warren: So it's like these.

Kiley Kipper: More than half. Yeah.

Chuck Warren: It's like. So I like to ask these questions to see where people are and the lack of knowledge on the most basic fundamental issues facing our country is horrifying.

Sam Stone: Oh, it's amazing to you know, he actually brought up something new or that I haven't seen in a while, which was Right. We need to get rid of sugar subsidies. Well, there's no such thing. We have price supports. Right. So so we set minimum prices and then we tax sugar coming into the US.

Chuck Warren: And the sugar subsidies are a big deal for liberals because it goes to climate change, right? So what they want to do is get rid of the sugar down in Florida. So when you talk to the people opposed to sugar harvesting down in Florida, where do we get sugar? We'll go from Mexico. Well, don't they have the same problems? Well, yeah, but it's a Mexico. They literally don't care.

Sam Stone: No, this is this is a trope. And then he pointed out oil, which, by the way, folks, oil is not subsidized by the federal government. No.

Chuck Warren: He just wasn't bright.

Sam Stone: No. You know, but but this is a bigger point when it comes to oil, like liberals all the time use. Oh, there's $30 Billion in oil subsidies. You know what subsidies they're pointing to? They're pointing to the same business tax deduction as everybody else. So, like, if I spend $1 million in improving my business and buying equipment, it's a write off. What's a write off for the oil company, too? But there's no difference. But somehow they think this is like handing away the cookie jar and then they think they can tax the rich. The taxing the rich is literally a swimming pool and they're demanding an ocean.

Chuck Warren: Yeah, 100%.

Kiley Kipper: Yeah. He was a no on my poll as well, he commented. He doesn't follow us, but he's sure.

Chuck Warren: We've engaged him. He's a follower. I hope he's downloaded. Yeah.

Sam Stone: He's got us listed somewhere.

Kiley Kipper: He does. Okay. But I want to talk about this Tupac stuff. Okay. Arrest because he's been.

Chuck Warren: Dead since the 90s, correct?

Kiley Kipper: 1996, Maybe I yeah, maybe I was two years old, so I never like super got into the Tupac like conspiracies, which surprises me. Oh, no, I was.

Sam Stone: I was. I was exactly.

Chuck Warren: That. It is a true it's a conspiracy like Elvis being alive and living in Mexico.

Kiley Kipper: Yeah, it is. Yes. Yes. But they made an arrest last Friday. And as they described it in a long awaited breakthrough in one of the hip hop's most enduring mysteries. So they arrest Keef D and he was a gang leader, but they don't believe he was the actual one that made the shot. Oh, they describe him as he was the ringleader. So he ordered the shot and provided the gun.

Chuck Warren: He did the planning.

Kiley Kipper: Yes. Which. So I'm going to go back to the long awaited arrest breakthrough in 1998. So a year later, two years later, he doesn't interview, telling a cable channel that he was in the front seat driving the car and he slid the gun into the back seat, of which that's where the shots were fired that killed Tupac. So he didn't Tupac didn't die immediately. He died a week later in the hospital. But. Then he goes on and he releases a memoir a couple of years ago, 2019, a tell all memoir, where he, again admits to these interviews, says he was the one that provided the gun. It was a drive by shooting and basically talks about what happens. So if he hadn't made so he's been talking about it publicly for a while now. So to me, I'm like, where is this mystery up? Because the dude's been talking about it.

Sam Stone: But investigators apparently were sitting on it, right? Like letting him incriminate himself further.

Kiley Kipper: Yes. So they basically said Davis's own public comments revived the investigation and he and it proved that it was premeditated. So that's what they were trying to prove. That was premeditated, that it was planned. Yeah, because prior to Tupac being shot, he had beat up Davis's nephew.

Chuck Warren: But he was shot in a car right.

Sam Stone: No, he was leaving a casino. So he was.

Kiley Kipper: Shot in a carjacking?

Chuck Warren: No, no. He was shot in a.

Sam Stone: Car outside the vehicle when he was shot? No, he was in it. No, no, no. I remember that from the time the photos and all that kind of thing. He was outside.

Kiley Kipper: So how everyone's describing it right now, he was shot in a car. Is he was in a black BMW being driven by his record producer. And he was also hit with one of the shots but didn't die. And now he's serving 50 years in jail. This is all gang, by the way, like two gangs, Right?

Sam Stone: Right, right. This is a Bloods and Crips rivalry that goes back.

Kiley Kipper: So then they say that the white Cadillac, which had four people in it, Davis being the driver or at least described as in the front seat, he and the two people in the back seat shot Tupac in a BMW, a black BMW. That's all I keep finding. So but he's claiming now that he made a deal with La PD that he could make these comments publicly, which is why he's been so public about it and that they couldn't incriminate him because they wanted more information on it.

Chuck Warren: I think there was a movie on it this past year.

Kiley Kipper: It was 2019.

Sam Stone: It was, yeah, a major motion picture.

Kiley Kipper: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Chuck Warren: No, I mean, it wasn't even an independent.

Sam Stone: Documentary type thing. Like.

Chuck Warren: Like real actors, you know? Yeah. Sorry for all you struggling actors out there, but people who make a living acting. But yeah.

Sam Stone: So that's really it's kind of one of the really interesting thing, not about the origins of rap, which were not really truly gangster. Yeah. But in the 90s there was this breed of actual gangster under Suge Knight and all those folks that really invaded the industry. And that's where this all came with.

Kiley Kipper: Because as I'm reading this, they all have the nicknames, the rap names that I, I've never even heard of them before. But when you.

Chuck Warren: Get your rap name.

Kiley Kipper: K Swizzle.

Chuck Warren: Put up on, let's put up on our social media. The survey Is Tupac still alive? And if so, where is he living? All right, all right, all right.

Kiley Kipper: So maybe so. Okay, I guess. You saying you remember that he was walking out and it was outside and then now all these reports of them saying he was in a car?

Chuck Warren: I've always I've always heard I've always read and heard he was in a car. I mean, I wasn't there. So I don't know.

Sam Stone: He was he was going into his car. So the car was pulled out. They watched him walk out and and shot.

Kiley Kipper: Him because this was right after he had just beat.

Chuck Warren: Up working. He had Sam assignment for next week for you to find the actual documentation. Was he walking in or out of a car? Was he shot in a car? Was driving? Because I think everybody who somewhat knows about this believes he was shot in a car drive by a show. So I'll find out.

Sam Stone: But one of the interesting things so I didn't know that he hung on for a week because they announced if I remember, they announced at that time that he had died on the scene. Now, that might have been to protect him, right. Thinking that, you know, a follow up hit would come through so he.

Kiley Kipper: Could get away and go live in.

Sam Stone: So he could get away and go live in Antigua.

Chuck Warren: Yeah, exactly. So.

Sam Stone: And drop 75 new albums. Yeah.

Chuck Warren: This is fantastic. I want to talk to you about this one last subject. So you probably get it too. I'm pretty stringent when people try to follow me on Twitter. Like you get a lot of these bots. So for example, if you have below 50 followers, I just I block you. I don't want you on. I don't care if you're on my side or not, but I had this person try to jump on Mary DeMaria. She had 2700 following 44 followers. So I go and quickly look at who they are. And I don't mind Democrats. I just don't want insane people. Her first post that I pull up anthropological literature frequently refers to third gender Native Americans.

Sam Stone: But blocked.

Chuck Warren: Marianne's blocked. Right. I'm just done with her. Really. But that brings me to a case here. The Free Press had a little snippet here that Larry Sanger, the creator of Wikipedia, went on Unheard podcast to slam the website he made. Sanger talked about how Wikipedia had been taken over by a small group of ideological aligned editors who assert their worldview over each entry. Quote, Eastern medicine is basically called quackery in dismissive, quite judgmental language and so forth is done, apparently without any compunctions at all. Then when it comes to Christianity, the viewpoint on Christianity given is the liberal one that would be found in mainline denominations and liberal Catholicism as opposed to the actual by Bible believing fundamentalism. And he goes on and on on. He's right. So, you know, we've talked about Sam's heard me. There's three pillars conservatives have just blown it on public schools, which you can easily take over by winning school boards. That's a that's a two for 2 to 3 cycle.

Sam Stone: Thing that and governors.

Chuck Warren: Right. But but.

Sam Stone: But.

Chuck Warren: But still but still school board school boards are a big deal. I mean, especially like state like Arizona and so forth. You should have the school boards, Right.

Sam Stone: The one difference, though, is the governor can affect the schools of education in the university. Very true.

Chuck Warren: Very true. So that brings me up. The second one is universities. We have just simply what you have is a lot of conservative donors, small business guys who love it. For example, ASU has got a lot of people who went there who have made money there, moderate to conservative. And I've seen it because I give a lot of money. I sit on these committees and they just go and they give money and say, Well, I'm gonna put my secretary on there or something. And they're not representing their values and donors have got to get more, you know, that would be a harder change. But you can start dictating what your money is doing. Well, liberal donors do.

Sam Stone: Right? They are very, very specific.

Chuck Warren: No, they go through it. They make it their own. And the third one is the third one is journalism. So, you know, they've gone and have a whole industry of putting these young progressives on papers. And what has to happen is conservatives need to do this. But it's not it's not that they just go to like The Daily Caller, National Review. They have to go work at The Arizona Republic, the Provo Daily Herald, The Colorado Springs Gazette, because that's where your news comes from a lot of times and people don't get that. And then the fourth thing is this social media online trolling thing like I'm ever going to accept. I mean, once you start telling me anthropological literature talks about, you know, the. Have a third gender. You're smoking crack. Yeah.

Sam Stone: Yeah. No, you are in the service.

Chuck Warren: Can really get involved. I mean, I think you can make the quickest change in public schools. And more than people realize. Sam's right about the universities, but the school boards do a lot.

Sam Stone: Yeah, school boards do the two things. I mean, look, school boards can do a lot, but you're you're drinking from a poisoned well on two fronts because the teachers are getting from the various education schools are being trained for to be highly liberal. But also the textbooks. Yeah, that's a big textbooks are a big problem. There's basically only three textbook companies that provide the textbooks, and the left made a concerted effort to take them over for their ideology. They've been they've.

Chuck Warren: Been smart about it. They've been smart about it.

Kiley Kipper: I have one more story.

Chuck Warren: Oh, okay.

Kiley Kipper: A feel good story. So I can end on a happy note.

Chuck Warren: Going to end on a happy note here.

Kiley Kipper: Who knew? After listening to last week's episode in the week before, I was like, Man, I'm a Debbie Downer sometimes. So my feel good story. After reading this story, I was like, okay, now I have a new item on my bucket list, so I thought I'd share it with you guys. It's um, so every August and September it's called Puffling season in Iceland. Puffling season Puffling. Yeah, Puffin. So if you don't know. Heard of this? If you don't know what a puffin is, it kind of looks like a penguin. Okay? But basically they hatch on top of a hill and how they get how they live their life is once they hatch, they go into the out to sea and then they live there for like 2 to 3 years. And then they come back and they then they're safe for babies.

Sam Stone: Because they're flightless.

Kiley Kipper: But because they're flightless. Yes. Yeah. But because the lights in Iceland started confusing them because they would find the ocean by the moonlight. But all the lights from the city are confusing to them. So they'll fly into the city on accident instead of flying out to sea. So they have puffling control patrol where they run around like little families run around. And when you're on puffling patrol, you run around in any puffling you find you take them to a vet to make sure that they can survive before you just throw them off a cliff. But then you take them to the top of a cliff and you throw them off the cliff and then they fly into the sea and you basically save their life.

Chuck Warren: Why aren't we doing this?

Kiley Kipper: I know.

Chuck Warren: I mean, Kiley and I want a baby elephant. Are we going to get a puffling now, too?

Kiley Kipper: Yeah.

Sam Stone: I saw I saw a network piece on this that was so fantastic. So they're interviewing and it's like it's almost all women that are rounding up the pufflings and tossing them.

Chuck Warren: Then count me in there.

Sam Stone: And so, yeah, so here's the great part, though. They interview some guy who does it, you know, they see him doing it and they're like, Hey, you're one of the few guys. And he was like, I'm single. Why do you think I'm here?

Kiley Kipper: But it's so important. The guy.

Chuck Warren: That takes a dog to the park, it's so.

Kiley Kipper: Important because they only mate with one puffin the entire their entire life. They're monogamous and they only lay one egg a year. So, like, if they die or if they don't make it out to sea and come back, then they are they could go in danger.

Sam Stone: A huge percentage get eaten out at sea anyway. I mean, really.

Chuck Warren: Find some clips on that on YouTube and let's post on our social media so we know a puffin is.

Kiley Kipper: Yeah they're so cute. Westman Islands is the the most populated one so that's I think where I have to go.

Chuck Warren: Who is, who is the natural critter critter that tries to harm them and eat them.

Sam Stone: Everything.

Kiley Kipper: Probably like meat. Yeah. Anything out in the water.

Chuck Warren: That's a tough they're.

Kiley Kipper: Not great at.

Sam Stone: Raptors, you know what I mean?

Chuck Warren: Like that's a tough lie.

Kiley Kipper: They're like basically penguins, so they're not great at flying. Like they got a short, but like, you can just throw them like a football.

Chuck Warren: They said, Are they as cute as penguins?

Kiley Kipper: Oh, yeah. They're might they might be cuter. They have like these big old colorful beaks.

Chuck Warren: Why aren't we talking about puffins more?

Kiley Kipper: I know what's.

Chuck Warren: Going on here. Well, this is a wonderful Kiley Kipper Kiley's corner today to end it on. I appreciate it.

Kiley Kipper: You have a big smile on your face. Well, I do now.

Chuck Warren: I know there's a puffling out there. Anyway, folks, thank you. We hope you'll go and share the podcast with your friends and family and co-workers. Our episode today is fantastic, especially if you want to learn about Ukraine. I thought the information there was fantastic. This is breaking battlegrounds. You can also find us at breaking battlegrounds dot vote or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great week.

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