Congressman Drew Ferguson on the Durham Investigation and Fractured Trust in Government 57:34

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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. We have absolutely nothing to talk about today, Chuck. That's why we got a member of the U.S. Congress on because nothing's been happening in Washington, D.C. either. We are very pleased to introduce our first guest returning to the program, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Third visit. Third visit. So he is now officially a good friend of the program. Congressman Drew Ferguson, proud native of West Point, Georgia. He was the mayor of West Point, Georgia. And you and I always love when elected officials in Washington have experience doing actual things.

Thank you so much and welcome to the program.

Thanks, Sam. And look, I never quit looking at policy and decisions through the lens of being a local elected official. You know, you talk about getting things done at the local level. That's one part of the equation. The other side of the equation is that you understand that at the local level, many times Washington is the problem and it's in the way of

And it's creating more headaches. So as much as we try to get things done, we also try to keep Washington out of our air at the local level. What's interesting, I was talking yesterday to a gentleman from Montana, and we were talking about possible Senate candidates up there in the future, not this cycle. And we mentioned the AG of Montana we've had on the show. And he was wonderful. And I was singing his praises. He was articulate. He was folksy. And I said, I think he'll do it. He goes, oh, no, he hates D.C. He didn't want to step foot in D.C. He'll never do it.

Do you think, I want to get into the Durham investigation real quick, but you being a person on the local level, do you think it's become so cantankerous out there that there's a lot of good women and men who are just saying, I have no desire to go to D.C. and serve? You know, I still find that there are a lot of good men and women that are willing to serve. I look at

current freshman class. As a matter of fact, I look at the four classes that have come in since 2016, and you're always going to have a couple of oddballs on both sides of the aisle. But there are also some really talented men and women with a lot of experience, a

a lot of different perspectives, particularly on the Republican side right now. And these are folks that you may not see on a daily basis, but they're behind the scenes working. So I would say I think a lot of people are still willing to put their name in the hat, make a run at this because they know it is important and they know that their constituents need a solid voice.

here in D.C. So I still think that we've got some good folks willing to do this. So let's talk about the Durham investigation. So we are in a state in this country, which I'm not sure I ever thought, where the American public has lost complete trust in a lot of our institutions, CDC, COVID, the FDA, CIA. And now we have the Durham investigation, which the FBI was not high on the trust factor.

I think it's worse now. And as Sam talked before the show, he's saying, you know, the thing is, Durham only limited his scope to the FBI. He didn't include DOJ or CIA. What do you take from this report in Democrats' view?

insistence that it's a nothing burger, as they say. Well, you know, when I look at it, there's one line that stands out that I think gets my attention, and I think it should get the attention of every American, and that is his report where it says the FBI failed to uphold the mission of strict fidelity to the law.

That should be concerning to every American, whether it is Republican, whether it is Democrat, whether you're independent, whether you're for Trump, whether you're against Trump. It doesn't matter. That is a very, very concerning lie because what it does is it further undermines the confidence in an institution that America needs to have confidence in.

And so I agree with you. I think it's a – if you look at a series of things and a series of missteps that they've had, it really calls into question what they're doing over there. What is the leadership doing? Is it a reflection of politics? Do they have culture problems? I think we as members of Congress –

have a constitutional duty to do oversight on the administration.

And this is a perfect example of why we should do our oversight. And we should do it for two reasons. Number one, we need to get to the bottom of exactly what happened from a congressional perspective from an oversight. I think Durham's report speaks for itself. And I think that most people realize that he is a man of integrity and someone who calls it like he sees it.

But there's also another part of this. If they, you know, when you read through this, if Congress sees that there are problems, then we have an obligation to take steps to fix those problems so that America can have confidence in an institution that it needs to have confidence in. Do you think, and this will sound simplistic to some, but I don't know how to make it less simple or more complex, is

Is it fair to say that there were certain members in the hierarchy at the FBI who worked very hard to bring down a presidential campaign in 2016? Well, if you look at the Durham report, you certainly begin to question motives. You begin to question, you know, you got to ask the question, what were they doing? Why were they involved in this? You

This is – is this the first time they did it? I guess another question I would ask is did they apply the same level of scrutiny to then-candidate Hillary Clinton? Did they apply this to George Bush? Have they applied this to President Obama?

is this normal operations for them? If it is, then we should take very aggressive steps to keep them out of our politics. So I think it just leads to a lot of questions about what they're doing, what the culture is, why they're doing it, and quite candidly, who's controlling them. Congressman, one of the things that I noted in reading the report repeatedly, there are instances where

All of the officers under the leadership, FBI agents and so forth, were saying, look, there's no here here in recommending that they drop these things and not move forward. And they were routinely overruled by leadership. And my question is, you know, that same leadership then goes and sits in front of Congress and routinely omits information that they have.

When will there ever be consequences for these people? I really have come to the point where I feel like if there are not consequences and personal consequences for some of these folks who did this, that they're not going to stop ever doing it. Why would they?

Well, I don't disagree with that sentiment at all. I mean, look, when when it doesn't matter if you are someone that is corrupt in the nation's premier law enforcement agency or whether you are a looter or a rioter in San Francisco or whether you are a human smuggler or drug trafficker on the southern border. Exactly. If there's not if there is not a deterrent to bad behavior, it will continue.

And I mean, that's just that's why we have laws and that is why we should focus on the safety and security of our fellow Americans. So look,

One thing I can tell you about the conference, about our House GOP conference, is it has a different outlook on the world than what was here when I came to Congress in 2016 when we came in with President Trump's first election. And that is this group really is fundamentally committing to looking at creating and putting forth policies that put America and Americans first.

And part of that is the safety and security of our fellow citizens. So this group sees this topic as vitally important to the health of our constitutional republic. Now, if there's a person in this conference that I trust to go hard at this issue, it is going to be my colleague from Ohio, Jim Jordan. Jim is an honorable man, someone that works very hard, and

and I believe sees this in his mind as a grave injustice not only to this generation, but it makes us more vulnerable in the future and quite candidly makes us vulnerable to our adversaries. And so I feel very confident that this House GOP will press forward with aggressive oversight

But look, here's the reality. We have an administration and an attorney general that I don't have confidence in that will take this information and do the right thing with it. It is concerning, but I'm not concerned about that.

the House GOP's willingness to go get the answers and do what we can with it. Is there a role or a possibility then of, for instance, state attorney generals stepping up in some way on this or federal prosecutors who are outside of the D.C. area who may have a little different view? I mean, this seems like without any action in response to this,

We have essentially a constitutional crisis with government agencies, intelligence and law enforcement collaborating to take down first a presidential candidate and then a president. This is an enormously important precedent in U.S. legal history. And having a DOJ that is so thoroughly politicized, I agree with you, I don't think they're going to do anything about

Is there some possibility of others stepping up to do that? Well, when Sam read my bio, he said that he mentioned that I went to dental school. So I'm probably better qualified to answer an oral health question than I am a legal question on this. But I can tell you.

But that's not to avoid the question. It's just simply to say that's a little bit outside of my purview. But what's not outside of my purview is my understanding of our role as members of Congress to do thorough, aggressive oversight to get to the bottom of it, lay the case out. And then if we've done a good job, then I think somebody fix this up and it can be adjudicated in the proper fashion.

Fantastic. Folks, we are with Congressman Drew Ferguson of Georgia's 3rd Congressional District. Congressman, we have just about a minute before we go to break here. How do folks stay in touch with you and your work?

Well, look, you can go to our Facebook page, Twitter at Rep Ferguson, and, of course, our official webpage here in the house where we provide a lot of information to our district. We're very district-focused. But all of those are important. And, look, we value the feedback.

We learn a lot by listening to our constituents, and we always truly appreciate that. So I encourage them to go to our official House website and then also sign up for our electronic newsletter that we send out on a regular basis.

Fantastic. Breaking Battlegrounds is going to be coming back with more in just a moment from Congressman Drew Ferguson. We'll talk about his recently introduced Student Loan Accountability Act. And folks, if you haven't, make sure you download and tune in. Make sure you get the podcast segment every week because there's great content going on there. Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone on the line with us right now. Congressman Drew Ferguson, friend of the program. Congressman lives in The Rock, Georgia, with his wife, Julie, and their six children. Fortunate for him, it is not the rock that everyone thinks of when I say The Rock. He's lived a better life than that.

This one is just a beautiful part of God's country, and it is a wonderful, wonderful area to live in. All right. So really the big question is the debt ceiling. Our Treasury Secretary says we have a June 1st deadline before we default. It's probably really more like June 15th.

We had a former undersecretary of Treasury on last week, Chris Campbell, who said whatever we come up with is going to take about two weeks to put together. I want you to talk about what you're seeing. You're in the know. But do you see a possibility that heads come together and just do a short-term extension for the summer, let's say? Tell us what's going on.

Well, first of all, I think it's important to note that House Republicans have voted to raise the debt ceiling. You know, we cannot get lost in the fact that we've actually done what we set out to do.

which is to raise the debt limit in a responsible way, to limit the spending, to save the money and claw back the unspent COVID funds, and to put policies in place that will grow our economy. So these things are very common sense. Everybody knows the problem with inflation is excess government spending.

So let's put some caps on spending as we've recommended. You know, I think if people look at this and they say, well, you're saying cut spending from fiscal year 24 to back to fiscal year 22 levels. Yes, we are saying that. And by the way, we are operating under fiscal 22 levels.

fiscal year 22 numbers right now. So it's not going to be the end of the world. We probably have more cuts to make. And we should be doing that. If I can back you up for just a second to that gets to one of the key points. I think a lot of folks out there do not know exactly what is in the proposal that Republicans have passed.

So you're only going back to 22 levels of spending, which were vastly inflated even from 2018, 2019, and then a 1% per year growth restriction. Is that correct? Yeah.

That is correct. So, I mean, these are far from anything resembling any kind of drastic cut. They're not draconian at all. No. No, they're not. They're very reasonable. And by the way, since I've been in Congress, I have voted against a lot of bad spending bills. This is actually the first time I've had a chance to vote on a bill that actually spent less money this year than we spent last year. Right.

Think about that for a minute. Of all the federal programs that you have to vote on every year, the fact that this is the first time that's ever happened is... So, you know, it sounds almost...

Mickey Mouse, but it's not as profound what we're doing. And look, you've got that. You know, having able-bodied adults ages 19 to 49 without dependents work or attempt to work in order to receive federal benefits does not seem like a heavy lift. Matter of fact, as Joe Biden has said, you know, he's voted for stuff tougher than that.

The pandemic is over. Why not take the roughly $60 billion that the Treasury has that we're not going to spend because the pandemic's over and return that back to the taxpayer? Doesn't that make sense? You know, there are –

America needs to be energy independent right now, and the simple, clean permitting reforms that are put forth that would allow us to go after an all-of-the-above energy solution policy and do away with this Green New Deal fantasy, again, is something that I think most Americans can get behind. And so, again, these are reasonable proposals.

What we see right now is that Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden are having meetings for the sake of having meetings. But they're not serious about negotiations. They are doing the exact same thing – Joe Biden, President Biden is doing the same thing with the debt limit that he did at the border, which is ignore it, and it's going to be a catastrophe.

So the Business Insider came up with an article about an hour ago with Shalonda Young, the director of Office of Management and Budget, who apparently failed every math course she ever took. And what she is saying today is that Republicans leave defense funding, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security in touch. Every other discretionary program or every other program, period, will have to be cut by 30 percent. I mean, that's what they're coming out with today saying.

That is intellectually dishonest. Yeah, and it's horrible. And by the way, if we have to cut all of the woke bureaucracy and all of the crazy programs that are out there that we should not be borrowing money for, absolutely we should do it. And if that's 30%, hey, give me a chance to vote on 31%. Listen to what she's saying here.

This could mean people waiting for disability benefits through Social Security might face wait times of at least two months longer.

Well, let me just say this right now. The Social Security Administration, and I'm chairman of the subcommittee on this, they are performing at a very high level right now anyway. So, you know, sometimes they are years behind. So another two months, come on, Rick. Let's be serious. My dad always told me it's impossible to confront a dishonest person. How do you negotiate with people like that who are just plundering?

I mean, we just talked about you're not cutting spending. You're doing 20, 22 levels and a 1% increase per year. How did they save 30%? Again, I think you touched on it. I don't think her math teachers would be proud of her right now. That's new Common Core math right there. I mean, it's stunning, Congressman. I mean, just that they can outright lie about it, and you have a publication like Business Insider that just recites it.

I mean, it's crazy. Here's the one thing that we know as House Republicans. We know what Americans are going through right now. We know that they are getting crushed every single week by inflation.

I saw a number recently that said if you make $300,000 or less, you're feeling the pinch of inflation. Guess what? That's about 98% of Americans. And so we know that they see the pain at the pump, they feel the pain at the pump every week when they fill up with gas.

They're getting killed at the grocery store, their pocketbooks are. And Americans, I mean, they just don't feel safe. There's a very basic concept here. Americans want a job that they can take care of their families. They

They want a decent, safe place to come home to. They want their kids educated well, and they want the freedom to be who they can be in this great country. And the Democrats continue to violate every single one of those principles. And despite what a news publication says, it doesn't change the fact that you can't afford eggs, you can't afford to put gas in your car. Crime is on the rise. The border is chaos, and people are sick of their children being indoctrinated, and people are sick of being told what they can and can't think.

Wow. I kind of want to wrap it up right there because that was a brilliant monologue. It's a home run. Yeah. I mean, it's spot on with everything you just said, Congressman. Well, look, I mean, I'm up here fighting with a lot of my colleagues what's happening in D.C. This place continues to be out of touch with everyday Americans.

It continues. The bureaucracy is now at a point that it's beginning to run itself, which is scary as hell. And quite candidly, we've got to get back to what this country was founded on, which is individual responsibility, equal opportunity, safety and security, and to make sure that the next generation can live better than we do.

That is the last word right there. Congressman Drew Ferguson, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on the program. Look forward to having you back on again. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, are you concerned with stock market volatility, especially with Joe Biden in office? You've been hearing our next guest talk about this. We've been talking about it. I'm talking about why refi and the opportunity for you to earn up to a 10.25% rate of return. That's 10.25% fixed rate of return. When you're looking at the stock market bouncing up and down the way it is under Joe Biden, the volatility, the banking system on edge, this is a great opportunity for you.

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The great Elderski, Larry Elder, now presidential candidate Larry Elder. Welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. God bless. So you've jumped out on this trail. We've got a building field on both sides. But I've got to say, Larry, the things that you and a handful of others are talking about who maybe aren't considered yet the frontrunners yet.

You, Vivek Ramaswamy, Robert Kennedy, talking about things others are not. One of the things you've talked about repeatedly is fatherhood. Tell us a little bit about why that's so important to your platform. Well, it's important to my platform because if that –

knife in the muster drawer of a basement and spread it over everything. They're talking about critical race theory and reparations and inequities. And the 10,000-pound elephant in the room that's causing the so-called wealth gap that the Democrats are so concerned about is the epidemic of fatherlessness, particularly in the black community. Seventy percent of black kids enter the world without a father in the home, married,

back in 1965. Now, unless you prepare to say America is more racist today than it was in 1965, you've got to ask yourself, what the devil is going on here? And what we've done with the welfare state is to incentivize women to marry the government and to...

and moral responsibility. And our side does not talk enough about it. We talk a lot about other things, about sports, and they're very important, and about energy independence, and that's also very important, and inflation and all that stuff, those are all very important. But the number one social problem in America is kids now enter the world without a father in the home married to the mother. And that's caused the lack of performance in our schools. Look at our urban education system.

You have a 50% dropout rate in many of our urban high schools. In Baltimore, there are 13 public high schools, I kid you not, where 0% of the kids can do math at grade level and another half a dozen where only 1% can. That's half of all the public high schools in Baltimore, and they're all located in the inner city. When you don't have a mother and a father in the home, emphasize education.

and hard work to watch two people discuss issues civilly and to work out things civilly, you really are at sea. And we don't talk enough about that. And that's one of the things that I want to bring to the forefront as I run.

You know, the funny thing about or a sad thing about this Baltimore situation, I think they're getting like $20,000, $21,000 per student in Baltimore. Over $27,000 per student. Yeah, it's not the money. We spend more money in the United States, K-12, than any other industrialized country, I think, except for Switzerland and Luxembourg. And we're getting worse results compared to our European and Asian counterparts. It's not the money.

It's a failure to emphasize reading, writing, arithmetic in favor of things like high self-esteem and the failure to hold people accountable. You know, there are schools that are working. The Kipp Academy schools are working. I'm in L.A. There's something called the Marcus Garvey Academy. They're private schools, and the Kipp Academy schools are charter schools. We need school choice.

so that the money follows the child rather than the other way around. This can be turned around. But if you're producing a bunch of people that cannot read, write, and compute at grade level, what kind of society are we going to have? There's something called the National Assessment Educational Policy. It's called the Nation's Report Card. And I'm not making this up. Eighty-five percent of black eighth graders, these are 13-year-old kids, can neither read,

nor do math at grade level. Half of them can't even read at basic level, which means a substantial number of black teens are functionally illiterate. This is a national scandal, as I said earlier, that enough of us do not talk more about. Larry, how much does this, I mean, one of the things that I see in this is, quite frankly, the way the Democrat Party is structured and the way their policies are structured, it benefits them to have more people in this country who are incapable of taking care of themselves.

Is that part of what's going on? I would say it also benefits the Democrats to have more people in the country who are capable of thinking for themselves. If you can't think for yourself and somebody yells and screams and talks about systemic racism and the police are out to get you and you deserve reparation and you can't critically think for yourself, you can be manipulated. And that's what these Democrats do. This is a party historically, as you know,

the party of slavery, the party of KKK, the party of the Confederacy, the party that voted against the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment, the party of the Southern Manifesto, the party of the welfare state. This is the party that opposed the school choice. What have Democrats done historically for black people? Yet, if you're a black conservative, you're called an Uncle Tom, or as the LA Times called me, the black face of white supremacy.

Larry, we're going to be back with more in just a moment. Thank you so much again for joining us, folks. Breaking Battlegrounds, back in just a minute. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Horne, my co-host, Sam Stone. We are honored to have with us Larry Elder. Larry has taken a break from his professional career to run for president of the United States. You can learn more about his issues and policies and donate at LarryElder.com.

Larry, so Representative Cori Bush of Missouri has suggested a $14 trillion reparations for the descendants of slaves. Her quote, the United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of black people. Your thoughts?

It's jaw-droppingly ridiculous. Reparations is the extraction of money from people who were never slaves to the people who were never slaves. Her argument is that slavery has traumatized black people to the point where somebody right now in 2023 is traumatized because it's ridiculous. As I mentioned, the problem is fatherlessness and misogyny.

In 1940, between 1940 and 1960, in 1940, 87% of blacks lived under the poverty line. By 20 years later, 1960, that number had fallen to 47%. A 40-point drop in 20 years, the greatest 20-year period of economic expansion in American history. This was before Brown v. Board of Education, before all the Civil Rights Act of

1964. Why? Because it was rare, I mean rare, for a black kid to enter the world without a father in the home married to the mother, a belief in hard work, a belief in entrepreneurship, a belief in Judeo-Christian values, and a belief in American values, even if American values were not being properly applied to black people. Fast forward, you have organizations like Black Lives Matter. They had on their website an attack of the nuclear family. They considered it to be a superficial construct.

They are trained Marxists, the founders, self-described trained Marxists. Marx, of course, did not believe in entrepreneurship, not even believe in ownership. Let me look at you. Go ahead. I would say for all of the values that enable black people to move forward despite Jim Crow and KKK are under attack today. That's the problem. That won't be solved with reparations. How are you going to solve the fact that I mentioned earlier, 13 public high schools in Baltimore where 0% of the kids can do math at grade level with reparations?

And it's also insulting. Michael Medved, my colleague on Salem, conservative colleague, once wrote a column about this and said there are probably only about 5% of white people with any sort of generational connection to slavery. Either whites came after slavery or they fought in the North or lived in the North or didn't own slaves. And then, of course, America is not 100% white. It's only 62% white. You've got 38% of people who are not white. Should they be paying for kids?

as a grievance. Italians were treated badly. The worst mass lynching in American history probably took place among Italians, Italians in 1991 in New Orleans when a group of Italians were falsely accused of murdering a police officer.

Chinese Americans were treated in China, in California. Couldn't own property, couldn't own restaurants and the laundries in the Bay Area. There were also laws that prevented Japanese from earning farmland. I mentioned Chinese and Japanese because if you look at their per capita income, household income, net household income average of a Japanese American is higher than that of a white American, and the same thing with Chinese Americans. Why?

Belief in hard work, belief in strong families, and a belief in an embrace of education. That's the formula to escape poverty, not whining and complaining that somebody owes you something. Let's go back here for a second here. So there just seems to be a real trajectory of your victimhood in this country. And one of the most recent things is Baltimore suing –

car companies were being too easy to steal, right? So now they're suing Kia, Hyundai for vehicular crime waves. And other cities like St. Louis, San Diego, Columbus, St. Louis, Milwaukee, they're doing the same thing. And they're blaming the car manufacturers because somebody's out stealing the cars. I mean...

I think the one thing you can really do is just start bringing this attention and just say, have we lost our ever-loving minds? I don't know, Chuck. I actually got to step in on that one. Kia and Hyundai have a huge fault with their electrical systems that allows people to hack them with a USB. That should not be a lawsuit from any state, but there should be owners banding together in a class action lawsuit in that case. Larry, let's go back. That's nor victimhood. I mean, a car is a car. It's not yours. You don't take it. It doesn't matter. What?

Well, that's right. And by the way, I've got a book coming out. You can get an advanced version for it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It's called As Goes California, My Mission to Save the Golden State and to Rescue the Nation. And I talk about this whole victocrat – that's the word I coined, victocrat mentality. You remember Lori Lightfoot? She also blamed retailers on the –

on the, on the magnificent mile for not safeguarding their goods better. This is, this is insane. Let me, let me give you something that, that they ought to be concerned about the left. A,

Larry, you're running for president, and I agree wholeheartedly with everything you're saying in terms of what has really taken down the black community is fatherlessness.

How do we start correcting that from a policy perspective at the federal level? Well, I think a lot of people haven't heard what I've told you about the schools in Baltimore, about the percentage of black kids in the world without a father in the home married to the mother, about the crime stats, the homicide rate of 53. One of the things I can do when I get on that debate stage in Milwaukee, and that's one of the reasons I want people to go to ElderForPresident.com or LarryElder.com and throw something in the tip jar, I've got a radio station.

on that platform. I'm going to talk about this stuff. And I think the bully pulpit of the president is the most powerful thing the president has. We're not talking enough about hard work and accountability and not blaming other people. And it's the president of the United States whose father entered the world without knowing his biological father, left home at the age of

clean toilets until my dad was 47 years old, started a little cafe not too far from downtown L.A. And then when my dad retired in his 80s, he owned that property, the property next door to it, plus the home that we still have in our family. My dad retired a little short of a millionaire. If that can happen to my father, who went through Jim Crow in Athens, Georgia, then it can happen to anybody. The formula to escape poverty is pretty easy.

Finish high school. Get a job, any job. Don't quit that job until you get another job. Don't have a kid until you're 20. Get married first and avoid the criminal justice system. If you do that, you will not be poor in America. This is why Haitians are lining up.

this country. Why? Because it's systemically racist? It's ridiculous. Barack Obama is the only black person to be elected in a majority white country and reelected. It hasn't happened before. America is the least racist majority white country in the world, provides more opportunities for black people than any other country in the world, including all of those of Africa. We ought to embrace America, appreciate America, and work hard. Without question. I love hearing that.

And I think it is. I think you're right. I think having that bully pulpit is particularly important. We're going to be looking to get some other presidential guests on the presidential candidates who are running on the show also. So there's a couple of questions I kind of want to ask each of you. What is your thought? Because this has been coming up more and more from the Democratic Party on universal basic income.

ridiculous. It's another form of welfare, great dependency. How did America get wealthy without a basic income? How did it happen? How did we become the mightiest country in the world without all these things the Democrats now claim that we need? It's the same thing with the minimum wage. I know the minimum wage sounds wonderful and warm and fuzzy, but there was a time when a black teenager was more like a child because a black teenager was able to sell his

All right. Now I'm going to ask a question kind of coming from the right that, frankly, I support. But, you know, it's been tough to build any kind of consensus on.

What about a mandatory term of service, say, two years after high school, 18 to 20, whether you're in the military or it's a program to help rebuild parks or whatever it is? Volunteer, religious mission, anything. Yeah, anything like that, term of service. Well, one of the reasons I'm running is because my father was a Marine. He served in World War II.

He was a Montclair Point Marine. They were the first Black Marines. They were the equivalent of the Tuskegee Airmen. Most people haven't heard of them. My older brother Kirk was in the Navy during the Vietnam era. He was a Vietnam-era vet. My little brother Dennis was in the Army. He actually went to Vietnam. I didn't serve. One of the reasons I am running is because I feel that I need to give back to my country.

It's been so good to me and to my family. That said, I don't believe in any kind of mandatory service. I do regret that I didn't serve. I think, again, we've got to make the moral case that people ought to serve. If I could do it all over again, I certainly would spend at least two years in the military. But I don't believe that we ought to force people to do it. Very good. Ukraine. What do we do in Ukraine? I don't think anybody here talking wants Russia just to go willy-nilly into any country. What do we do?

Well, the first thing, of course, is to recognize the original problem, which is the way Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, leaving $80 billion worth of equipment and stranding several Americans and Afghanis who supported us.

I think it informed Putin. I think it encouraged Putin to invade further Ukraine. I think it's encouraging aggression on the part of China and on the part of North Korea and on the part of the Ayatollahs. That said, we are where we are. I believe that it was right and is right to support Ukraine. I think if we don't stop Putin, he then keeps going. And then at some point, he's going to threaten NATO countries.

which will invoke Article 5. Look, he's already lost the war. If you look at how many people he's lost, he's lost 200,000, which is equivalent in American terms of 400,000. He is either lost on the battlefield or disappeared almost 20 years. He is imploding. He's looking for an off-ramp, and I think we ought to try to get both sides to come to some sort of agreement to give him one.

Fantastic, Larry. Okay, next, moving on, China. I know you've spoken about the threat that China presents with the geopolitical conflict with the U.S. One of the things that's been coming up again recently is should we ban China from owning land, particularly farmland and other key resource lands in the United States? The answer to that is yes, for national security reasons. China has been very, very careful and correct.

They've done this big Trojan horse. They've compromised our universities. They've compromised many of our corporations. They bought land near sensitive military installations. And, of course, that ought not be permitted. But they are a major geopolitical threat and recognize that they are three or four times, maybe five times larger than we are. Their standing army is twice the size of ours. And we have become dependent upon them for pharmaceuticals.

the rare earth minerals that go into cell phones and they go into batteries, pushing people to buy these EVs. You're making us more dependent upon China. And they're the ones who either mine or process the lithium and the cobalt and the nickel that go into the batteries or they control areas like the Congo where this is being done. And it's ridiculous for us to become more and more dependent upon China because

EV is better for the planet than a gasoline-powered car. And I don't believe that that assumption is necessarily a valid one. There's an idea that Sam and I have been talking about. Would you – like we have enterprise zones. Would you support a sort of enterprise zone by various regions in the country that allow them to build manufacturing facilities for like –

You know, medicines like Tylenol and so forth, semiconductors. But there's sort of like an enterprise zone in a city, but you do it for manufacturing. National security. Any sort of national security. Yeah, I do. And under the Trump administration, there were these opportunity zones that he pushed that lowered taxes and lower regulations. But frankly, they're all good opportunities.

How to be an opportunity zone. We tax too much. We regulate too much altogether. But yes, I support those. And as I said earlier, Donald Trump put on behalf of urban America when he was president. We're with Larry Elder running for president of the United States. You can find more about him at LarryElder.com. Please feel free to chip in and learn more about his policy stances. Larry, what are questions that you want voters to ask themselves?

It's real simple. Are you better off now than you were two and a half years ago? If the answer is no, then don't pull that lever for the Democratic Party again. If you're happy with what's going on on the ground,

five to maybe eight million illegal aliens in this country in the last two and a half years. And by the way, the people most hurt by illegal aliens are black and brown people. They have to compete against them for jobs. And there was a study done by the Civil Rights Commission that found that there would be a million more black people working, but for the present illegal alien labor puts downward pressure to the tune of almost $2,000 per year on the salaries of people living in the inner city.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the knock on effects from that are enormous because it really it keeps wages down also.

It prevents those wages from rising the way they should. Folks, we want to thank Larry Elder for joining us on the program. We're wrapping up here on air today, but thank you for tuning in. We would love to have you come check out our podcast at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, or you can find us on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all those great things. Larry, again, thank you so much for joining us, folks. Check him out, LarryElder.com. Support this man. He is doing important work for this country. Larry, thank you so much. Gentlemen, thank you.

Breaking Battlegrounds, on to our podcast portion. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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Get your 10.25% and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. Great. We are lucky today to have with us President Stuart Adams. He is the president of the Utah State Senate. For folks, if you don't know and you live under a rock, Utah is the most fiscal, stable state in the nation. It is the best state overall financially. Is an observer of state politics, Chuck?

Utah is right there as not only the best fiscally managed state, but overall the best managed state. Utah works. Yes, it does. And it has a lot to do with leadership like President Stewart Adams. And thank you for coming on, sir.

Great. It's great to be with you. And again, we are the best managed state, and we, U.S. News, World Report, other entities, rich states, poor states have all recognized that we have the best economy, and it is because of good management, but also because of good people. So great to be with you. Thank you. So recently, you took a delegation from Utah, which you led, to go out to Ukraine. What did you find out there? What stood out in your mind?

Well, Utah is not only the best managed state, the best state for business, we are the most giving state. So I went with two philanthropic groups, August Mission and Two Ukraine with Love. They put together millions of dollars to take care of bedding, mattresses, food for those displaced individuals.

And to Ukraine with love has built 100 homes. They're headed to 1,000 homes. All money from philanthropic entities, people in Utah. So our main purpose was to try to help the citizens of Ukraine that have been displaced.

but we also took a trade delegation of businesses. And there are businesses in Ukraine that are looking for help to maintain their economy and also to, not only during the war, but after the economy, to recover. So it was a two-fold mission. One is to philanthropically help those that have been displaced from the battle, from the wars, who've had their homes blow up and needed new homes. And the other one was to actually help them economically to sustain themselves through the war.

You mentioned that Utah companies could hire Ukrainian workers and help strengthen the country's wartime economy. Explain to our audience a little bit about that, what you have in mind, because I'm sure there's a very viable workforce out there.

Well, Ukraine has one of the best agricultural industries in the world. They provide more grain, more wheat, more than any other nation in Europe, maybe any in the world. In addition to that, they're highly technical. They have a lot of IT capacity. They're very, very smart.

We have in Utah, we have an area we call Silicon Slopes, much better than Silicon Valley. People leave California to come to Utah because of our great regulatory policy. Every IT company probably in the world is there. And they're actually trying to hire engineers. They can work remotely. Utah has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation at under 2%. Ukraine, because of the war, has one of the highest.

They can actually hire these very talented engineers remotely, pay them, help the Ukrainian economy, leave them in Ukraine. And it's a win-win for Utah because we need workers. It's a win for Ukraine because they're looking for people to be employed. Were the businesses and the people you talked to in Ukraine very open to doing this for these opportunities for them to provide for their family and help rebuild their country?

They were stunned. We were the first state delegation to Ukraine. The ambassador said that she wasn't surprised it was Utah being the first, but they were first stunned that we were there. They were extremely receptive.

We had, I can't count how many meetings, between 30 to 70 meetings with business leaders, with government leaders. It finally led to a meeting with President Zelensky, but they were very receptive, and they need help. I want to talk to you quickly here about a story here that I feel is important to tell. You were out there, and you had an air raid go off, and

And you had to go down to a bunker. And there was an interesting story in the Deseret News, which is a daily newspaper in Utah, where this woman was talking about, I guess everybody has an app that has an air alert app on it. And she was back in Utah after visiting Ukraine. And she talked about she's there for Fourth of July. They have their lawn chairs out.

And as the fireworks start going off, her app starts going off because she forgot to turn it off. And so as she's watching the U.S. and freedom and fireworks going off, the app is just showing all these missiles hitting these various cities in Ukraine. And she just said it's such a weird reality to hear the fireworks with those giant eruptions and watch the phone blow up with the rockets dropping. I just lost it.

And you were there, and one night you had an air raid. And tell us about what happened. You went to a bunker. How did you feel when you – after all this, how did it feel to come back to the United States?

Well, the same thing happened to me at 3 o'clock at night. I forgot to turn my alarm off, and I was there with my wife. And she still has, I think, effects from hearing that alarm go off. And in the bunker, they actually fired some of the first high-speed missiles at Kiev when we were there. And I felt very grateful for the United States. And every morning when we'd go to our meetings,

the ukrainians would talk to us about how thankful they are for the united states missile defense system that keeps them functioning uh thankful for the taxpayer dollars they also talked and we're all well aware that there's been uh somewhat some corruption talked about in ukrainian government they're well aware that they talk about it openly they're trying to root it out they're doing their best they

It's the old Soviet system that existed there. And they're well aware that if they can't fix that problem, that the rest of the world will not be there to help them. And they desperately need the help. I talked to one family, one family that we gifted a home to the

The grandmother was there living with the young couple and their daughter. She, with tears in her eyes, talked about their home being blown up, losing her pictures, losing all of her possessions, losing what she thought was her heritage. Her granddaughter would not know or be able to see.

And so grateful for, again, businesses in Utah who have taken the time and effort, millions of dollars, to help rebuild homes. It was an emotional moment. And, again, those types of – I don't think the rest of the world understands the trauma that Ukrainians deal with on a daily basis. No, they do not. We're with President Stuart Adams. He's the president of the Utah State Senate.

Let's change topics briefly here. Utah has a great program which you helped push through for first-time homebuyers. Sam and I talk about the housing crisis concerns us. There's a lot of people in 20s and 30s that do not have the advantages that you had, President Adams, or I have. Getting a home, it's a different time. So tell us a little bit about the first-time homebuyer program the Utah legislature has passed.

Well, because of our great economy, we've had a real challenge in Utah with housing affordability. And a lot of times when we've talked about housing affordability, people pivot and they talk about multifamily, more density, building additional apartment complexes and trying to drive apartment rents down so they're more affordable to have people live in.

And I think we're losing our vision of what we really need to do. America is built on the middle class. I believe most Americans believe in that American dream of having a home. And we started, we were focusing too much on multifamily. So we made a pivot.

And we decided that owning a home was important, that it was something that Americans ought to enjoy, and actually appropriated $50 million to allow a loan program. We don't want to give things away in Utah. We believe in personal responsibility. But a loan program to have $20,000 of property

a couple could use for their down payment or to buy the rate down. We've seen rates go up. Or to use for closing costs to incentivize people to get into that first home to start to build the equity. And I think it changes a person's attitude. If they have the pride of home ownership, surely changes their quality of life when they can put a swing set in the backyard and have their kids play on a swing set. I think it's the right thing to do. And it's been very, very...

It will roll out in June, but there's been a lot of interest in it here in Utah. Oh, I bet. That's a wonderful program. President Adams, I want to switch topics briefly and touch on two things. One of the things in the data across this country that really stands out is Utah spends a far lower sum than most of the big blue states per student on education, but your results are better than those states. Right.

And obviously, I think a lot of that has to do with the families in Utah and the family values of your state. But how much, I mean, how much does that show that the answer in education is not just dollars, but it's also about the kind of classroom environments we're creating? Well, we do have some of the best teachers, I think, on the planet in Utah. We're very fortunate. Again, great families. But we also pride ourselves on trying to be efficient with what we do.

and we do have a lot of kids, and our per-pupil spending is one of the lowest in the countries, but our results are one of the highest. And I think it speaks for, again, not just the quality of government officials. I'd like to take credit for everything, but I can't. It's the quality of people that we have here in Utah. And we are... I hope nobody understands that I'm a little biased, or everybody understands I'm a little biased, but

But I believe Utah is the best state in the nation. And that's one of the reasons why. You know what? I don't live in Utah, but I'm glad to hear you say that. I think the leadership in every state should want at least to view their state that way, right?

Absolutely. I don't think many of them deserve it as much as you all do in Utah.

Washington is having this debt ceiling debate. You have a president unwilling to negotiate. You have Republicans who have passed something and Biden just acts like they don't exist. He wants to rule by fiat. He literally held a press conference that pretended that that could happen. Yeah. If they do not increase this debt ceiling, what does this mean for finance or for someone like Utah, who's probably better prepared to handle this than most states?

Well, we predicted a couple of years ago when the federal government was doing two things. One is they were shutting down the Keystone Pipeline and shutting down energy production. And they were spending a lot of money, which the debt ceiling allows them to do, raising the debt ceiling. We predicted in Utah that we'd have inflation. And what happens after inflation? How do you fight inflation? Higher interest rates. And what do higher interest rates cause? They

because of slowdown in the economy. We predicted a slowdown in the economy a couple of years ago, and that's what's happening now. What the federal government doesn't understand, at least the president doesn't understand, is that when he allows the federal government to spend more money, it feels good for the moment.

but in the long term it causes a lot of damage, inflation and other things that I don't think they really understand the total damage of. The private sector can do a lot more than the public sector can. If you just cut us loose and let us go, I think you'll see states like Utah and businesses like we have in Utah that'll help the economy a lot more than government spending.

This is why I've said before that there are a bunch of states around this country that I would like to trade their entire state delegation for the entire federal delegation. 100%. And I apologize for what that would do to Utah. 100%. Well, President Adams, thank you so much for joining us on Breaking Battlegrounds today. We've appreciated the opportunity and hope you'll join us again sometime in the future. Hey, great to be with you. Have a great day.

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