Dan McLaughlin on the Trump Indictment 55:19

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Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. Our first guest up today, Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at the National Review Institute and relevant to today's discussion, formerly an attorney practicing securities and commercial litigation in New York City.

Dan, welcome to the program again. Great to be here. It's a busy week. Yes, it is. So, Dan, you have written a great series in National Review Plus about the case against Donald Trump, which seems very stretching would be the word I'm thinking of here.

What I've run across, though, is I can't believe the number of people who I view as somewhat politically in tune or astute who said, well, didn't Donald Trump use his own campaign dollars? No. People I know who don't like Donald Trump say this is a travesty of justice. They're doing this. I mean, it fills a gamut. So you have come out with this great three part series.

And we want to talk about that today. So let's start with the first one. You wrote this article called The Ridiculousness of the Trump Indictment, Part One, the Statue of Limitations Problem. What is the statute of limitations problem in this case?

Yeah, so, and I'll caution you, it's actually a five-part series. Oh, wait. The other two parts aren't out yet. We're waiting. We're waiting. So let's go for it. Yeah, so, look, the... I mean, before we get into the nuts and bolts of what the case is about, you have to remember that the...

You know, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. There's a two-year statute of limitations for misdemeanors in New York. If the falsification was used to basically cover up a crime, then it becomes a felony. And for a felony, there's a five-year statute of limitations. Alvin Bragg's problem here, the Manhattan DA, is,

is that all of the false entries he alleges, you know, all 34 charges involve things that were written in 2017, which is more than five years ago.

So, first of all, if he, you know, he doesn't have the option to go forward with this as a misdemeanor charge. There's no possible way for him to come up with a way that the two-year statute of limitations hasn't already run. But he's even more than five years out for these things.

So he's got to not only does he have to show the covering up of another crime in order to raise this to a felony, he has to do that in order to get the case not thrown out, you know, get the case to survive at all.

And then he still needs some explanation, some theory for how it is that stuff that happened more than five years ago is not time barred. Now, I think he may be able to do that, but it requires a certain amount of creativity right off the bat. And I think, you know, that's going to get charged. That's going to get challenged by Trump's attorneys. Yeah. Without question, I would assume they would challenge that. What sort of grounds would you be? I mean, I I.

My understanding and a lay person's understanding is that once the statute of limitations has been passed, that's it. You're done. There is no coming back.

Yeah, and if it in fact has run, then yes, that's how it works. And some statutes have what they call a statute of repose, which is kind of an outer limit saying, okay, even if you have some basis to extend the limitations period, it can't go beyond a certain point. The criminal laws in New York don't have that. But there seem to be three theories that Bragg is hinting at here. And one of the problems with this indictment in

in general and the accompanying statement of fact is that, you know, even Trump's lawyers in making motions to throw the case out are still left guessing as to what exactly he's really being charged with here, which I think is really an improper way for prosecutors to proceed. Let me interrupt you. Does that happen often that the prosecution keeps you guessing what the charges actually are?

Yes and no. I mean, it is a thing that, first of all, it's much more common in, like, white-collar cases, right? Because if you're charging somebody with, like, oh, you stabbed somebody to death, like, that's...

you know, it's going to be pretty clear. You have the guy who died, right? Like, um, you know, and in some, some types of cases, there's specific rules about what you have to say, like, Oh, it's a perjury indictment. You got to actually put the, you know, the actual words in the indictment. Um, but in a,

The thing about this false business records law, you have to remember, it's kind of a hybrid. It's this weird, like, hybrid thing, right? It says you made a false entry in your business records, and then that was used to defraud somebody, which included covering something up. So there's, like, multiple pieces to it. And what Bragg hasn't done, what he hasn't done anywhere...

used to say what exactly crime he thinks trump was covering up the ticket that but he doesn't he doesn't never actually specifies that and similarly with the federal limitations you know he doesn't i would think the more responsible thing in the statement of facts would be a say you know

we believe that these charges are timely because X, Y, Z, because, you know, otherwise you're wasting everybody's time, right? Trump's got to prepare a motion that his lawyers have to prepare a motion that argue a bunch of different possible theories. And the judge has to wade through all of that. Whereas, you know, before he sees, you know, Bragg's response saying, oh no, this is our argument, right? So that, that's kind of, it's just a waste of waste of everyone's time. But

I think Bragg is probably taking one of three arguments, and maybe all three of them. One I've seen is that, well, Trump was out of state, right? There's some arguments that criminal defendants, sometimes statute of limitations, is what they call told. In other words, the five-year clock doesn't keep running while the defendant is out of state. Now, the general idea of that is... That's a fugitive. That's a fugitive.

Yeah, that's like a fugitive. Not necessarily a fugitive, but a fugitive is the basic idea. Or it's just somebody who's like, you know, the guy moved to Ohio. We couldn't, you know, the New York prosecutors didn't know exactly where he was. Generally not somebody who everyone on the planet knows where he is in the White House every day. Right.

Right, that has like a giant skyscraper in the middle of Midtown with his name on it. Like, you know, yeah, he's not hard to find. And in fact, um...

You know, in some ways, it's almost kind of analogous to saying, oh, we should extend this against like some guy who was, you know, like serving serving in the army or something. I mean, Trump's not in the military, but he spent four years out of state as commander in chief. Yeah, right. Right. What are the other two? What are the other two theories they have to get over the statute of limitation hump?

Yeah, so one would be possibly – there may be some theory here that, well, they concealed what was going on, right? And one thing that jumped out at me from the Statement of Facts is they spent a little time talking about how Trump pressured Cohen, his lawyer Michael Cohen, not to cooperate with authorities. And that begins on, like, April 9th, 2018, which is, like, just barely less than five years ago.

you know, before the indictments filed. So it seems that there may be an argument here that says, well, you know, the pressure campaign to get Cohen to cooperate somehow concealed all of this, you know, from the DA's office being able to find out about it. And then the third one would be that, you know,

There was an executive order by Andrew Cuomo that extended some limitations periods during COVID when, like, the courts were closed and nobody could – you know, neither the prosecutors nor any other civil litigants could file anything in court for a couple of months there. Yeah.

You know, I suspect that Bragg will probably find one of these ways around the statute of limitations, but it's a problem right off the bat. Well, okay, so you used to practice security law. And let's say you had a white-collar criminal defendant come into your office. Would you give great credence that you could get past the statute of limitations if they faced something similar like this? I mean—

This one, I mean, obviously, look, what I would do is sit down and do the research. And frankly, I've done some research. I've done a lot of research on the legal research on the merits of this case. I haven't dug deep into the limitations issues other than to sort of flag what they are. But yeah, I mean, I certainly if I was in if I was representing somebody in Trump's shoes, I would absolutely challenge this because it's I mean, it's.

write on the papers that says it's more than five years ago and make the DA explain how exactly he's going to extend the limitations period. Before we get to your second article on this, let's go over for our audience the facts of the case. Donald Trump was alleged to have an affair or dalliance with Stormy Daniels. He worked with Michael Cohen, who was his attorney. Some will call it a fixer, but he worked with his attorney to pay her off, which Cohen did.

And they Trump repaid him with his own money over a period of time as a legal retainer. Is that the basic facts of the case?

Yeah, and Trump, in fact, ended up overpaying him because the idea was they kind of wanted to, what they ended up doing, because they recorded this stuff as legal fees instead of reimbursements. And if it's legal fees, then it would be income to Cohen, whereas if it's reimbursement, it's not taxable. So what they actually did was overpaid Cohen so that he could pay

pay taxes on money that he didn't actually, shouldn't actually vote taxes on. Which, again, overpaying your taxes is not a crime. And Cohen went and took a second on his house or something to do this, right? To get the money right away to her to keep her from gabbing. Yeah, he took it out of his home ownership line of credit.

And he was convicted of other stuff. Right, right, right, right, right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, that's it. And the other piece of this, just to add, the other piece of this is that there was also sort of this kind of parallel scheme, right, where David Pecker of American Media Inc., which is the parent company of National Enquirer, was kind of involved in an agreement with Trump that he would go out there and find stories like this, buy them and bury them. Right. Right.

Right. And at one point he paid some other woman, Karen McDougal, apparently, who said that she'd had an affair with Trump. And so he pays her off, buries the story. And Trump's like, oh, I'll pay you back for that. Right. And then once they sort of figure out, wait a minute, this is this is a woman that they clearly all concluded that this is a garbage, false story. Right.

And so Trump doesn't pay him back for that. And Pecker, you know, AMI ends up reaching a non-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department where it kind of agrees like, hey, yeah, maybe this was kind of the equivalent of a campaign contribution to Trump by spending this money to kill this story.

Okay, we have just about a minute before we go to break. We're going to be coming right back with more from Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online. But before we head into the break, folks, are you concerned with stock market volatility, especially with Joe Biden in office? What if you could invest in a portfolio with a high fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market?

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, with my co-host, Sam Stone. We have Dan McLaughlin with us today, senior writer of National Review Online. More importantly, he's a baseball blogger at BaseballCrank.com and BostonSportsGuy.com. We've been talking with Dan about a series of articles he is doing on the Trump indictment. The second part of the series is entitled The Ridiculousness of the Trump Indictment, Part 2, The Federal Felony Hook Problem.

So what is the federal felony hook problem? Because this seems like this is what he's trying to get besides the fact that he said there's 34 charges, which my understanding is an entry for each time it's in the books. Is that how he came up with 34? I will tell you it's even worse than that. Right?

Literally, just to give you an example, the first four counts in the indictment are Cohen sends an invoice to Trump, Trump writes him a check, and it's entered on the books of two different parts of the Trump organization in there, like General Ledger. Yes. So there's a felony charge for the invoice, another felony charge for the check, and

Two more felony charges for each of the two different general ledger entries, all on the same day. I mean, at this point, I'm surprised Bragg didn't charge Trump separately for every zero he wrote on the check. Or breathing. I mean, he's going to find everything, right? So tell us what the federal felony hook problem is for him. Yeah, so the issue here is this. I mean, Bragg, as we said, Bragg charges Trump with a felony. You know, he makes this into a felony by saying you're trying to cover up another crime.

And the problem is he never says what that crime is. So the suggestion, the main suggestions in the statement of facts that accompanies the indictment are that Trump was trying to cover up a violation of campaign finance laws.

possibly by Cohen and possibly by AMI. And let me just do a very, very quick diversion here. I just mentioned the whole thing with AMI, right? The National Enquirer basically trying to kill this story by this other woman. The problem is that

none of that has the slightest bit to do with any of the actual checks and invoices and business entries that Trump is charged with. Right? So at no point, Bragg doesn't explain how any of that has anything to do with the AMI stuff. So the AMI,

angle here is a complete red herring. And I think Bragg is going to try to stretch it into something. But I just don't see how the judge doesn't throw that part of the case out completely, no matter what else he does with the rest of the case. The other thing I would notice, which I didn't mention in this particular article, but I'm getting to in one of the later chapters,

is that you can be charged with making a false business entry, or you can be charged with failing to make a true entry that you were required to make, right? And Bragg hasn't charged Trump with, like, failing to make a campaign finance report, right? He's just charged him with lying to his own books, lying in his own checkbook. So, you know, he's really stretching here. But the problem with...

The underlying felony, right, what is it Trump, what crime is Trump trying to cover up, is that probably he's ultimately pushing here for arguing that Trump is trying to cover up campaign, federal campaign finance violations by Cohen.

Because Cohen kind of he pled guilty to a long list of stuff. And that was one of them at the end, although it didn't really affect his sentence or anything. So Cohen at that point was like, yeah, I'll do that. Why not? The prosecutors make them happy. But in any event, that's not you know, it doesn't prove anything about the law that Cohen agreed to that. Right. So doesn't it make it really tough to make that argument when the Federal Elections Commission has looked at this and dismissed it?

Yeah, and there's a deeper problem, too, which is does the DA even have the power, either under state law, to make this about a federal elections violation, or even if the state law is written in a way that maybe you could read it that way, does federal law basically preempt this? Trump's lawyers are undoubtedly going to argue that the Manhattan DA doesn't have the power to enforce elections.

federal law that the FEC didn't enforce, that the DOJ didn't enforce. So don't Trump's attorneys have like till August to file whatever they need to file? Is that true? That long? They have till August to do that?

Yeah. Now, it's possible that – now, look, if Trump was highly motivated to get this case thrown out very soon, certainly his lawyers could file something before that. But that's definitely not his background story, how he's handled legal cases. Yeah, the way they're looking at it. Yeah, no, I think he –

I think he wants delay. Yeah, they're wallowing in this story. They are working it for all it's worth. Yeah, he's raising money on it. And look, every time that, you know, we saw this with the raid of Mar-a-Lago last summer. Every time the legal system goes after Trump, he goes up at the polls in the Republican primaries. Now, I don't think that's going to help him in the long run, although there certainly are, you know, some independent voters out there who are going to look at this and be like,

You know, this is such ridiculousness that we sympathize with Trump over it. But clearly, Republican voters who are on the fence about Trump are more likely to tell pollsters, at least for now, that they're supporting him when they feel like, you know, the system is giving him a rock. Let me ask you this question, and this is a question to you personally as an attorney, okay?

It would seem to me if I am the D.A. in Georgia and I'm looking at this election interference stuff, this would really disturb me that they gave this junk indictment out, which sort of muddles everything and hardens public relations, public opinion on this issue. Is that a fair? Would that would you view it that way that they've sort of now because now you've got a bunch of people just saying it's just a political witch hunt. Right. Because this this clear this case is clearly a political witch hunt.

Yeah, and that's sort of how witch hunts work, too, right? Sometimes there's real witches out there, but, you know, I mean, look, Joe McCarthy, he had some targets who were real communists, but he went after a lot of innocent people, and that ended up kind of discrediting the whole thing. And that's exactly sort of what's happening here. I mean, I have some doubts and some questions about...

the federal Mar-a-Lago investigation and the Georgia investigation, but they are clearly not quite as ridiculous as this. And I think if I was the Georgia prosecutor, I would be pretty much hopping mad at this. Well, it seems like what Bragg's when he ran...

for DA, he said this is what he was going to do, right? And it's no different than the liberal justice who just won in Wisconsin. She didn't run a campaign based on law. She ran it like she was running for governor, you know, abortions, rights, all these things. And so now you've got a bunch of progressive attorneys who are running for office and in office who are telling you what they are. They're political. Well, and you can see a New York jury backing that. Oh, 100 percent. 100 percent. And that's why he's smart trying to. Do you think there's any chance he can change venue on this?

Um, I don't... Well...

I don't see how Trump would be able to get, I mean, yeah, he's going to have trouble getting a fair jury here because everybody's heard of Trump and everybody's heard of this case, but that's going to be true literally anywhere in the country. And you can't, obviously you couldn't move a New York County prosecution, you know, outside the city. You can't really move it outside the, I don't think you'd be able to. Right, but I guess my question is. What Trump may do, though, is try to get basically the federal courts to step in.

Right. I mean, but my point is, yeah, no, I mean, he can't go anywhere. People don't know who he is. But at least you can have some people that, you know, I mean, this just isn't a fair fight in New York City. That's that's a problem. It's like when the gentleman who was doing the Russian collusion, the special, you know, special prosecutor would be hired. Then he kept losing the case in New York on the Russian hoax thing. But he's in New York. I mean, it's just your numbers are outnumbered. I mean.

Am I wrong on that? I mean, it's just there's no way. Obviously, if you're Trump, you'd much rather be in front of a jury in Staten Island or, you know, or even in Onlog Island than in Manhattan. Sure. I mean, and it is an asymmetry here, right? Dan, we got to take a break. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be right back.

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Chuck, back to you. All right, Dan. So another article you put out this week is called When a Democratic President Was Above the Law. Would you compare how these two cases have what their similarities are and how Democrats defended Clinton then and how that logic does not transfer over to Trump?

Yeah, I mean, the you know, one of the big slogans from a lot of the Democratic politicians has just been, oh, well, this indictment proves nobody's above the law. And Alvin Bragg is a terrible representative for that because there's a whole lot of laws he's not enforcing. But but it's totally the opposite of the way they handled the Bill Clinton perjury and obstruction of justice charges that were brought as a basis for impeachment, but actually were never brought as a criminal charge. Right.

And the only thing that ultimately happened to Clinton legally was that he lost his law license for about a year. But, you know, at the time, their whole argument was, well, you know, it's it's it's OK to commit felonies because it's just about sex, which is funny because, right, that's exactly what Trump is doing here. It's just about sex. I mean, you couldn't get a more perfect comparison. They're both trying to cover up, you know.

you know, sexual affairs. And they're both lying about it. The difference is, like, Trump is lying to his checkbook, right? Clinton lied under oath in a civil deposition. And so, like, in Clinton's case, the victim and the harm is easy to see there, right? And the law is really simple. Everybody knows, you know, if you're like, when you're like eight years old and you're watching, like, crime shows on TV, you know that you're not supposed to lie under oath. Everybody knows that. It's not a complicated law.

And Dan, I would say it's far worse than that. Stormy Daniels has no business, personal, professional relationship to Trump other than this one, this activity. Whereas Monica Lewinsky was an intern in the White House. I mean, if he's an employee. Yeah. And a very low level employee of the most powerful person on Earth. That's a.

That's a pretty significant difference. Yeah, it's much more exploitative. And I think that, you know, and certainly I think our social mores have changed on that. I think a lot of Democrats today at least would tell you that the Lewinsky affair was bad in ways that they weren't really willing to admit at the time because she's like 22 and he's the boss and all. But...

Even to this very day, if you ask Democrats about, you know, Ken Starr and the impeachment, even if you read what, like, liberal writers wrote when Ken Starr died in September –

You know, nobody has changed their tune on any of this. They still think that it was totally illegitimate to go after Clinton for committing an absolute open and shut perjury in a civil case. You know, that was intended to harm Paula Jones, who was suing him for sexual harassment and wanted evidence that he'd done something similar to other subordinate employees.

You know, one long-term ramification here is now that you're going to have a lot of power-hungry, politically motivated district attorneys go after former elected officials. That's one thing that's been said. Do you think that's a reality? I think sooner or later it will. There's an asymmetry here, right, because it's a lot easier to find powerful, well-funded prosecutor's offices with major...

major politicians doing business in their cities in like D.C. and Manhattan than it is in the deep red parts of the country. That's just geographic reality. But, you know, we have seen time and again that Democrats do things like this and don't think through how it can be, you know, even when Republicans are screaming from the mountaintops about how they're going to get even with them, Democrats say, oh, that'll never happen. And then it happens predictably. And then they're upset about it.

I call that the Harry Reid clause. Yeah, it's the Harry Reid thing. It was the same thing with the independent counsel statute. For 12 years, they loved watching the independent counsels torture people in the Reagan and Bush cabinet. And then the minute it gets turned against Bill Clinton, they're all like, wait a minute, this is a terrible idea. And they all decided to let the law expire.

Dan, we have just about a minute before we come to the end of this program. How do folks follow your work and stay up with, obviously, the next two pieces of this series coming out shortly? Sure. I'm at Baseball Crank on Twitter, and I can be found at nationalreview.com. And before we let you off the line...

You also do a ton of baseball writing at BaseballCrank.com, BostonSportsGuy.com, Providence Journal Online. We've got to ask, what's more fun, talking baseball, writing baseball, or politics? Well, that depends how many Mets are injured at any given time. So politics a lot. Yeah.

That's the Max Scherzer clause. All right. Thank you so much, Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review Online. We are so grateful you were able to join us for the program again today. We thank you and welcome you back in the future. But be sure to tune in and download our podcast only segment at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote.

Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren. With us, we are honored to have in studio Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi. He is a senior Republican ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. And thank you for coming to Phoenix and visiting with us today. Well, Chuck, it's nice to be with you. We've got my wife here. She's here. She's smiling. She's enjoying the weather. Getting a bit of a tour of Phoenix and seeing some friends. That's fantastic.

First question, did the administration really wait 13 hours to tell you that they did a counterattack against Iran? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, first of all, they waited 13 hours to tell us that we had been attacked by Iranian missiles. That's the first thing. And, yes, they waited until later that night to actually counterattack Iran.

But during that time, the Senate was actually voting on whether to get out of a resolution to authorize military force.

And it had everything to do with the Iranian threat. So it would, I think, have been nice and a good bit of Americanism if the executive branch had told the legislative branch exactly what the latest news was. Well, this isn't your first rodeo. And I imagine, you know, the world is a dangerous place. Have you had has there been that long of a wait time for an administration telling the

senators that we just took this action or this action happened against us? Well, I don't know how long they've waited in the past, but let me just say that the administration has

should look at us on the Armed Services Committee as part of the same team. We want America to be strong. We want us to be resolute against Iran. We know that they're one of our threats, along with communist China and Russia. And we were debating a very important issue at that time, dealing with the authorization of military force.

And we deserve to know exactly the latest news. I don't know if it would have affected the outcome, but it certainly, I think, might have swayed some votes against repealing this authorization of military force. And we needed to make that decision.

Let's talk China. You had a great quote, which I'm going to kill and slaughter here, but you basically said it's going to cost a lot to deter China, but it's going to cost a lot more if we don't do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. For example, we have now spent $130 billion in Ukraine, and that's a lot of money.

But you have to compare that to, frankly, $100 billion is wasted in the defense budget every time we pass a continuing resolution and don't fund next year's priorities and continue with last year. So $130 billion to show that we are willing to back an ally and help them win would be a bargain, right?

if somehow that persuaded Xi Jinping, the communist leader of China, not to try to invade Taiwan. If we have to get into a conflict against China to defend our friends Taiwan, it's going to cost trillions, not billions. And so, yes, deterring communist China is

And also helping to arm Taiwan, helping them to pay for American arms sales to them would save a lot of money if we could prevent war. And I really do think it's not a given that China will go ahead with this. We need to do as Reagan did. Peace through strength and the strategic defense initiative during the Reagan administration persuaded –

our largest adversary at that time from doing anything stupid. And as a matter of fact, they stood down. We avoided conflict for the entire Reagan and George H.W. Bush years. And we saved mankind a lot of anguish and saved the United States a lot of money in so doing. What do we need to do to prepare? So China understands...

We take you seriously. We're not going to back down. Well, I have a hard time thinking China takes us seriously when our commander in chief has for three years in a row recommended cutting defense appropriations. Obviously, we need to spend money wisely.

But for two years in a row, on a bipartisan basis, I'll have to say, we have upped President Biden's defense budget by $30 billion the first year and $45 billion this past year. Once again, for the third straight year, Biden has come in very, very low. And so it doesn't fund the things we actually need. We need to revamp our nuclear force. But principally, we're way behind on shipbuilding.

China's bumping up against 400 ships. And, of course, that's principally in the Pacific where they want to be in charge of the trade routes. And our requirement, statutory requirement that I helped put into law is 355 ships.

will be way down around 290 if the president's budget goes through. And as admirals will tell you, retired and current, there is an importance in sheer numbers. The Biden administration, for example, wants to take a five-year pause on our amphibious ships.

that are critical to moving the Marines around. The comment on the Marine Corps says that is not wise. And so we're probably going to have a vote on that in terms of the National Defense Authorization Act. And my hope and my belief is that we will expand the shipbuilding budget because we need to. Again,

A few extra billion on ships in the Pacific could save us trillions four or five years from now. What is the thought process of the Biden administration saying we don't need as many amphibious ships? I mean, why is that? Well, you're asking me to look into the minds of politicians that I don't really understand. But it may be that they...

that they believe the Congress will save them from themselves. But I do know this. They have proposed a huge increase in, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency. I mean, they think...

that the climate crisis is, is worth, uh, you know, 50% increase or, or more than that. And, uh, and, and perhaps they know that with people like Jack Reed, uh, a West Point graduate as chairman of the Senate armed services committee and me as ranking Republican, we're going to have a substantial majority to give them the money they need, even though they haven't asked for it. I,

I have been frustrated during my time in Congress by the power of the Office of Management and Budget. They put out a number, and that is thought of as the requirement. And so then generals come in front of us and say, we are resource constrained, and based on that, we have to ask only for this and this. I don't think we should be constrained by what OMB says.

particularly when the safety of Americans and future generations is at stake.

Let's talk about another subject that's urgent that a lot of people aren't aware of is that we're missing recruiting targets for the military. So in the 70s, we missed we were at 90 percent of what we needed to be. We're at 75 percent now. Is that correct? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's a crisis for the Army and it's getting to the crisis stage for for the Navy and Air Force, too. Yes. What are the reasons you give for that besides the fact that there's a lot of young people?

men and women who are in the best of shape now. So I know that's part of it. There's some physical limitations. But why is this to you? Well, that's part of it. There are a number of reasons. And, you know, in spite of the fact that recruiting numbers are down, the military still...

still disqualifies people for reasons that don't quite matter. For example, I'm colorblind. Senator Tom Cotton, an Army combat veteran, is colorblind, and he had to...

basically beg the army to let him come in, although he had no desire, nor did I, to become an aviator. There's certainly no reason why most of our specialties can't use someone that's colorblind. But mainly it's a societal problem, yes. People for medical, emotional problems and obesity, things like that. But of the pool that are qualified,

It seems to me we're sending the wrong message to them. Someone who wants to be in the military wants to fight and defend their nation and do a tough job for patriotic reasons, and they don't need to be told that we have a discrimination policy, that there's somehow intolerance. I can assure you,

Being a veteran myself of active duty and the Air Force Reserve, the U.S. military is the greatest civil rights program in the history of the world. I mean, we...

We were integrated and promoting people based on merit long before the rest of society was. It dates back to the Truman years. So the wrong signal has been sent. We spent billions on discrimination and violence.

did a survey. Turns out there were maybe a hundred cases service wide out of the millions and millions of people serving in the military. But it sends a message that somehow if a young person is going to join, they're joining something that's, that's discriminatory and doesn't reflect American values. I thought, I think there's a bunch of wokeness to, I mean, to, to sponsor a drag queen campaign.

nights at the NCO club, things like that. It's just ridiculous. It's not the kind of thing that I think is required to show inclusiveness in the military. Let's talk about the industrial complex we have in this country. So we should be at 350 ship Navy. We're at 290. Do we even have the capacity to build? We need to rebuild our capacity. Yeah.

And, you know, we're not going to be able to go begging, say, to Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding or General Dynamics or General Atomics and say, you need to expand your industrial capability. The way to do that is to order more manufacturing. And when we do that and we do it long term and multi-year long,

acquisition, then they will own a profit basis, which is what our whole society is based on, risk-taking and making a little bit of a profit. They will expand. And we haven't asked them to do that in recent years. And when we send a signal that we don't want to continue building

amphibious ships for five straight years what are we going to do with those workers for five years and when we try to start it back up after that pause to rebuild it just won't work

Yeah, it's just not – they're not going to just come back in five years after they worked at UPS or some other industry. You'd have to rehire and get them back, and finding employees to do a hard job is harder and harder in America. I mean, Audi in America sends people – trains them for 18 months before they let them work on your car. I can't imagine building a ship. Right. I mean, it's a whole different skill set, right? But we do it very well, the ones that are engaged in that, and all they want is a –

Good paycheck. It's a great career. And many of the things we're doing in terms of apprenticeship and training, we've gone into like the Vo-Tech programs in high schools now. And we are training 10th, 11th, and 12th graders now.

to start learning how to be shipbuilders. So there are a lot of things that we're doing, but the jobs have to be there. The orders have to be there from the government. We're the only ones that can build battleships. We've got 45 seconds left. What would you tell the younger people listening to this show? Why America's Best Days Ahead? Are they? What is your belief? A

I really do think that America is still the greatest land of opportunity the world has ever seen. And it can be. And frankly, we get to make decisions every two years on the congressional level and every four years on the presidential level. So I do think that we can be looking for more optimistic decisions.

more opportunity-driven leaders. But somehow, if we stick with market-based, risk-taking job creation, we're still...

the promised land in this world today. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. We appreciate you. Thank you for your service. Glad to be with you. For Chuck Warren, I'm Sam Stone. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back on the air next week. But folks, make sure you tune in and download our podcast only segment. We are on Substack, Spotify, Apple, everywhere you can find a podcast. And we always throw in a little bit extra there for you. Thank you.

Welcome to the podcast, the only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. Thank you so much to our guests from today. Chuck, what's going on in the world? Alvin Bragg is a piece of work. Well, you know, people need to remember he ran for office saying he was going to prosecute Donald Trump. And look, the Soros ally funded candidates and I just called your Soros his allies. When George Soros gives a check, all his allies pop in, including family. And he's a

these progressive attorneys running for DA or Supreme Court justices, they're all the same. - County attorneys, attorney generals. - They're running campaigns. They're not running anything legal anymore and it's concerning because it's all feel good what I want. So for example,

Republicans, you have really need a wake up call. Abortion is killing you in elections. You just lost a majority on the Supreme Court in Wisconsin based on abortion. Anybody tells you otherwise is not being honest with you about the numbers. And the problem is the pro-life forces, Sam and I are both pro-life, are not being honest with you about the numbers.

They're not doing what needs to be done to win these races, frame a message. And you're going to have to pay attention. Those groups will hound your candidates ahead of a primary. They'll pound on them and pound on them and threaten you. But when it comes to general election and time to put up or shut up, they go running the other direction. So, Sam, give me – I didn't want to jump into this, but I'm going to do it. So you handle policy for Cary Lake. Yep. And I am sure they all came –

Full force at you. Do this. Do that. Take the most hard line position. Where were they during the general election? They were nowhere to be found. Did they air any commercials? No. Did they do any mail? They didn't do any mail. They didn't knock a single door. They didn't make a single phone call. They do it everywhere. They do it everywhere. So...

Folks, just pay attention to that. If you really care about this issue, you need to get out and get really involved in it because we are being outnumbered on this issue. Now, let's go back to Alvin Bragg for a minute. So Alvin Bragg has filed 34 criminal charges against Trump. Again, as we were talking to Dan, I'd be really upset if I was the Atlanta DA because now you've hardened lines even further with this ridiculous –

And I've seen some people questioning that case much more in the last week or two with this one coming out. Yeah. It makes it very vulnerable. Any vulnerability in that case or the other one now looks that much more political. Well, it goes back to our interview with Congressman Schweikert where we talked about if you have this technology, it tells you you're diabetes or whatever. And you and I made the point, COVID...

COVID's ruined that. People don't trust the government to do this anymore because they handled COVID so poorly on a communication standard. It's been okay then to say, look, after a month, this isn't working. We don't know what's going on. They never wanted to do it. It was a very authoritarian regime on public health. So look, so this is just so you know, this is how Alvin Bragg does his job. So Rodney Johnson, 53, has nearly 90 busts on his rap sheet and two state prison stints under his belt,

saw his felony robbery charges knocked down to a slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanor by Bragg's office last week, law enforcement sources told The Post. The guy has been breaking the law for 35 years. He's been one-man robbery spree preying on low-wage workers. Then when the cops catch the guy, Bragg's office downgrades the felony charges. All the while, Bragg chases in a diamond of a former president for paying a porn star. And the law enforcement office says, priorities.

This is what he's doing in New York, folks. And the numbers are there. You can Google them. The crime is running rapid in New York. No murders haven't gone up. They're steady. But all other type of crimes have gone up significantly. Well, first off, you know, and Dan alluded to this, Chuck, I normally am not a big believer in tit for tat politics. I agree. I agree. But I believe this is the time you need to some some.

State Attorney General, county attorney, whatever, Republican in a deep red area in a hardcore, you know, 80 percent Trump district.

needs to go ahead and indict Joe and Hunter Biden. Absolutely. 100%. Do it today. Do it today. 100%. Just so you know, folks, CNN came out with a poll Monday. 76% of folks questioned believe politics played at least some part in the indictment against Trump. 52% said it was a major reason for the charges.

I mean, and there's people are seeing through this. And trust me, folks, Donald Trump. Trust me, folks. Donald Trump does not have 52 percent support of the American public. No, which is impressive given the way this is being talked about on the liberal media, you know, echo chamber. Because if you listen to them, you know, he's committed some sort of hideous act and he should be in jail for the rest of his life over this. Right.

You know, how many of them, literally the people on the air prognosticating that Trump should go to jail over this, how many of them have paid off someone to hush them up over something in their past? You want to bet it's 50 percent or more? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, it goes back to the old saying, you know, you can believe me or your lying, stinking eyes. And people are just saying my lying, stinking eyes are pretty much telling me what you're really doing. In other news, Brandon Johnson. Yeah.

a hack of the Chicago teachers union won the race for mayor and in Chicago, believe it or not, he's probably worse than Lori Lightfoot. I was going to say he is left of Lori Lightfoot. Um, he received the money and muscle of the Chicago teachers union. They, he raised $10.1 million through March 31st. 91% came from unions. Think about that. So when you hear people talk about big money in politics, uh,

It's these type of people who support Mr. Johnson. Right. It's a lie. Don't don't don't just just say, do you support unions giving unlimited amounts to candidates? Just ask them. And so one of the interesting things and people have not been paying attention to this. Democrats across the country have been rolling out these so-called sunshine laws right to force disclosure of C4s and PACs and all these type of things ending, you know, fighting dark money.

But every one of those laws has clauses written into it that allow outside contributors to give money to unions and not have it be disclosed. Right.

I mean, that just tells you what absolute garbage we're dealing with. These people are completely full of it. This is win at all costs, win or die politics that we're fighting right now on every front. Absolutely. One last point before we leave with a little Easter message here. We got to talk a little baseball before. We'll talk a little baseball here. But one other point. So this week we talked about it. We referred to it. We had a

A very important election in Wisconsin for the state Supreme Court. So this is the first time in 15 years now that Democrats, for the next two years, will control the majority of this Wisconsin Supreme Court. Just so you know, for Democrats who give you this holier-than-thou approach to elections, Democrats helped choose the GOP opponent. They spent $1 million in a primary to defeat conservative challenger and Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorough.

Again, Democrats got involved in a Republican primary. You're hearing not a stink from The New York Times, The Washington Post. I'm sure the local papers, Milwaukee. It's it's forgotten. And, you know, the judge who was elected, this progressive judge, she ran a campaign like a governor. She said electoral maps rigged. She went on about union collective voting.

bargaining. She talked about abortion. I mean, she didn't even try to pretend she's going to be objective on the bench. I got to tell you, we were talking the tit for tat thing, and I am generally one that says we need to avoid that kind of thing. But in the same election, you had a state senator be elected in Wisconsin who gives Republicans a super majority in both houses. Right.

I would go ahead right now and impeach and remove every Democrat from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Just do it. Yeah, why not? I mean, they've just taken this so far. We have to fight back. I'm sick of us. And I hate saying that. You know I hate saying that. And I do too. Because that's not how I base my life. No, I agree. But we have reached a point now where we have to not just fight back, but when a bully comes up and punches you,

And sometimes you've just got to go after them until they're down and bloody. And that is what we're going to have to do. We're bringing paper straws to a knife fight. Right. Oh, good analogy. Clean, clean. Let's talk baseball quickly here. I love the changes baseball made. The game's faster. You're getting more hits. It's more exciting. Games are under two hours and 30 minutes. I think it's been fantastic. It has been phenomenal, Chuck. I mean, I consider myself a baseball traditionalist.

But when you're talking a 30-minute reduction in game times, when you're getting people running again, and when ground ball singles are finally back on the menu...

Man, this is better baseball. And it also opens up Major League Baseball opportunities for a whole assortment of athletes who, you know, weren't going to hit the ball 400 feet. So you get a lot more hitters back in the game. People are athletic. The Diamondbacks signed a 10-year contract with such an athlete. Yeah. Now, they've done, I thought, a really nice job building towards this new iteration of the game. You're seeing the Milwaukee Brewers. Yeah.

Looking really good. Look at the Rays undefeated. The Rays undefeated. Yeah, no. This makes it easier for small market teams to compete if they have a good farm system. Well, that's always been the thing. You pay an overprice for homers, right? Because homers are cool. Yeah. I mean, no one's putting any... Chicks dig the long ball, baby. You're not seeing many sacrifice flies on ESPN highlights. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Finally, as we close this week, it's Easter, and there's many Christians in the world celebrating Easter, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I am one. I believe in that with all my heart. But my point for you today is this. A lot of you are nervous. You're scared. You're anxious of the future.

I plead with you to go out and find your faith if you can. There's lots of churches. There's lots of faiths in America. Find something that fits you, that settles your soul, that helps you beat faith. It is not easy. You have to work on it. But this Easter season, take the time. We need to all start finding something that's outside the yelling, outside the pressures of work, something that grounds us all. And I highly recommend for all of us to

grind in and develop faith because you're going to need it. It's, I don't see, I don't see the environment we're in cooling down any until all of us individually start cooling down ourselves. I think that's entirely fair. This is Sam and Chuck. Have a great weekend with your family. We look forward to being with you next week.

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