Congressman Eric Burlison on the Border, Oversight, and Countering Corruption 01:08:56

Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren.

We are very excited to have on the line with us our first guest today, Congressman Eric Burleson of Missouri's 7th Congressional District. He is a sixth-generation Missourian with 20 years of private sector experience as an investment advisor and software consultant. Chuck and I always love it when our government officials have experience on the front of a paycheck, not just signing the back of it. So, Congressman, welcome to the program, and thank you for joining us. Thanks, Sam and Chuck. It's great to be on.

So Missouri spends $338 million a year on illegal aliens. In 2021, 1,581 citizens of Missouri died from opiate fentanyl overdoses. You just recently went to the border. We're all border states now. What do you feel is the prescription to tighten that border up so we actually have operational control over our border?

Yeah, I was really grateful. Andy Biggs from Phoenix area, he led a delegation of us down. He's a real leader of the conservative movement, myself and Tim Burchett. And, you know, we as a conservative, I've always been in favor of building the wall, doing everything we can to secure the border.

And I can tell you, we need every bit of it. We need an above-all approach. We need a wall. We need a barbed wire fence. We need a third fence. Whatever it takes, I think we need to do to secure the border and make it clear that if you do come, then you're likely to be arrested. You're likely to spend time in jail. And basically what we need to do is...

Eliminate the incentives to come and add or increase the disincentives because that's what they're all doing. All of these immigrants are calculating the risk and the reward. And so right now for them, the calculation makes sense to risk it and come to the United States. And we need to change that. I think one thing that's important.

When our audience or liberals or the New York Times hear about us talk about the border and how it just needs to be, we need to have operational control of our own borders, that somehow Republicans, members of the Freedom Caucus, are opposed to legal immigration, which is not the case. We're just saying we're a country, we have rules, and they need to be followed, and we can only assimilate X amount of people at a time. Is that a fair characterization of our position? Yeah.

100% fair. You know, I look in the eyes of people that are coming and I have empathy for them, right? Like they want the same freedoms and opportunities that we have. But when we establish a precedent that you can ignore our laws and ignore our rules, and then we're going to give you handouts, which is literally what's happening. Like we're giving people across the border a warm night's stay,

three hot meals, snacks along the way, and we're giving them a hot shower, and then free health care, right? If they've got any kind of ailments, they get free health care. This is not the precedent we want to set to people that are coming to the United States. No, our governor here in Arizona is now

chartering jets to fly them to their chosen destination. It's essentially acting as a travel agent for the cartels for the last step of the journey. Right. And we have, I mean, honestly, if there's one thing that we're doing is we're boosting the cartels. We're giving them, they have full control over the border. There's not a single person that crosses the southern border without permission of the cartels. But you cannot tell me that this is something that, you know, the United States, which is

which is the greatest country on the planet, can't accomplish, which is full control of the border. If cartels can do it, we can do it. Absolutely. Congressman, one of the things you pointed out or Chuck pointed out leading in is the number of people in Missouri who are dying of fentanyl overdoses.

Some time ago we had the attorney general of Montana on and he talked about the subsequent effect from people who are dying or ending up in jail or on the streets from this substance and now you having their foster care system be overrun. So I think people underestimate the enormous societal impact of every one of those deaths and every addict that's being created by this uncontrolled border.

Oh, that's a great point. And you're 100% right. Because when you look at a lot of the laws that are broken, even if it's just burglary and theft, a lot of times it's just drug seekers and drug users who are trying to basically finance their habit.

And they'll do it through whatever means they can. So I looked this up. I was thinking this morning as I read the numbers from the Missouri Department of Health about in 21, 1,581 folks in Missouri passed away from an opiate fentanyl overdose. There was a study. So I said, how many people does this affect? And so I looked it up and there was a study in 2019 that found 135 people are affected by some degree by every person lost by suicide. I would almost say these overdoses are sort of a suicide of sorts.

That means in Missouri, 213,000 people have been affected. I mean, this is just soul crushing. And you as a man who are dedicated to your faith, it just, I mean, the anguish for these folks is just unbelievable.

Yeah. Man, I appreciate those numbers. I'll have to remember those. That really hits home. 200,000 people is the population of the city of Springfield that I grew up in, third largest city. And when you put it in perspective, it's just devastating. Yeah, I mean, just the tears. It's also devastating. Our entire state of Missouri population is 6 million people. And we've had nearly 6 million people

it just under biden's watch migrated across our southern border which is just appalling you could populate our entire state well you can't continue we had marco rubio on a couple weeks ago and he was just saying you know what there's at least 200 million people in the world who want to immigrate united states we can't do it i mean we don't blame her but we can't do it so let's move on to another topic you're on the oversight committee um

It's interesting to watch the media do somersaults, spinning justifications for the Hunter Biden money from China. They are leading a mass spin class out of New York right now. And look, we all know when people leave office, a lot of people make money upon their connections. This has happened forever. The Bidens did not create it, right? Right.

There's something that – there's smoke. There's fire. There's something wrong here. What are you going to look at on oversight to try to figure out what's going on besides the fact that he just used his dad's name? Right. Well, I think we just need to follow the money and continue to follow the money. And I think that the fact that we now know that this Robinson Walker LLC got $3 million from a Chinese energy company –

And then within days, actually the next day, they wired $1,065,000 to a company that was associated with James Gillier, who is also connected to the Bidens. And then James Gillier forwarded that $1,065,000 exactly in payments over a three-month period to Hunter Biden,

James Biden, Ali Biden, and another unknown Biden member all during that period of time. So you can't tell me something is not – there's not some money laundering or something happening. And we owe it to the American people. We may have the first time in American history a president who is actually accepting bribes. Congressman –

Is there any evidence that any of those named Biden family members actually have expertise in the area of commerce that they're theoretically being paid for? Right. Or energy policy or anything like that. Yeah, I doubt it. I don't. I think this and this is also something that happens. Look, all sides do things that look hypocritical. But this is simply if this role was reversed, I'm not going to use Trump.

If this was family members of McCain or George Bush, the press would be on this front page New York Times, Washington Post daily for years. That's the hypocrisy of this.

Right. I mean, they and the thing is, like, they accuse Trump of everything the Biden family has actually been doing. Right. Exactly. You have Hunter Biden that was connected with Burisma, receiving money from Ukraine, being investigated for corruption. And yet it's but Donald Trump is the one that we're going to impeach because he's actually pointing at where the fire occurs and trying to get

get the press to do their job. Part of this is, a lot of this is because we have got really a press, and not you guys, but the mainstream media is not doing their job. They owe it to the American people to investigate corruption no matter which party is doing it. And when they're not doing their job, that the entire...

Exactly. And it's an important role. And they need to do it for both sides, but they are clearly not on that mission. It's one side, one side only, and it has to stop. What else are you folks looking at on oversight? How are you liking the committee? What are you seeing that concerns you there?

You know, it has been my favorite committee to serve on. It's where a lot of the action is. We're the investigative arm of Congress, so we get to investigate anything that the federal government touches. The first month on the committee, we investigated Twitter and all of the

You know, the banning, the shadow banning and the blocking of accounts, conservative media accounts on Twitter. And that was great. We investigated the border situation. We brought in border chiefs and were able to determine that, yes, they are, you know, the Biden administration is not following the law. Mayorkas is blatantly ignoring federal law and he deserves to be impeached.

Yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. He absolutely does. You have started a podcast. We have two minutes left here in this segment, but you started a new podcast called Fresh Freedom Podcast through the eyes of four freshman members of Congress. Tell us our audience a little bit about it, where they can find it.

So it's through the eyes, and it's on Apple Podcasts, it's on all the Spotify and everything. It's Fresh Freedom, and it's through the eyes of five freshman members that are freedom-oriented members, all very conservative. Myself, Ana Polina Luna, Eli Crane from Arizona, Josh Burkeen from Oklahoma, and Andy Ogles from Tennessee. And it's our perspective as freshmen coming in. You know, we've not been corrupted, right?

by the D.C. swamp. And so it's a way for us to kind of stick together in this, and hopefully listeners will tune in and encourage us along the way. I love that, Congressman, because one of the things that we've also talked about on this show is that folks have to stay on top of their members when they get to D.C. It's too easy to go swamp, isn't it? There's a never-ending buffet of enticements to roll over for the establishment.

Yeah, they immediately, when you get there, they start hanging out all these things like, oh, don't you want to be a committee chair someday? And it's all false promises and illusions.

to kind of get in line and join the swamp. But that's not why I root for Congress, and I certainly want to keep it that way. Fantastic. We're going to be coming right back with more from Congressman Eric Burleson of Missouri's 7th Congressional District here in just a moment. But folks, make sure you go to our website at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You can find all of our episodes there. You can also find us on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, anywhere you like to get your favorite podcast.

Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Hey, folks, are you concerned about stock market volatility, especially with Joe Biden in office? What if you could earn and invest in a portfolio with a high fixed rate of return that's not correlated to the stock market? A portfolio where you'll know what each monthly statement will look like with no surprises. You can turn your monthly income on or off, compound it, whatever you choose. There's no loss of principle if you need your money back at any time.

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Congressman, I want to go back just as we ended the last segment about being in D.C. and your new podcast. You have started with fellow Freedom Caucus members. You know, we are who we associate with, right? And, you know, people you associate with determine a lot where you're going in life. And you know this. Mm-hmm.

You go back there and you talk about getting corrupted. And I think it's easy to do saying, well, this is how this is how it goes. It's sort of like bada bing, bada bing. Right. What do you do to keep true to your principles? But at the same time, realize you do have to go and get to know folks on the other side, because at the end of the day, you need to work together to some degree. How do you balance both those?

I appreciate that question. To me, you've got to be rooted in your faith from the beginning, because if you're not deeply rooted, you're going to get blown around like a tumbleweed. And that's, for me, my personal faith and belief that Jesus is my Savior.

it kind of gives you a broader and a bigger perspective because you realize we're only here for a blip on this planet. And no matter what title you have is really not that important in the grand scheme of things, because you're going to serve, you know, eternity with your creator. And I want to,

be proud of what I did and not ashamed of what I did with the things that I was given responsibility over. And then to keep accountable, I try to keep myself around other Christian brothers and sisters, try to stay in a small group Bible study back home. And then as far as politically, stick around the conservative members, right?

That are in Congress. Right. So we kind of fight each other. And that's why this fresh freedom podcast is, you know, five of us freshmen that kind of found each other. That's fantastic. Congressman, one of the things that you did before running for Congress was Pat was helped lead and pass a law called SEPA in Missouri. Can you tell people what that is? Because I think it's really important. And frankly, every state needs to copy that model.

Thank you. Yes, SEPA stands for the Second Amendment Preservation Act. And in essence, if you think about all the states that are, quote unquote, legalizing marijuana, they're not upending federal law. They're just simply passing laws that say our local law enforcement is not going to spend their resources enforcing it. And I thought, let's take a page from the left and we'll

And when Joe Biden is trying to pass all these rules to grab up pistol braces or AR-15s, I don't want my local law enforcement or state law enforcement to lift a finger to help him violate the Constitution and the Second Amendment. So that's what SAFET did. It said the state of Missouri, not a single state law enforcement official can help Joe Biden or help any federal law

enforce federal firearms laws that are not on the books in the state of Missouri. So if it's legal in Missouri, they can't help them. But if it's illegal in Missouri, then they can work with federal law enforcement, which just makes common sense, right? Right. And Joe Biden sued it.

Yeah, Joe Biden sued the bill because, I mean, he threw the Department of Justice at it. They took it to the courts. A district-level court judge struck it down, and now it's being appealed at the appellate level. And our Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, plans to take this all the way to the Supreme Court if he has to.

You served in the state legislature in Missouri since 2009. What have you found the difference to be serving in a state legislature where you have a solid, solid majority versus working in Congress now that our folks should understand the differences? I'm still getting to know the differences a little bit, but some of the early things that you pick up immediately are the differences in the rules and the way things are governed. You know,

And whenever I got up there, Josh Burkine and I both served as state senators, he from Oklahoma, me from Missouri. And we both agreed that the fact that the way that especially rules operated under Nancy Pelosi were absolutely nuts.

She could bring a bill forward that no one's ever read, have it go through the rules committee, which is a committee just before things hit the floor. And then they would lock down a bill to where there would be no amendments possible. And it was an up or down vote. And sometimes they would bring forward bills to the floor and vote them just simply by a voice when they know no one's in the room.

And passed bills that spent millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, with no one on record for having voted yes or no for any of these changes in legislation. And to me, that is – that's why we have a swamp. That is absolutely insane. It is insane. And I think that –

And so that's why when we came in, one of the things I was really glad we were able to push for is changes to the rules. And I think that we had this unique opportunity with McCarthy when we were able to get those rule changes and roll things back to the way they used to be decades ago. Yeah, I don't think there's anybody left or right in this country who thinks that what you just described is good governance under any circumstance. I mean, I...

I fail to see how anybody could accept that as the way things should be done. Yeah, 100 percent. Is that something oversight could have hearings on? I mean, I think that's really important. I mean, bring it up saying this is what happened. Do you think this is the way Washington should function? That would be an interesting concept. I'm sure they could. They have hearings.

oversight over everything. So I know that there's a lot of James Comer's being pulled in a lot of different directions because there's so much accountability that needs to be done on the Biden administration. Congressman, we have just about a minute and a half before we go to break. But one of the things I see in your bio is that you and your wife, Angie, are active in supporting campus ministries.

Can you tell us just real quickly a little bit about that? Because that has to be one of the toughest things for kids today is to actually declare their faith on a college campus. Yeah, and that's exactly why we did it. You know, in college, I was actively involved in Baptist Student Union and then Campus Crusade for Christ and just saw that there's a huge impact. A lot of times...

Students get kind of lost in those years, and they need something. And I found that, in my opinion, still to this day, I think campus ministries have probably the biggest impact, probably a bigger impact than a lot of our churches do.

Fantastic. Congressman, how can folks stay in touch with you and your work? Obviously, we encourage them to go download and subscribe to the Fresh Freedom podcast, but how else can they stay up with everything you're doing? Yeah, I'm on all the social medias as Eric Burleson, spelled with a B-U-R-L-I-S-O-N. And so I try to do everything I can to keep people up to date on those tools and

Just appreciate the opportunity to be on your show, guys. Well, thank you. We look forward to it. We hope your podcast is a big success. We'd love to have your other members of the podcast on our show. We had Eli Crane a couple weeks ago. But we appreciate what you're doing, and keep up the good fight. Thanks, guys. Have a great weekend. You too. Fantastic. Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. On the line with us next, John Levine, political reporter for the Sunday New York Post. His work covers city, state and national politics. And frankly, folks, he's doing fantastic work. If you're not following him, you need to be. John, welcome to the program. Thank you both for having me. So let's talk about Hunter Biden. Yeah. Man in the news. The man in the news continues to be in the news.

What do you see happening on this? Well, there's like a lot of different storylines playing out at once. And the short answer is we can't know for sure which one is going to be the one that wins out. It's almost like that Price is Right game, Plinko, where the ball is going down and it can go in a lot of different places. First of all, you've got the federal investigation out of Delaware by the Department of Justice. That's still ongoing. And

And he could be charged with one or multiple crimes from there at any time. You may recall that probe is being led by David Weiss, who is a Trump appointee. You may recall a slew of articles before the election and immediately after the midterms talking about how that investigation was nearing a conclusion or is that a tipping point? And a lot of these

cloak and dagger leaks from the DOJ, but then we still haven't seen any result yet. But that's relevant because if the DOJ moves to prosecute Hunter for anything, that will step on the House Oversight Committee's investigation, and that will close off, for legal reasons, a lot of avenues they have to pursue Hunter. So actually, the House Oversight Committee doesn't really want to see charges filed against Hunter, at least not yet, because they're doing their own probe. And by the way, that probe

is slowly, and I can't emphasize that word enough, slowly moving forward. You know, they've just got access to these suspicious activity reports that Hunter Biden and his family have generated 150 of. And by the way, I don't, you know, if you're not familiar with banking, suspicious activity reports are generated by banks

by law when they see, as the term says, suspicious activity. You do not get these willy nilly. These are for combating terrorism, financing, human trafficking, money laundering. You know, it's the real nasty stuff. You and I and most humans listening to your show will probably go their whole lives without getting one suspicious activity report for Hunter Biden and his family.

to have 150 or more than that is is dependent that is a stupendous and crazy figure and you can talk to any banking expert and they will confirm that and the house oversight committee has been trying to get at these the treasury is blocking them even though it's their right they've painted them they're in the majority they finally got access this week and they're currently reviewing them and

And, you know, they're being very tight about it. I can't tell you what's in these yet. If this was Adam Schiff, it would have already been delivered on a silver platter to the New York Times. Correct. Right. How much, too, should the House Oversight Committee be looking at why none of this came to light via the DOJ or via any of the financial institutions that are supposed to be watching over this, the oversight committee?

Why did this take a congressional oversight committee? Why didn't it come out in the course of normal business?

Well, the course of normal business was decided by Democrats until a few weeks ago. And there was just no, there certainly was no teeth or interest among Democrats in the oversight committee to do anything with this. Even now, the minority, now that they're in the minority, you have ranking members like Jamie Raskin, who every time he opens his mouth, he keeps saying, oh, this is no big deal. It's just, it's

It's just receipts for Pizza Hut, you know, and Blockbuster. Right. And Starbucks. And it's not, you know, we just saw the other day that the multiple Biden family members received north of a million dollars in 2017 from a Chinese company. It's not Starbucks and Pizza Roll. That is a heck of a Blockbuster, Bill. You've had that video out for a while. We've got about a minute, 45 seconds left of this break. Let me ask you a quick question. So people leave office all the time and take advantage of the relationships they've made.

What makes this different from other examples, from getting paid a lot of money for a speech or something? What makes this different? I mean, what makes this different is that Joe Biden is the president of the United States. And if you have Hunter Biden in a financial relationship with major Chinese companies, and you have potentially that relationship going over to Joe Biden during the period when he was out of office, when he was between his vice presidency and his presidency, which is when a lot of the most –

suspicious activity occurred after he left the vice president's office, you have a situation. What James Comer, head of the Oversight Committee, always says is this is not an investigation of Hunter Biden. It's an investigation of Joe Biden and whether Joe Biden in his role as president of the United States is compromised because of his relationship to his son and his son's business dealings. That's the root of it. That's the nut.

Well, and Democrats keep trying to play this off. We have just about 30 seconds before we're going to break. But Democrats keep trying to play this off. Like you said, it's not about important things or at worst, it's about Hunter's promiscuity.

For lack of a better word, we're on Christian radio station, so I don't want to go much further. That's a pretty good word. Yeah. But this is a really far-reaching thing that has enormous global impact, and folks need to be tuned into this going forward. We're going to be coming right back here with more from John Levine of the Sunday New York Post in just a moment. But, folks, make sure you're tuning in, downloading. Go to BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. You can get all of our past episodes. For Chuck Warren, I'm Sam Stone, and we'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren of Sam Stone. We're very excited to have with us John Levine of the New York Post. Or David Levine, sorry about that. John, sorry, just grief. Sorry, John. Sorry, John. But we're gonna give you the name David, too, as well today. I don't know why I had written down David here. John, so Hunter Biden today announced he's suing the computer repair shop. Is this just good legal strategy on their part to do this, to sort of obfuscate what's going on and go on the attack?

I mean, it's a public relations strategy. Maybe it's a good PR strategy, but actually it's a terrible legal strategy because, you know, if you're familiar with litigation, there's something that happens in litigation. It's called discovery if you get far enough down the pipe. And that's where both sides have to turn over their phones and their emails and their documents, you know,

you know, to look at for relevant information to the case. Now, you know, if you're asking me who's got a lot more to lose turning over their information, it's not the computer repairman. Exactly. The son of the president. And do you think we're going to do you really think we're going to have full blown Hunter Biden discovery in the middle of a 2024 reelection campaign of his father? That's and that's that is where this would go if the lawsuit were to continue.

So I think from a legal standpoint, I don't I have a hard time thinking Father Biden is going to just let that happen. I almost wonder because politicians have gotten, frankly, very casual about ignoring FOIA. If they don't understand how much more dangerous this is when you're talking about a court which can subpoena records directly from the telecom companies.

Right. But what's your question? I'm just saying that this seems like something where they're running a risk of disclosure that may reach much further than they actually anticipate. Oh, yeah. I mean, that, again, I don't – well, it's interesting because Hunter is actually being sued by the repairman. So in a sense, you can't – like, he just filed a countersuit, which I don't know. I guess maybe that's an intimidation tactic, but –

You know, President Biden won't be able to shut down the computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaacs lawsuit. And that's been going on since 2019. And there's a universe where, as I said earlier, that you could get into discovery there during a presidential campaign and you'll get new messages and emails between Joe and Hunter. And, you know, there is a massive, massive possibility of major escalations of this story should that lawsuit continue.

Let's quickly switch gears here and go to Donald Trump. It sounds like New York may be indicting him. What can you tell our audience about it and what do you think really happens?

Well, you know, we have a very – we're versus a very political town, New York City and New York State. You know, we have an attorney general in Letitia James who openly campaigned. It's an elected position. She openly campaigned on putting Trump in jail and indicting him. That was a campaign promise. So, you know, obviously after she is reelected, that's something for her office to deliver on. They indicted his company ultimately, not him, and the company actually –

had to plead guilty, and I think their CFO, 75-year-old man, they got him for, like, taking a company car and not reporting it. Correct. And living in a Trump apartment and basically not reporting, you know, thrill perks that he received on the job. I actually didn't realize it was that minor. Yeah, no, no. That's what it was for. Yeah, it was ridiculous. And it was, this is stuff, you know, look,

Is it against the letter of the law? Perhaps. But you know what? So is jaywalking. And it's very, very common for executives to get these kind of fringe perks in New York City. Correct. So they shoved a 75-year-old man in Rikers Island.

which is a very scary jail in New York, for five months because of this. And he refused to turn on Trump, you know, because if there's no there there, you can't. But that's what they ultimately were trying to get from him. And so now we have the New York City, you know, district attorney pursuing charges. And this has to relate, again, it's like payments to the state.

to Stormy Daniels for hush money because they had an affair. She was an exotic dancer. And like, I don't know. Well, it seems very probable they will bring charges. But also Trump has indicated that

That it won't stop him and he will continue his campaign where he remained, at least certainly as of today, the front runner. In a certain sense, if they're publicizing how minor some of this is, you know, in essence, pursuing this and it comes to light that these are such minor things that don't really relate directly to Trump, that could actually help him in his reelection, couldn't it?

Well, the risk is always overreach. You know, if it looks like the prosecution is political, you do end up, you give him an enemy to attack. You give him a foil. You say, it's me against this corrupt, deep state that's trying to stop me, but I'm not going to be stopped. You know, they can't keep Nixon down anymore. And you do run the risk of giving him that sort of

pinata to hit as he runs his campaign. But it's never good to be indicted. No, I don't know that we have a modern precedent of a of a major party candidate, the front runner being a former president being indicted and then continuing to campaign. We don't happen. We will not stop. And, you know, and I'm sure New York City is full of upstanding business people. But how many of them now are checking their banking records? Have had a possible liaison that little money exchanged hands.

Well, right. I mean, a lot of people here are just checking their banking records to see if they still exist, if their bank is still soft banking. But, right. I mean, I don't know. I don't think that most New Yorkers have to worry about this unless they should seek major office as a high-profile Republican. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We're with John Levine. He writes about politics and culture at the New York Post. You can follow him on Twitter, which we highly recommend, at LevineJonathan.com.

Okay, so you write about culture. Let's talk culture. Let's get off politics for a minute. This is depressing. Culture. What are some cultural things you're following right now that you find interesting? Well, you know, New York City is currently consumed by this phenomena called drag queen story hour. I think every state does.

Yeah, it's become like a national issue, which, to be honest, I feel like we have bigger problems in life than drag queens. A smidge, a smidge, a smidge. Yeah, we have a smidge more problems. Like, isn't China sending five balloons? But anyway, look, it's a thing. And we have a nonprofit in New York, and their thing is that they like to send drag queens to talk.

to read books, children's books, to little children in the libraries and in the public schools. And now, you know, it's tough because in principle this strikes me as a parent's right issue. You're a parent. You want to take your kid to hear a drag queen read a story. Right. You know, whatever. But you have in New York a lot of these, this nonprofit and a lot of these events are happening at public institutions and are publicly financed.

So now you have the taxpayers of New York City, me and everyone else here, subsidizing what is essentially certainly a lot of very strong opinions on the appropriateness of a program like this.

And that is currently convulsing. We're going to have libs of TikTok. We're doing a massive drag queen story hour. It's happening within Letitia James. Our attorney general is doing it in in in downtown Manhattan on Sunday. And libs of TikTok is going to have like a counter protest in midtown a few blocks away. And, you know, she's going to read her book to children. We're having dueling story time in New York on Sunday, isn't it?

I'm old enough. When you had sex education come to school, you had to have a written authorization from the parent. Can't we just apply something like that to this, that the kid come in, they have the written authorization of a parent?

Yeah. Well, I mean, when it's happening in like a public library, if a parent brings their kid, that is like a bad thing. That's a bad thing. Yeah. The bigger issue is when it's happening in schools and parents don't know about it. Right. Correct. In a school library. Correct. And yeah, I mean, you will never go wrong including parents in the conversation about what their children should and shouldn't be exposed to.

But I don't believe teacher unions believe that anymore. I don't think they parent think parent. Well, they definitely don't. I mean, that's the problem with teacher unions more than anything. I mean, they just simply don't believe in parental involvement. They think it's dangerous.

Right, right. Exactly. The further they can keep parents away from what's going on in schools, the better it is. Because a bill that they fought tremendously hard against, I believe it was in Florida, is a curriculum transparency bill, which is where parents have a right to see the whole curriculum online, every book, every lecture, everything. And it is, without question, very suspicious.

You know, I can't answer why, but there is certainly a concerted effort to keep parents out of the conversation by public school administrators and teachers unions. And it's curious. John, one of the things that we've seen with this is the counter from the left has been to, you know, share a bunch of photos of mostly fathers who took their sons to Hooters.

But aren't they essentially making the point that many Republicans are trying to get out right there that, hey, if parents are making that decision for their kids and for their family, that's one thing. But it's entirely something else when that decision is being made for them and often without their consent. Right. You can argue, right?

I think probably with some justification, you shouldn't be taking young children to Hooters. I would agree. Correct. But the big question becomes Hooters is not a publicly financed company. Hooters does not receive tax money, as far as I know. Hooters is not a non-profit. Well, not directly. Right, not directly. And when Hooters starts receiving tax money, that's when we can reopen that conversation.

John, talking about culture, you live in New York. You have some opinions that are contrary to a lot of New Yorkers. Do you feel like you're on no man's land out in New York at times? Yes and no. I know what you're thinking, and the answer is yes, you are correct about that. But New York is also much bigger than the loudest voices we have here. And so much of our conversation here is dominated by the loudest voices.

and just large blocks of apathetic people. But if you go out into more of the outer boroughs, the Queens and the Brooklyn and further out, and you actually...

Because most people aren't thinking about drag queen story art. Most people have like five. Real problems. And real problems. Right. I can't fault someone for not thinking about that very often. But when you actually drill down onto that issue and you talk to them and you say, what do you think of this and this and this? It's like overwhelming people when they're actually forced to confront an idea. They're like they say, well, well, that's crazy.

And it's there's just not there's there's a lot of apathy, unfortunately. But I think actually there's a to use a loaded term. There is a real silent majority of New Yorkers out there who when they are pressed to understand this stuff and they're forced to confront it, they actually do are much more reasonable and far more amenable to probably what a lot of your listeners in Florida and elsewhere might might think. Well, common sense still rules for a lot of people. And so my question to you, we have a little less than two minutes left here is.

How do we shake people out of that apathy? Because I think you're right. You know, I have lots of conservative friends in New York. And so I'm trying to think what shakes them out of their apathy to get involved more, to have a government that reflects what they believe. You know, law and order, for example. You know, I mean, it's just very well cared for. Yeah. And, you know, I know that in New York City we got Rudy Giuliani. He won in 1992. Yeah.

You know, voters were shaken out of their apathy. But that took like 2,500 murders a year to get to. That's where it had to go. And Giuliani won that race by two points. It was a close, close race. That came at the end of a horrible decade-long decline. Right, right. It took a decade. So unfortunately, you know, people get snapped out of apathy only when the conditions around them kind of force them to pay attention.

And so I don't know that necessarily Drag Queen Story Hour is going to be an issue that really snaps anyone out of their apathy. But that's, you know, law and order and crime issues are a major, major concern going on here. And it has awoken a lot of people to things they didn't previously think about. John, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. How do folks follow you and your work and stay in tune with everything you're doing?

I can be found on Twitter at Levine, like Adam Levine, L-E-V-I-N-E, Jonathan, J-O-N-A-T-H-A-N. Perfect, folks. And you can all follow me. Yeah, please get on there and follow him. Jonathan Levine, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you on the program and look forward to having you back again in the future. Thank you for having me. All right, Chuck. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm still worried about my portfolio. Yes.

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Be sure to tune in for the podcast only segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. We have some fantastic stuff there for you today. And as always, thank you for tuning in. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren with Sam Stone. Today we have friend of the show, David Katniz on. He's a political writer from McClatchy. And also we recommend we have subscribed to his Substack account, Too Close to Call. There he has a podcast and writes his musings and stuff.

David's one of these great objective journalists that there's not many of anymore on either side. So, David, thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. Hopefully I can live up to the intro. Well, of course. We talked to your mom before, so we're ready. We're prepping right here. We're going straight into Ghoulville here, so I think this is going to be fantastic. David recently, on his Substack account, did a podcast on Too Close to Call about he was recently asked to write a preliminary obituary on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. David, let me play this clip here from the old TV show Dirty Walk. Go ahead, Jeremy.

Tracy Jordan, star of the fact movies was also voted worst representation of a black man nine years in a row. Perhaps best known for his FCC fines. Thank God I didn't f*** anybody. And thank God I didn't f*** myself. And giving the queen parvo. This is terrible. When I'm dead, that's what I leave behind. That's how my grandkids will remember me as they fly around in their jetpacks.

Well, it's not fair out of context. Her Highness was sending signals. It doesn't matter. That's how the world sees me, as some idiot millionaire. Who? Mark Cuban? That guy ran me over with a jet ski. What is he so upset about? It's my fault. I let Mr. Jordan see his obituary. He's dying? Fine. I'll sing at his funeral. No, ma'am. NBC News makes celebrity obituaries ahead of time.

Typical liberal media. They do? Well, then I need to see mine. If they used any of the footage from my shoplifting arrest, that would be great because my arms looked fantastic. So, David, you were called recently when Minority Leader McConnell fell, got a concussion, and were asked to preliminarily write a obituary. Tell us about the experience.

So I think most people can relate to this. If you ever get a very early morning text message or phone call, it irks you. But in this instance, Mitch McConnell...

I was still in bed when I got this message. It was that early in the morning. But I kind of knew it was coming because the night before the statement went out, midnight statement, any time an office puts out a midnight statement, you know, that's a problem. And Mitch McConnell fell.

And I knew that was going to be my story the next day, giving eye cover, you know, on congressional leadership for McClatchy newspapers. So the text message early in the morning the next morning was like, hey, obviously, can you see what you can find out about his condition? But more importantly, drop everything else you're working on and start compiling the obituary, which...

It's pretty standard in media, but I've never done it. So it was like, okay, wow, I got to comb through this guy. He's almost had 40 years of a life. So I'm pulling up old obituaries of other big figures and trying to get a sense of writers that I admire. And that's sort of what I spent my day doing. And at the same time, hitting my sources to see

Is McConnell all right? Is he going to be okay? And there was a lot of uncertainty around that because McConnell's office is tightly lit. They put out two lines on it. It was just he was in the hospital. He had fallen. Now, did he fall down the stairs? Did he slip and hit his head? Did he break a hip? We didn't know. So those are the type of details you're trying to scour for and trying to get while you have

You have this enormous task of, you know, trying to remember someone if they were to pass. Does it does it seem like maybe we need a law to replace all staircases with escalators? Because members of Congress and the president seem to be struggling with this right now.

I mean, like these guys are in their 80s. Yeah. So, you know, like they're all in their 80s. So it doesn't or on the cusp of it. So, you know, when injuries at your 80s, I mean, if I fall down today, you know, hopefully I survive. You know, maybe I have a broken arm. But we all know that injuries when you're older take a much bigger toll. So you have...

You have to take these things seriously. I mean, stranger things happen. It looks like in McConnell's case, he is recovering. He's got a fractured hip. Like they said, it was minor. But again,

But again, I'm just inherently skeptical of the office putting out the medical reads of anyone, of any president, of any – in the most positive light possible. Sure. And there's no such thing as a fractured hip, a minor fractured hip for someone at that age. That's a great segue to John Fetterman. OK? I know you've covered it some. Right.

Look, I mean, you take what he's gone through seriously. Don't wish that upon anybody from the stroke to the depression he's battling. And we all know people battle depression as a very dark place, not only for the person experiencing it, but for those who love them. But, you know, they're saying now he's going to be there another two weeks. There's a lot on the right, even independents who just feel the media has whitewashed his health crisis. What do you see? You've covered it. Tell us about it.

Well, I would, you know, I wrote on my Too Close to Call sub stack that compassion requires grace, but it should not suspend reason. And my lens on this was to be compassionate about the guy's health. I mean, depression is something that millions of Americans struggle with. I think, you know, some of these people on the right, they're taking shots at him for that. I think that's... Poor form. It's also politically stupid. Right. The real question to ask is, like,

Can he do the job? Is he able to read? Is he able to have conversations? We just don't know the extent of his cognitive ability, and this was prior to

really the admission of clinical depression, he was still recovering and struggling with speech just from the stroke. I mean, prior to the admission of clinical depression, he was at an event in Pennsylvania with the president and had real trouble getting through it. It didn't get much media coverage because, you know, he won and like people are now not focused on Fetterman as much. But

I mean, it was still very visible. And then you talk to experts and the clinical depression can take years to recover from. This is a six year term. He just began it. I mean, obviously, Democrats don't want to deal with this because their their majority is so, so frail. But I think it's a real if this goes on now, he's back in two weeks. And this is what I lay out in my post.

If he's back in two weeks and is showing signs of progression, I think, okay, that's one thing. But I suspect that this is going to be a much longer recovery and that this is not going to go away. And I think six to nine to ten months from now, that's when you're going to start to see, well,

I think it will matter more in Pennsylvania to his own constituents to say, wait, can he really do this or do we do we need to think about a replacement? Is there kind of a deadline maybe with the 24 election? I mean,

Is that something that I mean, that sort of makes sense if you're going to at some point have to replace him. Right. It's up to the governor. I mean, the governor would would make the replacement, but then they would it would trigger a special election. Usually in what I mean, what governors in other states have done is try to pair it with an existing election because elections cost a lot of money to run. Right. I mean, they don't want to run just an election by itself. So they would pair it with some other election. Right.

And maybe it would be the 2024 election, which is not what I mean. You already have enough for center race in Pennsylvania that in 2024, Bob Casey is running for reelection and is up there. And that's the seat Republicans will try to try to go after. I mean, imagine if you had two Pennsylvania Senate races in 2024, which is compound problems for Democrats. So I just I don't think I mean,

So it's a touchy issue. But I mean, politics aside, I mean, this guy isn't a private citizen. He is a public figure and and one of 100 senators, which is very important in a Senate that's divided by one single seat. We're with David Katniss. He is a political writer for McClatchy News Services. He also has a great sub stack account called Too Close to Call, where he writes on various things and has a podcast called

The one thing I want to move into another topic that I'm not sure he would still be in office.

30 years ago when political parties actually had some influence on elections. McCain-Feingold basically, no lack of a better word, castrated them. And I'm pretty sure because, look, yeah, they would have to do a new election in 24, but they're going to replace him with a Democrat right now. You still have 18 months. And that, to me, is the height of responsibility. So let's take all of our political jockeying and put it aside. The end of the day is, look, your health matters. Your family matters. We're going to replace you.

And we're going to replace you with a Democrat. And in all likelihood, pretty good odds that Democrats can get reelected in 24. And right now, Pennsylvania is missing half of its representation. Well, let's let's talk about something that's really fun. And I think David will probably be talking to you about this throughout the summer.

Silicon Valley Bank's demise. Boy, that's all the fun, Chuck. You know, it's interesting. So, yeah, well, it's fun because I heard a great quote I was telling Sam about this week where a guy said, this is the first bank failure started by a group text chat. And

You know, you look at it. They had at First Republic two third of their deposits were over the two hundred fifty thousand dollar insured FDIC. Yeah. Silicon Valley is 90 percent. Zions Bank in Utah, which is a good bank, been there for years. Their stock has fallen. Their uninsured deposits are only 47 percent. How does this stop? It seems to be and it just this seems to be also a perception thing more than a reality thing in a lot of ways.

Well, I'm not an economist, but I have read a ton on this since this collapsed and listened to a ton of podcasts. And I've learned a lot in the last week on this because I think it's really important. Yes. One argument that is starting to develop is to get rid of regional banks.

that the United States is unique in that we have so many banks. Most countries in the rest of the world have about two to three to four banks. They do most of the banking. And then there's like a few smaller ones.

We have dozens and dozens of these regional banks, and there's an argument that they're not as well-supervised, in part because of the rollback in 2018 of Dodd-Frank, and that really we have created in this country large banks that are too big to fail, but in some instances that's important.

I mean, too big to fail, so we've got a bad rap, right, for the financial crisis that we bailed out the big banks because they have to be there because these guys can do whatever they want, but they're too important for the country to let them go down. But in this instance, Silicon Valley's function of providing loans to basically tech guys, and if they were part of a larger bank, it would have never happened. Right.

And that's, I think, some of the argument that you're starting to hear. This is starting to divide very interestingly. I think the one takeaway is that from both parties is that this is mainly the fault of the management of the bank.

Now you're getting some partisan arguments about, was it Trump's fault? Was it Biden? Was it his overseers that didn't do it? Was it Trump's rollbacks of regulations in 2018? And that's going to be, depending on your political perspective, people get partisan. But every writing that I've read is that the agreement was just bankrupt.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's no one on the board that really had banking experience. I mean, it's, you know, where are the adults in the room? Yeah, there's I mean, that's the one thing is there's several things have stood out to me. So, you know, as you know, both Sam are conservative. I'm not falling for the whole woke argument. Yeah, they were into it. But that's not the reason for this failure.

The failure was it seems to be – Add financial management. Yeah, they didn't hedge their bets, hedge their risks. Right. They did bet – I mean, no one's on the board who runs a bank. I mean, there is – you know, look – But where was the oversight? Well, exactly. So this is – So here's what you're going to happen. Regulators failed, and Congress is going to say we need more regulation. But also not only regulators failed, but investors in this bank failed. Yeah, no, but this is a regulation – regulatory failure, and they're going to demand more regulations –

and dismiss the regulations they failed to do. Interesting, you mentioned how many banks there are. There are 4,236 FDIC-insured commercial banks in the United States with 72,166 commercial bank branches. That's a behemoth. Yeah, are there too many banks? Yeah, I don't know. And then you've got credit unions. I don't know. Is that banking? They're not credit unions, so that's not even credit unions. So, yeah, I mean, that's something that has to be looked at.

I mean, I just think the amount of regional banks and I mean, maybe they're I don't are they not there? There obviously are regulators. Are they too busy to look at these banks? Do they not have enough bandwidth to like see what's going on? I mean, OK, I'm a movie. Yeah, no, no, exactly. I'm going to double this number. So I just looked up how many credit unions there are. There are four thousand eight hundred fifty three federally insured credit unions with one hundred thirty two million members.

We're over 8,000 basic banking institutions. I do think you need to divide those two. Well, no, they're two separate things. Because credit unions operate very carefully. Right, very, very differently. Very differently. I mean, you and I moved business to credit unions years ago. Yeah. But still, that's over 9,000 institutions people put money in.

They would say the reason you need regional banks is because the big banks would never lend to the startup. They wouldn't take a risk on the small entrepreneur trying to get off the ground. The reason you want the mom-and-pop

which I don't even think his mom and pop, because Silicon Valley Bank was still a big bank. It was just not as big as the big biggest. You know, that you want these smaller regional banks to, like, sort of be immersed in the community, to support the community. And, like, Silicon Valley Bank was the tech bank. Like, this was all, like, VC, tech. I think they had some winery investments, too. But it was all, you know, that was that culture out there. And the thing, I mean, did they just get too...

Cocky. Did they get too arrogant as far as what was their – that's what it seems like. They gambled too much. We've got two minutes left here, but one of the fallacies of the regional bank is, look, their loaning standards are no different than Chase or Wells Fargo. I own a half a dozen businesses. Trust me. The local bank's just a pain in the butt to deal with getting a business loan as a Chase bank or Wells Fargo. They're just not as –

And Chase and Wilkes-Fargo's guys, you know, the word Wilkie's been overused and it's basically worthless in a lot of degrees now, but that's what they are. But there's no difference when you're a small business owner trying to expand between what the loan requirements are on the banks. It's just sort of ridiculous. So, David, we got about a minute left here now. What do you think people should be looking for in our country going forward? What are some hot spots you see that are just starting to percolate?

Well, I mean, Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis. I mean, the big question I am asking for the next five months is, can Ron DeSantis take a punch? A lot of people are critiquing that he may be socially awkward, that he may be a little odd, he doesn't like people. I don't think that's as important as whether we know he can take a punch from Trump and deliver one back. And that has yet to be determined. And that, I think, is the most important political question of the next half year. Interesting.

David Katnese, reporter, friend of the show. Go to his Substack, subscribe. He needs some extra money to do some vacations. It's too close to call. Yeah, I've got to get to Miami. Exactly. Miami Music Fest. Go do it, buddy. Enjoy it. And we'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye-bye. This is Breaking Battlegrounds. We'll be back.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds for the final segment of our podcast portion. Sam, we had some fantastic guests today. Really good. Really good conversation. And I think if people followed David Katanese and John Levine more, you'd probably be a little more educated about the world and culture and things of those natures. Well, you know what I like most about those kind of guests on this program is that you get –

frankly, a level of honesty from them. They're not part of their, you know, they each have their own viewpoints, but they really don't let that get into their reporting and their writing and their work. They try to deliver the news as they see it and as they're able to. And I think both of them do a fantastic job with that. They absolutely do.

We're going to play a clip here from Kamala Harris talking about the Willow Oil Project. And if you want to start laughing now, go ahead, folks. Yeah, just prime yourself up. Go ahead, Jeremy.

Was there any discussion in the White House about what the blowback would be for approving the Willow Oil Project? Because people have gotten quite upset about it. I think there's some protesters outside right now. Well, I think that the concerns are based on what we should all be concerned about. But the solutions have to be and include what we are doing in terms of going forward, in terms of investment. Was there any discussion?

She, you know, it's funny this week. The reason I decided to have that clip, there was literally a campaign on Twitter. Now, again, Twitter is not real world, but progressives have really spent the money and time. Everybody talks about Russian influence, but just watch progressives spend on it.

Trying to say what a wonderful communicator she is, that she's being underestimated. And, you know, folks where you don't know, the Willow Oil Project is up in Canada, the Biden administration. Alaska. Alaska, I mean. Alaska. It's getting close to election time. And, you know, it's just sort of like vetoing the D.C. crime bill.

Joe Biden's coming more towards a center that everybody was promised he would do. Belated delivery, but yes. So now you have a cartel of progressives desperately trying to say, well, Kamala Harris's isn't her fault. This is what the VP jobs like. She's a great communicator. And it's just a lie. Well, it's an absolute lie. She may be the single worst communicator who's ever been in that office. The fact that she is.

And unbelievably, a worse communicator than Joe Biden, who at this point in his career is not with us half the time, is astounding. It is. It is. Can I say also one thing about that willow oil patch? That is such a no brainer.

Oh, absolutely. That is such an absolute no-brainer for this country. You're talking an enormous amount of oil in an area where it's easy to extract and get into existing pipelines, requires no additional infrastructure. And it's in an area that was dedicated for that purpose. And even the Alaskan native tribes are supportive of it. Yeah, absolutely. This is just simply, again, a bunch of white people.

progressives in New York and D.C. having a conniption fit about it. Well, in play acting, which is mostly what they seem to do. Crocodile tears. All right. The next clip we're going to play here is Senator Lankford, a friend of the show from Oklahoma, interviewing Secretary of Treasury Yellen about the SBB bailout. Now, listen to this closely.

Don't stop what you're doing. Listen to what she's saying. This is crony capitalism, my friends, at its best. Go ahead, Jeremy. Start with some of the banking issues we're dealing with on it.

Will the deposits in every community bank in Oklahoma, regardless of their size, be fully insured now? Are they fully recovered? Every bank, every community bank in Oklahoma, regardless of the size of the deposit, will they get the same treatment that SVBP just got or Signature Bank just got?

A bank only gets that treatment if a majority of the FDIC board, a supermajority, a supermajority of the Fed board, and I in consultation with the president determine that the failure to

protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk and significant economic and financial consequences. So what is your plan? That's a lot of word salad right there. What is your plan to keep large depositors from moving their funds out of community banks into the big banks? We have seen the mergers of banks over the past decade.

I'm concerned you're about to accelerate that by encouraging anyone who has a large deposit in a community bank to say, we're not going to make you whole. But if you go to one of our preferred banks, we will make you whole at that point. Look, I mean, we're not something that we're encouraging. That is happening right now.

That is happening because depositors are concerned about the bank failures that have happened and whether or not other banks could also fail. No, it's happening because you're fully insured no matter what the amount is. If you're in a big bank, you're not fully insured if you're in a community bank. Well, you're not fully insured. You were at signature, and it just barely met that threshold. You were at signature.

Well, we felt that there was a serious risk of contagion. We can stop it right here, Chuck. I mean, this is horrid. So what Senator Langford of Oklahoma asked is, will every community bank get the same treatment as Silicon Valley Bank? And her reply was, banks only get the treatment if...

The failure to protect it uninsured depositors would create a systematic systemic risk. I mean, so with a majority supermajority FDIC, I mean, here's the other element to this. The bank that failed SVB, all their clients pretty much were big Democrat candidates.

organizations. This is the tech world. Yeah, it's looking more and more like it was saved for political reasons. Yeah. What if that had been a bank that was mostly giving loans to startup oil companies? They would have been allowed to go under. It would have gone under. So, folks, anyway, pay attention to what's going on here with the banking. I know it's a little complicated sometimes. Sam and I are like you. We're not bankers.

We're learning as we go along, but spend some time. Make sure you're in banks that are sound financial health, and folks need to understand that.

95% of the banks in the United States are in good financial health. Well, and your credit union. We always tell folks your local credit union is a great option. And if you have deposits above $250,000, you want to split that and put it in different banks or become a supporter and a sponsor of the Breaking Bad Algorand show. You can subscribe and put your name right in front of this podcast right here.

Anyway, folks, we hope you have a great week. There's a lot going on in the world. Don't get depressed. Get out there. Be active. Love your family. Have a great weekend. Happy St. Paddy's Day. The political field is all about reputation, so don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a yourname.vote web address from godaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.